BAE Systems’ partnership with UK Sport has seen them work with the British Skeleton Bob team, for whom Amy Williams won Olympic Gold on Saturday.
The manufacturing giant’s partnership with UK Sport began in 2008 and is due to go through until 2013. As part of the joint venture BAE Systems has worked with the British Olympic cyclists who saw so much success in Beijing, as well as the shooting, sailing and skating teams. Gold medallist Amy Williams was riding on a new type skeleton bob which was BAE helped develop.
BAE Systems’ expertise in lightweight composite materials makes them ideally placed for this sort of work. They are providing expertise in structural and mechanical engineering, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, mathematical modelling and simulation, human factors and materials science to some of Britain's major medal winning sports.
The deal is worth some £1.5m in engineering time from BAE Systems and allows UK Sport to tap into the expertise of the companies’ 18,000 highly skilled UK based engineers.
The defence industry in the UK provides 300,000 high skilled manufacturing and engineering jobs up and down the country. The industry also invests billions of pounds each year in Research and Development which helps Britain maintain a key technological edge.