Lockheed Martin beats Boeing to proceed with RATTLRS program

Aviation Week's AEROSPACE DAILY & DEFENSE REPORT
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February 4, 2005

Vol. 213 No. 23

Copyright 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies

9. Lockheed Martin beats Boeing to proceed with RATTLRS program

Lockheed Martin has been selected over Boeing to develop RATTLRS, a demonstration program intended to increase the capabilities and performance of expendable supersonic vehicles.
"They won," said Jennifer Huergo, a spokeswoman for the Office of Naval Research, when asked Feb. 3 to confirm that Lockheed Martin had beaten Boeing.
Lockheed Martin received a $157.4 million contract from ONR on Feb. 1,
according to a Feb. 3 FedBizOpps notice from the office. "This was the third and last competed task order" for the program, Huergo said. "So yes, Lockheed Martin was the only one to win it."
Lockheed Martin and Boeing had been the only two competitors remaining in an original field of four. The other two, eliminated earlier, were Orbital Sciences Corp. and Raytheon.
"We are pleased with the award," said Diane Knippel, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Projects unit. She declined further comment, saying the company is working on an announcement that will be released in a week or two.
Lockheed Martin said last year it was teamed on RATTLRS with Allison Advanced Development Co. to develop technologies that will provide an advanced Mach 4 plus integrated propulsion system in an airframe that could be the basis for an operational airframe. It said Allison's YJ102R developmental engine "provides more than six times the specific thrust of the engines in the SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft in a simple and inexpensive design suitable for an expendable missile."
RATTLRS - Revolutionary Approach to Time-critical Long Range Strike - is part of the National Aerospace Initiative, a joint effort of the Navy, Air Force and NASA that merges current technologies to go in steppingstone fashion from high- speed/hypersonic vehicles to regular and easy access to space, and finally to advanced space technologies such as multifunction satellites.
The RATTLRS project consists of flight demonstration and technology development, ONR said in a 2003 description of the effort.
Flight demonstration includes concept studies, design, development, fabrication and test of flight vehicles. The goal is to conduct at least three demonstration flights, with the first flight 36 to 38 months after the contract
award and the last by the time the project is completed 48 months after award, ONR said.
The technology development phase is optional, ONR said. It would focus on developing and maturing technologies for inclusion in potential future high-speed flight demonstrations.
- Rich Tuttle (richtut@aol.com)