LOCATIONS
LAND
14 Oct 09. Avon Protection, part of Avon Rubber p.l.c., is expanding its operations by opening an essential service and repair centre for its respirators with a local Malaysian company. The new centre will be fully approved and Avon certified, and is to be managed by SG Defence Electronics and Radar Corporation. It will be equipped to service and repair a range of Avon masks, including the C50, FM12 and S10, all of which are currently in service in Malaysia. Over time, this will be expanded to handle all of Avon’s respiratory solutions. Lieutenant Kol Ahmad Marzuki Ahmad Nawawi, Executive Director of SG Defence Electronics and Radar Corporation, says: “This new operation is a necessary addition to the Malaysian marketplace, and one that has already gained support with the Malaysian Army as well as with local organisations. The Army in particular require a rapid turn round in their support services, which is exactly what this centre will offer.”
15 Oct 09. Cubic Defense Applications, the defense systems business of Cubic Corporation, has been awarded an $18m contract to supply mobile combat training center instrumentation and training services to the Kingdom of Jordan. Cubic will provide a battalion-sized system capable of expanding to brigade or larger under a Foreign Military Sale coordinated by the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Training, Simulation and Instrumentation (PEO STRI). (Source: Google)
12 Oct 09. British IM artillery ammunition effort stalled. Industry representatives have confirmed to Jane’s that the GBP18m (USD28m) Phase 2 insensitive munitions (IM) filling plant inaugurated with great publicity by the BAE Systems Global Combat Systems Munitions division at Glascoed, south Wales, in 2006 has been sitting idle ever since. With a two-shift filling capacity of 250,000 105 mm artillery rounds per year, the Phase 2 plant was supposed to have been delivering improved-performance and safer L50 high-explosive (HE) IM projectiles for the L118 105 mm Light Gun used by the British Army in Afghanistan. (Source: Jane’s)
20 Oct 09. Handover of forces homes attacked. The Ministry of Defence must improve the way it hands over accommodation to armed forces families, says the Commons spending watchdog. Many families do not see their new homes before they move in and often find them dirty when they arrive, the public accounts committee found. It said they should get more details in advance and cleaning charges could be deducted from previous occupants. A report in March found a third of families rated accommodation as “poor”. That report, by the National Audit Office, found that among the 12,427 armed forces families it had surveyed, nearly a quarter said their home had been badly maintained and more than a third said their properties had not been cleaned before they moved in. Some 31% rated their home as in a poor condition, but 52% said it was in good condition. In Tuesday’s report, the MPs said 90% of the 50,000 properties
provided by the MoD were in the top two of the four-tier system – meeting the government’s decent homes standard. (Source: BBC)
MARITIME
21 Oct 09. Warship to launch on River Clyde. HMS Defender is the fifth of six ships commissioned to replace the existing fleet of Type 42 destroyers. With a price tag of £605m, each of the 150m-long vessels weighs about 7,350 tons and is designed to provide air defence cover. HMS Defender will be launched from BVT’s shipyard at Govan in Glasgow. The yard has previously launched HMS Dragon in November 2008, HMS Diamond in November 2007, HMS Dauntless in January 2007 and HMS Daring in February 2006. The new vessels are due to come into service later this year and in 2010. (Source: BBC)
09 Oct 09. Type 23 frigate HMS Argyll is to receive major upgrades to her command and weapon systems, sensors and ventilation systems in a 14 month upkeep period by Babcock at Rosyth, which has now started. The multi-million pound contract will