On track with BAE Systems

has teamed up with

to develop technology that could help British athletes boost their chances of sporting success.

Over the five-year partnership, BAE Systems will dedicate £1.5m of engineering time to projects focusing on sports such as cycling, sailing, canoeing and bob skeleton. At the launch, a prototype cycle helmet incorporating technology used in Eurofighter Typhoon fighter pilot helmets demonstrated the potential of the teamwork.

James Baker, director of technology and engineering services at BAE Systems, said: ‘To attract the right people into the industry, things like UK Sport tend to be a good thing for people to be associated with. It’s very much a motivation piece of work, and generally gets ideas flowing.

‘There are some business implications. For instance, some of the work we have done around the athletes with improving the performance of the cyclist could then go improve the performance of the soldier or a pilot because they are in the extreme of what they do - they are operating at extreme pressures, temperatures, stress and so on.’