Victory will see platform supplier Embraer of Brazil set up assembly line in Florida
Lockheed Martin has added to its emerging portfolio of networked defence systems and scored a needed success in the airborne surveillance market with its surprising win in the contest to build the US Army's Aerial Common Sensor (ACS).
The ACS award to the Lockheed Martin team was far from straightforward. Lockheed Martin faced the incumbent contractor, Northrop Grumman, which maintains the two aircraft the ACS will replace. Lockheed Martin was also forced to defend basing its proposal on a Brazilian regional jet, the Embraer ERJ-145, competing against the US-made Gulfstream G450.
Lockheed Martin, still reeling from the loss of the US Navy Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA) contest in June, focused its sales pitch on the key themes of lower costs and deeper knowledge of the army's future ground-based communications network, which will be the main subscriber of the ACS's surveillance information.
Lockheed Martin argued that the army could buy the unmodified regional jet for $20 million, or $13 million less than the Northrop Grumman team's business jet. Northrop Grumman countered that the G450's stronger airframe would need less maintenance, significantly lowering life-cycle costs.
But Lockheed Martin's team placed heavy emphasis on its direct access to network connectivity. The ground-based hub for the ACS's sensor product will be the Distributed Common Ground Station-Army 10.2, which Lockheed Martin is developing with prime contractor Raytheon. The company also acquired Orinon last year, which is a company involved in designing the network architecture for the army's Future Combat System.
Under Lockheed Martin's proposal, the army is also buying a wideband common datalink from L-3 Communications, a low-band communications sensor provided by Argon, a communications architecture developed by Harris, and hyper-spectral image to be provided by L-3.
Embraer plans to open an ITAR-compliant final assembly centre on an abandoned military base in Jacksonville, Florida. More than 16% of the aircraft will be made outside the USA.
The $879 million contract covers a 66-month system development and demonstration phase.
STEPHEN TRIMBLE / WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flight International
