The Leclerc tank is entering a new era, that of collaborative combat. On Thursday, the Ministry of the Armed Forces placed an order with Nexter for 50 leclerc tanks Additional refurbished (XLR) drives as part of 200-drive mid-life retrofit. This market was notified by the General Directorate of Armaments (DGA) on December 29.
A system that will work tomorrow with Scaf
The term renewed is an understatement since the tank will integrate the Scorpion bubble (CONTACT Synergy reinforced by Versatility and Infoevaluation). Implemented by the DGA, this technology was created for collaborative combat. Like the new Jaguar, Serval and Griffon armored vehicles, the Leclerc XLR will be fitted with a combat information system with broadband radio.
This equipment is connected to a “digital bubble” designed by Atos in which infantrymen, artillerymen, armored vehicles, but also helicopters, ground robots and drones communicate with each other at any time via a Cloud sharing the data they obtain. .
Even the Scaf (Combat Air System of the Future) and the cyber defense and intervention (IDF) frigate equipped with a digital radar will be integrated into this network to collect and send information.
This project to create a connected battlefield to face the wars of the future. This digitization of the battlespace (NEB) germinated among weapons engineers as early as 1999, at a time when mobile telephony and the Internet were far from what they currently allow. At that time, the designers were already envisioning a joint, interconnected battlefield. The idea is to better protect units to act more effectively by adapting the response according to the attack to better control the force.
Cloud and artificial intelligence
The concept aims to create a mobile and modular intranet to share the information obtained in the field by all the forces involved, each element of which is equipped with sensors. If a hazard is detected, information and data will be shared in real time with everyone else to get around or fix it. The positions of the friendly forces are indicated in real time and the orders are transmitted through this terminal, with which both the command post and the platoon leader are equipped in their vehicle.
And to avoid bottlenecks and outages, an artificial intelligence searches for permanently accessible networks to automatically switch from one node to another. And in the worst case, a degraded mode will secure the links.
Launched in 2014 with a budget of 330 million euros under the military programming law (LPM) 2019-2025, this program involves 1,872 Griffons, 978 Servals, 300 Jaguars, 200 Leclercs and 18 tank repairmen. These devices have been developed by Nexter, Arquus and Thales. Since 2019, these manufacturers have delivered 452 Griffons and 38 Jaguars to the DGA.
Source: BFM TV
