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Cobham has played a major role in developing safety and survival
systems for land, sea, air and space. Cobham life support systems
have served on every Space Shuttle mission, regulated oxygen on
Airbus and Boeing airliners and protected sailors on the deck of
every US Navy warship.
Through Cobham's technologies, International Space Station crew
inhabit an artificial environment as close as possible to that on
earth. Mariners in peril activate personal satellite beacons little
larger than mobile phones that broadcast their position, accurate
to within metres. US Army soldiers manning armoured vehicles in the
deserts of Iraq ward off potentially lethal heatstress with
refrigerated vests that triple their effective endurance. And
downed military pilots often emerge from the sensory fog of an
ejection and seawater immersion to find that Cobham systems have
saved their life; detaching their parachute, inflating their life
vest and preserving an airway in their still-connected oxygen
equipment.
Cobham entered the life support field in 1985, when its UK based
subsidiary Hymatic sought an American licensee for its cooling
equipment for missile guidance and thermal imaging systems.
US company Carleton took on the Hymatic licence and within four
years had won a US$22 million contract to develop the cryostat unit
in the US-based Javelin anti-tank missile system. Later Cobham, on
the acquisition trail to gain a US footprint and impressed with
what it had seen of Carleton through the licensing process, bought
the company in 1987.
Carleton's pedigree was in the control and application of fluids
and gases. In 1959 its co-founder and designer George Ord had
impressed the newly formed NASA by offering a Mercury astronaut
oxygen regulator considerably smaller, lighter and less complicated
than those of its competitors.
Carleton became a fixture on the US space programme, providing
oxygen regulators for the Gemini and Apollo series (and every
manned space mission since) and playing its part in man's first
steps on the moon.
In the early 1980s Cobham company Conax, now part of Cobham Life
Support, gained new prominence by helping to dramatically improve
the survival rate of US Navy aircrew, designing a compressed gas
system that triggered on immersion in seawater. Today, all US Air
Force, Navy and Marine aircrew use Cobham's life preserver
auto-inflation devices. Conax then solved the additional problem of
parachutes dragging aircrew underwater, with the SEAWARS
pyrotechnic parachute release device.
Cobham's route to its premier position as manufacturer of
Personal Locator Beacons began with a former camera repair company
originally based in New York. ACR Electronics, now part of Cobham
Life Support and still a household name in safety and survival
technologies, was initially a photographic pioneer, manufacturing
in the mid 1950s the first electronic flash unit for cameras that
used photo flash batteries.
In 1970 ACR's products were highlighted to the world when the
crew of the stricken NASA Apollo 13 spacecraft relied upon a
magnesium powered ACR penlight for emergency repairs after an
oxygen tank exploded. The penlight provided the sole source of
light for the crew as they received and actioned custom made
checklists from earth to gain enough electrical power to return
safely.
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Cobham's PHANTOM high altitude parachutist
oxygen system is in service with several armed forces.
Cobham's lightweight Personal Locator Beacons
and strobe lights have helped rescuers find countless pilots,
hikers, climbers and sailors since the 1960s.
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