Two firms to be selected by mid-year to study vital time-critical strike enhancement
Four bidders remain in contention to meet the UK's Project Listener requirement to provide time-critical targeting services by cross-cueing data from multiple sensors used by airborne and other platforms.
BAE Systems, General Dynamics UK, L-3 Communications and Lockheed Martin UK responded in January to a Ministry of Defence invitation to tender to become potential lead system integrator for the project, which is worth around £70 million ($137 million). Industry sources expect two bidders to receive parallel 10-month risk-reduction studies around mid-year, with a prime contractor selection expected in early 2009 and development and manufacturing activities to run into 2014.
Listener is among a number of key intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance efforts now being pursued by the MoD, along with the Helix systems upgrade to the Royal Air Force's BAE Systems Nimrod R1 electronic intelligence aircraft and the UK's future Project Dabinett procurement, which could introduce new platforms such as unmanned air vehicles.
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The new infrastructure will fuse data from types including the Nimrod MR2 |
The Listener infrastructure will be used to manage, store and retrieve reconnaissance data and to handle communications across numerous datalink standards.
"Listener was about fusion, but it is now increasingly about the network and security," says Al Slater, business development manager for General Dynamics UK's Mission Systems business unit in Hastings, East Sussex. "Putting equipment on to platforms is not the issue, it's about a network of networks."
One example of the Listener capability could see electro-optical imagery gathered by an RAF Nimrod MR2 relayed into the cockpit of a BAE Harrier GR9 ground-attack aircraft or to the UK via satellite, potentially cutting the time required to locate and prosecute targets.
GD UK has teamed with EADS Defence and Security Systems, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems of the USA - which could supply an export version of the US Navy's Storymaker data fusion infrastructure dubbed Zeus - plus Marshall Aerospace, SCS and Vega for the Listener requirement.
The company will conduct networked demonstrations between its Hastings site and EADS's Newport facility in south Wales if selected to conduct a risk-reduction study, it says.
BAE's rival proposal includes support from EDS, IBM and Raytheon Systems. Lockheed is teamed with Thales, while L-3 is partnered with LogicaCMG. GD UK is meanwhile also discussing a potential partnership in the Helix Nimrod R1 upgrade with one of the programme's current bidders, which include Lockheed and L-3.
Source: Flight International
