Lockheed Martin, General Atomics team for surveillance program

Sea Power, Oct 2003

One of the two contenders to build the Multimission Maritime Aircraft for the Navy has teamed with an accomplished builder of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to bid for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance System (BAMS).

Lockheed Martin, which is proposing a derivative of the P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft for the multimission program, has joined with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.-builder of the RQ-1/MQ-1 Predator surveillance and attack UAV-to "bring together complementary capabilities to provide a low-risk and highly reliable systems solution to the U.S. Navy's maritime surveillance needs," said Jennifer E. Smith, vice president for business development for Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors Tactical Systems.

The BAMS UAV is intended to complement the Multimission Maritime Aircraft through long-range, long-endurance surveillance and thereby reduce the numbers of multimission aircraft required for the same coverage. The UAV will serve as an information hub for surveillance, strike support, signal intelligence collection, and communications relay. The aircraft will be able to operate autonomously and independently, or directly in support of other ships or space-based systems.

General Atomics is proposing Predator B-Extended Range, a version of the Predator with a longer wingspan and other enhancements designed to create a platform that can provide "real-time information to a variety of networked littoral and battle group assets within the maritime infrastructure," a Lockheed spokesman said in a release.

The Navy is expected to award contracts for the engineering and manufacturing demonstration phase of the BAMS program in June 2004.