DefenseNews: British MoD Gives Elbit/Thales Effort $110M Deal for Hermes
Israel’s Elbit Systems has confirmed that the British Ministry of Defence has awarded a $110 million deal to an unmanned air vehicle joint venture company they operate in Britain with Thales UK to supply Hermes 450 platforms. The deal will plug a gap in British army intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The purchase of the Hermes 450 under Britain’s urgent operational requirements procurement process has been known about for several weeks, but this is the first time the purchase has been officially confirmed. In a statement released June 7, the company said the UAV Tactical Systems (U-Tacs) joint venture will immediately commence work on a program providing the Hermes 450, training of British personnel in the use and maintenance of the system and the provision of contractor logistic support.
Leicester-based U-Tacs, which is 51 percent owned by Elbit, is already contracted to supply the Hermes 450 as part of the British army’s 700 million-pound Watchkeeper tactical ISTAR UAV program. Deliveries of Watchkeeper vehicles are not due to start until at least the end of 2010, leaving a gap in British ISTAR capabilities in such hot spots as Afghanistan and Iraq.
The few Phoenix UAVs still available to the British army do not work in hot and high conditions causing capability shortfalls that are only now being addressed.
The original Watchkeeper program required a stopgap solution to be available by the end of 2006 until the full system could be deployed. That was ditched by the MoD for budgetary reasons.
Aside from the Hermes, the British army is also soon to begin operations of a handful of Hawker Beechcraft King Air 350ER equipped for ISTAR operations. The aircraft will provide significantly better performance than the Britten-Norman Islander, the other fixed-wing aircraft in the Army Air Corps fleet.
Three General Atomics Predator B UAVs have also been purchased for Royal Air Force use under the urgent operational requirements process paid for by the Treasury rather than the MoD.