General Dynamics UK

General Dynamics UK traces its story to 1962, when a London office opened as the marketing outlet for Computing Devices Canada. In 1974 the business, Computing Devices Company, moved to Hastings in East Sussex, where it supplied avionics for the Tornado GR1, Harrier GR7, Nimrod MR2 and Eurofighter Typhoon; the Hastings company was acquired by General Dynamics in 1997. The British company registered on 7 May 1985 as Computing Devices Holdings Limited became Computing Devices Company Limited in 1988 and was renamed General Dynamics United Kingdom Limited on 7 September 2001.

The rename followed the Bowman contract. The Ministry of Defence's requirement of 1989 to replace the Clansman radios had foundered when the Archer consortium failed to deliver within budget and schedule in 2000, and on rebidding CDC Systems UK, later General Dynamics UK, won a £1.7 billion contract in 2001 and opened a new headquarters at Oakdale, near Blackwood in South Wales. Bowman reached initial operating capability in March 2004 and was rolled out across the armed forces by the end of 2008, equipping some 20,000 vehicles, 149 naval vessels, 350 aircraft and 100,000 service personnel; the whole project has cost about £2.4 billion, with over 48,000 radios and 30,000 terminals on more than 15,000 vehicles from the Land Rover Wolf to the Challenger 2. For the Land Rover that meant the Bowman vehicle installation kit for the Wolf FFR, whose parts, the K5435 brackets, RF-equipment covers, mounting-plate adaptors and hydration-sack and water-bladder stowage trays, survive in the surplus trade as 'Bowman VIK' items. Bowman was too heavy for the Wolf 90, and the MoD sold off most of that fleet while the 110 remained in service. Oakdale remains home to Mission Systems' Bowman, tactical networking and vehicle-electronics work and to a Bowman/Ajax system-integration facility, and the company continues to support upgrades of the system, whose retirement has been pushed back to 2031-35 pending its replacement, Morpheus.

General Dynamics UK was awarded the contract for the British Army's Future Rapid Effect System family of armoured vehicles in 2010, opened its Ajax assembly, integration and testing facility on a 57-acre site at Merthyr Tydfil in 2016, the largest active armoured-vehicle plant in the UK, and delivered the first Ares variant to the Army in July 2020; it also produces the Foxhound. Today it describes itself as one of the UK's largest defence companies and a lead supplier to the Ministry of Defence, with about 1,500 staff at eight sites including two at Hastings, Merthyr and Oakdale.