Westar to Provide Software Engineering, Technical Support Services to Army's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program

REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala., Nov. 14, 2006 --[ASDWire.com]-- The U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office for Aviation has awarded Westar Aerospace & Defense Group, Inc., a $2.3 million effort to provide software engineering and technical support services for the development, testing and sustainment of the Army’s maintenance and logistics management system for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) program, as well as develop and integrate new modules into the system.

Westar will apply its experience in developing the Army’s Unit Level Logistics Systems-Aviation (Enhanced)
database—ULLS-A (E)—in designing a UAS Platform Management Application and a Maintenance Management System (MMS) aimed at improving system performance, and reducing operating and support costs.

The MMS will feature a “platform independent” database, capable of tracking information from several disparate systems, each with different readiness metrics for UAS maintenance.

“One Unmanned Aerial System, for example, is made up of several systems that may include an air vehicle, launcher, trucks, trailers, ground station, generators, etc.,” said Westar’s Steve Walters, Vice President, Technology Development. “Our job is to create a new maintenance management system design that incorporates information regardless of platform or system.”

The new system will provide UAS commanders and support personnel with greatly improved access to maintenance and logistics management information, including enhanced decision-support capabilities for unmanned aircraft maintenance planning, execution and record keeping, as well as for flight operations management, quality assurance, supply chain management, readiness reporting, and various other functions relating to maintenance and logistics.

Headquartered in St. Louis, Mo., Westar Aerospace and Defense Group, Inc. is a systems engineering contractor with more than $200 million in annual sales and 1100 professionals around the world dedicated to providing high-value engineering, software solutions, logistics and IT support services to the U.S. Department of Defense, allied governments and select commercial customers. Westar is a wholly owned subsidiary of UK-based QinetiQ (London: QQ.), an international defense and security technology company with approximately 2,500 employees in the U.S.