Leonardo leads team to equip British army vehicles with added protections
NewsSeptember 19, 2017
ROME. Leonardo will head a team of companies chosen by the British government?s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) in what it's calling the "Icarus" technology demonstration project (TDP), which is aimed at protecting British army vehicles against current and future weapons.
Additional companies working with Leonardo to deliver the Icarus TDP are BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin UK, Ultra Electronics, Frazer-Nash, Brighton University, Abstract Solutions, Roke Manor Research, and SCISYS.
The Icarus project is in response to an operational environment where armor by itself will not be sufficient to defend vehicles and operators against the capabilities of future weapon systems, particularly rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and anti-tank guided weapons (ATGW). To counter the growing threat from such weapons, a number of Active Protection Systems (APS) technologies have been developed by industry and are available as off-the-shelf solutions to supplement the physical protection offered by an armored vehicle.
The main objective of the Icarus TDP is to develop and demonstrate a U.K.-designed and -built Modular, Integrated Protection System (MIPS) electronic architecture (EA) that uses the latest APS sensors and countermeasures. According to Leonardo officials, the architecture must be easy to use, but must also be affordable, dependable, and ultimately form the basis of a new MIPS defense standard, similar to that which has been developed for the UK Generic Vehicle Architecture (GVA) standard.
