BAE Systems makes multi-million dollar facility investment in New York state to support aircraft electrification

BAE Sys­tems has invest­ed in a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar project in Endi­cott, New York, to sup­port the devel­op­ment and advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing of sub­sys­tems for elec­tric air­craft.

The upgrad­ed engi­neer­ing devel­op­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing and lab­o­ra­to­ry space focus­es on matur­ing ener­gy stor­age, con­trols and pow­er con­ver­sion sys­tems for avi­a­tion appli­ca­tions.

With­in its exist­ing facil­i­ty, the project increas­es the company’s foot­print cur­rent­ly used for design, devel­op­ment, and test­ing of elec­tric propul­sion sys­tems for bus­es and marine ves­sels. The invest­ment enhances the company’s man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties to enable the tran­si­tion of elec­tric propul­sion tech­nolo­gies to air­craft appli­ca­tions.

Ehtisham Sid­diqui, vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of Con­trols and Avion­ics Solu­tions at BAE Sys­tems, said: “Our elec­tri­fi­ca­tion invest­ment is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op and deliv­er impor­tant capa­bil­i­ties for an emerg­ing trav­el ecosys­tem. The space gives our incred­i­ble work­force the core man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties in con­trols and ener­gy man­age­ment sys­tems to build on their exper­tise and inno­vate for the future of flight.”

The project will also help to address demands for new prod­ucts in the aero­space indus­try, sup­port­ing next-gen­er­a­tion flight for peo­ple, car­go and emer­gency ser­vices. In addi­tion, the state-of-the-art space har­ness­es the use of automa­tion through robot­ics, improv­ing safe­ty, qual­i­ty and effi­cien­cy dur­ing pro­duc­tion.

The invest­ment lever­ages man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­niques and process­es estab­lished over the course of the company’s 25 years cre­at­ing sim­i­lar solu­tions for tran­sit bus­es and marine ves­sels. In addi­tion to devel­op­ment work, the com­pa­ny is also work­ing on air­craft inte­gra­tion and test­ing.

BAE Sys­tems cur­rent­ly tests the safe­ty of its tran­sit and marine sys­tems with 12 motor dynamome­ters and five engine pods, which sim­u­late rugged envi­ron­ments. It will take a sim­i­lar approach for air­craft propul­sion, which also requires the most strin­gent test­ing to ensure the utmost safe­ty over years of flight oper­a­tions.

The com­pa­ny entered the air­craft elec­tri­fi­ca­tion mar­ket in 2019 and since then, it has been devel­op­ing oper­a­tional pro­to­types of its hybrid-elec­tric and all-elec­tric sys­tems.

Addi­tion­al­ly, BAE Sys­tems is col­lab­o­rat­ing with indus­try lead­ers and its glob­al sup­port and sup­ply chain net­work in the tran­sit bus, marine and aero­space mar­kets to bet­ter under­stand elec­tric flight require­ments.