Competitiveness and Innovation in Ground Combat Capabilities

Patria is leading a defence industry consortium that has been selected as part of the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP), an EU industrial initiative.

The programme’s focus is to examine ground combat capabilities (GCC) and develop next-generation armoured platforms, as well as providing enhancements and upgrades for existing systems. Patria acts as the industrial coordinator of the EDIDP-GCC-2020 and has formed a consortium called FAMOUS (European Future Highly Mobile Augmented Armoured Systems) to execute the programme. The consortium includes 20 leading defence companies from several EU countries.

The first EU-funded programme to develop defence capabilities, with a €500 million envelope, EDIDP is designed to support the capacity of the EU’s defence industry for competitiveness and innovation. Selection for the programme was made at the end of June, with project start scheduled for this autumn: the GCC projext led by Patria will last two years.

FAMOUS aims to develop future technologies and performances that enhance GCC in the areas of mobility, hybrid operations, power generation and energy storage, as well as security systems, situational awareness, robotics, C4I solutions, weapons systems and life-cycle support solutions.

“All 19 companies, including ground combat system integrators as well as high-tech midcap and small and medium-sized enterprise companies, will bring highly complementary expertise, technologies, and know-how to the project. A comprehensive combination of various top-of-the-art land system capabilities will substantially improve the performance and technology of armoured platforms,” commented Patria President and CEO, Esa Rautalinko.

“This development programme is valuable not only because of platform development, but also because it is a unique and innovative approach to develop areas of next-generation technology that can be utilised in a variety of armoured vehicles and systems. These concepts can be made rapidly available and implemented already during the current Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) in future system architectures, as well as utilised in future European armoured vehicle systems. Development work is not only funded, but that the products eventually reach their actual use. This approach will lead to unity and thus increase coherence, standardisation and compatibility between different platforms in the EU,” added Jussi Järvinen, President of Patria’s Land business unit.

Companies involved in the consortium include: Arquus; AVL; Cybernetica; Diehl Defence; DST; FFG – Flensburger Fahrzeugbau; FY-Composites; Indra; ISD; John Cockerill; Krauss-Maffei Wegmann; lmt; Millog; Nexter Group; Pledrafita; Savox; Spinverse; and TenCate Advanced Armour