Carrier Strike Airborne Early Warning Initial Market Engagement

The Royal Navy employs an airborne surveillance system that operates from the Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers to provide the Carrier Strike Group (comprised of the aircraft carrier, support vessels, escort frigates and escort destroyers) with sufficient warning of air and surface threats to allow for effective counter threat action.

To sustain the capability, MOD is exploring potential future solutions, that will underpin the defence and security of the UK in the future, and as such is issuing a Request for Information (RFI) to industry. The objective of the RFI is to understand the capacity and capability of the industrial base to support this capability requirement. The implementation options in the RFI are not prescribed, so we are interested in views from all interested parties on the best possible solution.

Please respond by completing the Microsoft Form in the link below by 17:00 on the 6th May 2025.

Link to RFI response form:

forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx ↗

Please send any queries about this market engagement exercise to:

dean.cordwell102@mod.gov.uk.

Where relevant and appropriate, this market engagement event may be followed by further engagement exercise which will be notified through normal channels (e.g. Defence Sourcing Portal, Find a Tender)

For the avoidance of doubt, this notice is not informing the market of an imminent procurement. All costs pertaining to the completion of this response are to be borne by the responders.

Please note, procurement dates and values in this notice are subject to governance and should not be viewed as a firm commitment. This RFI is purely to gain market knowledge and is not the launch of a new procurement. Pricing and timelines will be refined through market engagement, at this stage a cost of between £500,000,000 and £1,500,000,000 and a contract start date of between May 2026 and May 2027, with an introduction into service of 2030-20235 is estimated.