15
few years the focus for the BAE Systems
team is well and truly on UK capability.
“The HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier
is the big one for us this year,” explained
Peters. “It will encompass most of the
team. Then into 2019 we will also start
our integration work with Meteor [beyond-
visual-range air-to-air missile, BVRAAM]
and SPEAR 3 [Selective Precision Effects
At Range Capability 3] weapon for
capability delivery in the mid-2020s.”
The SDD project included work on two
UK-specific weapons – the Raytheon
Paveway IV precision-guided bomb and
MBDA AIM-132 ASRAAM (Advanced
Short-Range Air-to-Air Missile), which
will be fielded as part of the UK initial
operating capability (IOC). “The weapons
test work we carry out here starts with
carriage-testing to ensure we have a good
fit,” says ‘Wizzer’ Wilson. “Typically,
that starts with ground-testing; uploading
and downloading the weapons before
we fly them, hanging missiles out in the
airstream, opening the weapons bay doors
and exposing the weapons. We do that
over a range of airspeeds and angles of
attack. We’re checking the acoustics, the
vibration, thermals, before we eventually get
to releasing the weapon. Then we get into
testing their accuracy.” While much of the
test work for these weapons was carried out
at Patuxent River, the majority of the firings
were carried out from Edwards due to the
presence of suitable ranges and targets.
“All Paveway IV and ASRAAM work
is complete from a DT [development
test] perspective,” Wilson explains, with
operational testing of these at No 17 Test and
Evaluation Squadron (TES) expected this
year. “The weapons work was undertaken
across the ITF. You can take anybody from
any place in the ITF and choose the ‘best
athlete’ on the day to complete any task.” At
the peak of the SDD Phase, BAE had two testpilots in the ITF at Pax. Today, the UK test
pilot involvement comprises Wilson plus two
UK military test pilots. “We started flying
the F-35 AA-1 six months before I came out
here and I started flying the F-35 in 2010.”Carrier trials
BAE Systems leads the operations and
planning for STOVL flight-test on the
F-35B. First-of-class trials for the
Queen Elizabeth-class carrier (QEC)BF-01 arrives aboard the USS ‘Wasp’ for DT-II trials with ‘Wizzer’ Wilson at the controls.
Lockheed Martin/Andy Wolfe