The Defence Procurement Agency has placed a competitive contract with The CVF Team for the assessment phase of the Future Carrier, which will replace the Royal Navy's current Invincible class carriers. British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems decided last year to combine their resources into a single team known as The CVF Team because of the range of skills and capabilities required for a project of the size, complexity and importance of the Future Carrier.

The Future Carrier will enhance the UK's ability to mount joint operations on the world stage. It is expected that the three Invincible class carriers will be replaced by two larger, more capable ships, which must be able to cope with heavier and more flexible demands. They must have the capability at one end of the spectrum to deploy and operate aircraft effectively without host nation support in a hostile environment and at the other, to provide full humanitarian support operations in a civilian emergency.

The CVF Team will evaluate trade-offs between performance, time, procurement costs, through-life costs and risks of the different options. It will examine operational and functional requirements and, during the process, will define and de-risk these so that a fixed price tender can be provided for detailed design and build. The prime contractor will be selected at the end of the assessment phase in 2003 to design and build the two carriers together with initial in-service support.

More information: British Aerospace or directly to the article.