Denel Land Systems launches new turret

Denel LCT turret

17 September 2014 by defenceWeb

Denel Land Systems launched a new one-man turret, designed for the African market, at the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) 2014 expedition in Pretoria on Wednesday.

The Light Combat Turret is a one-man turret for vehicles likely to operate in higher risk areas or roles, Denel said. It provides all-round and top protection against infantry weapons and fragments, with vision blocks for all round view and a top hatch to allow the gunner to ride head out when safe to do so. The turret can traverse 360 degrees and the mounted weapon can depress to minus twelve degrees and elevate to 45 degrees.

Weapons options include 7.62 and 12.7 mm machineguns, a 20 mm GA1 cannon or a 40 mm GLI40 automatic grenade launcher. The cradle has been designed to accept any of these weapons without modification.

The fire direction system includes a three field of view high definition day camera, a thermal imager for night use and a laser rangefinder, with all ballistic calculations on screen.

Denel Land Systems said the turret provides an affordable and low maintenance protected firepower solution for armoured personnel carriers or similar vehicles. Keeping the cost down is the fact that the turret is manually operated but other actuation mechanisms are available. Baseline weight is 650 kg.

Stephan Burger, Denel Land Systems (DLS) CEO, said that DLS and its associated companies LMT and Mechem now offer armoured vehicles as complete systems with the armament fully integrated with the vehicle. Burger said there has been interest in the turrets from Far Eastern customers.

Also on display at the Denel stand was a fire truck being offered to the South African Air Force to meet its Project Bandsman requirement for a fire/rescue vehicle. The vehicle on display was brought in in partnership with Rosenbauer and MAN.