The Air Force leadership says its RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drone program is meeting affordability guidelines a year after service officials criticized both government and industry program managers for allowing costs to burgeon.
Nothrop Grumman [NOC] is producing the aircraft with various sensors for the Air Force, Navy, NASA and foreign customers.
“What we were seeing is ever-increasing prices on the vehicles and sensors,” said David Van Buren, the Air Force acquisition executive. “We have reversed that cost working with Northrop and its suppliers and have gotten on a price curve going downward.”
Van Buren was speaking at a recent conference in Arlington, Va., sponsored by Credit Suisse.
Earlier this month, the Air Force’s top civilian official also expressed renewed confidence in the program’s financial management.
“I believe the Northrop team got the message, so I think compared to maybe a year or 18 months ago…there has been some progress, some increase in our confidence that Northrop understands what they need to do to perform on the program more effectively,” Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said during a press briefing in Orlando.
Donley also said the Air Force plans to retire the legacy U-2 program, which Global Hawk is slated to replace, at the end of FY ’15. Terminal actions begin at the end of FY ’13, according to a service spokesman, with closure of programmed depot maintenance.
“This measured drawdown is carefully aligned with the increases of Global Hawk Block 30 aircraft and ensures there is no gap as the U-2 program divests,” the spokesman said via e-mail.
The Air Force last month announced that the Block 40 Global Hawk would be “truncated” from 22 to 11 aircraft. Officials said they planned to use the savings to make capability improvements in the Block 30 buy.
The Block 40 variant carries the multi-platform technology insertion program radar. Eleven Block 40s, in conjunction with the E-8C Joint-STARS fleet that provides the same capability, is sufficient to meet the military’s requirement, officials have said.
The Air Force is requesting $311 million to buy three Block 30s in fiscal 2012. Nine Block 40s have been purchased, and the Air Force has requested funding for two more in fiscal 2011, which Congress has not yet approved.
Northrop Grumman officials have said that their “biggest focus” now is affordability. The company has over 100 cost-saving initiatives in place (Defense Daily, Feb. 16).
According to a company official, some of these initiatives include:
Combining buys for both production and spares to achieve an economic order quantity benefit.
Implementing removable leading edges on the vehicle wing to facilitate maintenance actions, thereby saving the program nearly $400,000 in production and maintenance costs.
Finding alternate fabrication sources for the exhaust duct and machined parts, achieving savings of close to $1.5 million.
Improving the change management process, yielding over 60 percent reduction in the time required to process changes on the program.