TORONTO - At a media event held today at Toronto's Royal Canadian Military Institute, John Wright, Chief Operating Officer of Atlantis Systems Corp. (Atlantis) underlined the significance of the $32-million contract between Atlantis and The Boeing Company, the signing of which was announced earlier this week.
The contract covers the design and manufacture of Integrated Maintenance Training Systems (IMTS) for the F/A-18 fighter aircraft used by the Canadian and Australian defense forces. The IMTS will be deployed at the Canadian Forces Base in Cold Lake, Alberta, and the Royal Australian Air Force Base in Williamtown, New South Wales. Delivery is scheduled for the spring of 2004.
"Since we received the contract for the preliminary phase of this project in July 2001, we have been working hard with Boeing and the governments of Canada and Australia to get all the parameters necessary for the full development effort in place," said Mr. Wright. "I am very pleased that this has now been accomplished. The IMTS project is the largest single contract yet placed with Atlantis and over its duration will provide high-quality employment for over 50 people in our Brampton, Ontario facility, as well as significant work for our suppliers."
"This is a very important contract for Atlantis," Wright noted, "both in terms of its direct benefit to the Company and, equally important, in the potential it offers for future work. While Canada and Australia will be the first to take delivery of the IMTS, we have already received expressions of interest from the forces of other countries that fly the F/A-18. Also, the IMTS is a very flexible system and can easily be adapted to other aircraft such as the P-3 Orion, the U.S. Navy's long-range anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft. The high-fidelity simulated cockpit of the IMTS could also be readily adapted to meet the needs of the Advanced Distributed Crew Training System, a future major Canadian military procurement, to significantly reduce the cost of that project should the Canadian DND so desire. And while the IMTS was conceived originally for military applications, we are actively working with our commercial customers to adapt the technology for commercial airliners such as the Airbus A320."
Modern aircraft are incredibly complex, and training technicians to maintain them at peak operational efficiency is a challenge facing both military and commercial operators. The IMTS combines Atlantis' unique simulation software technology with state-of-the-art interactive hardware to provide flexible, cost-effective training in fault diagnosis and repair procedures in a realistic simulated environment.
Atlantis is a globally recognized developer of simulation-based aircraft and naval training systems, and a leading supplier of high-tech systems for vessel traffic management. The Atlantis client base spans defense forces and government agencies throughout the world, as well as major commercial airlines and aircrew training centers. Atlantis trades on The Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol AIQ.
