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, 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, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. Formed in 1977, in 1999 it purchased Marconi ...

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 (BAE) is a British multinational arms, security, and aerospace company based in London, England. It is the largest defence contractor in Europe, and ranked the seventh-largest in the world based on applicable 2021 revenues. ...

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 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 VT Group was integrated into Babcock International in t ...

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'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 microprocessors and distributed systems.

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 ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial de ...

, it became clear that for some purposes the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

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 instrument and tool used in fishing, whaling, seal hunting, sealing, and other marine hunting to catch and injure large fish or marine mammals such as seals and whales. It accomplishes this task by impaling the t ...

. 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 unt ...

PDP-8 The PDP-8 is a 12-bit computing, 12-bit minicomputer that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units being sold over the model's ...

installation into a

submarine before she sailed to the South Atlantic. 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 thermonucl ...

system, the

UK Ministry of Defence The Ministry of Defence (MOD or MoD) is the department responsible for implementing the defence policy set by His Majesty's Government, and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces. The MOD states that its principal objectives are to d ...

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 or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The firm was known ...

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, extended from Pascal and other languages. It has built-in language support for '' design by contract'' (DbC), extremely strong typing, explic ...

. 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 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors 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. T ...

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 London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...

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 ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

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 loggers 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, 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. It was registered as ''Tube Investments'' in 1919, combining the seamless steel tube businesses of Tu ...

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

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