3 French Firms Picked To Lead Scorpion Effort
ARIS - A consortium of Nexter, Thales and Safran appears to have been selected as preferred bidder in a competition for an architect to design the Scorpion transformation program for the French Army, industry sources said.
The trio of French companies has topped the list of bidders, ahead of EADS, which had teamed with SAIC, a U.S. information technology company, and a joint offer from a pair of French high-tech companies, Communication & Systèmes (CS) and Ineo, the sources said. The Direction Générale pour l'Armement (DGA) will negotiate with the preferred bidder, and if an agreement is reached, the government procurement office will appoint the winner.
The appointment of architect is seen as crucial, as the Scorpion system of systems will help define future equipment and maintenance needs.
The selection of the Nexter-Thales-Safran team also raises questions over whether Nexter and Thales will link up as part of a wider industrial consolidation, an industry executive said.
CS Marketing Director Arnaud Salomon said, "If the result is confirmed, it will be a missed opportunity to appoint an independent architect and to manage the program in a different way."
Gen. Elrick Irastorza, the Army's chief of staff, said May 4 that Scorpion will be a "federative program," with a maximum of commonality and a built-in coherence to support the battle group formation.
The program will take an incremental approach and offer a strong potential for evolution, Irastorza said.
DGA Program Manager Thierry Perard told journalists May 4 that the winner of the architect competition would be known by the time the Eurosatory land armaments show opens June 14.
The key ideas behind Scorpion are coherence, optimization and management of complexity, Perard said. The program is not technologically driven and will use "proven technology" in a step-by-step approach, he said.
Under the program, the Army will get heavy and light versions of the Véhicule Blindé Multi-role (VBMR) to replace the workhorse VAB, the Engin Blindé de Reconnaissance et Combat (EBRC) to replace the AMX-10RC and ERC-90, and modernize the Leclerc heavy tank. Other key targets are cutting ownership cost and introducing a single battle management system in place of the existing three C2 networks.
Scorpion aims to bring existing assets into the new systems through standard interfaces.
French vehicle maker Panhard unveiled May 4 its design for the Sphinx light tank, its offer for the EBRC. The Sphinx would carry the 40mm CTAI gun and two launchers for non-line-of-sight missiles on the turret. The budget is estimated at 1 billion euros for 300 units. The first EBRC is due for delivery in 2018.
Panhard is open to international partnerships for marketing the Sphinx, which will appear as a mock-up at Eurosatory. The show runs June 14-18.
On a broader front, the government could use the Scorpion architect competition to force Safran and Thales to come to an agreement on a consolidation of their optronics, navigation and avionics activities, an analyst said.
"In the present context, the government will use the competition as a means of putting pressure on Thales and Safran to agree on an industrial consolidation in the optronics and navigations operations," said Loïc Tribot La Spière, chief executive of think-tank Centre d'Etude de Prospective Stratégique here.
The two companies are deadlocked in talks over Thales' commercial onboard processor business, which Safran sees as vital to boosting its civil aviation equipment business. Thales, however, sees the processors as intrinsically dual-use civil-military and a core activity.
The DGA, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Army are overseeing the Scorpion program, which is budgeted at 5 billion euros ($2.5 billion) through 2020. The total amount is expected to be 10 billion euros by 2030.
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