Stewart Penney/LONDON
The UK Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) says it has identified support cost savings of £1.86 billion ($2.7 billion) over the life of the Eurofighter in Royal Air Force service.
UK defence secretary Geoff Hoon says the DPA's Eurofighter project team has identified the saving, which is around 20% over "a more traditional approach to support of the aircraft". The RAF requires 232 Eurofighters, the first of which is in final assembly at BAE Systems' Warton factory and is due for delivery in June 2002. The UK has been seeking to drive Eurofighter in-service costs down in recent months. One measure has been to remove the internal 20mm cannon (Flight International, 9-15 May).
The largest savings are likely to come from changes in component and equipment replacement schedules, "particularly avionics", says the DPA.
Improved management techniques and incentivising industry to improve its performance could save around £700 million, says DPA. More Eurofighter maintenance and support will be contracted out to industry than with previous RAF aircraft. Industry will receive a higher income as reliability improves.
A second key area is a switch to commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. This will include computer components where there is likely to be a move away from bespoke, application-specific integrated circuits to COTS chips. The latter are cheaper, more widely available and are developed at a fast rate, offering comparatively cheap and rapid upgrades. This is likely to reduce the in-service support bill by around £200 million over the Eurofighter's nominal 30-year life, says the DPA.
Source: Flight International
