Britain's programme to field a new airborne early warning aircraft for the Royal Navy's carrier fleet is to get under way in the autumn when the Ministry of Defence issues invitations to tender.
The future organic airborne early warning (FOAEW) programme is expected to attract all the major players in the market, with the Royal Navy expecting to field the new system by 2012. FOAEW is intended to be the Royal Navy's primary carrier-borne radar surveillance aircraft and part of the new Joint Force Harrier concept.
The main contenders for the platform are expected to be Northrop Grumman's Hawkeye 2000/05, Bell-Boeing's V-22 Osprey and EH Industries' EH1-101 with an advanced compound wing. Competition between European and American companies to provide FOAEW with a radar and missions system is expected to be fierce.
Mike Attefield, senior airborne radar systems marketing manager at Thomson Racal Defence, says the company's Searchwater 2000 radar and newly-developed mission system for the Sea King AEW Mk 7 is "up-gradeable in stages for all the alternative FOAEW platforms".
He says the company is on schedule to provide the Royal Navy with its first modernised and upgraded Sea King AEW Mk 7 at the end of 2001.
Source: Flight Daily News
