The Véhicule Blindé Multi-Rôle Griffon ( English: Multirole Armoured Vehicle Griffon) or VBMR Griffon is a French six-wheel multi-purpose armoured personnel carrier developed and manufactured by KNDS France (formerly Nexter Systems), Arquus (formerly Renault Trucks Defense) and Thales. The vehicle entered service in 2019 and is, alongside the four-wheel VBMR-L Serval co-developed by KNDS France and Texelis, the successor of the Véhicule de l'Avant Blindé (VAB).
Components of the French SCORPION programme, the two vehicles are expected to fulfill a wide range of tasks and thus consist of several variants and subvariants. An on-board 120 mm mortar system based on the Griffon, designated Griffon MEPAC, has notably been developed. Furthermore, two distinct Serval-based air defence platforms are under development as of 2023; the Serval LAD, intended as a dedicated counter-UAV vehicle, and the Serval Mistral (or Serval TCP) for general V/SHORAD applications.
In total, 1,818 VBMR Griffon, 2,038 VBMR-L Serval, 54 Griffon MEPAC as well as at least 85 Serval LAD and Serval Mistral/TCP are to be delivered to the French Army by 2035.
Background Since the 2000s, the French Army had been looking to replace the emblematic VAB, which entered service in 1979. The vehicle was becoming increasingly obsolete in the face of new and upcoming conflicts. After multiple postponements of a programme to modernize the French Army's Armoured Cavalry Arm, the 2013 White Paper on Defense and National Security recommended the order of 2080 multi-role armoured vehicles (1,958 heavy VBMR and 122 lightweight VBMR) as well as 248 armoured reconnaissance and combat vehicles (EBRC). In 2014, the French Ministry of Defense finally entrusted their design to a consortium formed by Nexter, Arquus and Thales, who had announced their intention to collaborate as early as 2010 and had initiated preliminary work for a joint technical solution.
The development and purchase of this new generation of armoured vehicles, part of a programme styled SCORPION (Synergie du COntact Renforcée par la Polyvalence et l'InfovalorisatiON; English: Contact Synergy Reinforced by Versatility and Infotainment), was officially announced on 5 December 2014. The long-awaited first stage of the programme had been launched in October that year. This first stage, for a total cost of nearly €5.1 billion (FY2017), includes the replacement of the VAB by the VBMR Griffon, the replacement of the AMX-10 RC, ERC-90 Sagaie and VAB HOT by the EBRC Jaguar, the modernization of the Leclerc tank as well as the development of a unified combat information network to ensure the coherence of systems in service. Under this initial €5 billion investment plan up to 2025, 780 VBMR and 110 EBRC were to be acquired. The content of the following stages of the programme was to be consolidated at a later date to achieve the target set by the 2014-2019 Military Programming Law (LPM) and updated by the Defence Council's amendments on April 6, 2016: 1,722 heavy VBMR Griffon, 522 lightweight VBMR (which was to become the VBMR-L Serval), 248 EBRC Jaguar and 200 renovated Leclerc XLR. The first 319 Griffon and 20 Jaguar were ordered in April 2017.
In the 2019-2025 LPM adopted in July 2018, the SCORPION programme's targets were revised upwards with the planned acquisition of a total of 1,872 VBMR Griffon, 978 VMBR-L Serval, 300 EBRC Jaguar as well as the upgrade of 200 Leclerc tanks and 18 DCL armoured recovery vehicles to the XLR standard; all to be delivered by 2030. The total cost of the programme was estimated at €11 billion.
On 26 October 2018, the Belgian government formalized the plan to purchase 60 EBRC Jaguar and 382 VBMR Griffon for €1.5 billion. The vehicles will replace the Belgian Army's Piranha IIIC armoured personnel carriers and Dingo 2 infantry mobility vehicles. The deal includes spare parts and secure communications equipment and deliveries are scheduled to start in 2025.
VBMR platform
Design When the first stage of the programme was launched in 2014, the aim was to achieve an acquisition cost of €1 million per VBMR and €3 million per EBRC. This was expected to be achieved in part through the large quantities of SCORPION vehicles to be acquired, enabling economies of scale. Furthermore, the consortium opted for the Griffon to share 70% of its components with the Jaguar to save on development, production and maintenance costs as well as to facilitate logistics. Constituents shared include the suspension, supplied by Strasbourg-based company Quiri, the Elips intercom system by Argenteuil-based Elno, the roof-mounted PILAR V acoustic gunfire detection and localization system by Lyon-based Metravib Defence, as well as the vetronics. Featuring a wide range of state-of-the-art technologies, the Jaguar ultimately ended up costing twice as much as expected with an estimated unit cost of €6 million (FY2019), but the Griffon nonetheless benefited from the common development with an average cost estimated at just €1.5 million per unit (FY2017), 50% more than its original target price.
Derived from the BMX 01 prototype proposed by Renault Trucks Defense, the Griffon benefits from a classic layout. It's a huge armoured truck with six-wheel drive and four-wheel steering (front and rear axles), with the powertrain at the front. The vehicle weighs in at around 25 tonnes in combat order, roughly twice as much as the 13-tonne VAB. The embarked combat group of a standard Griffon (the VTT Félin) comprises 10 fully-equipped soldiers; a driver, a dedicated gunner as well as 8 infantrymen, including the commander. In the crew cabin, the driver (front left) and the remote turret gunner (front right) are sheltered by a one-piece armoured windshield. They access their seats through side doors fitted with armoured windows. The rear part of the body is taken up by the compartment, with two small armoured windows on each side, where 8 men sit facing each other on anti-blast seats fixed to the side walls. A ramp at the back, featuring an emergency door and an episcope, that comes down low enough for the troops to skip on and off enables entry and exit. The rear compartment is surmounted by four roof hatches: one at the front left, behind the driver; one above the gunner's station, behind the remotely-operated turret; and two at the rear. The Griffon features a militarized variant of a commercial Renault-Volvo diesel powertrain rated at 400 hp, an automatic gearbox and independent running gears, enabling the vehicle to reach a top speed of 90 km/h and a range of up to 800 km. The engine is rail-mounted, facilitating maintenance operations. It is able to run on various types of fuel to facilitate replenishment wherever in the world French forces would be deployed. The Griffon also incorporates air conditioning and heating for comfort, as well as an overpressure protection system in order to keep the crew and passengers safe from chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats. Crossing capacities are of the order of 1.2 m for a ford, 50 cm for a step and 1 m for a ditch.
The Griffon is designed to offer STANAG 4569 Level 4 armour protection as standard, being capable of withstanding 14.5 mm armour-piercing ammunition, 155 mm artillery shell splinters, IEDs and mine blasts, thus significantly improving the safety of the soldiers engaged over the VAB. Furthermore, armour protection levels can be raised beyond STANAG Level 4 through the installation of a modular armour package. A deployed French Griffon GTIA (in the French Army, a GTIA is a combined arms battle group composed of a little over 1,000 men) would be composed of two or three infantry companies equipped with Griffon vehicles, and a Jaguar cavalry squadron. Although its structure would be modular according to the missions assigned to it, each conventional infantry company is expected to have at its disposal: a command section comprising a command Griffon (Griffon EPC), a mobile maintenance workshop one (Griffon ELI) and 2 medical evacuation ones (Griffon SAN); three infantry sections with 4 Griffon each (Griffon VTT Félin); a combat engineering section with 3 Griffon (Griffon GEN); a fire support section with 2 Griffon equipped with 81 mm mortars (Griffon MO81), another with 2 Griffon equipped with Akeron MP missiles (Griffon MMP) and a last one with a Griffon embarking a sniper section (Griffon STE). In addition, there is an artillery observation Griffon (Griffon VOA) as well as several trucks and light all-terrain vehicles.
The Direction Générale de l'Armement (DGA), the French defense procurement agency, announced the Griffons qualification on June 24, 2019, enabling the first vehicles to be delivered on July 4, 2019. By the end of 2021, 339 units of the VMBR Griffon had been delivered to the French Army. The first operational units were displayed on the Champs-Élysées during the 2019 Bastille Day Parade. By 2025, the SCORPION infantry should have achieved its first infovalorization and collaborative combat capability, with the Griffon multi-role armoured vehicles having begun to replace the quadragenarian VAB in 2019 and half of the Griffon ordered expected to have been delivered. In the 2024-2030 Military Programming Law, it is stated 1,437 VBMR Griffon are to enter French service by 2030 and 1,818 by 2035. 54 Griffon MEPAC are also expected to be delivered to the French Army by 2030.
Sensors and situational awareness The data collected by the sensors equipping the Griffon are fed into the SCORPION bubble via a common combat information network, which is the SICS (Système d'Information du Combat de SCORPION; English: SCORPION Combat Information System), developed by Atos-Bull, and the CONTACT (COmmunications Numériques TACtiques et de Théâtre; English: Tactical and theater digital communications) software defined radio system developed by Thales. The SICS interconnects all the players in a combined arms battle group, while the CONTACT provides communication capabilities between the vehicles, with simultaneous and real time voice and data transmission. The Griffon is characterized by its vetronics i.e. the architecture of its on-board electronic systems. Also developed by Thales, the architecture is common to all SCORPION vehicles. It requires compact yet powerful computers and links all navigation, protection, observation and communication systems. It manages and merges all data within the vehicle. The SCORPION Common Vetronics ensure the processing and exchange of intra- and inter-vehicle data, enabling collaborative combat. In addition, vetronics play a decisive role in vehicle protection, thanks in particular to algorithms that offer the vehicle commander and his men several options for dealing with a threat, allowing them to opt for the one they deem the most adequate for the situation. Meanwhile, Safran's Epsilon 10 inertial navigation system provides precise position, autonomous engagement and navigation capabilities to the vehicle, including in GNSS-denied environments.