Contenders for Britain's £727 million ($1.1 billion) airborne stand-off radar (ASTOR) programme will be making final pitches at Farnborough for the closely fought contract.
The UK Ministry of Defence is due make its mind up "by the end of the year" on the programme, which was identified as a key capability in the New Labour Government's Strategic Defence Review.
Three trans-Atlantic consortia submitted final bids in July to provide the system, which will allow UK forces to detect ground targets deep behind enemy lines and then transmit data to a large number of ground, sea and air based command posts.
The system will be equipped with both synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to provide three dimensional or near photographic quality images of targets and moving target indicator (MTI) radar to track the movement of enemy forces over wide areas. All three contenders are proposing to install the system in four or five executive jet-class aircraft.
IMPORTANCE
Defence and industry experts consider the UK choice of great importance, opening the way for NATO to buy a similar system.
US missile and defence electronic giant Raytheon is teamed with GEC-Marconi Avionics, Thomson-CSF and the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), with Canada's Bombardier Global Express selected as the sensor platform. Their system is a development of the ARAS-2 radar currently used on the high flying Lockheed U-2R Dragon Lady spy plane. Britain's Racal Radar Defence Systems is teamed with Lockheed Martin, the largest defence company in the world. They ropose to use the Gulfstream V platform for a radar developed largely in the UK by Racal and DERA.
Racal announced unprecedented £335 million losses last month, making the ASTOR order crucial to the company's future.
Northrop-Grumman is proposing to mount a modified version of its Joint STARS radar on a Gulfstream V. The Joint STARS radar is currently used by the USAF on a Boeing E-8A aircraft. The US company has formed the Wizard Team, along with British Aerospace, Computing Devices, Gulfstream and L-3 Communications.
The Wizard Team is dangling the prospect of UK participation in the future USAF software upgrade of its JSTARS radars under the Radar Technology Insertion Program (RTIP). This could open the way for British access to the highly secret new RTIP technology. It is understood that some of the UK ASTOR budget could be used to fund the RTIP if Wizard is selected.
Source: Flight Daily News
