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Each business unit at General Dynamics has its own approach to research and development, but all are committed to providing the best possible product to our customers.

General Dynamics and Gulfstream won an Aviation Week Laureate Award for 2008 in the Business/General Aviation category. The award recognized “the sustained commitment of the General Dynamics and Gulfstream Aerospace management team to the development of industry-leading business-aviation products and services with global reach and significance.” This is particularly true for the flagship of the Gulfstream fleet – the G650 ultra-large-cabin, ultra-high-speed business jet (which was introduced in March 2008). The G650 offers the longest range, the largest cabin, the fastest speed and the most advanced cockpit in the Gulfstream fleet. Advances in engineering analysis and computing capabilities are driving refinements in aerodynamics, structures and systems. These refinements also enable Gulfstream’s current production models to achieve higher cruise speeds and greater range capabilities while providing superior passenger comfort.

In alignment with the motto Provide, Protect, Prevail^SM, General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products is developing and producing the next-generation chemical warfare agent detection technologies to support and protect U.S. warfighters. JUNO™ detects, classifies and identifies trace concentrations of threat agents and is an advanced technology to ensure the safety of the facility, public and responders. The system is a hand-held point detector that is lightweight, battery-powered and capable of continuously sampling the atmosphere for chemical warfare agents and toxic industrial compounds in a variety of applications. Not only does JUNO provide significant advancements in the detection performance of chemical warfare agents as compared to traditional detectors, it has been developed with user safety and sustainability in mind. JUNO was developed with an emphasis on product safety, which includes meeting the U.S military ruggedization standards and an emphasis on minimizing its environmental impact during its life cycle.

For the Virginia-class Submarine Program, Electric Boat pursued a “green” design approach that minimizes or eliminates hazardous substances in all phases of the ship’s life cycle – from manufacturing through operations, maintenance and ship disposal. To accomplish this, Electric Boat undertook an ambitious program that limits allowable consumable products. As a result, Electric Boat has achieved reductions of 60 percent in the number of adhesives, 80 percent in the number of solvents and cleaning products, and 30 percent in paints and coatings used for ship construction and service life. This approach resulted in no asbestos or ozone-depleting substances on Virginia-class submarines. The “green” approach continues to advance at Electric Boat as we pursue enhancements to the Virginia Class, as well as new platforms.

The Multimedia Analysis and Archive System (MAAS) of General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems provides imagery analysts with the capability to capture, exploit and disseminate intelligence products. MAAS is an evolutionary product that is constantly being updated to address the needs of our customers. MAAS can archive and provide long-term storage and retrieval of raw imagery, motion or still, related metadata, and supporting exploitation products. A search capability allows analysts to query the entire library of captured motion imagery missions. The MAAS Digital Video Analyzer (DVA) is the imagery analyst's primary tool to exploit, report, disseminate, manage and archive motion imagery. The DVA provides the imagery analysts with the means to meticulously analyze and exploit capture motion and still imagery.

At General Dynamics United Kingdom, internal development targets areas of knowledge and capability enabling better systems, and thus better value, to our United Kingdom and export customers. There are many active development programs aimed at:

• Modeling and simulation of complex systems of systems in complex environments to demonstrate that proposed systems meet customer needs and performance criteria; that developing systems are tested in realistic but stressful scenarios; and that delivered systems are complete with training necessary for deployment.
• Architectural frameworks on which specific system designs can be quickly developed to adapt to unique user requirements, while ensuring maximum re-use of existing capability, lowest risk and lowest cost.
• Integration components allowing General Dynamics United Kingdom to offer customers discriminating capability effectively integrating old and new systems, and providing intelligent connectivity over disadvantaged networks, while providing the developer teams the immediate control over key integration components that give faster turnaround of interface adaptations and reduced programme cost and schedule risks.

In providing better value to our customers, General Dynamics United Kingdom internal developments provide better returns to our shareholders.

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