Key Facts & Figures

Who Are We:

• We’re an independent provider of impartial technology-based advice, test and evaluation with global revenues, in the year to 31 March 2013, of £1,327.8m.
• With major facilities at Farnborough, Boscombe Down and Malvern, we’re the UK’s largest research and technology organisation.
• As a key supplier to the Ministry of Defence, we’re working on over 1,000 defence contracts at any one time.
• 95% of our UK people have national security clearance that allows them to work on government contracts.
• More than 75% of our people in the US carry high level national security clearances, and over half work on customer sites.
• All our principal UK sites hold ISO 14001 to help make sure we minimise our impact on the environment.
• We employ world-wide, 10,500 people.

What We Do:

• We provide test, evaluation and training support services to the UK MOD through the Long Term Partnering Agreement. During the life of this 25 year contract we’re generating £700m of savings, employing 2000 employees at over 20 sites, and we’re responsible for over 750 MOD projects.
• We’re the engine room behind NASA’s space programmes under a five-year $190m contract to provide test and integration services at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. We also operate and maintain communications and telemetry ground facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and base operations support for NASA-operated facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
• We support front line allied troops in areas of conflict by completing a wide range of Urgent Operational Requirements to deliver the latest equipment. Working with Carson Helicopters we recently improved the speed and lift capability of the Sea King helicopter to meet operational demands in Afghanistan.
• We’re an established knowledge partner in the fields of simulation and training and C4ISTAR research. Our Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstrator integrated over 250 servers and hundreds of apps and services to create a secure infrastructure for UK MOD, which was used by over 30 countries and agencies.
• Our secure monitoring service protects the integrity of IT Systems for organisations like British Airways, leading banking institutions and a range of government customers.
• We operate the West Wales UAV Centre, Europe’s only airspace where unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can be tested and flown, and we’re providing expert support and facilities to complete the acceptance trials for the MOD’s Watchkeeper UAV system.

Some of our world-leading products:

• We’re the world’s leading supplier of military robotics. More than 3,000 of our TALON robots have now been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, mainly for dealing with improvised explosive devices and roadside bombs.
• Our Ears SWATS sniper detection system was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2010. This shoulder-worn acoustic targeting system can detect and pinpoint hostile gunfire in a fraction of a second and audibly tells the soldier or marine the range and bearing of the sniper. It was first fielding in Afghanistan in 2009.
• Our OptaSense® product is protecting crucial oil and gas pipelines worldwide. It uses standard telecoms fibre optic cable, state-of-the-art fibre sensing and advanced signal processing and pattern recognition software to detect, classify and locate any threats before they do damage.

Our world-class facilities:

• Our low speed wind tunnel is one of just three in the world and is used regularly by Boeing under a 10-year contract.
• Our ocean basin at Gosport, Hampshire, is the largest in Europe – it’s the size of 16 Olympic swimming pools. Scale models of the new UK aircraft carriers Queen Elizabeth II and Prince of Wales have undergone trials in the basin to ensure their stability and handling.
• The 1,500m test track that we operate at MOD Pendine in Wales is the longest in Europe. It was recently used to test small missile-like probes that will allow scientific measurements to be taken from the far side of the Moon for the first time.

A hothouse of innovation

• We hold more than 1,500 granted patents and have 1,000 patents pending.
• We’re the biggest non-American partner to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that has triggered more than a third of the world's developments in IT and more than three quarters of developments in micro-electronics.
• We invented Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), high performance carbon fibres and the first ground mapping radar to be used in combat.
• Our ion propulsion team won the 2010 Sir Arthur Clarke award for ‘Team of the Year’ for its outstanding contribution to space exploration.
• Also in 2010, the European Space Agency's (ESA) GOCE Spacecraft become the first to launch with our T5 ion thrusters on board.
• We built Proba-2, one of the smallest satellites ever to be flown by ESA, which was launched on 2 November 2009.