Thales secures contact with MoD

The new ‘Swift2Move' application meets the UK MoD's Air Movements Operation (AMO) requirement to give movements staff the ability to manage passenger and freight bookings, flight check-in and aircraft loadsheet calculations in both the UK and at any operational location around the world. "Thanks to the Thales solution for our Air Movements Operations requirement we have an application that combines an easy to use system from the commercial world with the robustness and security needed for operating in a military environment," says Air Vice-Marshal Matthew Wiles, Director General Joint Supply Chain in the Defence Equipment & Support Organisation (DE&S). The AMO contract is valued in excess of £27 million over 10 years, including application support and training package provision, and will be in service by mid-2009. Thales has partnered with sub-contractors Fujitsu Services and Mastek to develop a number of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) packages, ranging from aircraft scheduling and passenger and freight management software, to aircraft weight and balance, which Thales has upgraded and then coupled together under a common user interface to provide a fully integrated modern air movements management system. Swift2Move is designed to operate on the MoD's Defence Information Infrastructure (DII), reducing the reliance on fixed commercial communications networks and ensuring system availability in all locations and situations. It will be one of the first major applications to be hosted on this service. The system will interface with existing MoD logistics systems, providing information on the status and location of airfreight during its transit. The system has been designed to allow future asset tracking enhancements, for example asset tracking across the whole supply chain from depot to trench.