Elbit Systems UK has secured a contract with the UK Ministry of Defence to supply, maintain, and operate the Ground Manoeuvre Synthetic Trainer (GMST) system for Boxer armoured vehicles and Challenger 3 tanks under the British Army’s Project Vulcan.

The initial phase of delivery will support the early arrival of the British Army’s new Mechanised Infantry Vehicle – Boxer.

The programme will feature high-fidelity driver trainers and cabins for turret and armament variants, backed by a comprehensive digital training management system. Elbit Systems UK’s open architecture and common digital systems facilitate an agile, interchangeable platform capability.

The simulators will be networked, allowing soldiers to train simultaneously in various formations, vehicles, and locations. The system can also be adapted to meet the training requirements of all future armoured vehicles for the Army.

Martin Fausset, CEO of Elbit Systems UK, said in a statement, “Elbit Systems UK is delighted to have been selected to provide the British Army with such an important project. The training of armoured vehicle crews is paramount to their operational effectiveness and safety, and we take great pride in the trust the UK MOD have placed in us to deliver this contract.”

Fausset added, “Elbit Systems’ innovative training capabilities are already deployed extensively across the globe. We pride ourselves on being able to use our extensive British footprint and supply chain to adapt Elbit Systems’ global solutions for the specific needs of UK Armed Forces. Through our focus on spiral development and open architecture, we will continue to develop advanced capabilities to support the UK and our Allies in the years ahead.”

Lisa West
Lisa has a degree in Media & Communication from Glasgow Caledonian University and works with industry news, sifting through press releases in addition to moderating website comments.

30 COMMENTS

  1. Just one of the many training systems that sets real military’s apart from meme army’s like Russia.

  2. This is stupid….

    We’ve only recently chucked Elbit off a training contract with the RN due to security and sovereignty concerns…

    And the Army go and give them a new contract….

    Someone needs to step in and remove any procurement responsibilities from the Army as they just don’t get it…

    • What equally concerns me is this is an area ie within Services that is supposedly at the heart of UK PLC now that we have neglected and effectively kneecapped our industrial sector and yet here we are now seeing foreign companies (ones from a suspect source arguably too) making serious inroads into our marketplace. Let’s hope strong links at various levels to Russia instilled in their parent society too doesn’t compromise this sort of training on our key military assets, or what ‘sets militaries apart from meme militaries like Russia’ might not be quite so set apart in the future after all.

      • The country of Cambridge 5 and on XXI Century one of most strong Leftist against Western Civilization on verge of being controlled by Labour that a couple years ago was controlled by a Marxist terrorist lover?

        • That is kinda what I was thinking robert, I thought a lot of countries did this so they can control sensitive items.

          • They do. Companies sell all over the world. BAE Systems does huge business in the US for example.

        • Because it is Israel is a problem, but if it was selling Tornadoes, Eurofighters, Sky Shadow missiles, Meteor missiles etc etc to Qatar that is not anymore a problem…

          • Ita for a British Army training system. It’s international business pal. If we didn’t sell them, somebody else would.

          • Well if you are scared about other actors not knowing your stuff you would not sell stuff in category of Meteor – which is vital for air dominance and Sky Shadow to Qatar, information should already be in Moscow and Teheran.

          • I don’t really understand why you have a problem with this. It’s an Army driver training system from a UK division of Elbit.

      • See outlook slightly differently, S, albeit accept that it’s in the nature of open societies to descope security infrastructure for social focus; sort of comes under a definition of Democracy. And, yes, it leads to something of a panic situation when authoritarian states see weakness, in their view, if they strike hard and fast, perhaps. Not talking Russia under Poutin’. Fades to pale under China, who have a Sauron view coupled with manufacturing efficiency and resource strategy.
        However, broadly defined ‘western states’ do have a capacity to ramp up cooperative engagement on a number of fronts not at all least, the political. What struck me about the incredible imagination & potential of AUKUS (and further afield under UK influence if I may hazard), in all its emerging facets.
        With China’s Imperial, and now Outward, Reawakening finally upon us, I’m starting to view the USA in a similar situation to the UK a century back i.e. still a great power, but in danger of becoming, & in our case became, eclipsed by the New Kid – and, importantly, recognising that fact. The critical downside is that whereas the US shares our broad perspective, China doesn’t. The later reverting to centuries old Imperialism and subjugation, being all its known (Communist, as with Russia, it never was).
        So, unless China suddenly sees genuine merit in Democracy (best for it but yeh- right), the USA should and maybe likely will adopt an acceptance of we’re all in this together, economically and technologically – since it cannot hope to protect Europe, the wider western world, and take on the Dragon e.g. keep all its balls in the air (balls for sure)
        Interesting Times

      • If they’re not judged secure enough for one part of the forces they should not be used anywhere else.

        • You know very well that big parts of any army are not secure.

          Do you think there are no islamists in the British army, supporters of IRA, Corbyn supporters. This is true for any army.

      • I can’t imagine there is much high tech stuff involved in the army training, so outside tactic information, which they will probably know already and is not exactly hard to find out based on public records (too many soliders to keep ground tactics secret), I doubt there is much of a risk.

        Navy /airforce will have to include highly sensitive stuff around capability of radars and missiles etc.

        I assume simulators for Apache/etc are separate.

    • So what should have happened if that’s the case (I’m not privvy to the detail) is that Crown Commercial should have disqualified them from tender. The Army set the requirement and allocate the budget and tell CCS what they thought of the bids.

      And it was really frustrating being on the end of CCS because they made lots of things quite difficult to procure due to their processes. I think it’s a bit naiive to blame the Army when there is a body whose role is to negotiate on their behalf, and who actually own the procurement process.

      • You don’t have to use CCS, they are voluntary…
        Personally I’ve found them very slow and frustrating to deal with…you usually end up doing all the work yourself…

  3. I always thought soldiers trained soldiers after having years of experience, not computer Jockey’s.

    • Modern world where virtual training is done across all services to save money. Unless we have a war where we are against a peer or near peer opponent we won’t know for sure if the training really plays out in reality. Luckily it’s not all virtual at this stage.

      The way I look at it is our last full service real war was the Falklands and there was a whole load of training issues that caused a number of the deaths (could include iraq1/iraq2/afgan but they had other issues). The reports highlighted the lack of training due to cost cutting. Virtual training might well help partially fill the cost gap, it might not be as effective as real training using real equipment, but it’s has to be far better than nothing. Potentially working as a force multiplier Vs enemies that don’t have it.

    • Plenty of contractors train service personnel on complex systems these days eg
      1.Ascent Flight Training traines helicopter pilots (contract 2008-2033).
      2.Aviation Training International Limited (ATIL) a wholly-owned subsidiary of Boeing provides air crew, ground crew and maintenance training to the UK Army Air Corps Apache (20-year contract) .

      …and contractors also train soldiers on not so complex systems: Contractor Driver Training (CDT) is provided at multiple locations to vocational and non-vocational drivers to a variety of cap badges. This is purely Licence Acquisition on Cat B to C+E in contractor vehicles.

    • There are certain things you just can’t train live, or it is prohibitively expensive to do so. For example, a Bde Operational insertion march over 200km with all of the logistics involved (a key requirement on Srike CONEMP) could only be done virtually.

      For HQ work, simulation enables far greater volume of training as it can be conducted simultaneously to basic skills training with the troops and is way more effective than the old style TEWT. And the troops should be practicing basic skills more than anything else – get the basics right and everything else falls into place.

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