07 May 10. BAE Systems is dismantling one of its major United Kingdom-based businesses by moving the bulk of the activities to other parts of its Programmes & Support group and selling off the remainder. Europe’s biggest defense contractor told employees at its Integrated System
Technologies (Insyte) division on May 7 that the main parts of the business were being divided between its maritime and air sectors. An air traffic control and electronic warfare training center at Cwmbran in
Wales and a printed circuit board and module assembly production operation at Hillend, Scotland, will be sold off, a company spokeswoman confirmed. At the same time, as part of an internal restructuring, the company is reorganizing its naval activities, bringing the surface warships, nuclear submarine and the naval elements of Insyte into a single U.K. maritime business as part of the wider Programmes & Support operation here. The individual operations like BAE Surface Ships and Submarine Solutions remain in place. The maritime reorganization follows BAE’s purchase last year of VT Group’s share of the BVT Surface Ships joint venture. Together, the Maritime group operations will have an order book in excess of 8bn pounds ($11.8bn) with annual revenues of 2.2bn pounds. Insyte’s break-up follows a months-long strategic review of the division, which last year recorded a turnover of 582m pounds and an order book of 1.8bn pounds. Insyte cut 642 jobs in November, citing a weakening workload, leaving more than 3,500 employees. No further job losses have so far been announced as a result of the reshuffle of business at the Frimley, England-based Insyte operation. Under the new plan, the naval elements of Insyte become part of the new maritime grouping, with BAE’s Military Air Solutions business taking on the air and land intelligence surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) activities.
The naval business of Insyte covers radars, torpedoes, command-and-control gear and other products. A production and systems integration site at Broad Oak, Portsmouth, will also move into the new maritime operation. The realigned ISTAR business now coming under the wing of Military Air Solutions is currently part of Insyte’s joint command and information systems activities. A small simulation and training engineering activity at the Hillend site will remain part of BAE when the manufacturing operations are sold off. The changes are expected to be complete by the end of the year. Insyte was formed in 2005 following the break-up of the BAE/Finmeccanica joint venture AMS. (Source: Defense News)
BATTLESPACE Comment: This announcement came as a bolt from the blue in the defense News scoop with no prior announcement from BAE Systems. Insyte was meant to be the jewel in the crown for BAE Systems, propelling the Company into advanced C4I Systems, post the loss of BOWMAN. Accompanied by the strategic stake in Niteworks, BAE’s policy was one of leadership in advanced systems in the U.K. in spite of GDUK’s BOWMAN ComBat contract which gave them dominance over the U.K. tactical network. Niteworks was meant to provide the core IP for BAE until other Niteworks partners requested policy changes to retain IP not distribute it to rivals. BAE then pushed systems dominance in the FRES Requirement but this again faltered with the loss to GDUK. Insyte was the BAE share of the break-up of AMS, with Finmeccanica taking the bulk of the radar, avionics, comms and system businesses, with BAE just retaining the naval radar business on the Isle of Wight which has completed the Samson order for Type 45 with little business in sight. BAE’s eyes were on the U.S. market at the time and had hoped to fill business from there pre-ITAR. The business never seemed to get off the starting blocks, with little information or promotion emanating apart from naval stories, possibly because there was no C4I champion on the Main Board of BAE Systems where the main focus appeared to be on Land S