IAV 2019: Rheinmetall unveils proposal for Challenger 2 LEP

At the International Armoured Vehicles (IAV) 2019 conference held in London on 21–24 January, Rheinmetall unveiled details of its proposal for the Challenger 2 Life Extension Programme (LEP). The company’s solution has been to develop a completely new turret for the Challenger 2, which has a fully digital electronic architecture, new day and night sights for the commander and gunner, and a Rheinmetall L55 smoothbore 120 mm gun.

The L55 gun is capable of firing Rheinmetall’s 120 mm ammunition family, and the typical loadout would include the DM63 armour piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot (APFSDS) for armoured targets, and a DM11 programmable high-explosive round with impact, delay, and air-burst settings. The commander is provided with a panoramic sight.

Although the Rheinmetall proposal does not feature an active protection system (APS), a company representative told Jane’s the new turret is capable of mounting such a system according to user requirements. He added that the turret also contains under-armour links, as well as having increased power and weight capacity, which would enable a customer to fit the vehicle with an electronic warfare system. It is likely that when mounted on the Challenger 2, such a system would be intended to disrupt the remote detonation signals of improvised explosive devices.

The turret was developed on Rheinmetall’s own initiative and was not funded by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) for the Challenger 2 LEP assessment phase. The smoothbore gun was not part of the MoD’s LEP requirement, with the request for proposals focusing on mission system obsolescence.