On 8th November, there was a fatal accident involving the Red Arrows Hawk aircraft XX177 following the ejection of a Mk10B seat.
We have had the opportunity to examine the seat and, while not wishing to pre-empt the outcome of the investigation currently underway, are satisfied that neither a mechanical nor a design fault were to blame for the fatality.
We welcome the opportunity to assist the Lincolnshire Police and the Military Air Accident Investigation Board in identifying the causes of this tragic accident
In the meantime, our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Flight Lieutenant Sean Cunningham who lost his life in this accident.
Foreign Secretary William Hague has announced a trade contract worth £25 million to a UK manufacturer, at a reception to mark the EU – Korea Free Trade Agreement.
Foreign Secretary Willam Hague has welcomed the introduction on 1 July of the new EU – Korea Free Trade Agreement, which will remove 97% of tariffs on trade in goods and has the potential to benefit the UK economy by £500 million annually.
This is the most ambitious trade agreement ever negotiated by the EU, and is expected to double bilateral EU-Korea trade from its current level of around €76 billion in the next twenty years, as well as eliminating many non-tariff barriers.
The agreement will result in new opportunities for UK companies particularly in legal and financial services, and ICT and low-carbon businesses who are keen to bring their world-class technology and cutting-edge design to South Korea.
One of the first UK companies to benefit from this agreement is Martin-Baker Aircraft Company, which has been awarded a contract worth £25 million, to supply the Republic of Korea Air Force with the very latest ejection seats for their F-5 fighter jets. It brings the total value of orders received by Martin-Baker from Korea to over £100 million.
Announcing the contract at a reception at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 19 July, the Foreign Secretary said:
“I am delighted that on 1 July the EU-Korea Free Trade Agreement came into force. It is the most ambitious trade agreement ever negotiated by the EU. The UK was the champion of this agreement and we are and will remain the leading advocate of free trade in the EU.
“We are working to build on the success of the EU-Korea FTA, by pushing for FTAs with other major and emerging economies. Although these negotiations can be tough, we firmly believe that the prize is worth it.” |
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“I am pleased to announce today that Martin-Baker Aircraft Company has been awarded a contract, worth £25 million, to supply the Republic of Korea Air Force. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office will continue to work hard with government partners to support the UK’s commercial objectives overseas and to encourage investment here.”
Copyright Foreign and Commonwealth Office |
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Martin-Baker has completed the first production configuration US16E Ejection Seat for their F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft for the partner nations. The US16E is the only ejection Seat in the world that has demonstrated compliance to the entire range of accommodation, physiological and ejection performance requirements for the JSF programme.
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the first JSF partner nation scheduled to receive a production configuration Lockheed Martin (LM) F-35 Lightning II aircraft; the first UK aircraft is known as BK-1.
To mark this occasion, Wg Cdr Willy Hackett RAF and Lt Cdr Uves Wood RN from the Joint Combat Aircraft (JCA) Integrated Product Team (IPT) at Abbeywood, visited Denham on the 24th May 2011. They are pictured below with James Martin, Joint Managing Director of Martin-Baker.
Wg Cdr Hackett explained “Next year RAF and RN pilots will begin flying our first 2 JSF aircraft at Eglin Air Force Base in the US in a pooled arrangement with the USMC, as part of the preparations to build a UK Test and Evaluation Squadron, which will allow UK participation in JSF Operational Test at Edwards Air Force Base. This will be key to ensuring the UK fully understands how this 5th Generation aircraft performs and operates so that we can eventually use F-35 at a time and place of our choosing. For a pilot flying a complex combat aircraft their Ejection Seat is, in the end, critical to their ability to safely exit a stricken aircraft and return home to their families. Martin-Baker, with decades of experience and a proven track record of saving over 7350 lives has been chosen on a best value basis, as the sole supplier of ejection seats for the JSF programme, ensuring that our pilots can fly with confidence knowing that in extremis they are in safe hands.
The Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) is the second JSF partner nation scheduled to receive the production configuration F-35 Lightning II aircraft; the first RNLAF aircraft is known as AN-1 and will also be operated at Eglin AFB. To mark the completion of the AN-1 Ejection Seat, Lt Col Jan Van Tilburg, the Military Air & Deputy Defence Attaché for the Netherlands visited Denham on 8th June 2011 and was joined by Jon Rambeau, LM VP International Programs and Peter Livingstone Managing Director of LM UK.
With the completion of BK-1 and AN-1 Seat deliveries, Martin-Baker will have completed the manufacture of all Low Rate of Initial Production (LRIP) Lot III Seat deliveries for delivery into LM Fort Worth.
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The Martin-Baker Aircraft Company Ltd (MBA) is pleased to announce the first Centre of Excellence (COE) award to the escape system maintenance facility of Marcos Bernasconi Associates S.A. (MBA S.A.), Argentina.
MBA S.A., a private company, has its offices in Buenos Aires and its maintenance facility at FAA Base Las Higueras Rio IV, in Rio Cuarto, near Cordoba. Since 1996, MBA S.A. has carried out overhaul and maintenance activities on over 600+ ejection seats, including the: J5D, RM4, BR8LC, JM6, APO6A, BR10LCX and AR10LM seat types. They support the Argentine Armed Forces and many other customers within the Latin American region with spares, tooling, training, test equipment calibration and technical assistance.
Martin-Baker’s vision of a COE organisation is a facility devoted to obtaining the highest standards of achievement in escape system maintenance, being focused on using best practices with regards to standards, methodologies, tools, supply chains and knowledge which are considered as typical approaches to maintenance.
Martin-Baker has a reputation for quality, reliability, service and value in providing its customers with an affordable high quality product in accordance with customer specification and requirements for Escape Systems. MBA also values these qualities in its representative organisations, such as MBA S.A. who carry out escape system maintenance on its behalf.
John and James Martin presenting the Centre of
Excellence plaque to Marcos Bernasconi and
Mabel Fernandez of MBA S.A. at the
Farnborough International Airshow 2010 |
Mick Cameron, Senior After sales Executive (left) with the
MBA S.A. maintenance team at Rio Cuarto, Argentina. |
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MARTIN-BAKER AND BREMONT ANNOUNCES A PARTNERSHIP TO BUILD THE ULTIMATE AVIATION WATCH
Martin-Baker and Bremont Watch Company have announced a partnership to design and build the ultimate aviation watch. The alliance will produce a unique aviation watch that will embody all that is meant by ‘Made in Britain’. The watch is on display on the Martin-Baker stand ( Hall 2B, Stand E93) here at Le Bourget, Paris.
As the inventor of the Ejection Seat and supplier to over 70% of the Western worlds’ air forces, Martin-Baker is at the pinnacle of British engineering. The new partnership combines Martin-Baker's knowledge of testing, materials and design with Bremont’s watchmaking skills. The goal is to challenge conventional mechanical watch design, by applying to it the standards which determine the integrity of a device that truly define ‘a matter of life and death’.
An Ejection Seat may sit for 40 years, but the day it is used, it has to work. As a Company, their testing facility is unique, and one of its facilities will endow the new watch with a trial found nowhere else: the ability to simulate 30 years of aircraft life through a vibration machine, during a 4-hour test. |
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A combined Bremont/Martin-Baker team has been formed to design and test the new watch, to be called the MB1. Although the movement will be assembled at Bremont’s atelier in Switzerland, all final assembly of the watches will take place in the UK. The MB1 will be Bremont’s first ‘Made in Britain’ wristwatch.
Exclusivity of the first edition of the Bremont MB1 is unparalleled in the watch industry: it will only be available for purchase to those who have been ejected using a Martin-Baker Ejection Seat. Martin-Baker seats have saved over 7283 lives to date; each watch will be engraved with the individual’s ejection number.
The second edition of the watch, Bremont MB2, will be available for sale alongside with the full range of Bremont watches, but – as with all Bremont timepieces – the annual production will be very limited.
Testing, which has been taking place over the last six months, includes live ejection seat launches. This is the first time that Martin-Baker has ever ejected a watch on one of their live launches.
The watches will be launched at a live ejection in Summer 2009. Further technical information and high-res images of the MB1 will follow at the end of Q3 2009.
Martin-Baker
With facilities spanning the globe, Martin-Baker has established an extensive range of unique, specialist engineering capabilities to support the task of ensuring that all martin-Baker products are of the highest quality and reliability and will always perform as designed – first time, every time.
Past and continued success have defined Martin-Baker as the number one choice for over 93 air forces throughout the world, with their Ejection Seats being fitted to over 80 aircraft types. Martin-Baker appreciates fully that this equipment may represent the crew member’s last chance to survive and that there can be no compromise. Every facet of the safety system must work perfectly to safeguard a precious life.
Furthermore, aircrew members must reach the ground uninjured, especially in a hostile environment, if they are to have the best possible chance of survival. With such an understanding at the core of their manufacturing, supported by 60 years of experience, dating back to the first live ejection test in 1946 and first life saved in 1949, it is no surprise that Martin-Baker is the only Company worldwide that can offer a fully-integrated escape system that satisfies the very latest in pilot operational capability and safety standards.
Only Martin-Baker has saved over 7,283 aircrew lives for more than 93 Air Forces.
Martin-Baker
Higher Denham
Near Uxbridge
Middlesex
UB9 5AJ
www.martin-baker.co.uk
info@martin-baker.co.uk
+44 1895 836658
Bremont
British watch brand Bremont was founded in 2007 by two brothers who were inspired by their late father’s aviation career and their joint lifetime love and passion for aviation and flying. In this spirit, they have introduced a range of masterful timepieces which embody the needs of genuine pilots.
Bremont watches are made using only the finest-quality Swiss components and are hand-assembled by Bremont’s team of skilled watchmakers in an atelier in Switzerland. They exude a specific character which no comparable timepiece can emulate, let alone match: an air of quintessential Britishness derived from the background of the brand's founders, Nick and Giles English.
All Bremont timepieces are tested above and beyond the demands placed upon conventional wristwatches. They are designed to be handed down from generation to generation, and to withstand the extreme conditions that explorers and pilots have put to the test. As a result, the stainless steel case of each Bremont watch is made to an exceptional hardness of 2000 vickers – nine times as durable as an average steel case.
Despite the company’s relative youth, Bremont had the honour of being awarded the Walpole Award for ‘Best Emerging British Luxury Brand’, at the 2008 Walpole Awards for British Excellence.
This Award recognises the considerable success that Bremont has achieved since its launch in July 2007. It took more than four years of research and development to bring the first series of Bremont watches from the drawing board to reality. During 2008, Bremont saw meteoric growth, launching the brand in over 25 of the best retailers across the UK, respected retailers including Harrods, Watches of Switzerland and Hamilton & Inches. Bremont also successfully launched their range of chronographs and time-only watches in the US.
Continuing this rapid growth, Bremont is now looking at expanding into Asia.
Bremont Watch Company
PO BOX 4741
Henley-on-Thames
Oxfordshire
RG9 9BZ
www.bremont.com
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April 2008 saw Martin-Baker reach another milestone in its illustrious history with the 1000th US16LA (JPATS) seat being manufactured in Denham. The JPATS programme was selected for the, then Raytheon, now Hawker Beechcraft T6A/B Texan II aircraft. Martin-Baker has produced on average approximately 10 seats per month since the first production seats were completed in December 1997. To date, 6 aircrew lives have been saved by US16LA seats. This seat marks the beginning of the light weight Mk16 era which has now developed in to many different variants.
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Martin-Baker recently received a $39.7 million firm-fixed-price contract for 172 Navy Aircrew Common Ejection Seats (NACES), including 70 for the US Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and E/A-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft; 20 for the US Navy's T-45 Goshawk trainers; 22 for the US Marine Corps' F/A-18A+ Hornets; and 60 for the Government of Canada who also flies F/A-18A+ Hornets. In addition, this contract provides for associated component parts and production support for the U.S. Navy production aircraft, and for the Government of Switzerland (F/A-18 C/Ds).
Work will be performed in Middlesex, England; Johnstown, PA; Northridge, CA; and Ronkonkoma, NY (5.5%), and is expected to be complete in December 2008. |
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On 15th December 2006, Martin-Baker celebrated a major milestone with the maiden flight of the F-35 Lightning II (AA-1).
The F-35 Lightning II is fitted with the US16E ejection seat, the latest of Martin-Baker’s Mk.16 range of ejection seats which will be common to all F-35 aircraft variants. This new ejection seat is the culmination of more than 50 years of escape systems experience and technological research.
Martin-Baker would like to congratulate the JSF Team and its many international partners and suppliers on this remarkable achievement. The entire Martin-Baker workforce is immensely proud to be able to have delivered this state-of-the-art technology for this prototype which will benefit the pilots of the 21st century.
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