The European Union’s (EU) European Defence Fund (EDF) has awarded a defense industry consortium a contract worth around 95 million euros for the development of a range of future modular armored vehicles.
The FAMOUS (European Future Highly Mobile Augmented Armoured Systems) consortium’s proposal for the second phase of the project was approved by the European Commission on July 20.
Nine countries are participating in the consortium, with Finland continuing to act as the lead state and defense technology company Patria as the industrial coordinator. The consortium includes 18 European defense companies and will continue the ongoing FAMOUS 1 (phase 1) research, in which the vehicles and systems concepts are developed.
The FAMOUS 2 project aims at developing technological building blocks for the next generation of armored platforms and upgrades for existing platforms, such as future all-terrain vehicles (ATV), light armored vehicles (LAV) and main battle tanks (MBT). It is building on the ongoing EDIDP 2020 FAMOUS project, thus following-up the research on vehicles and systems concepts during this precursor project.
The second phase of the project is expected to start by 2023 and end by 2026. It will focus on vehicle architecture, which will be followed by the designing, building and testing of prototypes developed in that framework.
Patria said the project would harness the company’s expertise and experience to develop the technologies and performance of future armored vehicles to meet the needs of customers in the European Union by improving their ground combat capabilities. Also, the changed security situation in Europe increases the significance of the project.
“The FAMOUS 2 project will take a significant step forward when the selected vehicle concept will be concretely designed and manufactured as a prototype, including actual field testing,” says Jussi Järvinen, executive vice president of Patria’s Finland Division.
