WFEL sole-bidder for British Army’s Project Tyro bridging contract

Project Tyro is the British Army’s programme to provide the Royal Engineers (RE) with new Close Support Bridge (CSB) and General Support Bridge (GSB) capabilities for both wet and dry gap crossings.

The programme requires that the CSB be deployed, launched and recovered from armoured vehicles or wheeled launchers. The GSB need to be self-deployed.

Commenting on the development, a Ministry of Defence (MOD) spokesperson told Army Technology: “Project Tyro is now being treated as a Qualifying Defence Contract with WFEL and we look forward to receiving their bid.”

WFEL is offering the DSB Dry Support Bridge for the GSB requirement and the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) Leguan bridge for the CSB requirement.

The company’s Dry Support Bridge can be fully deployed in 90 minutes by a team of eight people using a single launch platform.

Under the bid, Leguan will be adapted for launch from the British Army’s Titan armoured bridge launchers – based on the Challenger 2 chassis – and a new wheeled bridge launcher. Titan currently carries the BAE Systems-built BR-90 family bridges.

WFEL has already completed the assessment phase for Project Tyro, and an invitation to negotiate (ITN) was issued in September last year. Negotiations for the project’s demonstration and manufacture phase are set to start this summer.

WFEL’s Dry Support Bridge is already in service with the US and Australian armed forces among others. The Dry Support Bridge was integrated by Australia onto the Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles (RMMV) 10 x 10 fully-armoured chassis.

The Dry Support Bridge can also be carried on the RMMV HX77 truck used by the British Army without modification.

WFEL said a key part of its offering was interoperability with NATO forces, with the Dry Support Bridge offering the UK the ability to easily share resources with other users.