§ Mr. KeyTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the Future Engineer Tank; and if he will list the project milestones. [68516]
§ Mr. Spellar[holding answer 3 February 1999]: The Future Engineer Tank programme will provide the Army with modern armoured bridge launchers and engineer vehicles to support the Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank. A number of potential solutions have been identified and the MOD plans to let feasibility study contracts with Vickers Defence Systems, Alvis Vehicles Ltd. and OBRUM in partnership with Marconi Electronic Systems (Land and Naval). Depending on the results of the feasibility study phase, which are expected to report next year, we expect to select one contractor to develop and manufacture both variants.
We currently require an in service date of around 2004.