MANAGEMENT ON THE MOVE
LOCATIONS
Sep 08. DES&S’ SYSTEMS Engineering and Integration Group launched a centre of excellence for MoD systems engineering within Director General Safety and Engineering on September 1st. (Source: MoD desider)
29 Sep 08. Jankel Group’s life-saving technology to be manufactured in the US. The Jankel Group is to establish an assembly and manufacturing facility in South Carolina, USA, for production of its life-saving mine blast attenuation system. The equipment recently entered service with the UK MOD and already is credited with saving lives and reducing the severity and incidence of injuries for the crew of light wheeled vehicles following an attack by an anti-tank mine or improvised explosive device. The US facility will create employment and enable the on-shore supply of this innovative technology to the US military.
26 Sep 08. On September 24, 25 and 26, Jean-Paul Herteman, Chief Executive Officer of SAFRAN, successively inaugurated three new facilities in the Unites States: Sagem Avionics in Grand Prairie, Texas, Turbomeca Manufacturing in Monroe, North Carolina, and Messier-Bugatti USA in Walton, Kentucky. All three inauguration ceremonies were attended by a number of government officials. (Source: ASD Network)
29 Sep 08. The Trafalgar class attack submarine HMS Turbulent has left Devonport
Naval Base with some of the most advanced communications links in the Royal Navy’s fleet of submarines thanks to an MoD update. Several key upgrades, along with routine service and maintenance, were incorporated in the fifteen month package delivered by Babcock Marine at Devonport, which will extend the submarine’s operational life by two years. An upgrade to the communications system will significantly improve interoperability with allied forces on deployed operations. Newly installed IT systems will provide ship to shore connectivity when she is in port. The IT systems inside the submarine have also been upgraded with the installation of the Defence Information Infrastructure (Future)(DII(F)) network onto submarine computers which provides a common
communications platform across the MoD.
26 Sep 08. HMS SUPERB: Decommissioned. HMS SUPERB was decommissioned in Plymouth on 26 Sep 08 (and not “in October 2008” as forecast by the Armed Forces’ Minister on 1 Sep 08). The boat is to be laid up in Devonport Naval Base “and maintained in a safe environment for further disposal at a later date”.
Comment: The number of SSN in the Fleet has now been reduced to eight (HMS SCEPTRE and seven Trafalgar Class). SUPERB will now join seven other decommissioned SSN stored afloat in Devonport. Four SSBN and three SSN are stored in Rosyth. HMS SCEPTRE is undergoing a 37-week Revalidation Assisted Maintenance Period (RAMP) at Babcock Marine on the Clyde. This is SCEPTRE’s third RAMP and the 22nd and final planned docking of a Swiftsure Class boat. (Source: DNA DEFENCE NEWS ANALYSIS, Issue 0838, 29 Sep 08)
29 Sep 08. The Boeing Company and the U.S. Air Force are celebrating the opening of the new F-15E Mission Training Center (MTC) at Royal Air Force Lakenheath in Suffolk, United Kingdom. The official ribbon-cutting ceremony took place on Tuesday, 30 September, with Col. John Quintas, 48th Operations Group commander, the senior Air Force official attending. The MTC began operations in April 2008 and has supported approximately 350 training missions so far while maintaining a 100 percent availability rate. It provides aircrews with high-fidelity, simulator-based training without the material and personnel costs and environmental issues associated with training on operational aircraft. The MTC provides two high-fidelity, dual-cockpit F-15E simulators, each with a 360-degree visual system and a robust synthetic environment, as well as instructor/operator and brief/debrief stations. The simulators, enhanced with a head-tracked area-of-interest display visual system, can be operated individually or linked