ASRAAM dispute prompts fears of RAAF delay

Will the Royal Australian Air Force get its new Advanced Short-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (ASRAAM) on time in 2002? This is the question being raised as there appears no end in sight to a dispute between the British Ministry of Defence and manufacturer MBDA.
The official in-service date of the weapon, when 60 were to be accepted into service, was April 2001 but in that month Defence Procurement Minister Baroness Symons publicly criticised ASRAAM and MBDA over the alleged failure of the missile to reach Defence Ministry requirements. She stated that the ministry would not place a production contract for the missile with MBDA until the missile met the approved standard. The development of the missile began in 1992and is scheduled to cost the equivalent of $2.2 billion. Official documents indicate some $2.5 million was spent in studies to 'clarify' the project requirement although no further details are available.

Locked in a legal battle, the two organisations are extremely coy as to the point of dispute but industrial and service sources indicate it relates to the software performance of the missile's Raytheon-made imaging infra-red, focal plane array, seeker, and this is reinforced by the emphasis in MBDA briefings and public announcements. The dispute relates to the interpretation of modelled prediction of missile performance; it is believed that the service requirements may have been modified since the original contract was placed in 1992 but that the contract specifications were not modified when the contract was renegotiated about 1999.

The first guided firings were in May 1996 and there have now been 24 firings and over 160 captive carriage trials with further firings planned this year, including the first guided firing from the F/A-18. On July 1the first separation firing of ASRAAM from Eurofighter took place

Sir Robert Walmsley, Chief of Defence Procurement, told the House of Commons Defence Committee that until early 2000 the missile had flown well and hit targets. He noted that the seeker had been acquired from an American manufacturer, indeed in welcoming the creation of MBDA he noted the individual companies which made up the new entity had a total comprehension of seeker capabilities.

The Ministry of Defence has demanded that MBDA produce what might be termed a 'get-well-program' (officially a 'route map') to indicate when the missile will meet its requirements. This is underway and the company has also agreed to pay back to the ministry a sum equivalent to $51 million, but by the time of the Paris Air Show there was no sign that the program had been completely drafted. Although all parties remain optimistic that there will be no further significant delay with the in-service date and that the missile will enter service before the end of this year, it might not be until next April...and even if in service by December this will be exactly three years behind its original in-service date.

MBDA has developed an improved software package and by July conducted two successful test flights with the weapon in the United States. These have highlighted the flexibility of the software-based system and the speed with which improvements can be incorporated in a short space of time. The primary objective of the first trial was to demonstrate the performance of a production standard missile, and specifically its image processing capability, against a target flying at high speed and in severe cloud clutter.

Canberra ordered the missile in 1998 for use with the F/A-18 Hornet and the first integration flight test was conducted in December 1999. The first four F/A-18 firings were carried out for the RAAF at the US Navy's Naval Air Warfare Center, Patuxent River, earlier this year as part of a series of weapon separation tests intended to clear ASRAAM for F/A-18 wingtip employment. The RAAF's Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU) has also conducted two successful separation firings from F/A-18 under-wing stations. The first of these was a supersonic launch at Mach 1.2 with a 2g pull-up and the second was at Mach 0.8 with a 4g pull-up.

MBDA is scheduled to deliver a statement of ASRAAM's performance against the RAAF's operational requirement in September this year, according to a senior Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) source. "We will review that statement and conduct our own evaluation trials to determine the level of performance of ASRAAM," he said. "The Department will not accept delivery of missiles which are not compliant with the Australian performance requirement. The RAAF will work to safeguard its own interests in this project if these are in any way affected."

Although the UK and Australia intend to field identical variants of ASRAAM in order to reduce logistics costs and facilitate collaborative development of the missile, Australia has a slightly different performance requirement, along with a separate acquisition contract and delivery schedule. Therefore, problems affecting the RAF don't necessarily impact on the RAAF's ASRAAM program, a senior RAAF source told ADM.

Even if ASRAAM satisfies the RAAF's performance requirements, Canberra may still ask for deliveries of the weapon to be delayed. The RAAF is reluctant to take delivery of a missile whose final configuration may change subsequently as MBDA and the UK MoD continue development. A final RAAF decision is likely to depend on the nature of the agreement reached by MBDA and the UK MoD, sources said. Initial Operating Capability is scheduled for early-2002.

Australia selected ASRAAM in part because it was just about to start its service life, and so has enormous development potential, according to Australian defence sources. Also, this is the first guided weapon acquired in the last generation to which Australia has been granted full technology access, ADM was told: the UK invited Australia to collaborate on future development of the missile to accelerate the fielding of new enhancements and minimise the costs involved.

By Ted Hooton, London