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Anonymous ID: 338242 July 10, 2024, 1:05 p.m. No.21174602   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>4738 >>4902

Philly’s Leonardo delivers radiation-disaster helicopters to US as hiring surge at plant tops 1,000

 

Two helicopters made at Leonardo's Philadelphia assembly plant to check nuclear accidents and potential terror attacks are going through testing at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, as the company adds staff at the plant in anticipation of more sales to the U.S. government. Leonardo, based in Italy, delivered the two AW139 helicopters last month to the federal National Nuclear Security Administration. The agency, according to its website, monitors public events such as the Super Bowl, and is on call 24 hours a day to respond to "accidents and incidents" affecting nuclear facilities or nuclear material, from Andrews and a second facility at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. The aircraft type isn't new - Leonardo (formerly known as Finmeccanica) has sold more than 1,200 AW139s of different models since the 2000s, to 300 users in 70 countries, Clyde Woltman, who heads the Philadelphia plant, said in an interview last year. The company also has plants in Europe and North America, and a maintenance, repair, and overhaul facility in Santa Rosa County, Fla., near the U.S. Navy aviation base in Pensacola. The particular mission of the helicopters assigned to the nuclear security administration was described to staffers by a then-NNSA officer, Jay Tilden, at a meeting at the plant last summer: The machines were outfitted with special radiation detection equipment to quickly measure radiation and help the agency respond. The agency has provided similar detection services for allies including Japan, which accepted its help when its Fukushima nuclear power station flooded and suffered major damage after an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

 

 

https://www.theolympian.com/news/business/article289939969.html