Page 52 - Australian Defence Magazine June 2019

DEFENCE
FROM THE SOURCE
NICK GIBBS
Continued from page 54
GIBBS: If you look at it on total rev- enue, as in content on commercial and military aircraft, yes, it’s probably pretty close. In terms of actual work being done in country, it’s probably more like 90 per cent military, 10 per cent commercial. Most of what we do in country today in terms of Australian workforce utilisation is military.
ADM: Collins in Australia is probably best known for its work with the fire con- trol systems around AFATDS on Land 17 and then on related future Army pro- grams like Hawkei. What is the portfolio of work like in Australia for Collins tech- nologies, both in terms of new products and supporting the existing base? GIBBS: Definitely with the breadth of the company’s capabilities we see it as an excit- ing time within Defence. We’re continu- ing to focus on the legacy work with radio products and GPS, as well as the targeting system we’ve provided to the ADF and the integration of those capabilities onto future platforms and so on.
I think there’s three new areas that we
Collins Aerospace has done extensive work on the fire control systems on the M-777.
see great opportunity. One of them is in the ISR space, sensors and so on which we’ve not historically done work with. The other is in the live virtual and construc- tive (LVC) training and simulation and, finally, space. UTAS had quite a capability in space, providing space suits as well as a whole range of other technologies. We’re currently exploring what are the new areas of opportunity for the Collins Aerospace business in Australia.
ADM: You mentioned space there. Am I correct in understanding that Collins, they make the space suits for NASA which go up on the International Space Station? GIBBS: Yes, that is correct. The current generation of space suits were manufac- tured by Collins Aerospace.
ADM: Is that something you would look to be bringing to Australia in any way, shape or form?
GIBBS: I think the Australian space as- pirations are not so much oriented around manned space travel but more sensors, pay- loads, delivery systems and so on. So po- tentially not the space suits but obviously there’s a lot of technology and ancillary
technologies that relate to that that we are looking to bring to the market here.
ADM: What does your work on the Chi- nook fleet encompass?
GIBBS: For more than three years now the company has had a performance based lo- gistics support arrangement providing field service engineering and a range of other sup- port services for that helicopter fleet, and the basis of that is that the avionics suite on that platform is a legacy Rockwell Collins product. The Avionics are highly integrated with all of the mission systems and capabili- ties of the platform, so keeping it in a high readiness state is really important in mak- ing sure that the platform is available at the highest availability levels.
ADM: What does your workforce in Australia look like in terms of the split of engineers and your wider skills base? GIBBS: We have almost 100 people in Australia at the moment. Probably around a quarter of those are engineers working on ADF related engineering projects. Around another quarter are working on manu- facturing and repair related activities, an- other quarter are administrative and BD
52 | June 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au