24 | Flight International | 17-23 March 2015 flightglobal.com
UK DEFENCE
BETH STEVENSON SAMLESBURY & WARTON
A
s the UK’s largest remaining de-
fence contractor, BAE Systems is in
a state of flux, with its domestic
market continuing to experience
reduced spending, but the need to provide a
sovereign capability remaining at a consis-
tent high.
In order to keep a balance between intellec-
tual property retention and revenue making,
the company is refocusing the design exper-
tise it has accumulated over decades of pro-
viding aircraft to the UK Ministry of Defence
to emerging markets that have plans to devel-
op indigenous systems.
“The main challenge we have is to try to
work out how to sustain ourselves as a busi-
ness,” Michael Christie, director of strategy
and market development for BAE’s Military
Aircraft and Information division, tells Flight
International.
“There are two parts to sustaining us as a
business; there’s the self-centered motivation
to keep something within the company, but
there is also an element that is about sover-
eign capability.
“Production continuity is an issue,” Chris-
tie notes. “It’s slightly easier to stop produc-
tion and restart than to stop design and restart
it; stopping design – the skills erosion that
would happen as a result of that would be
hard to regenerate.
“Sustainment of our industry is really
about sustaining the design capability,
which is significantly harder. It is harder to
start up and retain if you have a gap. So
when we’re looking at sustainment, we’re
looking at how we have continuity in our de-
sign capability.”
Ongoing developments within the Military
Aircraft and Information division include
BAE’s participation in Lockheed Martin’s
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme, through
which it provides the horizontal and vertical
tails, aft fuselage and wing tips for every air-
craft produced. This gives it responsibility for
some 15% of work on the Lightning II.
BAE delivered structures for 44 aircraft –
with each consisting of one aft fuselage, two
horizontal and two vertical tails – to Lock-
heed in 2014, and is targeting 48 in 2015. The
programme is incrementally ramping up
ahead of full-rate production in 2020, at
which point 225 F-35s will be built per year.
The programme should first hit the 100 air-
craft per year target three years from now.
Jon Evans, head of operations for F-35 as-
sembly at BAE, says that 180 aircraft must be
built between 2015 and 2018, which equates
to the total number of F-35s produced over
the past 14 years.
This, he says, demonstrates the scale of
production ramp-up that is under way.
Amid tight military budgets in the UK and USA, BAE
Systems is looking farther afield to ensure business is
sustainable – while not abandoning its sovereign duty
FRESH
FRONTS
BAE is currently carrying out its commit-
ment to the JSF programme’s eighth lot of
low-rate initial production on a four-day turn-
around per aircraft, and the 200th aircraft set
is planned to be produced at its Samlesbury
site in Lancashire in May.
In parallel to increasing the rate of produc-
tion, the cost of each aircraft set also has to
come down, in order for the Lockheed-led
JSF team to meet its target of achieving an
airframe unit cost of $65 million for an
F-35A by the time full-rate production is
achieved. Combined with the aircraft’s Pratt
& Whitney F135 engine and other systems,
the US joint programme office has set a goal
of hitting an $80 million price tag per con-
ventional take-off and landing (CTOL) air-
craft by 2019.BAE has carried its experience in aircraft de-
sign through to its manufacture of parts for the
F-35, with production tolerances set at within
1,000th of an inch so as to reduce the radar
signature of the stealth aircraft, Evans says.
This is all done at a consistent 21 ̊C and is
measured to within +/-20 microns, which is
the equivalent of a fifth of a human hair.
“It is even more important on the F-35 be-
cause it’s designed as a stealth aircraft, where-
as the [Eurofighter] Typhoon wasn’t designed
for stealth,” Evans explains. “In comparison
to the manufacture of Hawk and Typhoon,
we’re very automated, although BAE is up-
skilling people rather than just relying on
technology.”
By its own admission, BAE has gone from
being one of the lowest performing suppliers