Scalable battlefield mobility (sponsored)

This article is brought to you by Pearson Engineering.

Our products enable combat forces to breach minefields, to overcome explosive ordnance and to defeat and create obstacles. They are designed to provide armoured vehicles with the ability to rapidly adapt to their mission, to overcome challenges to mobility and to deny mobility and momentum to others. In a time when 

Western militaries are preparing for peer-on-peer conflict with well organised, sophisticated, and technologically advanced adversaries, Pearson Engineering is championing a three-fold approach to high levels of adaptability, agility, and flexibility across the battlefield.

Helping Armed Forces to Defend, Move and Fight - Independent mobility for Armoured Fighting Vehicles

Pearson Engineering’s most recent developments focus on providing engineering Front-End equipment (FEE) to combat units. By equipping a wider range of vehicles, including Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) and other combat vehicles, with capability to support their own mobility, counter-mobility and survivability requirements, a tactical advantage can be gained. Commanders are afforded the opportunity to move as they need to without delay, and adversaries are reduced in their ability to predict next steps.

To achieve this, Pearson Engineering has developed SLICE, a rapid integration mechanism, to allow the wider adoption of front end engineering capability.

The new vehicle integration kit houses all of the power requirements to fit and operate front end equipment requiring no, or minimal, modification to the host vehicle. Typically fitted to the towing eyes and plugged into a NATO slave socket, SLICE can be quickly added to a vehicle when it is needed (and removed when it is not) to integrate mine ploughs, rollers, and dozer blades. Whilst not the primary role of this type of vehicle, providing them with independent manoeuvre support has the potential to outwit adversaries and ensure Commanders can move to places of their choosing when faced with complex obstacles. 

Pioneering Products, Proven on the Battlefield – A highly flexible approach to equipping Armoured Engineering Vehicles

Nevertheless, the importance of the armoured engineer continues to be widely recognised and Pearson Engineering continues to invest in the development of highly adaptable engineering capability to support the most specialised tasks.

“Such dedicated assets must have the ability to adapt. They need to be able to breach minefields, create and defeat obstacles and launch bridges to respond to the needs of the mission. The emerging doctrine to ‘March Divided, Fight United’ will mean that dispersed troops will face a greater range of mobility challenges, leaving them vulnerable to attack and removing their choices. Armoured Engineering Vehicles which can breach a minefield in a morning and support gap crossing in an afternoon will be invaluable in the future fight” says Richard Beatson, Business Development Director at Pearson Engineering.

The company’s approach to rapidly interchangeable front end attachments has been proven on Kodiak, the M1 based ABV, Trojan and Leopard amongst others. 

Improving Mobility, Pushing Boundaries - Interchangeable attachments for support vehicles as a force multiplier

“We believe that platforms like the Stryker Engineer Support Vehicle (ESV) will become more widespread in the near future” says Mr Beatson. “To supplement the need for a broader range of engineering assets to support a wider range of mobility and counter-mobility requirements, these lighter weight, more strategically mobile vehicles will be deployed to enhance combat engineering capability”.

Providing rapidly interchangeable tools for this medium weight wheeled or tracked vehicles will provide Armed Forces with the ability to maintain manoeuvre on the battlefield for these lighter ‘strike’ forces. Fitting many vehicles ‘for but not with’ such equipment provides a level of flexibility and interoperability that can act as force multiplier.

Scalable mobility means providing armoured engineering vehicles with inherent flexibility to adapt to ever changing mobility and counter-mobility missions, enabling other vehicles to undertake engineering tasks when needed to support combat vehicles and with independent manoeuvre support to defeat resourceful and well-equipped adversaries. 

Delivering against the most complex defence challenges

Pearson Engineering is also turning its attention to the future of armoured vehicle fleets. Armoured vehicles, whether tracked, wheeled, manned or unmanned require mobility and survivability on the battlefield, and may even be required to provide support to others.

“How UGVs will be deployed is still a matter of discussion with a trend towards lighter, nimbler, and more multi-purpose vehicles able to undertake a multitude of roles independently.

“The fact remains, that these vehicles will need to move to places of their Commander’s choosing and in doing so, will need to defeat the wide range of natural and deliberate obstacles usually encountered on the battlefield. A UGV without protection may still be subject to enemy action, if not to injure soldiers, but to stop valuable assets in their tracks”. 

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