BAMS Delivery

Aurora Flight Sciences today announced it has delivered the first complete ship set of composite aerospace structures to Northrop Grumman for the Navy's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aircraft System (BAMS UAS) program. According to an Aurora statement:

Aurora manufactures the aft fuselage, forward nacelle, mid nacelle, aft nacelle, and V-tail assemblies of the MQ-4C BAMS UAS aircraft at its composites manufacturing facility in Bridgeport, West Virginia. These structures are then shipped to Northrop Grumman's manufacturing facility in Palmdale, California for final assembly.

"The delivery of the first ship set of flight hardware is a major step in this important program," said John Langford, Aurora's President and CEO. "We are proud of the role that Aurora plays to deliver affordable, high-quality composite structures to Northrop Grumman for the Navy BAMS UAS program."

The MQ-4C BAMS UAS is the Navy version of the RQ-4 Global Hawk aircraft used by the U.S. Air Force to execute surveillance and reconnaissance tasks. The BAMS aircraft is expected to make its first flight in 2012. The MQ-4C is a long endurance UA that provides Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) information to the maritime forces. When it becomes operational, the BAMS UAS will provide military commanders with a persistent assessment of surface threats covering vast areas of open-ocean and littoral regions.

In October, Inside the Navy reported that the service's industrial base is largely stable, but in many cases the Navy relies on contractors that are the sole qualified source of a material or capability.

According to an annual Defense Department Industrial Capabilities Report submitted to Congress Oct. 3, BAMS was reviewed and found to have some concerns. Specifically, ITN reported:

The good news is that although current production requirements are for four units per year, "each contractor analyzed can support additional workloads at this time," the report says of the airframe contractors.

"Based on the DOD procurement budget for the next decade, the sub-tier industrial infrastructure supporting the UAS industrial base will most likely increase in size," the report says. "It consists of numerous subcontractors/vendors, employing the industrial capabilities to support all levels/tiers of DOD UAS programs."

However, the BAMS UAS industrial base is also considered to be at moderate risk because the components and systems are contracted to companies that are the sole source of that capability. The report also notes there are 12 subcontractors that manufacture critical components that are sole sources, and it would take three to three-and-a-half years to develop a qualified alternate if anything were to happen to any of these companies.

Jamie Cosgrove, a spokeswoman for NAVAIR, told ITN in an email Oct. 7 that "BAMS UAS Program Office along with their industry partner Northrop Grumman Corporation (NGC) are collaborating to reduce long lead times for qualified sources while maintaining economic order quantity initiatives. Additional initiatives for the supply chain include: supplier optimal procurement timelines, supplier sub tier alternate procurement sources, and long term buying agreements."

The report's authors were also concerned that BAMS/Global Hawk integration could be affected as production ramps up, since work space is approaching full capacity. Cosgrove said current projected buys do not exceed Northrop Grumman's production capacity, so "at this time, there are no program plans to try and increase production capacity or changing the schedule."