Northrop Grumman’s 20-year support contract for the UK RAF E-3D Sentry AWACS fleet is meeting expectations, according to UK Sentry whole life support team director John Parker.
The RAF fleet of seven E-3Ds is based at RAF Waddington and have been supported since 2005 under £529m ($1.06bn) contract. This involves 150 contract staff supporting the Sentry fleet at Waddington as well as at deployed locations.
The contract was drawn up in a bid to improve the value for money involved in support, and Northrop Grumman say the programme will save the UK MoD £80m over the life of the contract.
Northrop Grumman works as prime contractor, reporting to the Sentry integrated project team (IPT), and is responsible for single track maintenance (STM) at Waddington, with one aircraft in deep maintenance at any given time.
Eagle had been planned for the end turn of the decade and was aimed at transforming the E-3D into a hub for UK network-centric warfare capability, facilitated by the addition of network-centric collaborative targeting (NCCT) technology. This was aimed at dramatically reducing the sensor-to-shooter timeframe.
Source: Flight International
