17 July 2006 -– Farnborough , United Kingdom - Smiths Aerospace has been selected by The Boeing Company to supply Remote Interface Units (RIU) for the V-22 aircraft. The contract is valued at $6M for engineering units with additional potential sales of $30M over the next 20 years. The system will be designed and developed at the Smiths facility in Cheltenham with production beginning in 2008. Engineering units deliveries will take place in December 2007.

The functional flexibility of Smiths' remote interface units allows rapid design modifications to be made and easily introduced with minimal disruption and cost to the aircraft programme. The flexibility is important to the upcoming avionics upgrades anticipated for the V-22 program. The Interface Unit (IU) is located in the engine nacelle, the wing and the avionics bay on the V-22 aircraft and provides digitised sensor data over the MIL-STD-1553 bus. Smiths' participation in the program with Boeing and the U.S. Navy is part of the V-22 cost reduction initiative. It is anticipated that this solution will provide significant cost and weight savings. The Queen's Award for innovation was awarded to Smiths for the RIU product family this year.

Smiths' content on the V-22 is valued at $140M for the life of the program including the following systems:

• Rudder Actuator

• Servovalves

• Ramp Latch Actuator

• RADS-RN

• Airframe Flexible Hoses

• Airframe Rigid Tubular Assemblies

• Airframe Rigid / Hybrid Tubular Assemblies

• Digital Data Set

• RADS-AT Test Set

• RADS-AT Aircraft Adapter Kit

• Shut-off/Isolation Valves

• Utility

• Lighting Control

• Nacelle Blowers  

About the RIU family : The Remote Interface Unit (RIU) product family is a range of units that offer incredible flexibility with the ability to digitise real world signals like voltage, current, frequency and temperature, and effectively communicate this to a large number of aircraft systems over the central nervous system of a modern aircraft - its communication network. The RIU family supports the aerospace industry's transition to Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) architectures – providing a standardised unit that can interface to multiple types of aircraft sensors, and communicate with centralised computing resources.

About Smiths: Smiths Aerospace, a part of Smiths Group, is a leading transatlantic aerospace systems and equipment company, with more than 11,000 employees and $2 billion revenues globally. The company holds key positions in the supply chains of all major military and civil aircraft and engine manufacturers and is a world-leader in digital, electrical power, mechanical systems, engine components and Systems Customer Services. www.geaviationsystems.com

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