Local AAI Corporation Engineering Support Inc. to build maintenance training devices for the C-17 heavy-lifter transport

United Industrial Corp. has announced its AAI Corporation Engineering Support Inc. subsidiary has received a significant order from the U.S. Air Force to build and deliver additional maintenance training devices for the service’s C-17 Globemaster III transport and provide engineering support.

The initial delivery award is valued at $37.7 million. ESI will build the trainers in its Charleston facility and expects to deliver the first of the three trainers in mid-2005. Providing maintenance training devices for the C-17 heavy-lifter transport is a flagship program of ESI. The new award brings the company’s C-17 maintenance training device program to a combined contract value of $270 million with a current backlog of $89.5 million.

Under its Training Systems Acquisition II contract, ESI will produce and deliver a suite of three C-17 maintenance training devices to help instruct Air Force aircraft technicians in various maintenance skills at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.

In addition, ESI will enhance system integration capabilities of the service’s Maintenance Training Device Support Center, conduct an alternative training media study and perform requirements analysis for C-17 Block 15 configuration upgrades. Training devices for McGuire Air Force Base include an Aircraft Maintenance Systems Trainer, Training Evaluation Performance Aircraft Training Set and Aircraft Engine Trainer.

“There are major values to the Air Force in using ESI’s innovative hands-on C-17 training devices,” noted Frederick M. Strader, president and chief executive officer of AAI Corp. “Air Force technicians develop the best available journeyman-level maintenance certification skills, and they do it without the costly use of operations aircraft needed in critical service elsewhere.”

The Air Force declared the first C-17 squadron operational in 1995. AAI ESI received its first C-17 maintenance training device award in 1997. A total of 180 C-17s have been ordered from the Boeing Co. and more than 100 have been delivered to the U.S. Air Force and four to the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force.