CAP Scientific Ltd was a British defence software company, and was part of CAP (Computer Analysts and Programmers) Group plc. In 1988, CAP Group merged with the French firm Sema-Metra SA in 1988 as Sema Group plc. In 1991 Sema Group put most of its defence operations (CAP Scientific Ltd and YARD Ltd) into joint venture with

British Aerospace British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft manufacturer, aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer that was formed in 1977. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. ...

called

BAeSEMA BAESEMA was a naval technology joint venture between British Aerospace and the French Sema Group. The company was formed in 1991 and dissolved in November 1998 when BAe purchased SEMA's 50% share. BAESEMA acquired Dowty-Sema in 1992, another naval ...

, which British Aerospace bought out in 1998. Parts of the former CAP Scientific are now

BAE Systems BAE Systems plc is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Aerospace industry, aerospace, military technology, military and information security company, based in London. It is the largest manufacturer in Britain as of 2017. It is ...

( Insyte).

Formation of CAP Scientific

CAP Scientific was formed in 1979 by four colleagues who had previously worked in Scicon, a BP subsidiary. Seeking to start a specialist software company for defence applications in the United Kingdom, they approached CAP-CPP, a commercial software house, to back a start-up operation. By 1985, CAP Scientific had established significant work in several areas. It had a strong naval business based on supporting the

Admiralty Research Establishment The Admiralty Research Establishment (commonly known as ARE) was formed on 1 April 1984 from various Admiralty establishments. It became part of the Defence Research Agency on 1 April 1991. Constituent parts on formation * Admiralty Surface We ...

. This Maritime Technology business applied the technologies fostered in research contracts on major development programmes. CAP worked with

Vosper Thornycroft VTG (formerly VT Group) is a privately held United States defense and services company, with its origins in a former British shipbuilding group, previously known as Vosper Thornycroft. The British part of VTG was integrated into Babcock Interna ...

Controls to develop machinery control and surveillance systems for the Royal Navy's new generation ships and submarines. An associated Naval Command Systems business had built a strong Action Information Organisation design team, working with both surface and submarine fleets, and a Land Air Systems business also took research and development contracts and was prime contractor for the

British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...

's Brigade and Battlegroup Trainer (BBGT). The non-defence scientific sector was addressed by setting a Scientific Systems business with expertise in energy generation and conservation. In that year, CAP Scientific established the Centre for Operational Research and Defence Analysis ( CORDA) as an independent unit to provide impartial assistance for investment appraisal. At that time military computer systems were purpose-built by major contractors, and CAP Scientific's strategy was to form joint ventures with companies which had market access but could not afford the investment to move into the new technology of

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

s and

distributed system Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers. The components of a distributed system commun ...

The Falklands breakthrough, and DCG

In its early years, CAP Scientific took time to establish itself, but in 1982 there came a breakthrough. While the UK was mustering its naval taskforce for the

Falklands War The Falklands War () was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and Falkland Islands Dependenci ...

, it became clear that for some purposes the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

needed more computational power. An Urgent Operational Requirement was raised to provide improved fire control solutions for RN Sub-

Harpoon A harpoon is a long, spear-like projectile used in fishing, whaling, sealing, and other hunting to shoot, kill, and capture large fish or marine mammals such as seals, sea cows, and whales. It impales the target and secures it with barb or ...

. Working in frantic haste, CAP's engineers were able to add an experimental

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

PDP-8 The PDP-8 is a family of 12-bit minicomputers that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units sold during the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pi ...

installation into a

submarine before she sailed to the

South Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for ...

. This was one of the first examples of

commercial off-the-shelf Commercial-off-the-shelf or commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) products are packaged or canned (ready-made) hardware or software, which are adapted aftermarket to the needs of the purchasing organization, rather than the commissioning of ...

equipment being employed for military use. The success of this experimental deployment led to the development of a standard RN submarine fit, DCG, which allowed extra processing power to be added to submarine command systems.Some of the above is supported by the following:
Friedman, Norman, ''The Naval Institute guide to world naval weapons systems, 1997-1998'', p149

SMCS and Gresham-CAP

By its prompt response to the needs of the

, CAP Scientific demonstrated its ability to supply naval computer technology. With the decision to build the new to carry the

Trident missile The Trident missile is a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV). Originally developed by Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation, the missile is armed with thermonu ...

system, the

UK Ministry of Defence The Ministry of Defence (MOD or MoD) is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for implementing the defence policy set by the government and serves as the headquarters of the British Armed Forces. ...

proceeded for the first time to run an open competition for the command system. In 1983, CAP Scientific teamed with Gresham-Lion, a British manufacturer of torpedo launch control equipment and now part of Ultra Electronics plc, to form a special purpose company, Gresham-CAP Ltd, to bid for the system. Up to that point all RN ships and submarines had command systems built by

Ferranti Ferranti International PLC or simply Ferranti was a UK-based electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century, from 1885 until its bankruptcy in 1993. At its peak, Ferranti was a significant player in power grid system ...

using custom-built electronics. Gresham-CAP offered a novel distributed processing system based on commercial off-the-shelf components and utilising a modular software architecture largely written in the

Ada programming language Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, and object-oriented high-level programming language, inspired by Pascal and other languages. It has built-in language support for '' design by contract'' (DbC), extremely strong typing, expli ...

. The Gresham-CAP consortium won the bid, and their solution, known as Submarine Command System ( SMCS) became the basis for subsequent products from the company. The choice of

Intel 80386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit computing, 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in ...

processors and MultiBus, when many competing chips were available and the PC had only recently reached the market, showed foresight as the basic architecture remains in service today on RN submarines. (The choice of an array of

INMOS Transputer The transputer is a series of pioneering microprocessors from the 1980s, intended for parallel computing. To support this, each transputer had its own integrated memory and serial communication links to exchange data with other transputers. ...

chips to process sonar tracking data was less successful - whilst they did the job, the lack of long term support / future product line meant they have been phased out once general purpose processors were able to fulfill the role.) The impact of this still-young company displacing one of the great names of British electronics in the Royal Navy shocked the industry and can be seen as one of the first open competitions in modern British defence procurement and followed a long post-war period of 'preferred contractor' policies. The founders of CAP Scientific sold their complete shareholding to CAP-CPP, which subsequently listed on the

London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...

as CAP Group plc. In June 1986, the Group acquired YARD (Yarrow-Admiralty Research Department) Ltd, a marine engineering consultancy, formerly part of

Yarrow Shipbuilders Yarrow Shipbuilders Limited (YSL), often styled as simply Yarrows, was a major shipbuilding firm based in the Scotstoun district of Glasgow on the River Clyde. It is now part of BAE Systems Surface Ships, owned by BAE Systems, which has also o ...

, based in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

DNA (SSCS) and Merger

The

prompted a further competition in British naval equipment supply when an analysis of the loss of showed that improvements were necessary in surface ship combat systems. A contract for the command system for the navy's new

Type 23 frigate The Type 23 frigate or Duke class is a class of frigates built for the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. The ships are named after British Dukes, thus leading to the class being commonly known as the Duke class. The first Type 23, , was commission ...

s was cancelled and put out to competition, and after a long campaign was awarded to the CAP and Gresham consortium, teamed with

Racal Racal Electronics plc was a British electronics company that was founded in 1950. Listed on the London Stock Exchange and once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, Racal was a diversified company, offering products including voice recorders and ...

Electronics. The consortium developed the architecture of SMCS to create a derivative distributed system known internally as Surface-Ship Command System (SSCS). By now Gresham-Lion was under Dowty ownership and CAP Group had merged with the French company SEMA-METRA SA to form Sema Group plc. The Type 23 command system proved to be a step too far for Sema Scientific, as it was now called. The enormous fixed-price contract overran, causing problems for both Sema and Dowty. Dowty was taken over by

TI Group TI Group plc (formerly "Tube Investments") was a holding company for specialised engineering companies. It was based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire and was listed on the London Stock Exchange, at one point being a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. ...

, who sold their interests in Dowty-Sema back to Sema Group for £1. Sema Group invited

in as a co-investor in the business, and the activities which once formed CAP Scientific, Gresham-CAP and YARD, together with some BAe interests were merged in 1991 into a new entity,

. Ultimately, BAe purchased Sema Group's interest in BAeSEMA. Ironically, with the BAe/

Marconi Electronic Systems Marconi Electronic Systems Limited (MES), or GEC-Marconi as it was until 1998, was the defence arm of General Electric Company (GEC). It was split off from GEC and bought by British Aerospace (BAe) on 30 November 1999 to form BAE Systems. GEC ...

merger to form

in 1999, the CAP Scientific business found itself under the same parent as its erstwhile competitor Ferranti.

References

{{More citations needed, date=June 2009 Defence companies of the United Kingdom Defunct companies of the United Kingdom Software companies of the United Kingdom Software companies established in 1979 Software companies disestablished in 1988 British companies established in 1979 British companies disestablished in 1988