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07 Apr 16. BAE Systems has been awarded a £118m contract to build engineering and training facilities at RAF Marham in Norfolk, in readiness for the arrival of the UK’s first F-35 Lightning II aircraft in 2018. The contract award coincides with the early completion of the tenth aft fuselage for the UK aircraft at BAE Systems’ manufacturing site in Samlesbury, Lancashire. The contract for the new facilities has been awarded by Lockheed Martin – the prime contractor of the F-35 aircraft programme. With work beginning at RAF Marham this month, BAE Systems will construct three facilities to support the operation of the F-35 fleet; a maintenance and finish facility, a logistics operations centre and an integrated training centre. The work is scheduled to be completed in 2018.
07 Apr 16. The Ministry of Defence has awarded Lockheed Martin UK a £142m contract to provide bespoke facilities to support the fifth generation jets at the Norfolk base that will be the home for the UK’s Lightning Force. Over the next 28 months, the landscape at RAF Marham will be transformed as three new buildings are constructed to support the first Squadron of F-35s that will be based at RAF Marham from 2018. The facilities, which consist of a Logistic Operations Centre, an Integrated Training Centre and a Maintenance and Final Finishes Building, will be where the pilots and crews can prepare to operate the aircraft and where the aircraft themselves will be maintained and supported. Lockheed Martin UK has subcontracted BAE Systems to manage the project and construction firm Balfour Beatty who will construct the new facilities. The work will create approximately 300 jobs across the companies involved in the supply chain. The new facilities are due to handed over to the MoD in 2018 which will align with the expected arrival of 617 Squadron to RAF Marham.
06 Apr 16. Serco has been awarded a £5m contract to supply the German Air Force with equipment to support their fleet of Eurofighters. Serco will deliver 10 sets of equipment over the next 14 months that will provide the German Air Force with a means of testing release units, pylons, launchers and other related equipment in a service bay environment. Serco’s ruggedised General Purpose Support Equipment (GPSE) system uses custom high speed measurement hardware, coupled with open architecture bespoke test algorithms, to increase the speed of fault detection. Designed by Serco’s engineering team at Waterlooville in Hampshire, the system is up to seven times faster than alternative solutions leading to increased availability of the aircraft. Over the past 10 years, Serco’s GPSE system has successfully supported the Royal Air Force’s fleet of fast jets – including Hawk, Tornado, and Typhoon.
05 Apr 16. Thales and Airbus Defence and Space to produce new digital maps for French defence.
• The French National Institute of Geographic and Forestry Information (IGN) has awarded the Thales-Airbus Defence and Space consortium the GeoMaps contract for the next six years. • French armed forces will get high-added value geographical data that will give them the upper hand in missions in theatres of operations.
The IGN has awarded Thales and Airbus Defence and Space the GeoMaps contract to supply the French Ministry of Defence database with digital geographic data on a range of scales, including city maps. The data will mainly be based on images acquired by the two Pléiades satellites, significantly increasing the accuracy of the maps to be produced. This contract runs from 2016 to 2021 and guarantees the consistent geometry and formatting of all reference mapping data to optimise interoperability between the French Ministry of Defence’s different systems and services, as well as with their allies and partners.
04 Apr 16. DGA selects Thales to upgrade French MoD’s telecom networks. Thales has secured a contract from the French Defence Procurement and Technology Agency (DGA) to upgrade