BAE Systems Military Air Solutions

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Military Air Solutions
Type	Division
Founded	2007
Headquarters	Warton, England
Key people	Nigel Whitehead (MD)
Industry	Defence
Products	Military Aircraft and Aerospace systems
Parent	BAE Systems

Military Air Solutions (MAS) is a BAE Systems Business Unit formed on 1 January 2007 through a merger of the Air Systems and CS&S MASS business units.

The formation of MAS was brought about to consolidate BAE Systems' entire military aircraft product range throughout the design lifecycle. Accordingly it provides design, development, manufacture and support for a wide variety of aircraft types for numerous nations the world round. The divisions major customers include; the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, India and the US Navy.

[edit] Sites

Warton, Lancashire - Warton is the Headquarters of MAS and is also home to the central assembly facility for the Eurofighter Typhoon, Hawk configuration and to the upgrades for Harrier and the Panavia Tornado. The divisions major testing facilities and commercial offices are based there.

Samlesbury, Lancashire - Samlesbury near Blackburn is home to the production facilities for the Typhoon Front fuselage and T-45 Goshawk as well as home to BAE's F-35 Lightning 2 involvement. Sections for Airbus are also subcontracted to the site. The site unlike many other MAS sites does not have an operational runway. The runway closed in the 1980's and is used today by Lancashire Police for training as well as the Air Training Corps for Glider training.

Brough, Yorkshire - Brough near to Hull is home to Hawk production and assembly before the aircraft is sent to Warton to be configured. In January 2008 the runway at Brough reopened with a Hawk 128 the first aircraft to take off in nearly a decade.

Woodford, Cheshire - Woodford near Manchester is home to the conversion of the Nimrod to MRA4 standard.

Chadderton, Lancashire - Chadderton near Oldham is a former manufacturing facility (Historically as Avro) but the site lives on as a major office centre for the company.

The firm has sites on various RAF stations such as RAF Coningsby, RAF Marham etc.