THE TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT OF THE YOFS WITHIN INDUSTRY PLACEMENTS Introduction 1. Working as a partnership is vital to progress forward and research new technology advancements that can benefit the United Kingdom (UK) Armed Forces. The former Minister of State for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology (Dunne, 2014) refers to the technical expertise within industry already leading capabilities and innovation to support the UK defence sector. Industries such as General Dynamics United Kingdom (GDUK) and BAE Systems (amongst others) design and manufacture highly sophisticated products and services while competing on a global market. This essay will examine the industry where future Yeoman of Signals (YofS) may receive a temporary employment …show more content…
General Dynamics (UK) works in partnership with government, military and private companies to deliver command and control communications. GDUK are the lead in developing the new fleet of Army Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) called AJAX. The company boasts (GDUK, 2016) that the new fleet will be ‘best-in-class’ regarding its capabilities in numerous areas in particular Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) while operating within network-enabled digitalised platform. General Dynamics is best known for its delivery of Bowman tactical communications to the UK military back in 2005 replacing Clansman. Since then the company has carried out a number of uplifts within the Bowman, ComBAT, Information and Platform collectively known as BCIP to meet the needs of the Armed Forces. It has been announced (Larrinaga, 2016) that the Bowman communications and management system is to be upgraded to BCIP 5.6 by General Dynamics in a contract worth around 175 million. The contract includes the production and delivery of approximately 12,000 new data terminals which are to enhance software application and end user experience. The upgrade to BCIP 5.6 and the introduction of AJAX are expected to be rolled out in …show more content…
BAE Systems is a global defence, aerospace and security company providing products and services for air, land and naval forces. With a workforce of around 82,500 employees located primarily within the UK, United States (US), Australia and Saudi Arabia, BAE is strategically geographically placed and focuses heavily on research and development. The strength, weakness, opportunity and threat (SWOT) analysis carried out on BAE systems highlights the organisations tough competition market (Marketline, 2016). In fact one of its main competitors is General Dynamics who together with other leading technical industries and the Ministry of Defence (MOD) form a partnership called ‘niteworks’. Although the companies are in fierce competition to secure lucrative contracts with the MOD, they must also collaborate to ensure systems can communicate to one another once brought into service. More importantly from a Royal Signals perspective BAE manufactured and delivered a secure deployable broadband voice, data and video communications system known as Falcon. The company states ( ) due to numerous fragmented systems that are now replaced by Falcon, an improvement has been made on set up times, operating costs and interoperability with coalition forces. Testing, development and trials on Falcon are currently carried out from the BAE Systems facility located in Christchurch. Falcon training delivered to service personnel with the help of Babcock instructors is conducted from either