The vehicles will be equipped with a 15-metre telescopic mast system to obtain a long-range telecommunications network
Madrid-based General Dynamics European Land Systems (GDELS) is to supply 256 Piranha 5 8×8 armoured vehicles to Germany. The operation is part of the project called Tawan for the critical procurement of a vehicle-based long-range telecommunications network. The company reports that the agreement includes an initial batch of 58 armored vehicles for a price with “a three-digit volume in millions.”
The project, which is “part of the modernization efforts of the Bundeswehr,” as its Armed Forces are called in German, involves the collaboration of GDELS with the local company Rheinmetall Electronics, which acts as the main contractor of the communications contract, the source clarifies
The agreement was signed in Neubrandenbur, in the northeast of the country, at the facilities of the GDELS-FWW subsidiary, born after the acquisition of the local firm Fahrzeugwerk in 2018.
The Piranha 5 of this contract will be equipped with a 15-meter telescopic mast system that will serve as a highly mobile armored connectivity point in the aforementioned Taban network. A similar variant of long-range communication vehicle, called Piranha 3 Kompak, “has been in successful operation in the Swiss Army for many years”, reports the company, which has also announced that it will establish a support centre in Neubrandenburg “to ensure immediate technical and logistical maintenance, as well as the operability of the system”.