Douglas Barrie/LONDON
Gilbert Sedbon/PARIS
BRITISH AEROSPACE Dynamics will have to submit an independent bid to meet the Royal Air Force's stand-off-missile requirement in July, having been thwarted by the French Government in its desire to submit a joint bid with Matra.
BAe Dynamics was intending to have tied up its merger with Matra, allowing it to submit a joint bid based around a variant of the Matra Apache to meet the RAF's Staff Requirement (Air) 1236 for a precision stand off weapon.
It will now have to submit a bid, still based around the Apache, but with Matra acting only as a main subcontractor following French Government demands that the merger be consummated with a RAF order for the Apache.
The UK company maintains that the merger is on course, although it admits that the French Government's demands have not helped. The UK Ministry of Defence has robustly dismissed any idea of linking the two.
The UK will also be offered access to data from the Spot, Helios I and Helios II satellites as part of the Apache package. This will allow the RAF to build up a database mission map for the weapon, which will not have a global-positioning-system capability.
The missile being offered to the RAF will draw on the technology being developed for the Super Apache APTGD (armament de precision et a tres grande distance) which has been rechristened SCALP (systeme de croisiere autonome a longue portee.)
Source: Flight International