THE British Ministry of Defence has signed a further contract with the Belfast company Shorts Missile Systems (SMS) for an additional 1,000 Starstreak missiles, bringing the total number of Starstreak missiles built by Shorts for the British army to more than 7,000.
The contract was announced at the Paris Air show yesterday by SMS chairman Mr Roy McNulty. SMS is a joint venture company between Short Brothers plc, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Bombardier, and the French manufacturer Thomson-CSF.
SMS is one of the world's leading companies in the design and manufacture of close air defence systems, and its products are in service in 47 countries throughout the world.
The company employs around 500 people at its manufacturing operations in Belfast and France.
Starstreak enables a crew of three to deploy up to 20 missiles - mounted on a tracked armoured vehicle - to knock down enemy attack aircraft detected with an infrared device, Shorts said in a statement. Tests are now underway in the United States to adapt Starstreak as air to air missiles for the Apache attack helicopter, under a joint US British programme.
Meanwhile, Mr McNulty said that Shorts' aircraft components business had recovered quickly from the collapse of its main customer Fokker in 1996, which resulted in the loss of 17 per cent of its business and 900 jobs at its Belfast factory.
"This was a real setback," he said, abut in the short term it has been partly offset by increased production on existing Bombardier aircraft programmes, and on our nacelles and Boeing programmes.
"In the past three years, we have started ten new aerostructures or nacelle programmes which will account for almost 60 per cent of our aerospace business at Belfast by the year 2000.
"We can see the impact that this is having on our business. The number of articles Shorts will deliver in 1997 is double that of two years ago".
In the long term, he said, the loss of the Fokker contracts will be more than replaced by Shorts participation in two new Bombardier programmes announced at the beginning of this year - the Canadair Regional Jet Series 700, and the de Havilland Dash 8-400.
The Belfast company is part of the engineering team designing the aircraft, and will also manufacture some of the components, with up to 1,000 new jobs being created over the next five years.
Since 1989 Shorts has doubled sales and turned losses into significant profits, in spite of having to replace work on the production of Shorts SD360 aircraft, Tucano jet trainers, and wings for the Fokker 100, which in 1988 accounted for over 80 per cent of the company's aerospace business.
"With the postprivatisation investment of around £700 million by Bombardier in plant and facilities; in new products; and in training its people, Shorts prospects in its niche sectors of the aerospace market, the design and manufacture of fuselages, nacelle systems, and flight control surfaces, as well as the close air defence systems and aviation support markets - are very good," he said.
We are now part of the third largest civil aircraft manufacturer in the world.
"We have become involved in the design and manufacture of four new Bombardier fuselages in the past eight years, and we have tripled our composites business.
"This expansion is helping us to extend still further our capabilities, and has put us in a good position to win further new business in the coming years."
