UK completes tests of a new sapper robot

Harris Corporation’s T7 unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) has completed its acceptance trials at Kineton, Warwickshire, United Kingdom, with production models to be delivered to the British Army in November.

Lieutenant Colonel Thornton Daryl Hirst, assistant team leader of Special Projects at the UK’s Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) procurement organisation, told Jane’s at the Defence Vehicle Dynamics (DVD) 2018 exhibition and conference that “very stringent testing has been carried out in the UK and collaboratively with Harris in the US”.

“The first four production standard vehicles will be delivered early in November which will enable us to conduct train-the-trainer packages from January onwards,” Lt Col Hirst said.

“Initial operating capability (IOC) will be with the UK armed forces in July of next year and full operating capability (FOC) in 2020. The project has run to time [and] cost and it has exceeded our performance expectations,” he said.

Project Starter will procure 56 Harris T7s to support explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams on contingent operations. The programme is designed to replace the army’s ageing fleet of Wheelbarrow Mk8B remote EOD robots. These have been in service around the world since 1972 and are due to retire from service in 2020.

“We have focused the requirements around battlefield missions that we need robots to achieve,” Lt Col Hirst said. “We have reduced the number of system requirements for Starter to less than a third of the surplus 750 we specified for Cutlass [EOD UGV] even though both robots meet similar mission criteria.”

“The rationale behind this approach is to stop constraining industry with so many system requirements that they can’t surface the innovation, creativity, and change that have delivered a step-change in capability here with Starter,” he added.

Autonomy presets have been developed with the British Army and Harris to optimise mission effectiveness and reliability such as stowage, disruptor attachment loading, and low-, high-, and medium-attack settings.