7 Big Defense Firms Bid on New Fighter : Advanced Jet Sought to Replace F-15 in 1990s
Seven major defense contractors filed first-round bids Wednesday to build a new radar-evading fighter plane that the Air Force hopes will rule the skies by the mid-1990s.
The Air Force wants the plane, dubbed the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF), to replace the F-15, a medium-range fighter that first flew in 1972. A later version of the plane may ultimately take the place of the F-16 for striking ground targets, and the Navy is watching to see whether the new fighter can take the place of the F-14s that protect U.S. ships at sea.
“It’s the only new fighter program that we see all the way into the distant future,” said Herbert F. Rogers, general manager of General Dynamics’ F-16 plant in Fort Worth.
General Dynamics and the other six contractors submitted 3,000-page technical documents two weeks ago, backed by financial proposals Wednesday, trying to show the Air Force that they can build 750 new fighters for $35 million apiece.
Multiple Roles
Spokesmen for the contractors and the Air Force declined to disclose details of the bids, citing security and competitive reasons.
The AFT’s purpose is to knock out enemy fighters and airborne warning and control systems planes, clearing the skies for other U.S. aircraft and reconnaissance craft and protecting ground forces, said Col. Albert C. Piccirillo, director of the Air Force program to develop the new fighter.
“The mission is air superiority,” said Piccirillo, interviewed by telephone in his office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. “It is going to fly supersonic, very high, very fast, very far.”
The plane, still on the drawing board, will be made largely of non-metal composite materials and will use an array of new technology, ranging from so-called radar evading devices to engines that can fly efficiently at nearly twice the speed of sound at 50,000 feet above sea level.
Most jet fighters now cruise more efficiently at subsonic speeds, gulping fuel to break through the sound barrier for limited periods of combat. The speed of sound is about 660 m.p.h. at 30,000 feet above sea level.
Air Force and Navy specialists will pore over the proposals for several months and announce by late summer up to four companies chosen to split about $390 million over the next phase of the project, which will last three years.
Several Winners Likely
The schedule calls for the first flight to occur about 1990, with production starting as early as 1992.
Several companies, rather than a single one, may ultimately be selected to build the plane, according to Air Force and industry sources.
“I think it will be a team,” said Renso Caporaoi, president of the aircraft systems division of Grumman, another bidder. A major aerospace corporation could probably handle the deal alone, he said, but choosing just one company might allow the others to atrophy.
“It gets to be 30 or 40 years between drinks of water,” Caporaoi said from the Long Island, N.Y., plant where Grumman makes the F-14.
Team production could also save the government money, allowing it to order more planes from the company that submitted the lowest production bid for a yearly order, Rogers said.
The other bidders are McDonnell Douglas, builder of the F-15 and the Navy’s F-A-18; Northrop, which made the F-5; Rockwell International, maker of the space shuttle; Boeing, and Lockheed.
Based on the bids, Piccirillo said he was “very encouraged that we can build the performance that we are talking about. On the affordability side, I think we have a major challenge.”
The Air Force wants a fighter that has twice the combat range of the F-15 and can turn in half the space. The F-15 loses maneuverability in supersonic flight and needs an 8,000-foot runway and a large maintenance crew.
The ATF is supposed to take off in less than 2,000 feet and will have advanced systems to pinpoint maintenance problems, cutting the size of the ground crew, Piccirillo said.
Most of the $295 million earmarked for the ATF in President Reagan’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year is for engine development, under contract to the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies and General Electric.
The plane will use new technology to pioneer tactics in air combat.
“We have to make the airplane . . . almost invisible on radar, yet it still has to fly like a fighter,” Piccirillo said. “To do that, you have to do certain things in designing the airplane, shaping it, adding materials to absorb radar energy and controlling the shape of the exhaust nozzles.”
Improved Soviet fighters, which have their own radar rather than depending on ground-based systems, threaten the current tactic of flying low to avoid detection.
