Under the name of Team Minerva, Leonardo – as Principal Systems Integrator – leads a team of leading UK defence companies that have significant land vehicle protection and electronic infrastructure expertise.
Collectively, the team is tasked with improving the survivability and protection of Land Armoured Vehicles in the British Army, as part of delivering the UK Modular Integrated Protection System (MIPS) Implementation programme.
Let by Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) through the Aurora Engineering Delivery Partnership (EDP) contracting framework as managed by QinetiQ, Team Minerva includes Leonardo, Roke Manor Research, Thales, CGI, Ultra Electronics and Frazer Nash.
The Dstl contract builds upon the success of the Icarus Technology Demonstrator Programme (which concluded in July 2021). It represents the second phase of the MIPS programme for the development of a new pan-fleet active protection system architecture for British Army vehicles, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, to handle existing, new and future threats.
Team Minerva seeks to maximise the validation and verification of the MIPS Architecture Standard by pooling its land vetronics expertise and evolving common, Crown-owned system models within a secure collaborative working environment. This will enable the configuration of Active Protection Systems for a range of armoured vehicles against a variety of threats including Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs), Anti-Tank Guided Weapons (ATGWs) and Small Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS). Layered and adaptable configurations will provide the ability to reconfigure the systems for different operational scenarios, ensuring vehicles have the latest and most effective protection tactics for threats they face.
Furthermore, as part of the verification and validation programme, Team Minerva will design and build an electronic system integration laboratory (ESIL) with synthetic environment and hardware-in-the-loop testing facility. The team will select mature examples of sensor and effector node assets and, after their initial integration using MIPS interfaces, will install and operate these in a live firing technology demonstrator rig. Since Team Minerva is not currently responsible for conducting competitive selection of specific sensor or effector products for volume acquisition, the demonstration nodes will be chosen for their ability to exercise the broadest range of MIPS infrastructure features and to demonstrate modular layered behaviour, rather than for the absolute sensor or effector performance.
