27 Jan 05. BAE SYSTEMS: Job Losses BAE SYSTEMS announced 1,396 job losses across 13 UK sites. 340 redundancies were declared in the AMS joint venture, including 195 at Cowes. The Defence Repairs Business at Chadderton is to close by 31 Dec 05, with the loss of 335 jobs. The Avionics Group is to reduce its workforce by 431 over four sites. Avionic Systems is to lose 290, mainly at Rochester. Comment: The Company said that the redundancies were “designed to match anticipated order intake and workload with capacity”. 672 of the 1,396 job losses are in engineering. (Source: DNA DEFENCE NEWS ANALYSIS, Issue 05/05, 31 Jan 05)

01 Feb 05. AgustaWestland has announced 640 job losses just four days after an aircraft it designed was chosen for the US presidential fleet in an important validation of European technology. AgustaWestland, now owned by Finmeccanica of Italy, added it would have needed to cut more jobs if it were not for the presidential fleet order. It said: “We have had five years of unusually high activity, but unfortunately we have not been able to top up the order book.” (Source: FT)

02 Feb 05. Dan Murphy, president and chief executive officer of Alliant Techsystems will become chairman of the board of directors effective April 1. Murphy will succeed Paul David Miller, who will depart from the board on April 1. Murphy became chief executive officer of ATK in October 2003 as part of a leadership succession plan announced earlier that year. He succeeded Miller, who retained his post as chairman of the board to assist in the transition.

02 Feb 05. Following our announcement (BATTLESPACE ALERT Vol.7 ISSUE 1, 25th January 2005, THALES WATCHKEEPER TEAM WINS A REPRIEVE), and its effect on small sub-contractors such as Supacat. Supacat has announced eight redundancies. These include PR Manager Mike Gormley, Ken Brown (Workshop Manager) and Martin Wickham (Design Manager). Further delays in contracts for the company Supacat could impinge on its existing customers; the company is believed to be in discussions with the MoD.

31 Jan 05. Wyle Laboratories, Inc., has appointed George R. Melton as chief executive officer and president. The appointment of Melton is concurrent with the completion of the previously announced acquisition by Wyle of the Aeronautics Services business of General Dynamics, which creates the leading independent test and evaluation business with projected revenues of approximately $450m and over 3,000 employees.

01 Feb 05. Robert C Michelson steps down from GTRI. After 30 years service to the Georgia Institute of Technology, GTRI Principal Research Engineer Emeritus and adjunct Associate Professor to the School of Aerospace Engineering, Robert C Michelson has retired to begin his own engineering consulting firm, Millennial Vision, LLC. Michelson is a past President of the AUVSI, having held every elected position on the Board of Trustees. He is the creator of the AUVSI International Aerial Robotics Competition. Currently Michelson is acting Vice President for Engineering at Techsphere System International (TSI), a company specializing in spherical airship design and construction. TSI airships hold the current altitude record for this type of vehicle.

01 Feb 05. King Trailers is looking for a new technical director to replace John Ingrey who plans to retire this summer. John has been with King for 25 years and is well known in the industry both as King’s chief engineer and as chairman of the SMMT’s Trailer Technical Committee. John has played a key part in the ten year buyout at King which has seen turnover rise six-fold. ‘I hope there is a chartered engineer in the industry who thinks he can fill John’s shoes,’ says Mark Carrington, managing director. Ingrey will stay as a technical consultant to King Trailers and hopes to retain his position on the SMMT trailer committee.

31 Jan 05. BAE Systems’ Information & Electronic Systems Integration
(IESI) sector has named Michael L. Lewis as vice