This whole thing sounds a lot like the French-Australian submarine deal:
→ French design is contracted by Australia in 2015
→ Development occurred in Australia
→ Deal falls through in 2021 (a similarly long period of time between the contract being drawn and it falling through as with the CSP)
Theoretically, I don’t think the French submarine should go to Australia (were it to be its own nation in-game). Theoretically, of course.
Maybe you can see the similarities, maybe you can’t. But I don’t see why the UK should receive the Patria CSP when comparing the two situations. That said, I can also appreciate the uniqueness of the CSP debacle.
But if the UK:
Developed the turret or
Adopted it into service
Then I would support this suggestion. But seeing as they did neither (no, an American subsidiary in the UK doesn’t make it in a British company) I don’t see why this vehicle should go to the UK.
Its Lockheed in naming yet the people it employs the factories it was made in and the place it rests is the UK. It never once stepped in the US. Hell the US didn’t want or look at any part of buying the CSP it was designed from the get go for the UK. Yes it fell through but the fact that it was a prototype that was developed for the UK implies and shows this. If it was made and then refused and sold off to the US Army then yeh… but it was made, cancelled and scrapped in all but one instance…
Alan Lines, Vice President and Managing Director of Lockheed Martin UK’s Ampthill site, said: “The turrets that will be manufactured in our new facility have been designed and developed here in Bedfordshire and the new production line will help to make Ampthill a world class location for this highly skilled and technical work. Our continued investment is creating opportunities for jobs and exports and demonstrates our commitment not only to the Warrior and Scout SV programmes but also to our workforce and to the local community.”
Philip Dunne MP, Minister of State for Defence Procurement said: “This new £5.5 million high tech centre of excellence will create 40 jobs here in Bedfordshire and secure many more in the UK, making Ampthill a world class location for high quality, skilled technical engineering.
“The highly sophisticated turrets made here in Bedfordshire are just another example of home-grown British defence innovation that not only boosts the wider economy, but gives our Armed Forces an operational advantage, ensuring we can keep Britain safe.”
According to both the British government and Lockheed Martin UK, yes the turret was developed by the British. I think this discussion has gone on long enough.
We don’t have any special privileges when it comes to submitting suggestions. Posts are reviewed independently by other members of the team than the ones who make them.
It’s not. The STAG DA sight complex used on the Lockheed turret was developed by Thales Optronics Ltd in Glasgow, which was formerly under the name Pilkington Optronics and Barr and Stroud. The thermal imaging core is sourced from a French company Sofradir but the cameras are UK-built variants of Catherine.
BAE’s Warrior turret used French-built sights and FCS by SAFRAN.
Lockheed’s 40mm turret design itself is more German and British than American, having been based conceptually on Rheinmetall’s LANCE turret. Americans worked on the project including the design work, but it was entirely managed in the UK being that it was originally supposed to be a modified Warrior turret. Once the Bushmaster III was de-selected as the armament for WCSP, there were virtually no American-built components. When the decision was made to make an all-new turret, Rheinmetall manufactured the steel citadel, but assembly and fitting out of the turret was done in the UK.
So far as US-designed subsystems: the Curtiss Wright turret servos were to be built in Switzerland rather than the US, and the Moog gun-actuating systems were to be built in the UK.
In addition to the sights and FCS, the ammunition feed system was British (Meggitt), so was the armour (Lorica - but based on Israeli Plasan Sasa technology) and other electronic systems (Ultra Electronics).
Yeah, that was the concept copied from LANCE: ammunition stowage and feed route separated from the crew for better safety. Smart design for belt-fed guns where the feed mechanism is in the gun, like the MK30-2/ABM on LANCE. But CTA40 ammunition is linkless so is fed from a separate autoloader mechanism that can fail separately to the gun.
Render you have there looks like the original turret concept where they were going to cut the front off Warrior’s RARDEN turret with a water jet and build on top of that. So obviously no way to access the ammo feed through 4-ish inches of steel armour.
Don’t know if the Rheinmetall citadel addressed that in any way
