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. 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. In addition, there is an artillery observation
Griffon (
Griffon VOA) as well as several trucks and light all-terrain vehicles.
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. The ANTARES'' combines precise laser warning and local situational awareness capabilities in a single electro-optical head. The module can be mounted on either the vehicle's roof or turret and provides a 360° azimuthal field of view around the vehicle, day and night, and elevation coverage from -15° to +75°, which also makes it possible to spot snipers on rooftops. With a resolution of 5 million pixels, it provides colour video for daytime operations and black-and-white video for night-time operations. In daylight, the system can see an armoured vehicle at a distance of 500 m or a small drone at a distance of 250 m, and detect a human being up to 150 m away. Thanks to its built-in laser warning system, the
ANTARES also issues an alert if the vehicle is targeted by a laser rangefinder or designator. It can locate laser threats to within 1.5 degrees as well as detect the launch of an incoming missile, allowing the crew to react as it sees fit. Countermeasures yet to equip the
Griffon include an
active protection system; one is being developed by
Thales and
Nexter for integration on
SCORPION vehicles under the PROMETEUS (
PROtection Multi Effets Terrestre Unifiée;
English: Unified terrestrial multi-effect protection) programme, which aims to develop a global armour protection system for
SCORPION vehicles combining three technologies: "versatile passive protection", "reactive protection" and "active protection". The latter, designated
Diamant, is a distributed hard-kill active protection system being developed by
Thales comprising four frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar sensors mounted on the corners of the vehicle, a number of effector modules mounted around the perimeter of the vehicle, on its roof and around its hood, and a power supply system for the control unit computer. The system uses the radars to detect and track potential threats such as
anti-tank rockets and
anti-tank guided missiles. Once the threat has been detected, the system instructs the appropriate effector module to launch a countermeasure along the threat's trajectory, in order to destroy or degrade it sufficiently so that it can no longer perforate the vehicle's passive armor. The
Griffon is designed to simplify maintenance. The vehicles are fitted with sensors on key components, such as suspension, brake pads and gearboxes, enabling predictive maintenance. The principle is to deploy
Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) on these key functions to generate continuous data on vehicle activity. This data is stored and analyzed to determine remaining potential, anticipate breakdowns and program interventions at the right moment. This method, one of several being explored as part of the
MCO-T 2025 plan, is intended to help streamline support operations and improve vehicle availability. HUMS sensors can, for example, take the form of a dynamic engine oil quality control system. This control tool will allow oil changes to be carried out when necessary, rather than systematically after a set number of kilometers. The lower part of the turret, meanwhile, incorporates an independent
GALIX countermeasure system developed and manufactured by
Lacroix Defense and
Nexter, which consists of 8 80 mm smoke grenade dischargers linked to the
ANTARES laser warning system. It operates alongside the missile launch detector, the
PILAR V, the
ECLIPSE and the infrared jammer. The
GALIX is a self-protection system that makes vehicle protection more reliable through an automatic detection action, which drastically reduces protection engagement time by automating the decision phase. When a shot is detected within a 5 km radius, the sensors transfer threat and angle-of-attack data to the vehicle's
fire-control system. In response, the
GALIX will launch multispectral countermeasures in less than a second, capable of disrupting the opposing gunner. Essentially, the grenades deploy a cloud of smoke that mask the vehicle in visible range as well as all laser wavebands (target designators, laser rangefinders, etc.) and large infrared bands (0.8-14 microns) covering bands I, III and IV. This non-toxic protective cloud lasts up to 90 seconds and is created from ground level up to a maximum height of 7 meters and to a distance of between 20 and 60 meters from the vehicle. Furthermore, the system is designed not only for self-defense (passive action), but is also capable of neutralizing hostile personnel (as it can fire a variety of lethal and non-lethal charges). With variants and subvariants incorporating equipment and/or systems specific to them,
Griffon-derived fire support vehicles possess their own main armament, ranging from Akeron MP missiles to the MEPAC on-board 120 mm mortar system. They nonetheless also integrate a remotely-operated turret as secondary armament (typically the
T2 Hornet Lite equipped with a 7.62 mm machine gun as well as the
GALIX, and featuring the same
MINEO sighting system as the
T1 Hornet). Each
SCORPION vehicle's remote controlled weapon station is a contributor to the intelligence acquisition and sharing chain. As common
SCORPION equipment, they are the "eyes" of collaborative combat. Each remotely-operated turret is integrated into the vehicle's vetronics, which in turn is linked to the other elements of a French company team or GTIA via the
SICS combat information system. This facilitates the sharing of tactical information in real time, allowing every section to have a precise idea of the situation of friendly vehicles and enabling
SCORPION Vehicle A (whether a
Griffon,
Serval,
Jaguar or
Leclerc XLR) to engage a target identified by
SCORPION Vehicle B. ==Variants of the Griffon and their design==