Thales UK has contracted Curtiss-Wright Controls to deliver systems for use in the avionics suite supplied for the UK Royal Air Force’s fleet of Boeing CH-47 transport helicopters.

Under the $9m order, Thales customer Boeing will receive the tactical data unit and data transfer unit from Curtiss-Wright’s Specialist Electronics Services business operation for use in the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) Project Julius Chinook Upgrade programme.

The hardware to be delivered under the project includes a ruggedised processing engine and high integrity 3D OpenGL graphics solution.

Project Julius, which also includes the integration of a glass cockpit and digital avionics to upgrade the fleet to a common configuration, is scheduled to run through 2013.