Douglas Barrie/LONDON
It is a case of in one door and out the other as far as the aspirations of Northrop Grumman and the US Government of selling Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) technology into Europe are concerned - back into the UK, but out of NATO, at least for the moment.
A politically contentious decision has seen Northrop Grumman allowed to re-enter the UK's Airborne Stand-off Radar (ASTOR) programme in September, but its Boeing E-8 JSTARS platform was rejected by senior NATO officials in November as the "fast-track" solution to its alliance ground-surveillance (AGS) requirement (Flight International, 12-18 November).
The NATO Conference of National Armament Directors (CNAD) met in Brussels on 6 November and, despite furious lobbying led from the US Presidential office, deemed the acquisition of four E-8 JSTARS to be "not viable".
The estimated $225 million per aircraft price tag, coupled with heavy personnel requirements - the US Air Force runs a standard complement of 21 crew - undoubtedly influenced NATO's cash-strapped European member states.
Several of the smaller NATO member states supported the "fast-track" approach - France and the UK were believed to have been opposed, favouring national-level solutions, while Germany sat on its hands. Given the longevity of the related ASTOR project, which had its genesis as the CASTOR programme as far back as the late 1970s, the UK Ministry of Defence's opposition to anything "fast" when it comes to airborne ground surveillance is no surprise.
As well as rejecting the E-8, the CNAD has also ruled out longer-term proposals, dubbed the "deliberate approach", built around European development projects. Instead, it tasked the AGS project office with a six-month study to come up with "new acquisition options". The procurement case - whether for NATO or at a national level - for acquiring an airborne platform equipped with a synthetic-aperture radar/moving-target indicator (SAR/MTI) remains strong. The ability to deploy such systems at short notice would give the user a high-value intelligence asset across a broad spectrum of operational scenarios.
Where the USA has differed with those European states which are developing SAR or MTI systems at a national level is in the size of the carrier, along with the balance of on-board/off-board processing. While the E-8 JSTARS uses a Boeing 707 airframe, France, with the Horizon, and Italy, with the CRESO, have opted for helicopters as the basis of tactical MTI systems. For ASTOR, the UK MoD has decided on a medium-to-large business jet as its platform, while French studies, such as Dassault Electronique's Mosta proposal, settled on an Airbus A319 commercial twinjet.
The events surrounding Northrop Grumman's resurrection as a competitor for the UK MoD's ASTOR programme in the run-up to the CNAD meeting will have been frustrating for the two previously shortlisted competitors - Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
The UK MoD had been aiming to release the request for best and final offers (BAFO) for ASTOR in October. It is not inconceivable that, had this schedule been adhered to, it could have informally briefed other CNAD states at the 6 November meeting on its preference between the two. Whether this would have had any impact on the outcome remains a matter for conjecture.
As it is, the BAFO had still not been released by early November. In the interim, the UK, having previously repelled US attempts, industrial and political, to form a JSTARS beachhead in Europe, had invited an unopposed landing.
What exactly transpired in the weeks running up to the 10 September meeting between US officials and Sir Robert Walmsley, the UK Chief of Defence Procurement remains a matter of speculation. What is certainly not in doubt, however, is the outcome of that meeting.
The UK MoD and the US Department of Defense (DoD) reached a Government-to-Government agreement that a "co-operative development of a variant of JSTARS" would be considered to meet the ASTOR requirement.
Northrop Grumman's E-8 JSTARS, and variants thereof, had previously been eliminated from the ASTOR competition for not meeting the requirement. Royal Air Force officials close to the procurement have, in the past, gone out of their way to highlight their view of JSTARS as a first-generation system.
The ASTOR requirement, by comparison, was for a second-generation airborne ground-surveillance capability.
Whitehall and industry sources suggest that the E-8 JSTARS Westinghouse Norden APY-3 radar is slanted towards MTI performance. As such, it does not meet the UK's more-demanding SAR requirements enshrined in the ASTOR. It also fails to meet the specification in several other important areas.
Whitehall sources say that the previous elimination of a JSTARS proposal precipitated a letter from US President Bill Clinton to the then UK Conservative Prime Minister John Major. A similar level of political pressure had also been exercised in pushing the E-8 JSTARS to NATO.
The motivation within the Presidential office appears to be domestically driven, with employment issues forcing its strident advocacy of Northrop Grumman to meet European needs.
The UK's change in Government saw the Labour administration launch its Strategic Defence Review (SDR), while in the background the Treasury initiated a search for more savings in defence expenditure.
It is within these quarters that the USA's JSTARS overtures found resonance.
The politically driven decision to accommodate US ambitions, and perhaps to acquiesce to US pressure, in seeing Northrop Grumman return to the ASTOR fray has been met with consternation by several senior defence officials at the service and procurement level.
To many, the decision appeared a far cry from UK Defence Secretary George Robertson's call for "smart procurement", because it effectively undermines the whole procurement process.
The decision also was met with concern and dismay by the two selected teams, led by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon: concern in the shape of doubts over whether the competitive playing field remained level, and dismay over bid costs which were in danger of not being recouped by a contract award.
US competitors involved in the ASTOR programme also question whether, in clearly backing Northrop Grumman, that the US administration is breaching its own guidelines in dealing with overseas procurement competitions.
The US Government's stated position is that where there is more than one US company bidding for a programme, it will adopt a neutral stance.
With regard to Lockheed Martin, however, this must be qualified by the pending approval of its acquisition of Northrop Grumman - an inadvertent case of if you can not beat it, buy it.
Beyond confirming that a variant of JSTARS is to be considered alongside the BAFO responses by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, the UK MoD has remained tight-lipped about exactly what it will be considering. Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman has used the Government-to-Government nature of the agreement to parry questions.
What appears to be under consideration for "co-operative development" is a business-jet variant of the JSTARS, possibly equipped with a new radar, or at least a different antenna. The Bombardier Global Express is emerging as the most likely candidate airframe, although the Gulfstream V may also be offered.
The USA is believed to have offered the UK a stake in a "black" radar programme as a potential ASTOR candidate sensor, and Northrop Grumman is also looking at the possibility of drawing on one of the two other contender radars. A modified APY-3 is also being proposed as a solution.
By implication, "a co-operative development" also suggests that the US DoD has an interest in a smaller JSTARS platform. The Pentagon's Quadrennial Defence Review(QDR) reduced the JSTARS procurement from 19 to 13 E-8 aircraft - NATO, some assumed, would pick up the remaining six.
Such a limited number of aircraft in the inventory could leave the DoD exposed, unless it also has some smaller JSTARS-type aircraft which can be used as potential gap-fillers.
There are indications that the US ASTOR initiative is, in part, an attempt to stitch together an alternative - although still Northrop Grumman-led - bid to meet the NATO AGS requirement.
It is also reasonable to assume that the DoD will continue to promote Northrop Grumman to meet the NATOAGS project. Given the UK MoD's procurement schedule, the Pentagon could be in a position to champion Northrop Grumman's ASTOR solution, should it be selected in the first half of 1998, as a genuine continuing European programme. The next CNAD will meet to consider the AGS by the end of the second quarter of 1998.
A "co-operative development" might also result in a co-operative sharing of costs as far as the UK is concerned. Such a move, given the £750 million ($1.2 billion) price tag attached to the five-aircraft ASTOR programme, would find staunch support in the lobbies of the UK Treasury.
What is considerably less attractive is the difficulty of attempting to evaluate - if, indeed, a genuine equal assessment is intended - the Northrop Grumman JSTARS variant. The proposal will be compared with the two BAFO submissions from Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. It remains to be seen what kind of approach the MoD will take to factoring-in what must be the considerable development risk associated with a JSTARS variant, however.
Source: Flight International
