Starting from Helicopters to unmanned aerial vehicles, the UK, over the years, has become a prominent player in the global Defence Industry. Apart from military hardware, it is also a major manufacturer in Space Industry, accounting for a sizable market share.
The UK’s Space market is made up of 4 primary segments; Space Applications, Space Operations, Space Manufacturing, and Auxiliary Services.
Space Applications have a 69.5% market share by income and this includes the dominant subsector of Direct-To-Home broadcasting, and smaller sections like supply of user devices and equipment and mobile sat con services.
Space Operations has a 14.7% market share, including proprietary satellite operations and ground station networks. Space Manufacturing holds a 12.7% market share and this segment includes a diverse array of subsectors each holding a small piece of the sector. Auxiliary Services represent the smallest part of the market, claiming a 3.1% market share.
Even in the Commonwealth of Nations, very few, really, aware of the major role that the UK plays in the global Space Industry and the immense benefits that nations could get by developing their space industries.
Technology Safeguards Agreement
Over the years, even in the Space Market, the UK has become a major player. The Technology Safeguards Agreement signed in June 2020 will facilitate the U.S. firms to bring rocket hardware into the UK.
This agreement was a must-have for U.S. companies like Virgin Orbit and Lockheed Martin to commence launching satellites from Britain. The U.K. Space Agency announced that it will provide $9.5 million to Virgin Orbit U.K. Ltd., the U.K. branch of Virgin Orbit, for launch support equipment and mission planning activities at Cornwall Airport Newquay, also known as Spaceport Cornwall with the intention of supporting flights by Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne air-launch system. The space agency funding is part of a broader funding package of $25 million to enable Virgin Orbit to operate from the airport in southwestern England.
Among other things, the UK government has been pursuing various efforts to establish a domestic launch capability in recent years. In July 2018, the UK declared that it would fund development of a vertical launch site in northern Scotland and support two companies, Lockheed Martin and Orbex that plan to fly small launch vehicles from the site.
At the same time, the government left open the door for supporting other launch facilities, including horizontal launch sites like in Cornwall. Construction of the vertical launch site in Scotland has yet to begin, as local officials work on agreements to obtain the land and address environmental concerns. Virgin Orbit could host its first Launcher One mission as soon as late 2021, a schedule that will depend on various regulatory approvals as well as completion of the infrastructure improvements at the airport.
Virgin Orbit is in the final phases of development of LauncherOne, a rocket that is released from a Boeing 747 aircraft, capable of placing several hundred kilograms into low Earth orbit.
According to estimations, there are 3,500 to 10,000 satellites due to be launched globally by 2025. In order to capture a portion of that market, a National Satellite Test Facility will be established at the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire. The UK is investing $125 million to establish the National Satellite Test Facility.
The investment is being led by the RAL Space and will deliver a set of co-located facilities for the assembly, integration and testing of space payloads and satellites. This facility will assist the industry to develop next-generation launch technologies and testing capabilities required to construct satellites and deliver payloads into orbit.
Helicopters
The UK’s helicopter market is dominated by Leonardo and Airbus Helicopters UK. Leonardo is the largest inward investor in the UK defense sector, the largest Italian inward investor to the UK, and one of the biggest suppliers of defense equipment to the UK MOD.
Leonardo commences its helicopter division activities through a strong industrial presence in the UK. The company provides employments for around 7,000 people in UK, while assisting a further 10,000 jobs in the supply chain including 1,550 SMEs, serving both commercial and government customers worldwide.
For over 30 years, Airbus Helicopters UK has manufactured products and services for the civil as well as military helicopter markets. With more than 300 civil helicopters customised and delivered in the UK, Airbus Helicopters UK is the leading provider of helicopters in the UK’s civil and para-public market, capturing a 46% fleet share, and it dominates the UK security and emergency services market.
Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Drones)
In the UK, delivery drones could become business as usual by 2030. Large retail and logistics companies make substantial investments in delivery drones with the aim of achieving increased efficiency, lower costs, and increased customer satisfaction.
The scope of delivery drones could also be gone beyond dropping off parcels in the ‘last mile’ of client logistics. Drones will be omnipresent in warehousing and able to autonomously conduct real time stock checks by scanning inventory. This will integrate impeccably with other ground-based autonomous warehouse robotics in an end-to-end management and movement of inventory driven by AI with no human touch.
Delivery drones in the UK could also integrate into other advances technologies, for instance, a driverless vehicle, loaded with parcels by robotics at the warehouse that automatically dispatches multiple delivery drones when it nears the most efficient point to complete its deliveries.
Such a vehicle would serve as a base station for the drones providing charging and payload swapping as required. This scenario is somewhat fictitious, as current technical and regulatory challenges remain such as flying pilotless and beyond visual line of site (BVLOS) in congested urban areas and integrating with other airspace users.
Accident response drones
Accident response drones may well be a common scene above roads in the UK by 2030 enabling live data from accident scenes to be shared in real time with emergency services. Drones could also be used to store evidence from an accident reducing the time it takes to reopen the road.
Accident response drones may offer new revenue streams for the public sector by selling the data to insurance companies.
UK Search and Rescue organization will also offer opportunities for companies that provide technology to help in rescue operations. The ability to carry sensors, providing real time information during inclement weather to rescue centers will keep rescue personnel away from dangerous situations and at the same time, still providing needed information. In the construction industry, drones are already providing cheaper and more efficient solutions for mapping sites and recording construction progress. Drones also provide 3D information and integrating it with existing building information modelling (BIM) systems.
Three Dimensional Printing
Additive manufacturing or commonly known as 3D printing, is experiencing exponential growth momentum within the UK aerospace sector. 3D printing facilitates weight reduction, manufacture of niche, low-volume parts and complex design parts and also reducing complexity of assembly processes. Some of the suitable components for manufacturing are low and high temperature fasteners, discs, hubs, spacers, seals, compressor blades, landing gear, and aircraft interiors.
Lightweight materials (Composites): Lightweight materials are increasingly being adopted in the UK aerospace sector to provide enhanced properties such as high strength-to-weight ratio, superior impact and corrosion resistance, and extreme high temperature resistance.
The University of Bristol received an investment of $33 million from the British government to develop a UK National Composites Centre for advanced research on composites used in aerospace.
Host of opportunities
The opportunities in this market are to be those associated with the manufacturing of new aircraft or engine models, or for those companies that employ the latest technology such as composites or additive manufacturing.
In addition, the UK aerospace industry is also experiencing a growth in the use of cloud computing platforms, with innovation in integrated solutions such as flight planning tools and digital flight management systems.
Currently, the UK enjoys a record backlog of orders for equipment across narrow- and wide-body aircraft. The challenge is to deliver on these orders within the UK supply chain. It has been observed that this backlog of orders is becoming more acute for tier 2 suppliers and below, and may cause UK companies to consider forming new alliances to create extra capacity to meet obligations. Suppliers should consider collaborating with a larger customer with an established presence in the UK, looking for increasing capacity.
The UK’s enviable position in the global defense market as a leading manufacturer offer a once-in-a –life-time opportunity for the Commonwealth of Nations not only to upgrade their defense systems as well as forging links with the UK’s Defense Industry to higher quality products at reasonable rates.
