UK to announce order for 589 Scout tracked reconnaissance armored vehicles for the British Army 0209.

Defence & Security News - United Kingdom

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron is to announce an order of nearly 600 new Scout infantry armoured vehicles for the British army this week at the Nato summit in Wales as part of an effort to demonstrate the UK’s commitment to higher defence spending.

The prime minister will unveil plans to buy 589 Scout armoured reconnaissance units. Scout SV is the replacement for British Army’s CVR(T) fleet and will provide the Army with a modern, extremely well-protected and highly capable platform for the conduct of manned reconnaissance. Based on a proven in-service European design, it is being developed specifically to meet the British Army’s requirement by a team of General Dynamics engineers in Britain and mainland Europe.

The Scout SV is a new family of reconnaissance armoured vehicles developed by General Dynamics UK for the British Army.

The Scout turret, designed by Lockheed Martin UK, mounts sophisticated Thales UK sights with detection and identification ranges which are more than the double that of the in-service BGTI system. These are integrated with crew stations, via the latest in GVA-compliant Open Architectures, allowing the crew to capture, analyse, manipulate and store over 6TBs of intelligence and to share this intelligence in real or very near real time.

The Scout’s owes its outstanding mobility to a combination of an extremely powerful 805bhp engine and a 7 wheel-station running gear, incorporating a sophisticated dual-rate suspension. The result is a top speed of 70kph and terrain accessibility that is far superior to in-service vehicles.

Scout SV has been designed to a rating of 42 tonnes, and incorporates a fully proven transmission rated at 45 tonnes. This means the load carrying ability of ASCOD SV meets the full Specialist Vehicle requirement now and won't require a major upgrade programme to deliver all the variants.

Scout SV offers tonnes of value to the UK Defence Industrial Base. Its Intellectual Property will be based in the UK, part of the sovereign capability available to the British Government. By value, 80% of the vehicle manufacture will be completed in the UK, with 70% of the supply chain companies UK-based. Overall, Scout SV will create or safeguard thousands of highly skilled jobs in the UK.