VBMR Griffon
The Véhicule Blindé Multi-Rôle Griffon or VBMR Griffon is a French six-wheel multi-purpose armoured personnel carrier developed and manufactured by KNDS France, Arquus and Thales. The vehicle entered service in 2019 and is, alongside the four-wheel VBMR-L Serval co-developed by KNDS France and Texelis, the successor of the Véhicule de l'Avant Blindé.
Components of the French SCORPION programme, the two vehicles are expected to fulfill a wide range of tasks and thus consist of several variants and subvariants. An on-board 120 mm mortar system based on the Griffon, designated Griffon MEPAC, has notably been developed. Furthermore, two distinct Serval-based air defence platforms are under development as of 2023; the Serval LAD, intended as a dedicated counter-UAV vehicle, and the Serval Mistral for general V/SHORAD applications.
In total, 1,818 VBMR Griffon, 2,038 VBMR-L Serval, 54 Griffon MEPAC as well as at least 85 Serval LAD and Serval Mistral/TCP are to be delivered to the French Army by 2035.
Background
Since the 2000s, the French Army had been looking to replace the emblematic VAB, which entered service in 1979. The vehicle was becoming increasingly obsolete in the face of new and upcoming conflicts. After multiple postponements of a programme to modernize the French Army's Armoured Cavalry Arm, the 2013 White Paper on Defense and National Security recommended the order of 2080 multi-role armoured vehicles as well as 248 armoured reconnaissance and combat vehicles. In 2014, the French Ministry of Defense finally entrusted their design to a consortium formed by Nexter, Arquus and Thales, who had announced their intention to collaborate as early as 2010 and had initiated preliminary work for a joint technical solution.The development and purchase of this new generation of armoured vehicles, part of a programme styled SCORPION, was officially announced on 5 December 2014. The long-awaited first stage of the programme had been launched in October that year. This first stage, for a total cost of nearly €5.1 billion, includes the replacement of the VAB by the VBMR Griffon, the replacement of the AMX-10 RC, ERC-90 Sagaie and VAB HOT by the EBRC Jaguar, the modernization of the Leclerc tank as well as the development of a unified combat information network to ensure the coherence of systems in service. Under this initial €5 billion investment plan up to 2025, 780 VBMR and 110 EBRC were to be acquired. The content of the following stages of the programme was to be consolidated at a later date to achieve the target set by the 2014-2019 Military Programming Law and updated by the Defence Council's amendments on April 6, 2016: 1,722 heavy VBMR Griffon, 522 lightweight VBMR, 248 EBRC Jaguar and 200 renovated Leclerc XLR. The first 319 Griffon and 20 Jaguar were ordered in April 2017.
In the 2019-2025 LPM adopted in July 2018, the SCORPION programme's targets were revised upwards with the planned acquisition of a total of 1,872 VBMR Griffon, 978 VMBR-L Serval, 300 EBRC Jaguar as well as the upgrade of 200 Leclerc tanks and 18 DCL armoured recovery vehicles to the XLR standard; all to be delivered by 2030. The total cost of the programme was estimated at €11 billion.
On 26 October 2018, the Belgian government formalized the plan to purchase 60 EBRC Jaguar and 382 VBMR Griffon for €1.5 billion. The vehicles will replace the Belgian Army's Piranha IIIC armoured personnel carriers and Dingo 2 infantry mobility vehicles. The deal includes spare parts and secure communications equipment and deliveries are scheduled to start in 2025.
VBMR platform
Design
When the first stage of the programme was launched in 2014, the aim was to achieve an acquisition cost of €1 million per VBMR and €3 million per EBRC. This was expected to be achieved in part through the large quantities of SCORPION vehicles to be acquired, enabling economies of scale. Furthermore, the consortium opted for the Griffon to share 70% of its components with the Jaguar to save on development, production and maintenance costs as well as to facilitate logistics. Constituents shared include the suspension, supplied by Strasbourg-based company Quiri, the Elips intercom system by Argenteuil-based Elno, the roof-mounted PILAR V acoustic gunfire detection and localization system by Lyon-based Metravib Defence, as well as the vetronics. Featuring a wide range of state-of-the-art technologies, the Jaguar ultimately ended up costing twice as much as expected with an estimated unit cost of €6 million, but the Griffon nonetheless benefited from the common development with an average cost estimated at just €1.5 million per unit, 50% more than its original target price.Derived from the BMX 01 prototype proposed by Renault Trucks Defense, the Griffon benefits from a classic layout. It's a huge armoured truck with six-wheel drive and four-wheel steering, with the powertrain at the front. The vehicle weighs in at around 25 tonnes in combat order, roughly twice as much as the 13-tonne VAB. The embarked combat group of a standard Griffon comprises 10 fully-equipped soldiers; a driver, a dedicated gunner as well as 8 infantrymen, including the commander. In the crew cabin, the driver and the remote turret gunner are sheltered by a one-piece armoured windshield. They access their seats through side doors fitted with armoured windows. The rear part of the body is taken up by the compartment, with two small armoured windows on each side, where 8 men sit facing each other on anti-blast seats fixed to the side walls. A ramp at the back, featuring an emergency door and an episcope, that comes down low enough for the troops to skip on and off enables entry and exit. The rear compartment is surmounted by four roof hatches: one at the front left, behind the driver; one above the gunner's station, behind the remotely-operated turret; and two at the rear. The Griffon features a militarized variant of a commercial Renault-Volvo diesel powertrain rated at 400 hp, an automatic gearbox and independent running gears, enabling the vehicle to reach a top speed of 90 km/h and a range of up to 800 km. The engine is rail-mounted, facilitating maintenance operations. It is able to run on various types of fuel to facilitate replenishment wherever in the world French forces would be deployed. The Griffon also incorporates air conditioning and heating for comfort, as well as an overpressure protection system in order to keep the crew and passengers safe from chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. Crossing capacities are of the order of 1.2 m for a ford, 50 cm for a step and 1 m for a ditch.
The Griffon is designed to offer STANAG 4569 Level 4 armour protection as standard, being capable of withstanding 14.5 mm armour-piercing ammunition, 155 mm artillery shell splinters, IEDs and mine blasts, thus significantly improving the safety of the soldiers engaged over the VAB. Furthermore, armour protection levels can be raised beyond STANAG Level 4 through the installation of a modular armour package. A deployed French Griffon GTIA would be composed of two or three infantry companies equipped with Griffon vehicles, and a Jaguar cavalry squadron. Although its structure would be modular according to the missions assigned to it, each conventional infantry company is expected to have at its disposal: a command section comprising a command Griffon, a mobile maintenance workshop one and 2 medical evacuation ones ; three infantry sections with 4 Griffon each ; a combat engineering section with 3 Griffon ; a fire support section with 2 Griffon equipped with 81 mm mortars, another with 2 Griffon equipped with Akeron MP missiles and a last one with a Griffon embarking a sniper section. In addition, there is an artillery observation Griffon as well as several trucks and light all-terrain vehicles.
The Direction Générale de l'Armement, the French defense procurement agency, announced the Griffon's qualification on June 24, 2019, enabling the first vehicles to be delivered on July 4, 2019. By the end of 2021, 339 units of the VMBR Griffon had been delivered to the French Army. The first operational units were displayed on the Champs-Élysées during the 2019 Bastille Day Parade. By 2025, the SCORPION infantry should have achieved its first infovalorization and collaborative combat capability, with the Griffon multi-role armoured vehicles having begun to replace the quadragenarian VAB in 2019 and half of the Griffon ordered expected to have been delivered. In the 2024-2030 Military Programming Law, it is stated 1,437 VBMR Griffon are to enter French service by 2030 and 1,818 by 2035. 54 Griffon MEPAC are also expected to be delivered to the French Army by 2030.
Sensors and situational awareness
The data collected by the sensors equipping the Griffon are fed into the SCORPION bubble via a common combat information network, which is the SICS, developed by Atos-Bull, and the CONTACT software defined radio system developed by Thales. The SICS interconnects all the players in a combined arms battle group, while the CONTACT provides communication capabilities between the vehicles, with simultaneous and real time voice and data transmission. The Griffon is characterized by its vetronics i.e. the architecture of its on-board electronic systems. Also developed by Thales, the architecture is common to all SCORPION vehicles. It requires compact yet powerful computers and links all navigation, protection, observation and communication systems. It manages and merges all data within the vehicle. The SCORPION Common Vetronics ensure the processing and exchange of intra- and inter-vehicle data, enabling collaborative combat. In addition, vetronics play a decisive role in vehicle protection, thanks in particular to algorithms that offer the vehicle commander and his men several options for dealing with a threat, allowing them to opt for the one they deem the most adequate for the situation. Meanwhile, Safran's Epsilon 10 inertial navigation system provides precise position, autonomous engagement and navigation capabilities to the vehicle, including in GNSS-denied environments.The Griffons countermeasures include a laser alert detector, a missile launch detector, a gunshot detection system, an infrared jammer and an anti-IED jammer. It will integrate both the ECLIPSE smart software defined jammer from Thales, which provides electronic protection against IED/RCIED threats as well as the company's ANTARES optronics system. The ECLIPSE instantly detects and responds to the triggering of improvised explosive devices by jamming radio remote control signals across a wide range of frequencies without interfering with the radio communication systems used by friendly forces. The ANTARES combines precise laser warning and local situational awareness capabilities in a single electro-optical head. The module can be mounted on either the vehicle's roof or turret and provides a 360° azimuthal field of view around the vehicle, day and night, and elevation coverage from -15° to +75°, which also makes it possible to spot snipers on rooftops. With a resolution of 5 million pixels, it provides colour video for daytime operations and black-and-white video for night-time operations. In daylight, the system can see an armoured vehicle at a distance of 500 m or a small drone at a distance of 250 m, and detect a human being up to 150 m away. Thanks to its built-in laser warning system, the ANTARES also issues an alert if the vehicle is targeted by a laser rangefinder or designator. It can locate laser threats to within 1.5 degrees as well as detect the launch of an incoming missile, allowing the crew to react as it sees fit. Additionally, the vehicle features the PILAR V, a roof-mounted device capable of detecting, identifying and locating shots from small arms, medium-calibre weapons, mortar shells, shaped charge rockets or RPGs in real time. It provides a 360° coverage and is always active. It can filter outgoing fire to avoid false detections and false reports to the SICS combat information system, and can detect whether single or burst shots are being fired in the vehicle's direction. The PILAR V is accurate to within 2° in azimuth and 3° in elevation, with a 10% margin for distance estimation. However, if other Griffon or SCORPION vehicles are in the vicinity, their own PILAR V systems will detect the shot as well and can exchange the data instantly. The vetronics will then triangulate to pinpoint the shooter's position and share the information across all vehicles. The vetronics will also be able to automatically direct the remotely-operated turret towards this position, and propose firing among other options. This threat discrimination and precise target designation capability improves situational awareness, immediate reaction and the effectiveness of retaliatory fire.
Countermeasures yet to equip the Griffon include an active protection system; one is being developed by Thales and Nexter for integration on SCORPION vehicles under the PROMETEUS programme, which aims to develop a global armour protection system for SCORPION vehicles combining three technologies: "versatile passive protection", "reactive protection" and "active protection". The latter, designated Diamant, is a distributed hard-kill active protection system being developed by Thales comprising four frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar sensors mounted on the corners of the vehicle, a number of effector modules mounted around the perimeter of the vehicle, on its roof and around its hood, and a power supply system for the control unit computer. The system uses the radars to detect and track potential threats such as anti-tank rockets and anti-tank guided missiles. Once the threat has been detected, the system instructs the appropriate effector module to launch a countermeasure along the threat's trajectory, in order to destroy or degrade it sufficiently so that it can no longer perforate the vehicle's passive armor.
The Griffon is designed to simplify maintenance. The vehicles are fitted with sensors on key components, such as suspension, brake pads and gearboxes, enabling predictive maintenance. The principle is to deploy Health and Usage Monitoring Systems on these key functions to generate continuous data on vehicle activity. This data is stored and analyzed to determine remaining potential, anticipate breakdowns and program interventions at the right moment. This method, one of several being explored as part of the MCO-T 2025 plan, is intended to help streamline support operations and improve vehicle availability. HUMS sensors can, for example, take the form of a dynamic engine oil quality control system. This control tool will allow oil changes to be carried out when necessary, rather than systematically after a set number of kilometers. The adoption of predictive maintenance, agreed in a rider to the SCORPION contract, meant developing the software layer needed to coordinate sensors and analyze data. SCORPION vehicles are the first in the French military designed to be equipped with HUMS sensors; adding this capability is therefore not a complex operation. It boils down to connecting a few cables to a central box located behind the vehicle's driver. The maneuver is also closely linked to the SERUM' cases developed by Arquus. This diagnostic tool takes the form of a computer which can be plugged into the vehicle to perform maintenance operations or identify faults.