MANAGEMENT ON THE MOVE

LOCATIONS

15 Jul 08. GKN and Airbus Continue Talks. Negotiations between Airbus and GKN for the sale of the Filton Operations continue to make good progress. Associated A350XWB package negotiations also continue to make good progress. Given the complexity of both the sale of Filton Operations and the award of associated
A350XWB packages, it is difficult to predict when a conclusion may be reached. However, both parties remain optimistic of an early conclusion. Both Airbus and GKN continue to keep key stakeholders, including all affected employees, the Trade Unions and the UK and regional Government agencies, informed of progress.

16 Jul 08. Since the opening of The Portal in July 2007, QinetiQ and The Boeing Company have conducted a broad spectrum of training events, demonstrations and classified experiments in support of numerous UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) and industry programs. The Portal has successfully supported more than 130 separate activities ranging in scale from half-day workshops to multi-week experiments, and has met all requirements. The state-of-the-art decision-support capability at QinetiQ’s Cody Technology Park site in Farnborough, England, is enabling customers to explore and understand implications of proposed network-enabled systems in a real-time, dynamic environment featuring the latest in modeling, simulation, analysis and experimentation techniques and tools. QinetiQ and Boeing have undertaken several joint activities, but most projects have been in support of individually managed programs. Customers have been testing logistical requirements across a wide range of existing and future operational settings and against a variety of threats. Experiment designers create enhanced environments with multiple concurrent activities to compare the effectiveness and survivability of competing systems, test future scenarios and assess potential solutions before they are delivered to the front line. Operators have also addressed the interoperability issues of coalition warfighting through combinations of live assets and virtual simulations.

16 Jul 08. Lockheed Martin UK unveiled an enhanced Swift Laboratory during this year’s Farnborough Air Show. The Swift, located in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre, is an innovative and interactive research and development laboratory. Recent upgrades include new assets focused on national security, network-enable operations and fighter aircraft simulators. Swift continues to evolve in the sophistication of its in-depth simulations. Real systems using real data can be analysed using actual communications networks to both test and stress systems and operations. Environments also can be established for work in both classified and unclassified environments. To demonstrate Swift’s capabilities during the show, specific scenarios were run that featured national security and joint operations themes. The Swift environment demonstrates how the seamless integration of real-time data, intelligence and records can be used to solve a customer problem or result in specific actions that can be taken or executed in a crisis. Swift opened in June, 2006 to provide a state-of-the-art reconfigurable laboratory in the UK. Aimed at enhancing a customer’s mission performance, the Swift is a proven, invaluable resource for Lockheed Martin UK.

14 Jul 08. The Lockheed Martin Pathfinder flight team established operations at Felker Army Airfield, Fort Eustis, VA, this week in preparation for the system’s developmental and limited-user evaluation by the U.S. Army’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate. Army aircrews will evaluate the Pathfinder system, a state-of the-art pilotage sensor for cargo and utility aircraft. This evaluation phase, expected to last through November, will assess Pathfinder’s performance as a fully integrated advanced pilotage sensor on a U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) HH-60L Black Hawk MEDEVAC helicopter. Lockheed Martin will lead an indus