The UK Ministry of Defence’s (UK MoD) Land Mobility Programme (LMP) is a major initiative to modernise the British Army’s ageing fleet of utility, mobility and protected mobility vehicles, replacing legacy Land Rovers, Pinzgauers and the plethora of other light, medium and heavy protected mobility platforms with new wheeled vehicles. The programme seeks to replace over a dozen legacy vehicle types with new, more capable platforms, while drastically reducing the current 16 vehicle types to approximately five designs, thereby minimising the logistics support requirement, maximising commonality, reducing the training burden and increasing cost effectiveness.
Under current published information, LMP is structured around core platform categories including 3,000 Light Mobility Vehicle (LMV) or General Support Utility Vehicle (GSUP), 2,500 Light Protected Mobility (LPM), 2,000 Medium Protected Mobility (MPM) and 500 Heavy Protected Mobility (HPM) so approximately 8,000 vehicles with a potential total programme value exceeding £4.8 billion, depending on how the scope evolves. The LMP programme’s key considerations are:
- Mobility – Focus on the benefits of wheeled platforms
- Survivability – Provide appropriate survivability, not just physical protection
- Adaptability – A key user requirement to provide mission system primacy
- Cost – minimise cost through commonality and off-the-shelf (OTS) capability
- Time – minimise procurement lead times to deliver at the speed of relevance
ISTEC has 37 years of experience in designing and manufacturing robust, high-quality and operationally proven crew-served weapon mounting solutions, smoke dischargers and other ancillaries, such as weapon stowage, for military use across land, sea and air platforms. ISTEC are supremely well placed to support the whole LMP, irrespective of which company delivers each capability, because their weapon mount integration solutions are platform agnostic, specifically designed to maximise individual vehicle survivability with wide arcs of fire and recoil reduction and increase flexibility with common mounting solutions so users can quickly and easily switch between mounted weapon systems.
ISTEC has over 20,000 mounts fitted to every type of military platform currently in service and has recently been awarded the 4-year contract for the supply of weapon mount spares across all 3 services via the Babcock Service Provision and Transformation Contract (SPTC). Their weapon mounts are currently fitted to a host of vehicles that all fall in the LMP category such as Land Rover RWMIK, Jackal, Coyote, Foxhound, Husky, Mastiff, Ridgeback and Wolfhound to mention a few. Therefore, not only will users already be familiar with the easy operation of ISTEC products, but all the necessary logistical support and spares resupply will already be established to maintain operational capability. Istec also supports these same mounts deployed by the navy on vessels such as, off-shore raiders, ribs and landing craft.
In addition to UK, ISTEC offers logistic support for their kit used worldwide including – other European NATO countries, North America, Gulf and the Indo Pacific region.
Mick Coulson, Managing Director ISTEC said, “ISTEC has a long history of supporting a huge variety of military platforms with their essential weapon integration solutions from our first product for specialist forces back in the 1990’s, through all the major conflicts and urgent operational requirements to most recently the new MLRS. Over the years, we have established excellent working relationships with all the major defence suppliers and integrators; and our systems are well known by front-line troops for being robust, easy to use and operationally proven. ISTEC solutions are the perfect choice for whichever vehicles are selected for the LMP and we look forward to working closely with the successful bidders.”