EUROPE
LAND
09 May 06. The UK MoD has awarded an £8.40m, two year contract to a SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems (S&AS) led team that comprises QinetiQ and Thales UK to develop world class high performance Thermal Imaging (TI) technology for a wide variety of military applications. This contract exploits a key part of MOD Research funding to SELEX S&AS under the Output 6 Technology in the supply base programme. This new programme, ALBION, will develop the next generation thermal imaging technology which offers higher resolution, greater sensitivity and lower cost than the current second generation technologies. This important work, managed by SELEX S&AS,will develop three types of thermal imagers using cadmium mercury telluride (CMT) focal plane arrays. These new sensors will offer significant military advantages in the detection, recognition and identification of targets at night and in poor visibility. This technology can be applied in a range of environments and will be used on land, at sea and in the air. Potential applications include advanced sensors on future armoured vehicle programmes, naval infra-red search and track (IRST) systems and missile seekers for precision attack against difficult targets. In 2008 it is hoped that the MoD will seek to further develop the ALBION programme moving from a Technology Demonstration Programme (TDP) to an operational phase and widening its use for specific applications identified in the initial phase.
May 06. A three year € 6.5m programme funded by the European Commission and aimed at reducing the costs and risks associated with designing, prototyping and manufacturing integrated microsystems has been launched. Known as INTEGRAMplus, this new project will be co-ordinated by the UK’s QinetiQ and draw on the complementary expertise and facilities of ten partners from seven different European countries. The use of microsystems, devices with very small components, is growing in a number of emerging markets, such as communications, biomedical, healthcare, and environmental and security monitoring. These systems often require high levels of complexity, perform
SEA
05 May 06. U.K. DEFENCE PROCUREMENT Minister Lord Drayson today highlighted further progress in the programme to build two new large aircraft carriers with the announcement of a series of contracts to continue to refine and develop the design of the projected ships. The MoD and its five Aircraft Carrier Alliance (ACA) partners – BAE Systems, KBR, Thales UK, VT Group and Babcock – have also signed an Alliance agreement that will take the project through the current
demonstration phase.
May 06. Culminating a £6.3m contract for both development and trials activity over a three year period, a QinetiQ led industry and MOD team has successfully fitted a tactical intranet system in ships deployed for a Royal Navy (RN) exercise. The team delivered a new Network Enabled Capability (NEC) for the first time empowering all ships to achieve integrated Command and Control and Situation Awareness whilst simultaneously reducing Task Group reliance on Satcom. Minor war vessels and Royal Fleet Auxiliaries (RFAs), previously disadvantaged through limited communications in RN exercises, will now be able to flexibly use whatever communications bearers are available to them to join the UK’s new Global Information Infrastructure.
11 May 06. Jean-Marie Poimboeuf, the CEO of DCN, the French military shipbuilder, has said that the contract to build six Barracuda nuclear attack submarines, worth an estimated 6bn euros in total, will last until 2030. Mr Poimboeuf also said that European cooperation in the area of conventional submarines would be ‘useful’, particularly faced with competition from South Korea, Russian, China and possibly, in the future, India. (Source:
Abstracted from Les Echos/FT.com)
11th May 06. BT Global Services has selected OutStart to provide the Learning Content Management System to support the Royal N