UK — Delivery Of Weapons System Rig Supports Typhoon On The Frontline

RAF Con­ings­by, UK – BAE Sys­tems has suc­cess­ful­ly deliv­ered a cru­cial ele­ment in the Typhoon Avail­abil­i­ty Ser­vice (TAS) in part­ner­ship with the UK Roy­al Air Force (RAF), giv­ing key weapons sys­tems sup­port — vital to main­tain­ing the RAF’s front-line capa­bil­i­ty.

The for­mal accep­tance of the Weapons Sys­tems Sup­port Rig (WSSR) by the UK RAF is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the joint Typhoon air­craft team, which also marks the one-year anniver­sary since the offi­cial in-ser­vice date of the TAS. 

The rig at RAF Con­ings­by, Lin­colnshire is the size of two ten­nis courts con­tain­ing 33 bench­es and 24 pieces of rig sup­port equip­ment. This capa­bil­i­ty was designed, devel­oped and deliv­ered by the BAE Sys­tems team at Warton, Lan­cashire. It has been through an exten­sive peri­od of instal­la­tion, test­ing and qual­i­fi­ca­tion and is now being used to val­i­date mis­sion data and eval­u­ate any avion­ic issues in sup­port of the oper­a­tional fleet. 

Ter­ry Butchart, BAE Sys­tems’ TAS WSSR man­ag­er said: “The deliv­ery and offi­cial cus­tomer accep­tance of the rig under­lines the Company’s capa­bil­i­ties in the area of readi­ness and sus­tain­ment and is the lat­est in a num­ber of mile­stones achieved as part of the TAS con­tract in the past year. 

“Over the past months, we have been work­ing very close­ly with the UK RAF to ensure that we deliv­er the elec­tron­ic war­fare capa­bil­i­ty. It is now our task to make sure that the rig is there for the cus­tomer when­ev­er they require it. Oth­er vital ben­e­fits of the rig are the sav­ings and effi­cien­cies it deliv­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the reduc­tion of test flights required and, unnec­es­sary removal and test­ing of equipment.” 

Flight Lieu­tenant Shaun Bates added: “We are now able to improve the effec­tive­ness of Typhoon mis­sion data in a safe, con­trolled envi­ron­ment. Under­tak­ing flight tri­als is not always the most cost-effec­tive way of prov­ing the effec­tive­ness of air­craft soft­ware and mis­sion data. The WSSR de-risks these tri­als and gives the Typhoon Force con­fi­dence that the improve­ments will func­tion as designed.” 

About BAE Sys­tems

BAE Sys­tems is a glob­al defence, secu­ri­ty and aero­space com­pa­ny with approx­i­mate­ly 107,000 employ­ees world­wide. The Com­pa­ny deliv­ers a full range of prod­ucts and ser­vices for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced elec­tron­ics, secu­ri­ty, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions and cus­tomer sup­port ser­vices. In 2009 BAE Sys­tems report­ed sales of £22.4 bil­lion (US$ 36.2 billion). 

For more infor­ma­tion, please contact: 

Deb­bie McKen­zie, BAE Sys­tems Tel: +44- (0)1772 856249 Mob: +44 (0)7793 422003 debbie.mckenzie@baesystems.com

Kate Watcham, BAE Sys­tems Tel: +44(0)1252 383550 Mob: +44(0) 7793 420731 Kate.watcham@baesystems.com

Issued by: 

BAE Sys­tems, Farn­bor­ough, Hamp­shire GU14 6YU, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1252 384719 Fax: +44 (0) 1252 383947 24hr media hot­line: + 44 (0) 7801 717739 www.baesystems.com

Notes to editors:

• The TAS con­tract to the val­ue of £430m was award­ed by the UK Min­istry of Defence (MOD) in 2009 under a part­ner­ing arrange­ment. It ensures the RAF’s Typhoon air­craft are main­tained and sup­port­ed by BAE Sys­tems for five years. 

• The TAS, which is cur­rent­ly in oper­a­tions at RAF Con­ings­by in East Lin­colnshire, sees both BAE Sys­tems and RAF per­son­nel work­ing side-by-side over to ensure the avail­abil­i­ty of the Typhoon fleet to meet its stand­ing and oper­a­tional commitments. 

• Anoth­er key require­ment under­pin­ning the TAS is for a reduc­tion of Typhoon sup­port costs over the life­time of the jet. Work­ing in part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Defence a range of inno­v­a­tive sup­port solu­tions has been iden­ti­fied to max­imise val­ue and min­imise costs. 

Source:
BAE Systems 

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