The National-led Government of the late 1990s was very clear that it wanted an Orion that could undertake both tasks to protect New Zealand’s sovereignty and surface and sub-surface tasks in a collective endeavour with other forces. In 1996 the Ministry of Defence awarded a contract for a Project Definition Study to the US firm Boeing. According to Boeing, the purpose of the study was to obtain an independent assessment of what would be needed for an Orion upgrade, based upon evaluation of a number of equipment and system options. This was to take into account an analysis of operational scenarios. Project Sirius was the outcome.

Some three years later Boeing was amongst the contenders for Project Sirius, when the Request for Tender was called for in March 1999. At this point the defence contractor DaimlerChrysler Aerospace (DASA) pulled out; Lockheed’s proposal was unacceptable and Boeing and Raytheon were left as serious bidders. Both were said to have tendered in the NZ$650–$700 million range.^[63] Raytheon had in fact offered a trimmed-down version at NZ$450 million, but (as stated in the Introduction to this chapter) the price quoted at the time the Labour Government rejected the deal was NZ$562.1 million.

Wing Commander Carl Nixon, subsequently Commanding Officer of No. 5 Squadron, was a member of the Project Sirius team at the time tenders were called for, and in discussing the project said: ‘I am very proud that back in the late 1990s, the Air Force was part of re-defining acquisition processes to acquire capabilities by defining outputs functionally, rather than specifying equipment directly.’^[64]

The Key Capabilities were spelt out in a briefing to the Minister of Defence in July 2000. The capabilities included:

No equipment was specified in the briefing, but Nicky Hager provided details that same month, although he did not quote a source for the information. Details were as follows:

In a briefing to the Minister some three months previously in April 2000, the point was made that, without the ability to detect, track and deal with anti-surface threats, the Orion would only be able to make a limited contribution to a combined force. (This same paper clearly stated that Project Sirius was fully equivalent to Australian capabilities.) Nevertheless, with the Government’s antipathy towards anti-submarine capability, by the time of the July 2000 briefing the Ministry of Defence had made provisional allowance for the removal of the acoustics equipment and magnetic anomaly detector. They offered two scenarios—(1) fitted for but not with the equipment, with a saving of some NZ$12.9 million; or (2) none of these capabilities at all, leading to a combined saving of NZ$33.16 million, or 7 per cent of the upgrade cost.

The Labour Government was adamant about the cancellation of Project Sirius. However, what was clear though was that much of the capability that had been sought under Project Sirius was inherent in Project Guardian. (‘It’s better actually’, one well-placed source commented.) The successful tenderer was L-3 IS Communications Integrated Systems (L-3), the company which, trading under its previous name of Raytheon Corporation, had been chosen as preferred contractor for Project Sirius.^[67] Project Sirius was to have cost NZ$562.10 million (US$236 million at the then current exchange rate of US$0.42/NZ$ or US$229 million without a sub-surface capability). Project Guardian was agreed to in 2004 with a contract price of NZ$352 million (US$232 million at an exchange rate of US$0.66/NZ$). The sophisticated radar, the ELTA EL/M–2022 (v)3 series, which was sought for Sirius, is central to the upgrade. The electro-optics system, the Wescam MX-20 infra-red camera, provides a significant capability; and central to the Orion’s developing role is a Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI). Handling the large volumes of information will be L-3’s Integrated Data Handling System (IDHS). The result is ‘an optimised platform that can operate over land and sea as well as providing air-to-air surveillance’.^[68]

With the signing of the contract in October 2004, the Project Guardian upgrade began in 2005 with the installation of the electro-optics system as a first stage. The full upgrade was started on the first aircraft in 2006 at L-3’s base in Texas, with system proving, testing and completion to be undertaken by 2009. The remaining five aircraft are to be modified by Safe Air Ltd in Blenheim, to be delivered by 2011.