QinetiQ and Boeing Mark Successful 1st Year with The Portal.

FARNBOROUGH, United Kingdom, July 15, 2008 -- Boeing [NYSE: BA] and Arik Air today announced an order for an additional seven Next-Generation 737s at the Farnborough Airshow. The airline ordered 10 Next-Generation 737s in September 2007 and now has a total of 17 Next-Generation 737s on order. Arik Air currently operates six 737-700s. Today's order has been attributed on Boeing's Orders & Deliveries Web site to an unidentified customer.

The state-of-the-art decision-support capability at QinetiQ's Cody Technology Park site in Farnborough, England, is enabling customers to explore and understand implications of proposed network-enabled systems in a real-time, dynamic environment featuring the latest in modeling, simulation, analysis and experimentation techniques and tools.

QinetiQ and Boeing have undertaken several joint activities, but most projects have been in support of individually managed programs. Customers have been testing logistical requirements across a wide range of existing and future operational settings and against a variety of threats. Experiment designers create enhanced environments with multiple concurrent activities to compare the effectiveness and survivability of competing systems, test future scenarios and assess potential solutions before they are delivered to the front line. Operators have also addressed the interoperability issues of coalition warfighting through combinations of live assets and virtual simulations.

"Partnering with Boeing on this exciting venture continues to provide value for us collectively, individually and for the growing and quite diverse range of customers that are now benefiting from the capabilities The Portal provides," said QinetiQ's Chief Executive Graham Love. "The Portal allows customers to explore many alternative scenarios in a fully immersive and interactive environment, and to see the effects of introducing new technologies to support current systems and platforms in order to optimize design concepts and performance."

"The Portal enables us to support our customers' decision-making processes by helping them to explore their options, evaluate alternative solutions, minimize risk, and reduce cost and development time," added Darryl Davis, president of Boeing Advanced Systems.

QinetiQ has undertaken projects including a training demonstration to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of running a virtual training event for road-convoy personnel. In support of NITEworks -- the MOD/industry collaboration for advanced decision-support capability -- QinetiQ, with assistance from Boeing, investigated which process, organization, doctrine and training changes or technology insertions would be most effective for an integrated air defense command and control system.

Boeing projects include a series of analyses -- including virtual/constructive operator-in-the-loop experiments -- for the Future Rapid Effect System (FRES) program that led to the successful award of the FRES Systems of Systems Integrator (SOSI) role to the Thales-Boeing team earlier this year. Other activities include participation in a NITEworks FRES project, classified analysis into disruptive technologies for the equipment community, and -- in conjunction with QinetiQ -- future concepts analysis for the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre.

The Portal's capabilities continue to support the MOD's Defence Industrial Strategy and Defence Technology Strategy, which both recommend that UK suppliers invest in tools and technologies to enable future military hardware and software solutions to be assessed in a variety of operational environments. QinetiQ's quest wide area network features nodes across the UK in multiple domains, including land, missile defense, air and sea. The Boeing Laboratory Network links more than 700 Boeing labs, including the Systems Analysis Laboratory in Brisbane, Australia, U.S. government labs and industry partners.

The 6,000-square-foot Portal facility features laboratories, viewing areas, conference rooms, and a state-of-the-art presentation and audiovisual suite that can link to an additional 14,000-square-foot experimentation space and up to 50,000 square feet of hard standing area for large vehicles or mobile facilities, such as a tented headquarters.

The Portal supports all major simulation software systems and uses the latest Dual-and Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® central processing unit technology. Significant secure storage is available along with a scalable bandwidth link up to 32 Mbps in size that can securely connect The Portal to other QinetiQ, Boeing, industry and MOD facilities in the UK and around the world. The facility also can connect to the Joint Multi-National Interoperability Assurance Network for MOD-sponsored programs.

The Portal is a jointly owned asset of Boeing Defence UK Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Boeing Company, and QinetiQ. For further information on The Portal, contact QinetiQ customer inquiries at +44 (0) 8700 100942 or CustomerContact@QinetiQ.com.

Congratulations!! QinetiQ and Boeing Mark Successful 1st Year with The Portal.

Source:
Boeing News

Reported by Sandra Englund