The U.K. army’s number one land equipment priority program–the Scout Specialist Vehicle (Scout SV), being manufactured by General Dynamics UK [GD]–will take the land force’s armored vehicle capability to the next level, a company official said.
In early September, the Ministry of Defense awarded the company a $5.7 billion contract to deliver 589 vehicles.
The first delivery will be in 2017, and the program runs to 2024.
Photo: General Dynamics UK
A pre-production Protected Mobility and Reconnaissance Support vehicle rolled out at a U.K. military conference–Defense Vehicles Dynamics (DVD) in June, and was shown at the NATO summit in September. A total of seven prototypes will be built.
The program will consist of six variants: 245 Scout Reconnaissance; 112 command and control; 93 Protected Mobility and Reconnaissance Support; 50 repair; 38 recovery; and 51 engineering reconnaissance vehicles.
“Over the past four years we’ve been working on the requirements. There are more than 1,200 requirements, finding the best balanced design to meet British Army requirements,” said Kevin Connell, vice president of General Dynamics UK. The billion-dollar technology demonstration program was awarded in 2010.
Connell was in the United States attending the Association of the United States Army annual conference Oct. 13-15 and discussed the program with Defense Daily.
The tracked medium weight vehicles have a common base platform, providing commonalities across the variants in mobility, electronics and survivability.
The new family of armored vehicles may look somewhat familiar, but they’re very complex and chock full of software—so far there’s a half million lines of code, Connell said. The vehicles will become a digital node on the digital battlefield, communicating within the Scout family or other equipment, to include airborne assets.
The Scout family is designed with a common base platform, with a 70 percent commonality across all variants.
Test rigs were built and used for mobility, cooling, blast and stress tests, he said. The point is to retire as much risk as possible.
That has a lot to do with why the U.K. government gave GDUK the award, Connell said. Officials were comfortable with moving forward knowing a lot of risk was retired during the technology demonstration contract.
The Scout SV family will be the “eyes and ears” of the British Army going forward, Connell said, to allow them “to see first, decide first and act first.” The United Kingdom expects the Scout SV to be a key part of the Army 2020 concept.
There will be trials toward the end of next year and in 2016 prototypes will be ready for early testing.
“We do expect a fair amount of export interest,” he said. Scout is generally ITAR-free, to use U.S. terms. It is not the common chassis but usually the customer-unique items that may be subject to national security restrictions.
If the United States or another customer had a need for a vehicle in this class, Connell said, they could talk to the United Kingdom about requirements and the trades done over four years in survivability, mobility and lethality. The result was a balanced design for the British, “which would not move much for another customer.
Connell said the platform is built in General Dynamics’ facility in Spain, where it is assembled, integrated and tests, the turret is built by Lockheed Martin UK [LMT] and customer management and all the software is written in Wales.
Lockheed Martin expects to build some 245 of the turrets.
The United Kingdom has asked GDUK to take a look at bringing production to the United Kingdom, for assembly, integration and test. This was a program option after 100 vehicles. GDUK is providing the data to the ministry.