UK CVF programme approaches deadline

Industry stakeholders in the Aircraft Carrier Alliance (ACA) established to deliver the UK’s Future Aircraft Carrier (CVF) programme are to submit their latest pricing data on 20 September 2006, a little over a month ahead of a planned Main Gate 2 (MG2) submission to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) which has set a budget ceiling of $6.6 billion.

The MoD had originally planned that the CVF programme for the two 65,000 ton aircraft carriers should pass a single Main Gate decision for demonstration and manufacture. However, in October last year the MoD acknowledged that this was no longer feasible, setting out instead a revised two-stage Main Gate process splitting the demonstration and manufacture phases.

The ACA industry partners – Babcock, BAE Systems, KBR, Thales and VT – have been working under demonstration phase contracts worth a combined GBP140 million to refine and mature the CVF ship design, and to develop a credible and costed build strategy. The objective is to bring the design and the overall programme up to a level of maturity at which the MoD is sufficiently confident to give the green light for manufacture.