MIDDLETOWN, Del. — Boeing [BA] has already begun selling its Reconfigurable Airborne Multi-Intelligence System (RAMIS)–which the company is pitching as both a standalone tactical intelligence platform and as a supplement to its P-8 Poseidon and the Insitu Scan Eagle–even as it continues to demonstrate new sensors for the aircraft.
Michael Ferguson, a business development representative, told reporters during a media demonstration that “we have several customers for the airplane” and that each has requested a different sensor configuration so far. Some current and potential customers are interested in a single configuration for a narrow use–border patrol, for instance, or surveillance over fisheries and other natural resources. Others are looking for a set of sensor suites that can be swapped in and out to conduct a range of missions.
Ferguson would not say how many customers the company has so far or how many planes have been sold, but he said Boeing hopes to sell about 90 aircraft domestically and abroad. He said he was confident in his ability to sell the plane for two key reasons: its open design allows virtually any sensor from any developer to be added in with minimal integration work, and the sensors are so well connected that they can cue one another and overlay information in a way that most intelligence platforms cannot.
RAMIS, built with the King Air 350ER frame, has an extended nose that hosts a retractable nose turret with an electro-optical/infrared camera and full-motion video camera. On the belly of the plane, the forward bay holds optics sensors, the center bay hosts radars and the aft bay contains a communications suite.
In demonstrating the platform to reporters, the Boeing team flew the plane over Middletown, Del., and operated the sensors from a ground station rather than the two-man setup in the back of the plane. In the scenario, the operators were seeking the origin of radio communication at a certain frequency. RAMIS’s sensors were able to identify a general area generating that frequency signal, and then zero in on the location closer and closer. Upon locating the target, the cameras identified a car as the target–which eventually stopped in a parking lot with two other cars. Now with three targets of interest, the system could auto-track them going forward to see where the cars would go next, but it could also trace their movements backwards to see where they came from. With this technology, personnel on the ground wouldn’t have to swoop in on the meeting but instead could plan raids on the three locations of origin, likely yielding better results, RAMIS program manager Ahsan Iqbal explained during the demonstration.
Iqbal said his team continues to integrate new sensors to prove the art of the possible to potential customers. The only fix the plane still needs is a new fairing for the center bay–the current one blocks radar signals from coming and going–and he said that would be complete in the next couple months. That aside, all the sensors have worked well with minimal integration work needed, he said. A key selling point for international customers is that they can use cameras and sensors developed in their own countries if they want, thanks to the open operating system, he said.
“Industry-standard hardware and software supports rapid tech insertion,” Ferguson added. “One of the great parts about using all the industry standards is, like we said, third party can write software; if we have a vendor who wants to host a new payload on the airplane, write us a Windows application that we can put on the thing and we can host it on the backbone. It makes integration very simple, very easy and allows us to do it fairly quickly.”
Alternatively, Ferguson said customers who already own the P-8 could choose to buy a RAMIS that uses the P-8’s Tactical Operations Mission Software to create a common training pipeline.
“India, for instance, has bought the P-8 and there’s a lot of appeal to having a common system they could use in a single training pipeline,” Ferguson said. “There are other countries in South America, for instance, that are never going to buy a P-8, but they would be interested in a tactical ISR asset for border security, to do counter-smuggling operations, those kinds of things.”
Domestically, Boeing demonstrated the platform to Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Heidi Shyu last spring. RAMIS is built on the same airframe as the Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System (EMARSS) Boeing developed for the Army, though company officials were quick to point out that EMARSS and RAMIS are targeted at different customers–EMARSS focuses solely on signal intelligence and communication intelligence, whereas RAMIS has a broader range of capabilities to include radar, cameras, full-motion video, target tracking and more.
Asked if the Army was a potential RAMIS customer, Ferguson would only say that “the Army is interested in a multi-[intelligence] platform,” but would not elaborate on any discussions about EMARSS versus RAMIS.