Former type Subsidiary Area served UK Founded 1977 Defunct August 1996 | Industry Defence, Spacecraft Products Missiles, Satellites | |
Fate Merged with Matra in 1996 | ||
British Aerospace Dynamics Limited (BADL or BAe Dynamics) was a division of British Aerospace.
Contents
History
British Aerospace was created in April 1977 by the merger of the British Aircraft Corporation, Hawker Siddeley Aviation, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics and Scottish Aviation.
Formation
There were two companies in the formation:
The missile, weapon systems and space businesses of these companies were merged into British Aerospace Dynamics Limited (BADL), a wholly owned subsidiary of BAe.
In December 1979, Euromissile Dynamics Group was formed with Aérospatiale of Toulouse, France and MBB of Ottobrunn.
Rationalisation
British Aerospace was partially privatised on 4 February 1981. In 1989 the then fully privatised BAe instituted a company wide restructuring. BAe Dynamics was rationalised with the particular aim of reducing costs. Along with redundancies the main part of this was the closing of four of the company's facilities; Bracknell, Hatfield, Bolton and Weymouth.
In 1981 it was conducting important research into passive infra-red surveillance.
Subsidiary company
On 1 January 1992 British Aerospace Defence Ltd began trading as a wholly owned subsidiary of BAe. Previously separate defence companies now operated as divisions of that subsidiary;
In 1994 the BAe Dynamics subsidiary British Aerospace Space Systems was sold to Matra Marconi Space.
In the mid-1990s, development work for the Meteor missile took place.
Merger with Matra
In 1996 BAe Dynamics' guided weapons division was merged with a division of Matra Defense to form the (then) largest European missile manufacturer, Matra BAe Dynamics. This group now forms part of MBDA.
Space
In 1980 it built a space camera at its Filton site. It built a 107,000 sq ft (9,900 m2) factory in the mid-1980s at Filton for design, production and testing of satellites.