The UK Ministry of Defence has made the first significant advance in its Team Complex Weapons initiative, approving a £74 million ($147m), one-year budget to launch six risk-reduction projects.
Announced yesterday, the move comes two years after then-Minister for Defence Procurement Lord Drayson launched the Team CW scheme at the last Farnborough air show, establishing a six-month goal to finalise a partnering agreement with industry.
After encountering a complicated period of negotiations, the initiative finally received initial gate approval in early June.
Team Complex Weapons includes MBDA, Qinetiq, Roxel, Thales Missile Electronics, Thales UK and the MoD. Raytheon Systems of the UK has also formally applied to join.
The partnership was formally launched with a signing ceremony at the show involving Minister for Defence Equipment and Support Baroness Taylor.
 |
|---|
“Team CW will help to maintain the UK’s key skills and technologies in missile development and protect our operational sovereignty in this sector for the future,” she says.
“This is a real landmark,” says Team CW industrial chairman and MBDA UK managing director Steve Wadey. “It has taken radical change in industry and the MoD to reach this point.”
The new framework seeks to remove duplication, simplify platform integration, encourage modularity and provide planning stability to the UK’s guided weapons sector. This has suffered a 25% decline in its business over the last few years, but is expected to value a potential £6 billion over the next decade, says Wadey. “We understand that we have a fixed budget to work with,” he says. “We can’t keep growing costs or delaying programmes.”
Covering so-called ‘weapons of broad utility’, the projects include the light and heavy elements of the Royal Navy’s future air-to-surface guided weapon requirement, respectively based on the Thales-developed lightweight multirole missile and an enhancement of MBDA’s Sea Skua airframe.
Enhancements to MBDA’s Storm Shadow cruise missile will also be made, with a mid-life upgrade to focus on enhanced operational flexibility and increased lethality.
A next-generation common anti-air modular missile family will also be developed to replace the MBDA Rapier and Seawolf systems and enhance the capabilities of the company’s Asraam air-to-air missile.
Source: Flight International
