Leahy Visits
South
Royalton’s ARA To Announce Recent Job Additions
And New Plant Expansion, For Work On Demining Vehicle
SOUTH ROYALTON, Vt.
(Tues., Dec. 16) – Sen. Patrick Leahy Tuesday told employees and
managers of the New England Division of Applied Research Associates
(ARA) of South Royalton that the firm will receive a $4.1 million
contract from the Department of Defense, one in a series of
contracts that have helped the plant add more than 20 new employees
since Leahy visited the plant a year ago in December.
Leahy helped secure this
contract and others to develop an advanced demining vehicle. Leahy
is a senior member of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee’s
Subcommittee on Defense, which handles the Senate’s work in writing
the annual defense budget bill. He has also been Congress’s leader
on landmines and demining issues.
Leahy and ARA Automation
and Geosciences Sector Manager Jim Shinn also announced that the
firm will build a 30,000-square foot manufacturing facility in
South
Royalton over the next year. The 65-person firm’s expansion plans
are the result of the company’s continued development of an advanced
demining vehicle for the U.S. Army. Including Tuesday’s $4.1
million announcement, Leahy has helped secure $8.4 million in
contracts with ARA to develop the demining vehicle, called the Force
Protection Demining System (FPDS). The FPDS is a remote-controlled
tractor that can efficiently deactivate and remove unexploded
ordnance, including landmines.
ARA has also contracted
out more than $2 million in manufacturing and design work to other
Vermont
firms since 2002.
“Senator Leahy's efforts
in humanitarian demining are having significant effects on Applied
Research Associates, Inc,” said Shinn. “We have expanded our
South Royalton
office and added both engineers and technicians to directly support
the effort. As a direct result, ARA is planning to expand our South
Royalton manufacturing and research facilities beginning in the
summer of 2004. We anticipate hiring additional engineering staff
and technicians once this facility is completed.”
“This is a project I
have a personal connection to,” said Leahy. “All Vermonters are
proud of the work ARA is doing to help protect our troops from
landmines, and to find and remove landmines so that years after war,
they do not indiscriminately maim or kill innocent people.
Vermonters have led in bringing down the toll caused by landmines
around the world, and these Vermonters are doing vital work that
protects our soldiers, and innocent civilians in dozens of
countries, from this deadly threat.”
For more than a decade
Leahy has pressed the
U.S. military to develop new techniques
and tools to combat the worldwide scourge of landmines. The efforts
have been part of the crusade against anti-personnel landmines waged
by Leahy, long the leading U.S. official promoting a worldwide
landmine ban. He has authored several laws toward that goal and
played a key role in advancing a new international treaty banning
anti-personnel landmines, which the United States has not yet
signed.
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