Britain's new SCOUT Specialist Vehicles are to be outfitted with scalable, open architecture computer subsystems from GE's Intelligent Platforms business.

The equipment -- Ethernet switches, gateway processors, data servers and video servers -- were ordered by General Dynamics UK in a contract worth about $100 million.

"A strength of the GE proposal (for the contract) was that it was based exclusively on COTS -- commercial off-the-shelf -- products, minimizing program risk and cost and reducing time to first deliveries," said Andy MacCaig, Business Segment Leader, Ground at GE's Intelligent Platforms business. "However, an even greater strength was GE's ability to work in close collaboration with General Dynamics UK to fully understand the requirement and to adapt the proposed solution such that it was an exact fit with what was needed."

The SCOUT SV will come in six variants and will replace the British Army's CVR(T) vehicles. They are heavily protected, high-mobility, fully digital platforms with state-of-the-art intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance capabilities. General Dynamics UK is supplying 589 of the new vehicles to the British military.

GE's computer subsystems will be the backbone of the vehicle electronics architecture.