Further up the UAV food chain, lessons for future development of a different sort are being learned by Northrop Grumman's Ryan Aeronautical Center, developer of the RQ-4A Global Hawk. Rather than adding more capability, planners are now having to think of taking systems off, or simplifying them in a bid tocut costs averaging $73.7 million per system.
A Joint Affordability Team (JAT) set up to find solutions to the cost issue included Northrop Grumman and the USAF. JAT recommendations are expected to be formally unveiled at the Farnborough air show this month. They revolve around several option packages, which balance capability and quantity against cost. One is thought to be an option to equip 25 aircraft with an improved synthetic aperture radar (SAR), signals intelligence (sigint), electronic warfare (EW) capability and multi platform datalink. A further 13 vehicles will be equipped with the advanced Radar Technology Insertion Programme (RTIP) sensor.
Under the original plan, all 38 Global Hawks would receive the RTIP radar, but only 13 would have the improved SAR. Other options are thought to include configuring 13 aircraft for imagery capability only, while another includes removing the RTIP radar, and the elimination of related RTIP payload and multiple sigint packages.
A mixed-role option also includes a combined fleet of 13, with SAR and electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR), 12 with sigint and EO/IR, and 13 with SAR and sigint.
Around the baseline capabilities options, the JAT has also recommended several other cost-cutting suggestions, ranging from smart procurement and lean manufacturing to production changes, along with the adoption of smaller and cheaper launch and recovery systems.
Cost avoidance has therefore become as valid a development lesson for Northrop Grumman as any it has had. A key aspect, it believes, is how to resist "loading up" the UAV, and balancing capability against cost. Otherwise, it says, any UAV manufacturer faces exactly the same spiralling costs that have killed the majority of manned platform developments.
Source: Flight International
