DEW and RUAG Announce Teaming for Protection Technologies

OTTAWA, May 31 /CNW/ - DEW Engineering & Development ULC of Ottawa, Canada is pleased to announce the recent signing of a teaming agreement with RUAG Land Systems AG of Thun, Switzerland. This agreement will directly result in next generation, fully integrated "made-in-Canada" passive vehicle protection being made available to the Canadian military, covering a broad range of ballistic, IED, RPG, EFP and mine-blast threats.

With a broad range of Canadian Army programs on the horizon, including CCV, TAPV, LAV 3 Upgrade, MTV and MSVS SMP, this teaming arrangement could not come at a better time for a Canadian Army looking for improved, and better integrated survivability protection as it moves to the future.

In the words of Urs Breitmeier, CEO of RUAG Land Systems, "DEW Engineering is well recognized in Canada for armour system innovation and RUAG is excited by the potential that our combined team has to deliver first class integrated armour solutions to Canada".

RUAG Land Systems, part of the 7,000 person RUAG Technology Group, has well established and diverse competencies on vehicle systems such as the M109, CV90, Leopard 2, as well as weapon systems, special containers, maintenance/repair and testing. As well, with decades of experience in the area of ammunition and the impact of weapons, RUAG has developed modular and adaptable vehicle protection against ballistic, EMC/NEMP, RPG, EFP and mine threats. This Armour Cooperation Agreement will initially bring to Canada their impressive passive RPG defeating technologies, with other technologies possible in future.

The SidePRO-LASSO is an adaptive, passive and very lightweight side protection against the common anti-tank grenade RPG-7. The side protection system SidePRO-RPG is in a class of its own - highly efficient, passive protection against RPG-7 for medium and heavy armoured vehicles.

Incorporated in 1978, DEW Engineering & Development, with Headquarters in Ottawa and additional manufacturing facility in Miramichi, New Brunswick, is well known in Canada for land combat vehicle re-life/re-role and add-on armour protection systems. DEW designed and is supplying all ballistic appliqué armour for the US Stryker program. Continuous DEW armour R&D programs have seen the addition of next generation Stanag Level IV solutions to their protection product portfolio. Previous and current vehicle projects for the Canadian Army include extensive repair and refit work on the Army's light armoured wheeled vehicle fleets and a multi-year M113 Life Extension Program that saw major improvements to the mobility, firepower and protection of the Army's M113 fleet, making it one of the safest vehicles in its class on operations today.

According to Bill Brewer, Vice President, Business Development Armour at DEW Engineering, "The agreement between DEW and RUAG will directly benefit our soldiers in the field. DEW now has the ability to complement our next generation armour systems with state of the art RUAG technology - the end result will have a significant, positive impact on soldier survivability"

For further information: Bill Brewer, Vice President, Business Development Armour, DEW Engineering and Development, ULC, Tel: [phone] (ext 301), Email: [email protected]