Nexter, Thales, and Arquus Successfully Deliver 500th Griffon on SCORPION Program to French Defence Procurement Agency
13th July 2023 • Nexter, Arquus, and Thales presented the 500th Griffon (VBMR) multirole armoured vehicle and the 50th Jaguar (EBRC) armoured reconnaissance and fighting vehicle to the French defence procurement agency (DGA). • The three industry partners in the EBMR temporary consortium met their contractual targets on the program, which involved the delivery of a total of 1,872 Griffons and 300 Jaguars.
Manufactured and assembled by Nexter Nexter, a KNDS company, built the armoured aluminium body, outfitted the vehicle’s interior, and manufactured the turret for the Jaguar at the Roanne site. Its high-precision machining and robotic welding processes ensured that the welded aluminium structure of both the Griffon and the Jaguar provided the best possible level of protection for military personnel. Nexter also manufactured the Jaguar’s 40 mm cannon and its telescoped munitions at its Bourges and La Chapelle Saint-Ursin facilities.
Other Nexter sites and subsidiaries supplied vehicle equipment, including CBRN protection systems made by NBC-Sys at Saint-Chamond, onboard electronics and computers manufactured in Toulouse, and vision systems produced by OPT-Sys in Saint-Etienne. Nexter also had responsibility for final assembly and integration of all these components, along with those provided by Arquus and Thales, into the vehicles.
Ground mobility expertise from Arquus Arquus was responsible for the design and manufacture of the complete powertrains for the Griffon and Jaguar vehicles, including the engine, gearbox, running gear, and all the other parts and components that ensured the vehicles’ mobility. These mobility kits were manufactured at the Arquus site in Limoges, the company’s centre of excellence for new vehicle production, and then shipped to Nexter in Roanne for integration into the vehicles. The engines for the vehicles were built at the Arquus site in Marolles-en-Hurepoix, the company’s centre of excellence for engine militarization.
Thales’ Vehicle Interconnection Thales provided the vehicle vetronics and data systems required to deploy the vehicles as a network and conduct collaborative engagements. This included the common Scorpion vetronics, onboard sensors, secure communication systems, and self-protection systems incorporating collaborative combat algorithms. Thales was also responsible for the radars and sensor payload for the artillery observation vehicle (VOA). The onboard computing architecture interconnected all the navigation, protection, observation, and communication systems, giving deployed units a decisive advantage in the theatre of operations by expanding their intelligence and response capabilities.