A £90 million subcontract has been awarded to Thales UK, based mostly in Scotland, to ship subsequent era sights for the British Military’s upgraded Challenger 3 Fundamental Battle Tank (MBT). The contract will defend key manufacturing expertise within the UK and maintain 700 expert engineers and technicians based mostly in Glasgow, together with 30 apprentices at present receiving coaching. The contract was signed by RBSL (Rheinmetall BAE Techniques Land) and Thales, with the Secretary of State for Scotland in attendance, at Thales’s web site in Glasgow the place the vast majority of the mixing work will happen.
Stephen McCann, Managing Director of Thales within the UK’s automobile integration enterprise in Glasgow, mentioned: “Thales’ continued provide and assist of cutting-edge know-how into the British Military’s armoured functionality is a testomony to the incredible engineering functionality of our workforce in Glasgow. We’re tremendously happy with our key function within the defence of the nation, which has endured since 1888, and this contract provides us the chance to additional put money into innovation and the way forward for our workforce, together with by our apprenticeship scheme. A relationship we’re more than happy to proceed and develop.”
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Dr Marco Noeding, RBSL Managing Director, mentioned: “RBSL is dedicated to making sure the Challenger 3 programme delivers optimistic industrial influence for the UK. This implies collaborating and dealing carefully with our suppliers to ship spectacular functionality and know-how for British troopers, in addition to defending UK engineering and manufacturing expertise on the identical time. We’re more than happy to have achieved this newest milestone with Thales. Collectively, we’ll add worth to UK defence and engineering on a permanent foundation.”
Scottish Secretary Alister Jack mentioned:“That is incredible information. This contract provides the British Military the superior functionality it wants to make sure the nation’s safety. I met most of the Thales workforce on a current go to, and was impressed by their functionality and enthusiasm. This contract will assist extremely expert jobs in Scotland – in whole, UK defence spends round £2 billion a yr in Scotland, supporting greater than 12,000 jobs.”
The contract will present sights (panoramic and glued azimuth weapon aiming sights) for each the automobile commander and gunner. Thales will even present a Sign Processing System (SPS), which is able to ship state-of-the-art video monitoring and Vast Space Search and Detection (WASAD) functionality. The sights will act because the eyes of the crew, enabling them to view the battlefield in excessive definition in all situations, evening and day. The system will enhance the vary and the element out there to the crew, in addition to present correct goal identification, monitoring, digital imagery and firing ranges. The sights will probably be tailor-made to fulfill Challenger 3 specs and kind an integral a part of the broader £800m improve programme, as introduced by RBSL and the UK MOD in Might 2021. The Challenger 3 programme will make important enhancements to the automobile and supply the British Military with a world-class functionality, made within the UK.
