Navy Ponders Options for P-3 Replacement.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: P-3 Orion land-based patrol aircraft

Cost-benefits of new vs. remanufactured aircraft to be assessed by fall 2001

During the next several weeks, U.S. Navy officials will be reviewing proposed strategies for upgrading, or possibly replacing, the service's maritime patrol aircraft fleet.

After years of internal Navy deliberations and various efforts to refurbish and modernize the fleet of land-based patrol aircraft, specifically the P-3 Orion, service officials believe they must now make a decision on whether the bulk of the dollars allocated to P-3 modernization will be spent on extending the life of the current fleet or on buying new platforms.

The Navy first awarded Lockheed a contract to develop the P-3 Orion-- derived from the company's Electra airliner--in February 1959. The P-3 entered the inventory in July 1962. It became the Navy's only land-based antisubmarine warfare aircraft and, after the end of the Cold War, took on other missions, such as anti-surface warfare and land attack.

The P-3C is the only model now in active service. The last Orion came off the production line in April 1990.

The Navy currently owns 228 P-3Cs and 11 EP-3 Aries, which serve as signals intelligence reconnaissance platforms. Some aircraft will approach the end of their useful life in fiscal year 2002, said Navy officials. But other P-3s still have considerable life left. For the entire fleet, the average age is more than 20 years.

According to the Navy, a P-3 Orion costs $36 million. But any replacement aircraft would come with a much higher price tag, said an industry consultant.

To understand the Navy's plans to modernize the P-3, one must realize there are currently several different programs dealing with "inventory sustainment," explained Capt. George C. Hill, Navy program manager for maritime patrol aircraft.

One of those efforts is called the "sustained readiness program," (SRP), under which 13 P-3s were re-manufactured by the Raytheon Company's aircraft integration division in Greenville, Texas. When the SRP contract was awarded in 1994, it was supposed to cover 32 airplanes. The work involved replacing, upgrading, and refurbishing the fuselage, wings, spar caps, flaps and empennage, replacing control cables and portions of the avionics and electrical wiring.

Raytheon found that there was more corrosion-related damage than had been expected, explained Hill. Because it was a fixed-price contract, Raytheon concluded that the additional damage could nor be repaired for the previously established cost. So the Navy and the company mutually agreed to restructure the contract, said Hill. The company will complete the work on 13 aircraft only, instead of 32. The last one will be delivered to the Navy in January 2001, Hill said.

Corrosion is a common problem in the fleet because P-3s operate over ocean water. The aluminum used in the P-3 is the same type that was used in the B-29 bombers of World War II. These older materials are more susceptible to corrosion than those used on newer generations of aircraft.

The P-3s that did not receive the SRP upgrade are undergoing a "service life assessment program," or SLAP, said Hill. The SlAP, which began in 1996, involves a full-scale fatigue test conducted at a Lockheed Martin facility in Marietta, Ga. The work will continue for two more years.

The Navy, meanwhile, issued a solicitation in early October, seeking industry proposals for a "service life extension program" (SLEP), that would begin in 2002. "The plan always was to merge SRP into a SLEP program in fiscal year 2002," said Hill. Industry proposals will be due in April 2001. A contractor is scheduled to be selected next...