Luxemburg

Thales select­ed as prime con­trac­tor for Lux­em­bourg Army tac­ti­cal recon­nais­sance capa­bil­i­ty

The Pro­tect­ed Rec­ce Vehi­cle (PRV) con­tract calls for deliv­ery of a tac­ti­cal recon­nais­sance capa­bil­i­ty inte­grat­ed with KMW Din­go 2 vehi­cles for the Lux­em­bourg Army.

The Lux­em­bourg Min­istry of Defence man­dat­ed the NATO Main­te­nance & Sup­ply Agency (NAMSA) to con­duct the com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure for this pro­gramme. Prime con­trac­tor respon­si­bil­i­ty was award­ed to Thales. The com­pa­ny will deliv­er 48 vehi­cles by the end of 2010.

The PRV con­tract will pro­vide the Lux­em­bourg mil­i­tary with a tac­ti­cal recon­nais­sance capa­bil­i­ty that is par­tic­u­lar­ly well suit­ed to allied oper­a­tions. Key require­ments include the inter­op­er­abil­i­ty of the solu­tion under devel­op­ment, com­bined with mobil­i­ty, pro­tec­tion and obser­va­tion capabilities.

Thales drew on its high-lev­el exper­tise in com­plex sys­tems for land forces and key ref­er­ences in vehi­cle sys­tems to pro­pose an inte­grat­ed and scal­able solu­tion that meets the strin­gent oper­a­tional per­for­mance cri­te­ria of the Lux­em­bourg Army. The company’s know-how in inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and proven abil­i­ty to man­age pro­grammes to short dead­lines were also deci­sive fac­tors in the final selection.

“The choice of Thales as prime con­trac­tor for the Lux­em­bourg PRV pro­gramme reflects the grow­ing impor­tance of elec­tron­ic sys­tems in new-gen­er­a­tion vehi­cles,” says Mil­lar Craw­ford, Vice Pres­i­dent, Thales Land Sys­tems. “The deci­sion fur­ther under­scores our cred­i­bil­i­ty in land sys­tems and our abil­i­ty to work in close coop­er­a­tion with the cus­tomer and deliv­er an evo­lu­tion­ary yet low-risk solu­tion with­in a lim­it­ed timeframe.”

This tac­ti­cal recon­nais­sance capa­bil­i­ty will be inte­grat­ed on Din­go 2 4x4 vehi­cles from Krauss-Maf­fei Weg­mann (KMW), which offer the high lev­el of mobil­i­ty and pro­tec­tion required by the Lux­em­bourg forces.

The vehi­cles will be equipped with: 

• A pro­tec­tion sys­tem based on the Pro­tec­tor remote-oper­at­ed tur­ret from Kongs­berg, com­bined with laser detec­tion sys­tems and smoke grenade launchers.

• A com­plete obser­va­tion sys­tem, includ­ing a long-range sys­tem inte­grat­ed with a tele­scop­ic mast (already select­ed by France and Bel­gium), guar­an­tee­ing pro­tec­tion, dis­cre­tion and rapid deploy­ment thanks to all-weath­er optron­ic sen­sors and an off-vehi­cle sur­veil­lance sys­tem with Sophie MF hand­held ther­mal cameras

• A C4I sys­tem based on proven HF/VHF com­mu­ni­ca­tion equip­ment (PR4G, TRC 3700 HF) and a tac­ti­cal sit­u­a­tion aware­ness sys­tem (T‑BMS) to allow vehi­cle inte­gra­tion with an inter­op­er­a­ble recon­nais­sance unit. 

These sub­sys­tems will be inter­con­nect­ed via an inno­v­a­tive open elec­tron­ic archi­tec­ture called the Open Infor­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Sys­tem, designed to opti­mise inte­gra­tion and enable infor­ma­tion exchange both with­in vehi­cles and exter­nal­ly. This inno­v­a­tive archi­tec­ture reduces inte­gra­tion risks, speeds up the tem­po of oper­a­tions, man­ages all plat­form sys­tems in real time and allows opti­mised sup­port services.

About Thales
Thales is a lead­ing inter­na­tion­al elec­tron­ics and sys­tems group, address­ing defence, aero­space and secu­ri­ty mar­kets world­wide. Thales’s lead­ing-edge tech­nol­o­gy is sup­port­ed by 22,000 R&D engi­neers who offer a capa­bil­i­ty unmatched in Europe to devel­op and deploy field-proven mis­sion-crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion sys­tems. To this end, the group’s civ­il and mil­i­tary busi­ness­es devel­op in par­al­lel and share a com­mon base of tech­nolo­gies to serve a sin­gle objec­tive: the secu­ri­ty of peo­ple, prop­er­ty and nations. The group builds its growth on its unique mul­ti-domes­tic strat­e­gy based on trust­ed part­ner­ships with nation­al cus­tomers and mar­ket play­ers, while lever­ag­ing its glob­al exper­tise to sup­port local tech­nol­o­gy and indus­tri­al devel­op­ment. Thales employs 68,000 peo­ple in 50 coun­tries with 2007 rev­enues of €12.3 billion. 

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