It has been announced today that Peter Moore – a former Director of defence services business, VT Group – has joined Ricardo in the role of Global Market Sector Director for Defence.
Peter Moore is a highly respected industry professional whose career has been defined by a series of senior level appointments within the defence services sector. He joins Ricardo from VT Group (now a division of Babcock International plc) where he was strategic development director for defence, and a member of the divisional defence board. Before this he served as managing director of the VT Land division of the company, where he carried overall profit and loss responsibility for the group’s land-based defence business. In this role he was highly successful in international driving business growth, particularly within the US market where he was instrumental in the development of key strategic alliances and partnerships. Peter Moore’s career is also marked by very senior roles within the public sector, having served as chief executive of the UK Ministry of Defence owned Army Base Repair Organization (now known as the Defence Support Group). This large and complex defence engineering business operates from multiple locations and has a workforce of 2500 employees.
Peter Moore joins Ricardo at a time when the company’s defence business has enjoyed significant recent expansion. In addition to its defence vehicle activity for which the company has a long-standing and envied reputation in innovative vehicle engineering programmes such as R-WMIK+ and Vixen upgrades of the existing British Army fleet, Ricardo has played a central role in the development of the Ocelot vehicle in partnership with Force Protection Europe. Following Force Protection Europe’s successful selection in September as the preferred supplier of the UK MoD’s future light protected patrol vehicle, Ricardo will also be responsible for a significant element of the vehicle’s manufacture.
Separately, Ricardo is also successfully leveraging its engine technology in the development of the heavy fuel Wolverine family of UAV engines, the first of which – the Wolverine3 – was flight tested for the first time in October at the Nevada National Security Site.
Commenting on the appointment of Peter Moore as the new Ricardo global market sector director for defence, Ricardo CEO Dave Shemmans said:
“Peter Moore joins the Ricardo defence business at a time of recent significant growth, but brings with him the skills, experience and expertise that, I firmly believe, will enable him to take this activity to an altogether higher level. His senior level background in the international defence services market – both on the commercial and public sector sides of the industry – will be invaluable to Ricardo as we seek to grow this very important global business stream. The fact that Ricardo is able to attract the very best of international talent in this way is demonstrative of the company’s success in building a globally leading, multi-industry engineering services and technology business that creates significant value for both customers and shareholders alike.”
