Future Rapid Effect System

These types were broken down into families of vehicles: The Utility Variant comprises protected mobility, command and control, light armoured support, repair and recovery and medical.

The SOSI team was contracted to act as an independent, honest broker between industry and the MoD to co-ordinate the procurement of more than 3,000 vehicles which were expected to be acquired under FRES.

[4] The design is planned to follow the philosophy of "medium weight" forces that balance ease of transportability ("light") with armour ("heavy").

[5] The British Ministry of Defence decided to pursue a replacement, with a specification that it could be airlifted by Airbus A400M and smaller C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.

[6] Since then, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory has been researching electric armour, with the view of ultimately integrating it into the FRES design.

These were:[9] In a defence briefing on 14 June 2007, Lord Drayson made it clear that FRES UV would not be the standard off-the-shelf version of any of these vehicles:

The winning design provisionally selected for the FRES Utility Vehicle contract was the Mowag Piranha V, manufactured by General Dynamics.

[13][14] However, as no production order was announced, various sources "feared that the FRES programme had fallen victim to the UK defence "budget crunch".

[16] After General Dynamics had its preferred bidder status for UV withdrawn in December 2008, the Ministry of Defence decided to restructure the programme.

The UK MoD's Defence Equipment and Support agency focused its attention on the tracked variants of the FRES programme, most notably the Specialist Vehicle.

FRES as an overarching programme effectively no longer exists, with future UV and SV projects being separate armored vehicle procurements.

[28] BAE Systems fought to reverse the decision by announcing it would move manufacturing from Sweden to its Newcastle factory.