A MAJOR defence equipment manufacturer with two plants in Lancashire has signed a new deal with international IT giant Microsoft to develop military digital capabilities.

BAE Systems, which has military aircraft factories at Samlesbury and Warton, hopes the partnership will assist in building complex digital systems for armed forces and governments.

It will develop applications using Microsoft's Azure Cloud platform.

This work will contribute to BAE Systems Future Combat Air System - or Tempest warplane - in which its firm's Samlesbury and Warton factories are heavily involved.

On Friday the UK government confirmed a £656million contract to continue the development of the combat aircraft protecting and creating hundreds of jobs at the two factories.

The two companies believe cloud technology could be used to more easily combine and analyse different sources of data during military operations.

As part of this collaboration, BAE Systems and Microsoft have used the Azure Cloud approach to accelerate software design, development and testing of a system that can deploy new software on to an Uncrewed Air Vehicle during flight.

Julian Cracknell, chief technology and information officer at BAE Systems, said: “The data available to the defence sector and armed forces is often highly complex and comes from hundreds of thousands of sources, whether that’s satellite and radar feeds, intelligence gathered by ships at sea or even social media.

“Our innovative agreement with Microsoft will give us easier access to tools that help us make sense of this information for our customers – allowing armed forces to stay ahead of rapidly evolving threats, whilst maintaining the highest levels of security.”

Clare Barclay, Microsoft UK's chief executive said: “This strategic agreement will enable defence organisations to use data more effectively.

"By working together, delivering agile, secure and reliable software, BAE Systems and Microsoft are already delivering tangible results to our customers."