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November 17th 2011 - General Dynamics UK welcomes UK Government and Armed Forces to JIRAD 2011

Newbridge, South Wales - General Dynamics UK held its fifth annual Joint Internal Research andDevelopment (JIRAD) demonstration at its EDGE UK® facility in Newbridge, South Wales yesterday.The company welcomed over 70 high-ranking members of its customer community from the BritishArmed Forces, Ministry of Defence and UK government.

JIRAD is an annual end-of-year showcase at which General Dynamics UK demonstrates innovativetechnologies developed in response to current operational needs. This year the focus was again onoperational issues in Afghanistan. Themes included Operations Room solutions; Tactical Basesolutions; Surveillance Systems; Embedded Teams and Tactical Communications; and SupportServices.

“JIRAD demonstrated the ‘art of the possible’ for current, new and developing technologiesappropriate to operations in Afghanistan and beyond,” said Brigadier Alan Hill, Head of InformationSuperiority, Army HQ, following the event. “There are significant challenges in Afghanistan and Iappreciate the forward-leaning and innovative approach that General Dynamics UK continues totake. How to exploit our current capabilities and incrementally extend them has been very clearlydemonstrated. I welcome the close and joint working relationship which has been fostered in theinterests of delivering capability.”

The Operations Room demonstration addressed interoperability issues for forces on the ground byallowing them to better manage and exploit the multiple sources of information available in theatre.Several new technologies and solutions were demonstrated that improve shared situational awareness,manage workload to ease information transfer and provide better interoperability between BritishForces and the Afghan Mission Network, as well as with legacy and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)equipment. The solutions help provide a common operating picture (COP) to all users.

The Tactical Base solutions area demonstrated the command post of tomorrow. Focused on acommand and control centre in a 20-foot ISO container, General Dynamics UK demonstrated how itsapproach to Generic Base Architecture (GBA) addresses current key operation issues and contributesto a more rapidly deployable, easily integrated and managed solution. Demonstrations includedintelligent power management through an electronic infrastructure plus integration of vehicleelectronic and power infrastructures; reduction of logistics burdens through the integration of fuel,water and waste infrastructure; data retrieval from platforms using a Health and Usage MonitoringSystem (HUMS); and exploitation of that data.

For Surveillance Systems, General Dynamics showcased its capabilities in the area of rapidlydeployable ground surveillance units; expertise in ISTAR; persistent surveillance and force protectiontechnology; and how to use network connectivity to exploit the resulting data. Building on capabilitiesalready in service with British Forces, General Dynamics UK demonstrated several new surveillancesolutions including the delivery of video over tactical radios, face recognition from CCTV and a new,small portable and lightweight surveillance camera that delivers the capability of larger surveillancesystems to a patrol group.

The Embedded Teams and Tactical Communications theme focused on solutions that meet thecommunications infrastructure needs for smaller mobile UK forces embedded with the AfghanNational Army during the draw-down of troops from Afghanistan. The company demonstrated anumber of solutions that help supplement tactical communications, such as 3G and Tetra networks andSecure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Devices (SME-PED), as well as provide a ruggedcomputing infrastructure adaptable to a variety of transition tasks.

Support Services were also a focus this year, with General Dynamics UK demonstrating how it canreduce cost, maximise availability and maintain the capability of MoD equipment throughout its life.Concrete examples of this cost-reducing capability included solutions for asset visibility, automateddata capture and decision analysis.