Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recently awarded Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) a potential $610 million contract to provide the agency with up to 30 multi-mission aircraft that will eventually conduct missions currently carried out by a number of other aircraft.
The initial base contract is for $95 million to supply five Multirole Enforcement Aircraft (MEA) and contains four one-year options for up to 30 aircraft over the life of the program. SNC will perform the work at its facility in Hagerstown, Md.
“This is a strategic win for us in realizing our diversification objectives into the Homeland Security Department as well as others, like international markets,” Eren Ozmen, president of SNC, said in a statement.
The company will integrate a sensor suite into the Hawker Beechcraft King Air 350ER twin-engine special mission aircraft. The MEA will perform maritime and ground surveillance missions, airborne tracking.
CBP also wants the MEA to have the flexibility to support ancillary missions such as communications intelligence, logistical support, and training.
The MEA’s sensor suite will include multi-mode radar for automatically detecting and tracking air and surface targets, weather detection, and an electro-optic and infrared sensor for long-range visual search, surveillance and tracking.
The MEA will replace aging Beechcraft C-12, Piper PA-42 and Beechcraft King Air 200 aircraft. CBP is several years into a 10-year plan to consolidate its 19 different types of aircraft assets, which number about 270 total, to around eight or nine.
Under the statement of work in the Request for Proposals, there will be a system requirement review one month after contract award. That will be followed by a preliminary design review in mid-December and a critical design review in February 2010.