General Dynamics UK [GD] says some of its executives will be part of an Armored Fighting Vehicle (AFV) Symposium May 15-16 and will share the experience and expertise it has gained as one of the U.K. Ministry of Defense’s major land systems suppliers.
The symposium will focus on how to deliver easily upgraded capabilities that can keep up with the rapid change of today’s operations and how to deliver increased military effects through interoperability between AFVs.
Sandy Wilson, a member of the GDUK board of directors, will give the opening keynote address, and will discuss the importance of incremental acquisition and through-life upgrades. These issues are also of importance to the United States, and the GD business units based there.
Wilson will also “acknowledge that the MoD’s Generic Vehicle Architecture program is a positive enabler of incremental acquisition.” The open modular electronic architecture for the next-generation AFVs would ensure new technology advances are easily incorporated.
General Dynamics is developing the British Army’s Scout Specialist Vehicle (SV) program, the core AFV under the service’s Force 2020 program. It is expected to be key to ensuring the army has increased interoperability between AFV platforms and the ability to upgrade them more easily than current platforms, while delivering improved value to the taxpayer.
Peter Flach, director, Marketing and Customer Relations for GDUK, will discuss progress on the British Army’s Scout SV program and share how the vehicle is being developed to make it easier to upgrade over its lifetime. The vehicle will be an intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) hub with the Bowman communication system at its core to provide better interoperability for the army and coalition forces in future operations.
General Electric [GE] last June received an approximately $5 million contract from General Dynamics UK for ISTAR-providing subsystems.
GD provides the Bowman system, and as reported in its first quarter earnings, received a $60 million contract for the United Kingdom communication system for long-term support and improvement activities.
As well, Kevin Lindsay, GD UK’s Electronic Architecture (EA) expert, will talk about the company’s open standard EA in rapidly delivering upgrade technologies to meet the latest threats and reducing operating costs for the user.
The Systems Information Exploitation / Health and Usage Monitoring System (SIE/HUMS) is being developed to monitor-on-board systems on the army’s operational training vehicle fleet and will automatically download vehicle data, simplifying the job for fleet managers.
In June 2012 GDUK won an approximately $6 million contract from the Ministry of Defense to deliver the army’s first SIE/HUMS. The first such vehicle equipped was delivered four months later. The MoD wants the SIE/HUMS capability integrated into more than 570 vehicles covering six protected patrol vehicle variants in the operational training fleet, to improve the availability and use of the vehicles.