By Geoff Fein
The Navy earlier this week awarded Boeing [BA]-Argon ST; Lockheed Martin [LMT]; and Northrop Grumman [NOC]-L3 Communications [LLL] teams each $1.25 million contracts to develop the program requirements and potential system concepts for the service’s replacement for the EP-3 aircraft.
“The contracts will allow industry to work with the Navy to analyze the current requirements for the EPX system and will further develop the concepts, cost and schedule for the program,” said Capt. Joe Rixey, Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft program manager. “These contractors will help us determine the technical criteria necessary to build a strong foundation for the EPX program.”
Planned as a replacement for the EP-3 Aries aircraft, the EPX will be a manned multi-mission, multi-intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting platform. The EPX will operate in concert with other maritime patrol and reconnaissance platforms, such as Broad Area Maritime Surveillance and the P-8A Poseidon.
Representatives from Boeing and Northrop Grumman told Defense Daily that the EPX requirements were mailed out by the Navy yesterday.
“The Navy is in the very early phase of concept exploration, concept development, and through these study contracts, the EPX BAA (Broad Area Announcement) they invited industry to participate in the conceptual development of EPX,” Alan Easterling, Northrop Grumman EPX capture leader, told Defense Daily yesterday.
The first steps are to assess draft Navy requirements for the EPX system and develop candidate system concepts that broadly meet those requirements, he said.
“The core of the study is really about assessing those requirements and advising the Navy on whether given the operational context they provide, we [in] industry believe those requirements are executable, or appropriate, or affordable. All the traditional early phase activity,” Easterling said.
Although EPX is planned as a replacement for the EP-3, Easterling said the effort is much more than that.
“In fact we prefer to de-emphasize the aircraft. We think of it in terms of a system-level concept. The aircraft is one component of the system,” he said. “What the Navy is asking for is…a multi intelligent ISR&T, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting capability.”
The Navy is bringing in mission areas that have been traditionally addressed by other platforms, Easterling added. “Bringing all that together into a single system will be challenging, which is another reason for involving industry early in the process.”
The strength of the Northrop Grumman L-3 partnership is L-3’s position as the current system integrator for the EP-3E Joint Modernization Common Configuration, or JCC, which is the mission system for today’s EP-3, Easterling said. “And EPX is replacing the EP-3, so there is a certain logic in collaborating with the incumbent in the current mission area.”
Northrop Grumman shares that legacy, he added.
“We also have a highly capable SIGINT (signal intelligence) experience, and we also add deep knowledge of EW (electronic warfare) in general, information operations, battle management, fusion…clearly fusion is a critical skill set required to bring together this large array of sensors to provide targeting data,” Easterling added. “So you combine those two legacies of experience and you create a very powerful mission capability team.”
The study is a five-month period of performance that concludes in July, after which the Navy has told the industry teams that they will digest the study product and formulate a technical development phase request for proposal, which is the next step of the acquisition plan, he added.
Boeing will work with partner Argon ST to help define program requirements and develop initial system concepts for the EPX multi-intelligence system. Argon ST, based in Fairfax, Va., is a leading designer and developer of SIGINT sensors and information operations systems, according to Boeing.
During the concept refinement phase, Boeing and Argon also will review requirements and determine potential cost, schedule and technical risks; analyze operational scenarios and assess achievability; develop risk mitigation plans; identify opportunities to leverage investments in Navy, the Pentagon, or other non-developmental item programs; and identify opportunities to reduce system life-cycle costs, Boeing said.
“From our perspective, we bring large scale integration expertise in ISR&T and coupled with the right SIGINT and MULTI INTI hardware suppliers, I think we can provide quite a capability on a derivative of the P-8 aircraft,” Paul Summers, Boeing director of airborne SIGINT campaigns, told Defense Daily yesterday. “And, of course, our background in the P-8 platform itself, in terms of transitioning it from a commercial platform into a military variant.”
The Navy is expected to downselect to one contractor for the EPX system development and demonstration phase in late 2011 or early 2012.