Gloucestershire firm wins £14 MoD contract
A Gloucestershire firm has won a £14m contract to build robots for the ministry of defence.
The Ministry of Defence has selected L3Harris Technologies for the contract which will see the firm deliver up to 50 medium-sized T4™ explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) robots.
The robots are designed to deal with bombs and explosives in confined urban spaces.
The contract includes providing robots, in-country support, maintenance, training and follows L3Harris’ successful delivery of Project STARTER.
“Like the T7, the T4 robots will play an integral role in enhancing the EOD capabilities leveraged by the British Army,” said Lt. Gen. Simon Hamilton, Director General Land, Defence Equipment and Support, at the MoD.
“Critical to the MOD’s land modernization ambitions is the prioritization of agile, modular and highly capable technology built to tackle the demands of the future threat environment. The versatile T4 is a significant step forward in achieving this.”
“We’re ready to deliver these critical systems to the U.K. armed forces for their EOD operators,” said Ed Zoiss, President, Space and Airborne Systems, L3Harris.
“The T4 robots offer many of the same capabilities and intuitive control as the T7 robot but in a more compact footprint, allowing operators to safely access threats in much smaller spaces.”
This contract award with the U.K. follows L3Harris’ successful award for T4 and T7 variants to the Australian Defence Force. Those robots will be delivered to Australia starting in mid-2024 as part of their Land-154 program to enhance EOD unit capabilities in improvised explosive device neutralization and exploitation as well as route clearance. The U.S. Air Force also ordered more than 100 T7 robots to support their EOD missions around the world, many of which have been delivered and are now fully operational.
