UK Ministry of Defence Invests In Future Combat Air Systems

Tara­nis — Unmanned Com­bat Air Vehi­cle (UCAV)

Cur­rent­ly, the vast major­i­ty of unmanned air­craft fly­ing is sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance in sup­port of front-line troops, pro­vid­ing them with vital intel­li­gence and help­ing to save lives in Afghanistan.

Min­is­ter for Defence Equip­ment Sup­port and Tech­nol­o­gy, Peter Luff, said: “I am com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing sus­tained sup­port for sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy across all aspects of Defence. As part of our ongo­ing invest­ment, the Min­istry of Defence has and will con­tin­ue to invest in aero­space sec­tor projects like this to ensure that we devel­op and main­tain the UK’s for­mi­da­ble strengths in this spe­cial­ist field.”

Dr Nick Joad, who heads up the Defence Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Laboratory’s Air Domain, said: “This is an impor­tant step in ensur­ing that the MOD con­tin­ues to devel­op its capa­bil­i­ties in this area and is able to exploit poten­tial­ly game-chang­ing tech­nolo­gies. We have worked very hard with BAE Sys­tems to ensure that we have a high impact pro­gramme and look for­ward to see­ing the fruits of this invest­ment of both mon­ey and intel­lec­tu­al capital.”

Tom Fill­ing­ham, BAE Sys­tems Direc­tor for Future Com­bat Air Sys­tems, said: “The award of this con­tract is great news for the BAE Sys­tems and Defence Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy teams that have been work­ing, since the begin­ning of this year, to devel­op the pro­gramme to address crit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy require­ments for future Unmanned Com­bat Air Sys­tems. It is recog­ni­tion by the UK Gov­ern­ment of the skills and capa­bil­i­ties that have been devel­oped with­in BAE Sys­tems over the last ten years.”

For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:
Les­ley Dob­son, BAE Sys­tems
Tel: 01772 852052; Mob: 07801 717289
Lesley.dobson@baesystems.com