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Multinational defence technology QinetiQ Group has secured an aerial training services contract with the German Armed Forces Procurement Office for the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr), Air Force, Army, Navy, and Special Forces.
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The 10-year contract is worth €284 million with an option for an additional two-year extension. It represents the largest and longest contract award for QinetiQ’s Global Threat Representation business, providing long-term visibility and enabling future growth for German operations.
For more than 30 years, aerial training and related services have been an essential part of the German Armed Forces operations.
Under the aerial training services contract, QinetiQ will provide a comprehensive range of tailored services including Joint Terminal Attack Controller training, Red Air training, close air support, maritime air operations, ground control intercept training, air traffic control training, and target towing for ground-based air defence systems.
These mission-critical training services will be delivered by the newly enhanced QinetiQ fleet of 11 PC-9 and four PC-12 aircraft.
“In the current heightened threat environment, the award of the aerial training services contract demonstrates QinetiQ’s commitment to ensuring the German Armed Forces are always operationally ready for their missions,” said Steve Wadey, group chief executive officer of QinetiQ.
“The contract will form a crucial part of our Global Threat Representation offering across all domains. We are very proud of our highly skilled employees who will deliver thousands of flight hours of training per year for our customer.”
Late last month, the company announced it had been awarded a £15 million contract by the UK Ministry of Defence to manage, maintain, and update the classified military data management system, Thundercloud.
Thundercloud collates, analyses, and distributes meteorological and oceanographic data at all security classifications for use by military forces through a secure network of systems, to land, sea and air operations anywhere in the world.
The data, services, and products delivered by Thundercloud gives a heightened understanding of the environment, providing shared situational awareness across different military teams. This is a crucial advantage for naval, air force, and land-based teams who need secure, accurate, detailed geospatial information to fully exploit the environment or mitigate its impact on operations.
Thundercloud was developed in the 1980s by the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency and transitioned to QinetiQ management in 2001 where it has been run and maintained through several upgrade cycles. QinetiQ has retained the support contract to manage the capability through competitions in 2014 and 2019, with this latest round of competition seeing QinetiQ’s expertise called on for a further two years with a focus on agile change delivery.
Demonstrating QinetiQ’s commitment to partnering with small and medium enterprises, Hampshire-based technical managed services company Thorn LTD will provide a key role in engineering support, as well as other SMEs providing specialist technical support.
Commander Nick Davies, Joint Operational Meteorology and Oceanography Centre, said: “We are very pleased to award this ongoing contract to the QinetiQ team who have ably supported us for 24 years already, working collaboratively with us on what’s needed to deliver this key capability now and for the future. QinetiQ has worked as a partner to us to get the best from the system in the past, frequently going above and beyond to give us a reliable, best-of-breed solution and I’m looking forward to continuing that over the next two years.”
James Willis, chief executive, UK Intelligence, QinetiQ, said: “QinetiQ is proud to apply its expertise in cyber, data, and electromagnetics to ensure this critical capability continues to provide its vital service to our military forces around the world.”
