Giat Industries of France, with some funding from the French DGA, has developed a KBCM (Kit Basique de Countre Mesures, or basic countermeasures kit) Defensive Aids System (DAS).

The KBCM can be installed on high-value armoured fighting vehicles such as tanks and reconnaissance vehicles to improve their battlefield survivability against a variety of direct threats including Anti-Tank Guided Weapons (ATGW) using SACLOS (Semi-Automatic Command-to-Line Of Sight) guidance, laser-guided munitions and tank fire-control systems.

The KBCM has already been installed on the turret of a Giat Industries AMX-10RC (6x6) 105 mm armed reconnaissance vehicle for a series of trials which commenced in 1999.

Giat Industries regard this as a technology demonstrator but which could be tailor made to meet the user's specific operational requirements. The main object of the DAS is to detect and initiate countermeasures to all direct threats to the platform.

A typical DAS would consist of a man/machine interface and central processing unit coupled to the existing vehicle's combat system and data bus.

To this are added Infra-Red (IR) jammer/jammers, missile launch detector, three laser warning detectors covering a full 360° (the Israel LWS-2) and the well established GALIX system which can launch a wide variety of grenades.

The man/machine interface would have a display on which all threats would be displayed with appropriate countermeasures taken to defeat the threat.

Method of operation would be manual, semiautomatic orfull automatic. In the latter case the system would enage and defeat those targets which were the greatest threats to the platform.

While Giat Industries is in overall prime contractor and system integrator for the KBCM a number of other contractors are also involved including SAGEM for the laser warning sensors and DASA for the missile warning system.

Further growth potential, according to Giat Industries, would include a network of several vehicles fitted with DAS linked to a FINDERS (Fast Information, Navigation, DEcision and Reporting System) type command and control system to provide well coordinated protection to a complete armoured unit.

Giat Industries stress that some key parts of their DAS are already in production and service. GLAIX, for example, is already in production and service with a number of countries including France, Saudi Arabia,

Sweden and the United Arab Emirates while FINDERS is standard equipment on the Giat Industries Leclerc tanks built for home and export markets. Galix can launch a variety of grenades such as smoke and screening as selected by the operator.

Development. Not yet in production or service.