The project, to employ about 300 jobs in the United Kingdom, will be integrating the precision future anti-surface guided missiles (FASGW) both heavy and light versions.

In March, MBDA was awarded an $830 million contract to develop and produce the FASGW heavy missile. Thales won an $81 million contract in June to develop the FASGW light missile.

The missiles can target small boats, fast attack craft and land targets. Each Wildcat helicopter can carry as many as 20 missiles.

AgustaWestland will be integrating, testing and installing the FASGW missiles on new 28 Wildcat helicopters by 2020. AgustaWestland is the original equipment manufacturer of the Wildcat.

The missiles would replace the Navy’s Sea Skua missile toward the end of the decade, and also replace the French Navy AS 15TT.

At the Farnborough International Air Show July 16, Minister for Defense Equipment, Support and Technology Philip Dunne said: “FASGW state-of-the-art missiles will provide Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters with unparalleled strike capabilities. I take great pride that these missiles are being made in Britain by British experts, with more than 300 jobs sustained from Belfast to Somerset.”

Dunne added: “These missiles are also evidence of our close partnership and growing interoperability with France. This was further strengthened yesterday when the [former] Defense Secretary signed further understandings to bolster co-operation for acquisition and support of military equipment.”

AgustaWestland is part of Finmeccanica, which also holds 25 percent of MBDA. BAE Systems and Airbus Group each hold 37.5 percent of MBDA.

The company now awaits a government decision on production that could come by the end of the year, a company official said.

The acoustic passive detection system for hostile fire–Boomerang–“detects the first shot within a second,” said Roy Azevedo, head of Raytheon’s Advanced Concepts and Technology business. “Operators are given oral and visual cues and information in real time even to range, azimuth and elevation from where that shot was fired.”

The system detects the shockwave from everything from small arms fire to triple A–anti-aircraft artillery fire.

Raytheon BBN and the government have invested in the air technology for about six years, he said, and flown it on Black Hawk and Chinook.

“We have a U.S. government customer that has bought systems and performed developmental testing, just completed at the end of June,” he said. “Our assessment of those tests was that we met or exceeded customer expectations and now await the customer’s assessment. We’re optimistic (the assessment will be) at least as good as ours, with a production decision by the end of the year.”

At least 10,000 Boomerang systems have been sold and are on domestic and international vehicles and soldiers.

The technology was technologically matured and demonstrated as feasible through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) programs about a decade ago. Raytheon BBN took that technology and brought it to an application. This first application was ground-mounted on a vehicle.

The technology then moved to a smaller soldier-worn system, with a mini-display. It worked the same way, detected a shot and where it came from.

“The system is quite successful because it has a very low false alarm rate and very quick response time,” Azevedo said. In hostile situations sometimes soldiers don’t know they are being shot at. Early detection allows troops to not only know they’re being shot at, but to know where from and then have the option to take action.

Moving the Boomerang system to the air presented an interesting problem in trying to identify a specific signal out of a very noisy background, he said. Helicopters are inherently one of the noisiest acoustically, with the sound of the blades and rotor and other system noises. The technology being developed has been optimized over the past six years with government and Raytheon investment, in signal processing to pull the shockwave–the sound of the ammunition–out of all that noise. “We foresee in future uses microphones in helicopter skin to get a 360 degree field of view.”

Some of the most dangerous helicopter missions are when they hover and hover low to the ground, in mostly hostile environments. Boomerang technology cancels the noise of everything except the signal you’re looking for, he said. With a very successful low false alarm rate as has been demonstrated on the ground and through the just completed tests.

“One of the very unique selling features is that the entire system (weighs) less than 30 pounds,” Azevedo said, and that includes everything, cables and sensors and signal processing.

For those helicopters that already have electro-optical systems for hostile fire detection, Raytheon envisions customers could integrate or fuse the two systems. At this point, Boomerang is a standalone system.

“We detect that bullet, and provide indication within less than a second of shot being fired,” Azevedo said. “We have demonstrated how it could tie into another system to automatically counter where hostile fire came from.”

Raytheon also has ventured into the commercial market, into the law enforcement arena, he said. For example, Boomerang was used during the Boston Marathon.

Another customer in the United States has bought systems to place in the perimeter of the critical infrastructure they own. That requirement was born from a power plant fire last June in San Jose. It turned out the fire was caused was a sniper firing into some transformers. Because of that, the company is now seeing interest in the system for critical infrastructure protection.

Finmeccanica’s AgustaWestland said July 15 it successfully completed the demonstration of its Rotorcraft Unmanned Aerial System / Optionally Piloted Helicopter (RUAS/OPH) to the Italian Ministry of Defense (MoD).

The trials evaluated modern remote controlled rotorcraft technology and its potential to provide enhanced capabilities for the Italian armed forces in the future. 

Under the Research and Development contract that is included in the National Military Research Plan signed with the Italian MoD Directorate for Air Armaments, the company successfully demonstrated ground station-based remote controlled capabilities for the modified SW-4 Solo RUAS/OPH single-engine helicopter.

The basic aircraft has been developed as a result of close cooperation between AgustaWestland and PZL-Swidnik in Poland, also an AgustaWestland company.

The aircraft successfully completed the planned missions in OPH configuration with a safety pilot on board.

The development phase and flight trials, done both in Italy and Poland, were performed from September 2013 through to May 2014, with the final testing completed in Frosinone, Italy.

Test activities included system monitoring, ‘hands off’ and remote controlled maneuvers, hovering and a range of mission profiles. The SW-4 Solo RUAS/OPH is one of the most technologically advanced achievements of aviation technology in recent years.

The SW-4 Solo RUAS/OPH, based on the proven SW-4 light single-engine helicopter, has been designed for both unmanned and piloted operations, providing users with maximum operational flexibility. The RUAS version of the SW-4 is capable of performing a number of roles, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as cargo re-supply. In piloted configuration, the SW-4 can undertake a number of activities, including transportation of personnel, surveillance and intervention. It can be fitted with a comprehensive mission equipment package including search and communications/intelligence systems.

The successful completion of this demonstration confirms the strong cooperation between Finmeccanica–AgustaWestland and the Italian MoD for the development of new generation technologies that will pave the way to future improved operational capabilities.

The company also is involved in a dedicated U.K. MoD program intended to evaluate advanced RUAS technology and its capabilities.

Kongsberg Defense Systems  and Finmeccanica- AgustaWestland recently signed a protocol to extend and increase cooperation relating to maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of dynamic components, including various gear boxes, for the NH90 helicopter and a range of AgustaWestland helicopters.

The protocol is an overarching agreement outlining the intentions of making Kongsberg a Center of Excellence for MRO of dynamic components in Northern Europe.

Key elements of the agreement are related to the transfer of technology that includes the establishment of advanced test equipment that will enable the full functional testing of gear boxes at Kongsberg in Norway.

Finmeccanica-AgustaWestland and Kongsberg have maintained a solid business relationship for more than 25 years, the company said in a statement.

The extended co-operation confirmed by the signing of the Protocol represents potential revenues for Kongsberg of $27 million to $33.8 million per year for the next 25 years.

The agreement will enable AgustaWestland to satisfy its Industrial Participation requirements in Norway and the other Nordic countries for NH90, and will be a major part of its support solution for the AW101 Norwegian All-Weather SAR Helicopter (NAWSARH) contract.

In December last year, Finmeccanica-AgustaWestland signed an Agreement with the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security for the supply of 16, plus options for 6 more, AW101 search and rescue helicopters.

“We are excited that we can grow our helicopter MRO business together with AgustaWestland as a valued partner and we will establish gear box testing capabilities in Kongsberg,” said Harald Ånnestad, president of Kongsberg Defense Systems.

The Defense Department Office of Inspector General found that the Defense Logistics Agency has been paying Textron’s [TXT] Bell Helicopter millions of dollars more than it ought to in a sole-source contract for spare parts and could continue doing so on future orders over the next year.

According to a summary of the report, the contracting officer “accepted Bell’s market-based pricing strategy in a noncompetitive environment without performing a sufficient sales analysis. As a result, the contracting officer did not obtain cost data to perform cost analysis, and DLA potentially overpaid Bell about $9 million on 33 of 35 sole-source commercial spare parts reviewed. In addition, DLA may overpay as much as $2.6 million over the next 12 months on future orders under this contract.”

More specifically, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on acquisition reform July 10 that one type of spare part “should cost about $409 and we paid about $3500 per part for this, and we got 116 of them, costing us $367,000” above what the parts should have cost.

Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall, who was testifying at the hearing and said he had just seen the summary of the DoD IG report right before the hearing started, said that his initial impression is, “I think what you described is basically fraud: someone who’s charging us 10 times what something costs.”

Kendall tried to put the problem into context, saying essentially the workforce is too small to verify every single market-based price a company presents to DoD. The Pentagon and DLA set standard costs for some items, but for commercial and commercial-type products, the standard practice is typically to “rely on commercially established prices for commercial products, for commercial-type products. But if there’s a question about that price then we can ask for anything up to certified cost and price data, which is a very high requirement,” Kendall said, saying that many companies will walk away from government business altogether if asked to provide certified cost and price data because it is such a cumbersome process.

But Speier was not satisfied with his response.

“Here’s the problem: it’s fraud, and we’ll continue to do business with Bell Helicopter, and they’ll continue to rip us off, correct?”

“What we have to do is hold them accountable for the thing you just described, and they can pay a penalty that’s appropriate for that,” Kendall replied. “There will be audits based on–I just got the report, but based on the report that I have, we will be auditing an awful lot of what they do to us to see how widespread this is. If it’s an isolated case, that’s one thing, but if it’s systemic that’s a much bigger deal.”

Highlighting the complexity of monitoring market-based prices, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) asked later on in the hearing about companies that offer a brand new product, or have improved an existing product to be more efficient. In those cases, the government has no way of conducting its own cost estimates, and when DoD requires certified cost and pricing data, then the company is effectively shut out of doing business with the Pentagon.

Kendall acknowledged the practice cuts both ways; when the government does insist on verifying market prices, some companies are unable to comply and lose business. But when it doesn’t, situations like the Bell Helicopter one arise.

“When one of those occurs, it’s a very public event the Department is chastised for,” he said. “We’ve got to strike the right balance between relying on…commercial prices and doing due diligence to make sure we’re getting a fair and reasonable price.”

The DoD IG report summary includes several recommendations. The director of defense pricing “should issue guidance to establish a percentage of commercial sales that is sufficient to determine fair and reasonable prices when items are being acquired on a sole-source contract and market-based prices are used.”

The report also suggests the DLA director should establish quality assurance processes that review whether contracting officers verify and document that sufficient analysis took place; require that contracting officers establish pricing for commercial parts under Bell Helicopter’s existing contract and future sole-source contracts with the company by performing adequate reviews of historical prices, sales data and more; and request a voluntary refund from Bell for identified overpayments.