British Aerospace

British Aerospace, often shortened to BAe, was a British aircraft, munitions and defence systems manufacturer formed in 1977, with its head office in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre at Farnborough in Hampshire, England. Its predecessors were the British Aircraft Corporation, Hawker Siddeley and Scottish Aviation. It began as a statutory corporation and from 1980 was a public limited company. It ceased to exist on 30 November 1999, when it purchased Marconi Electronic Systems, the defence electronics and naval shipbuilding subsidiary of the General Electric Company, and the combined business became BAE Systems. In the space atlas it is recorded as a defunct legacy aerospace and defence group and the direct predecessor of BAE Systems.