The Santa Bárbara Sistemas weapons manufacturing facility in Trubia (Asturias) began on Friday, December 17, the manufacture of the barges of the primary VCR8x8 Dragon (Fight Automobile on Wheels) of the Spanish Military, a platform designed on the idea of the Piranha 5. The manufacturing of the barges of the brand new armored automobile formally started with an act of sheet steel chopping attended by a delegation of the Ministry of Defence, headed by the Basic Director of Armament and Materials, Admiral Santiago Ramón González Gómez, and one other of the Military, with Lieutenant Basic Fernando Miguel García y García de las Hijas, head of the Military’s Logistics Assist Command. On the plant every thing was prepared for the beginning of manufacturing after months of intense work to adapt the services.
The target of the VCR8x8 Dragon Program is to acquire an 8×8 Wheeled Fight Automobile to exchange the MRAPs (RG-31 and LINCE), M1 BMRs, M1 VECs and a part of the TOAs fleet, incorporating new technical options to face the evolution of threats, taking into consideration each the expertise accrued by different nations round Spain, which have any such autos, and the difference of the answer to the natural construction of the Spanish Military. With this goal in thoughts, the Ministry of Protection, via the Spanish Basic Directorate of Armament and Materials (DGAM), initiated a number of years in the past a sequence of technological packages whose goal was to scale back the dangers related to the event and acquisition of a automobile with superior traits, in addition to to allow the nationwide business to play a number one function sooner or later provide of the VCR8x8 Dragon.
Commercial
The event of those technological packages was entrusted to GDELS Santa Bárbara Sistemas S.A., Indra Sistemas S.A. and SAPA Operaciones S.L. The demonstrators constructed inside these packages allowed these corporations to mature the applied sciences essential to deal with the problem of executing the serial manufacturing part of the VCR8x8 Dragon Program. These capabilities had been additional complemented by the design authority of Escribano Mechanical and Engineering S.L. on the armament subsystem, which is why the 4 corporations agreed to kind a nationwide group of corporations with adequate industrial and technological capability to cowl all phases of the life cycle of the system. Thus, a brand new firm, TESS Defence, was created to capitalize on the expertise of its companions, counting on their strengths and sources, to steer the commercial effort within the subsequent phases of the VCR8x8 Dragon Program.
TESS Defence was born as a transparent instance of commercial collaboration within the protection sector, with the agency goal of safeguarding Spanish strategic capabilities via the administration of aggressive packages that contribute to the nationwide curiosity. To ensure the manoeuvring capability to Fuerza 35 via the event and provide of the VCR8x8 Dragon, the built-in logistic assist to the automobile and the assist to the evolution of the system. To this finish, Indra Sistemas S.A., Santa Bárbara Sistemas S.A., Sapa Placencia S.L. and Escribano Mechanical & Engineering S.L., main corporations within the sector, have joined forces to kind the corporate that manages the Program for the provision of 348 Wheeled Fight Autos (VCR8x8 Dragon) for the Spanish Military.
