The German parliament is expected to approve the design and development (D&D) phase of the tri-national Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) in December, clearing the last in a series of political hurdles for the new D&D effort, an industry official said Oct. 26.

"Every indicator that we have right now coming out of Germany ... shows very favorable support for the MEADS program," said Jim Cravens, president of MEADS International, the industry joint venture developing the anti-aircraft, anti-missile system. "I will predict that if it continues this way, we will have Germany's approval before Christmastime of this year."

The U.S. and Italian governments, the other two partners in the program, gave the go-ahead for the nine-year D&D phase in August (DAILY, Aug. 2, Aug. 11).

Anticipating German approval, the NATO MEADS Management Agency (NAMEADSMA), a NATO entity that overseas MEADS, awarded a $3 billion D&D contract to MEADS International on Sept. 28 (DAILY, Sept. 29). MEADS International includes Lockheed Martin, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS), MBDA Italia and EADS/LFK.

The U.S. share of the program's cost is 58 percent. Italy will contribute 17 percent and Germany would pay the remaining 25 percent.

Cravens said upcoming key milestones for MEADS include a systems requirements review in about May 2005, followed by subsystem and system-level preliminary design reviews from about February 2007 to August 2007. Subsystem critical design reviews (CDR) are slated for 2008, followed by a system-level CDR in 2009. A series of nine flight-tests are planned from 2011 to 2013.

MEADS is designed to replace Patriot systems in the United States and Germany and Nike Hercules in Italy. It is expected to be fielded in Italy and Germany in 2012 and in the U.S. in 2014.