Großbritannien — BAE Systems Hands Over Last Viking MK2 to Uk Ministry of Defence

Ashchurch, Unit­ed King­dom. – The UK Min­istry of Defence (MoD) has tak­en deliv­ery on time of the last of 24 BvS10 Viking Mk 2 mine-pro­tect­ed vehi­cles ordered from BAE Sys­tems in July last year. The vehi­cles will be deployed to Afghanistan in the near future.

The fast-mov­ing £21m pro­gramme was a response to new threats from insur­gents in Afghanistan. The orig­i­nal more light­ly armoured go-any­where BvS10s — known as Vikings in British ser­vice — proved extreme­ly suc­cess­ful because of their abil­i­ty to pro­vide the ele­ment of sur­prise in car­ry­ing the fight to the ene­my. Before long they came under attack from impro­vised explo­sive devices and in response they were fit­ted with extra armour in Afghanistan under an urgent oper­a­tional requirement. 

Lessons learned from this urgent response were quick­ly incor­po­rat­ed into the par­al­lel Mk 2 devel­op­ment pro­gramme which result­ed in a vehi­cle with much-improved lev­els of pro­tec­tion, a larg­er and more pow­er­ful engine, and a big­ger alter­na­tor which gives more elec­tri­cal pow­er. The steer­ing unit has also been improved along with uprat­ed sus­pen­sion and brakes. Despite the extra armour, the Mk 2 ful­fils all the orig­i­nal Viking require­ments, such as the abil­i­ty to swim. 

At the han­dover cer­e­mo­ny this morn­ing, BAE Sys­tems vehi­cles man­ag­ing direc­tor Jan Söder­ström com­ment­ed: “The speed and suc­cess of this pro­gramme shows what close co-oper­a­tion between deter­mined part­ners can achieve. The MoD’s Defence Equip­ment & Sup­port orga­ni­za­tion, the Defence Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry, our sup­pli­ers and BAE Sys­tems worked togeth­er as one team, pool­ing com­ple­men­tary skills. 

“The Mk2s will be a part of a coher­ent all-ter­rain vehi­cle fleet with a full sup­port pack­age in place to min­imise the logis­tic foot­print. The devel­op­ment was car­ried out under BAE Sys­tems fund­ing but this could not have been done with­out a col­lab­o­ra­tive, open rela­tion­ship between all involved.” 

France became the sec­ond cus­tomer for the BvS10 Mk2 in Decem­ber last year when it ordered 53 vehi­cles. Deliv­er­ies for that order have begun. With options, the total val­ue of the con­tract could reach €220 mil­lion for 129 vehi­cles. The Dutch bought 74 of the ear­li­er BvS10 in 2005. 

About BAE Sys­tems
BAE Sys­tems is a glob­al defence, secu­ri­ty and aero­space com­pa­ny with approx­i­mate­ly 107,000 employ­ees world­wide. The Com­pa­ny deliv­ers a full range of prod­ucts and ser­vices for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced elec­tron­ics, secu­ri­ty, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions and cus­tomer sup­port ser­vices. In 2009 BAE Sys­tems report­ed sales of £22.4 bil­lion (US$ 36.2 billion). 

Text- / Bildquelle (source): BAE Sys­tems
Ansprech­part­ner / con­tact:
For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please con­tact:
Mike Sweeney, BAE Sys­tems
Tel: +44 (0)780 171 6452
mike.sweeney2@baesystems.com

Kate Watcham, BAE Sys­tems
Tel: +44(0)1252 383550 Mob: +44(0) 7793 420731
Kate.watcham@baesystems.com

Issued by:
BAE Sys­tems, Farn­bor­ough, Hamp­shire GU14 6YU, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1252 384719 Fax: +44 (0) 1252 383947
24hr media hot­line: + 44 (0) 7801 717739
www.baesystems.com