soldier modernisation, lightweight soldier equipment, lightening the load, reducing the soldiers burden, soldier systems, modern soldier equipment, defence, military, US Army, UK MoD, FELIN, IdZ, IMESS

1. Question and Answers With French Land and Soldier Modernisation Land Systems
Acquisition Director, Brigade General Dominque Luzeaux:
Interviewer: Brigadier General Dominique Luzeaux, what are your three biggest challenges for
the land systems at the moment for the French MOD and also for the FELIN Programme?
Dominique Luzeaux: So, one of the major challenges of the French army is the programme
SCORPION, which aims at renewing all the platforms or some of the platforms we have; the
ABCs, also the scout vehicles, and renovating the main battle tanks. And so what we want to do
is to renovate this vehicle while decreasing also the logistic footprints and trying to optimize also
all the C4ISR issues in order to have a seamless network-centric capability with all these
platforms, and of course, also these platforms are for the mounted soldier and we also have a
major programme for the dismounted soldier, the FELIN Programme which just started its
production; I mean, the first battalions will be equipped this summer so all these programmes are
managed together, and I think these will be the challenges of this year.
Interviewer: And which system integrators is your programme working with at the moment?
Dominique Luzeaux: The FELIN programme will currently work with the VBCI which is the
French combat vehicle for infantry which has been launched into production over 1 year ago and
all these systems will be used very soon also in external theaters like Afghanistan.
Interviewer: Smallest surprises are often bringing innovation to the industry; which three
surprises or three technologies are you looking at the moment at the French MOD?
Dominique Luzeaux: This is a key issue because we have these large programmes so we have
major industrial partners who are in charge for the production, the realization, the manufacturing,
and production of the systems, but we want also to keep an eye, an attentive eye on innovation,
so what we ask from these large industrial suppliers is to have some partnerships with SMEs in
order to be able to include whenever they arrive, some new kinds of innovation of technologies
in our programmes. So, we keep a very attentive eye on innovation or on the fact that SMEs can
work with our major industrial partners.
Interviewer: Which aspect of the soldier system do you believe would be the most important at
the moment?
Dominique Luzeaux: I think, we in France had an approach which was to consider the soldier
as a whole system, so we don’t have some equipment, some optoelectronics, some clothe, some
rifle issues; we have the soldier programme. One of the main advantages of such system
approach is for instance, on the energy issue, we were able to design all the various energy
batteries as having only two different types, so the system approach helps us for the
sustainability of the system. I think it’s one of the main advantages of the FELIN Programme.
Brigade General Dominque Luzeaux was interviewed at Soldier Technology last may and will be
presenting at Soldier Technology 2011 in June.
For further details, visit www.soldiertechnology.com or
email : soldiertechnology@wbr.co.uk or call +44 (0) 20 7368 9465.
soldier modernisation, lightweight soldier equipment, lightening the load, reducing the soldiers burden, soldier systems, modern soldier equipment, defence, military, US Army, UK MoD, FELIN, IdZ, IMESS
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