Lucas Aerospace- Defence

Sector:	Defence
Customer:	Lucas Aerospace, now Collins Aerospace
Duration of supply:	3 years
Contract value:	£2.4 million
Investment:	£850k

Background The Spearfish torpedo is the heavy torpedo used by the submarines of the Royal Navy. It can be guided by wire or by autonomous active or passive sonar, and provides both anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and anti-surface (ASuW) capability. Spearfish development began in the 1970s, with production starting in 1988, and deployment in 1992. By 2004, the new weapon had completely replaced the older Tigerfish torpedo. Collins Aerospace’s Rockford facilities are experts in supplying torpedo power plants and afterbody components. Collins has provided full life-cycle support to the U.K. MoD’s Spearfish heavyweight torpedo for 40 years. Collins has been a research and technology partner with the U.S. Navy for over 50 years to improve and supply their next generation lightweight and heavyweight torpedo systems.

Scope of work NEC produced five of the eight hull sections that make up a Spearfish heavyweight Torpedo.

CNC investment

The company’s investment included the procurement of a CNC twin pallet horizontal machining centre, a CNC vertical turning machine and a CMM, coordinate measuring machine, in a temperature-controlled environment. NEC was processing several operations on these parts to assist our customer in getting back onto the delivery program. Lucas Aerospace could not produce these parts to specification with their existing plant and was looking at the feasibility of investing in new facilities. NEC suggested that they set up a cell for the manufacture of these parts; this would enable the customer to solve their problems without capital expenditure.

After producing a detailed cost model for the cell and identifying the correct machinery, equipment, and processes wpresented our proposal to the customer. A contract was negotiated which justified our investment and gave the customer guaranteed security of supply.