Leonardo engineers keeping British & Italian artillery on target

20 May 2024

Leonardo has signed new contracts with the ministries of defence of the UK and Italy for its LINAPS artillery pointing system.

In one new contract, the Italian Ministry of Defence has placed an order with Leonardo for 39 LINAPS systems to equip its Army’s FH70 towed howitzer with precision fire capabilities.

Meanwhile in the UK, the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) organisation has placed a support contract to ensure the readiness of LINAPS on-board the UK’s L118 light gun through to its 2030 out-of-service date.

Designed and manufactured at our Edinburgh site, LINAPS is widely considered to be the gold standard artillery pointing system on the market. It is in-service with the Armed Forces of the UK, Italy, Poland, Canada, New Zealand, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Malaysia, Thailand and India.

Fitted to the British Army L118 light gun, LINAPS was successfully deployed as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was further proven on operations in Afghanistan, on the Canadian M777 howitzer.

The brains of LINAPS is a module called the FIN3110 (or FIN3210 depending on variant), which provides the orientation and position data for gun laying and navigation, ensuring pinpoint firing accuracy.

In future, data-generating sensors like the FIN3120 will form part of Leonardo’s wider approach to a more connected battlespace, with multi-domain integration underpinned by the company’s industry-leading expertise in secure cloud technologies, data and analytics.

By integrating sensors and products from across domains and making better use of data, it is possible to augment the human decision maker and enable faster and better decisions.