LOCKHEED MARTIN, Aerospatiale and Daimler-Benz Aerospace (Dasa) are to decide by the Paris air show in June whether to proceed with development of a new tanker/transport aircraft as a joint programme.

The three companies have completed a "Phase 1" study of the market for what Lockheed Martin terms the New Strategic Aircraft (NSA), and are discussing whether to proceed jointly into concept development, Micky Blackwell, president of Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics sector, tells Flight International.

The possibility of a joint programme "looks favourable", but he says that it is not clear yet whether Lockheed Martin would co-operate with Airbus Industrie partner companies Aerospatiale and Dasa individually or collectively, or with Airbus itself.

The US company is engaged in "a broad range of discussions with Airbus", Blackwell says. Lockheed Martin has submitted a proposal to supply engine nacelles for the A340-500/600, which Airbus plans to launch by the Paris show.

The European consortium has also offered the US company work packages on the stretched A340 and the A3XX large airliner, he says. These packages are "substantial", but are not major airframe sections such as the fuselage or empennage, Blackwell says.

The NSA is envisaged as a replacement for aircraft such as the Lockheed C-141 strategic airlifter and Boeing KC-135 aerial-refuelling tanker, and the US company sees a market for a commercially developed aircraft with a target price of $100 million.

As some 280 US Air Force C-141s are being replaced by just 120 McDonnell Douglas C-17s, the company believes that there is a market for a cheaper aircraft with a similar cargo capacity, "-developed and offered to the US without a lot of non-recurring expense", according to Blackwell.

Blackwell says that the US need to replace its C-141s and KC-135s, coupled with a European demand for strategic airlift, could generate a requirement for "several hundred" aircraft.

A modified Airbus aircraft studied by Lockheed Martin, Aerospatiale and DASA is a "very viable" candidate for the emerging KC-X requirement to replace US Air Force KC-135s, Blackwell says.

Lockheed Martin is telling the European companies that the NSA would not compete with their planned Future Large Aircraft (FLA). "The FLA as envisaged is a competitor for our C-130J," says Blackwell.

"The NSA is a much different aircraft to the FLA," he adds.

 

Source: Flight International