CMI Defence develops new Cockerill Protected Weapon Station

CMI Defence has unveiled two full-scale mock-ups of a medium-calibre Cockerill Protected Weapon Station (CPWS) on different wheeled armoured vehicles.

In recent years there has been a clear trend towards the design, development and production of remote weapon stations (RWSs), which are typically armed with a 7.62 mm or 12.7 mm machine gun (MG) or, in some cases, a 40 mm automatic grenade launcher (AGL).

These have a number of advantages including their very compact size and the lack of a turret basket, which takes up precious volume inside the vehicle. They do, however, have a number of disadvantages in that they normally lack armour protection for the weapon, its ammunition box and electro-optics, and therefore require the crew to emerge from cover to reload or repair the weapon.

Conceptual studies of a design to overcome these shortcomings began in late 2011. Following customer feedback a decision will be taken as to whether to build a CPWS for trials.

The CPWS is being marketed by CMI Defence under the designations CPWS 20, CPWS 25 and CPWS 30, the figure corresponding to the calibre of weapon selected by the customer.