India — BAE Systems Secures £500M Order to Support HAL in the Provision Of A Further 57 Hawk Aircraft

Del­hi, India — In a move under­lin­ing the impor­tance of BAE Sys­tems’ pres­ence in India, the com­pa­ny has secured a new order, worth over £500 mil­lion, with Hin­dus­tan Aero­nau­tics Lim­it­ed (HAL), to sup­ply prod­ucts and ser­vices to enable a fur­ther 57 Hawk Advanced Jet Train­er (AJT) air­craft to be built under licence in India for the Indi­an Air Force (40 air­craft) and Indi­an Navy (17 air­craft).

Indi­an Hawk, the lat­est ver­sion of the world’s most advanced jet train­er Source: BAE Systems

The final terms and con­di­tions for the con­tract were signed by Guy Grif­fiths Group Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Inter­na­tion­al, BAE Sys­tems, in the pres­ence of British Prime Min­is­ter, David Cameron on his his­toric vis­it to India and BAE Sys­tems’ Chair­man Dick Olver. 

The air­craft will be man­u­fac­tured under licence at HAL’s facil­i­ties in Ban­ga­lore and BAE Sys­tems will pro­vide spe­cial­ist engi­neer­ing ser­vices, the raw mate­ri­als and equip­ment nec­es­sary for air­frame pro­duc­tion and the sup­port pack­age for the Indi­an Air Force and Indi­an Navy end users. 

Com­ment­ing on the news BAE Sys­tems Group Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Pro­grammes and Sup­port, Nigel White­head said: 

“HAL is the pre­mier aero­space com­pa­ny in India and BAE Sys­tems is proud to be able to build on its long-stand­ing rela­tion­ship with HAL to deliv­er a fur­ther batch of this excel­lent air­craft to increase the Indi­an Air Force’s fast jet train­ing capac­i­ty and estab­lish a sim­i­lar fast jet train­ing solu­tion for the Indi­an Navy. The Hawk AJT fast jet train­ing solu­tion enables an Air Force or Navy to pro­vide front line pilots for even the most mod­ern fight­er air­craft such as the Eurofight­er Typhoon or Sukhoi SU-30.” 

Guy Grif­fiths added: 

“This new order con­tin­ues and strength­ens the long stand­ing rela­tion­ship between BAE Sys­tems and HAL. It high­lights the impor­tance of BAE Sys­tems’ strate­gic devel­op­ment of India as a home mar­ket, and the ben­e­fit of sol­id Gov­ern­ment support.” 

This year BAE Sys­tems and Mahin­dra & Mahin­dra launched Defence Land Sys­tems India a joint ven­ture whose first prod­uct is a mine pro­tect­ed vehi­cle designed and devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly for India. BAE Sys­tems is com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing a domes­tic busi­ness in India and will con­tin­ue work­ing with indus­try in India to devel­op fur­ther capa­bil­i­ties in the defence and secu­ri­ty sectors.” 

With 18 cus­tomers, the Hawk air­craft has been wide­ly export­ed around the world. Cus­tomers include Aus­tralia, Cana­da, South Africa, Bahrain, India and the UK Roy­al Air Force. 

Pri­or to today’s announce­ment BAE Sys­tems was already work­ing with HAL and Rolls-Royce to sup­ply 66 Hawk air­craft to the Indi­an Air Force and this addi­tion­al order will extend the cur­rent part­ner­ship for a fur­ther six years. 

BAE Sys­tems is com­mit­ted to the devel­op­ment of a long term sus­tain­able domes­tic busi­ness in India, not just in man­u­fac­tur­ing, but in design, devel­op­ment, sys­tems inte­gra­tion, test­ing and sup­port. The com­pa­ny firm­ly sup­ports the Gov­ern­ment of India’s objec­tive of procur­ing 70 per­cent of defence equip­ment domes­ti­cal­ly. The fur­ther devel­op­ment of its long rela­tion­ship with HAL, and the estab­lish­ment of Defence Land Sys­tems India are real exam­ples of the company’s deter­mi­na­tion to take active steps to demon­strate its sup­port for the Gov­ern­ment of India and India’s defence services. 

About BAE Sys­tems

BAE Sys­tems is a glob­al defence, secu­ri­ty and aero­space com­pa­ny with approx­i­mate­ly 107,000 employ­ees world­wide. The Com­pa­ny deliv­ers a full range of prod­ucts and ser­vices for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced elec­tron­ics, secu­ri­ty, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions and cus­tomer sup­port ser­vices. In 2009 BAE Sys­tems report­ed sales of £22.4 bil­lion (US$ 36.2 billion) 

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please contact: 

Jon Bon­nick, BAE Sys­tems UK
Tel +44 1772 854636 Mobile +44 7801 714753
jon.bonnick2@baesystems.com

Guy Dou­glas, BAE Sys­tems India
Tel +91 (11) 43 412345 Mobile +91 (97175) 35511
guy.douglas@baesystems.com

Issued by: 

BAE Sys­tems, Farn­bor­ough, Hamp­shire GU14 6YU, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1252 384719 Fax: +44 (0) 1252 383947
24hr media hot­line: + 44 (0) 7801 717739
www.baesystems.com

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