A Western New York aerospace contractor is hoping some help from Washington will help it continue to grow its missile technology.
CUBRC won $16 million contracts in FY18 and FY19 from the Department of Defense in support of its Large Energy National Shock Tunnel (LENS), used to conduct hypersonic testing on weapons systems. The company is hoping to see the DoD include another $16 million in its 2020 budget.
Thomas McMahon, CEO at the company, is says the LENS operation is a “critical asset” in the hypersonics race.
“This is as big as it gets for CUBRC or any federal contractor,” he said.
Sen. Charles Schumer toured the facility Thursday morning, and brought along Dr. Michael Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and former NASA administrator. Schumer said he’s launching a major push to establish CUBRC as the national epicenter of hypersonic weapon development, something he says will boost both national security and the regional economy.
“We do not want to let China gain that kind of advantage over us,” Schumer said. “(It is) so important to the security of the United States.”
A nonprofit corporation, CUBRC’s roots date back to the 1950s. The Cheektowaga-based organization has contract revenue of about $50 million generated from three divisions: aerosciences, including hypersonics and aeronautic research and testing; chemical, biological and medical sciences; and information exploitation research, development testing and evaluation.
The LENS facility at CUBRC’s Genesee Street site is used by NASA and contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon to test flight capability of space vehicles, as well as military aircraft and weaponry using subscale models.
CUBRC remains the nation’s only facility capable of testing weapons systems at this level. Schumer said additional funding will allow the United States to outpace international competitors like Russia and China, which have performed successful tests of this technology in recent years, and are investing heavily in this technology.
“We are meeting with Dr. Griffin and others from DoD to lay out a plan to try to build year-over-year funding for LENS into the formal DoD budget process,” McMahon said.
Source:
https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/...contracts.html
Company info:
https://www.cubrc.org/
https://workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/...=MP&lang=en_US
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