By Staff Writer.
Homegrown prime defence contractor EOS Defence Systems is taking its R400-M remote weapon stations to the world after launching the platform at the Indo Pacific 2022 Expo. EOS is tapping into technology first developed in the Star Wars era to make some of the best remote weapon stations around for land, and now sea-based, tactical platforms.
Canberra-based EOS showcased its newest weapons system to an enthusiastic audience at the recent expo. On display were EOS systems designed to operate with a range of widely used weapons. But the star of the show were the new R400-M systems that housed Northrop Grumman’s M230 cannons.
“We customise to the client’s cannon requirements,” says EOS CEO Matt Jones. “What we provide is a system that points those cannons and allows the engagements to occur.
“The R400-M, the latest version of the operationally proven R400 remote weapons system family, offers customers the firepower and specialist ammunition natures possible for weapons up to and including 30 mm cannon, but in the weight and form factor of competitors’ machine gun systems.”
The land-based R400 is already in service with the Australian Army and five other customers internationally. The just-launched marine version is already in production for one overseas-based customer, with 15 R400-M systems already dispatched and a further 15 to follow.
“With the marine system, the R400-M, we have the ability to mount the weapons system onto the vessel and remote the operation of the weapons system into the control room of the vessel or system operating the canon,” says Mr Jones.
“We can generally do this at a lighter weight than any of our competitors. Our control systems allow us to be more accurate at longer ranges. We can offer a higher calibre, longer range, high hitting power solution, with a higher degree of accuracy, than our competitors.”
The technology behind the R400 remote weapons systems comfortably blends the old and the new. Some of the critical technologies hark back to the 1980s.
“There is a technological thread that runs from that original technology developed for the Star Wars program, which was really around pointing accuracy,” said the EOS CEO.
“The system that allows us to point a laser at a satellite in space tens of thousands of kilometres away, we use that same pointing algorithm and technology to point a remote weapons system at a target one, two, or three kilometres away, and to stabilise the system and maintain that point of aim in very difficult and complex environments.
“That’s the technological thread – what we’ve been doing in space all the way through to these weapon systems and also into the directed energy systems were are now developing.
Meanwhile, in the same week EOS was drawing a crowd at the Indo Pacific Expo, the publicly listed company confirmed the Australian Government had committed to buy 18 R400-M systems for the Australian Army’s future Land 8710-1 Littoral Manoeuvre Vessels.
“The Army already operates the R400 in their vehicles,” Mr Jones confirmed. “There are significant logistics, supply, and other benefits in standardising the R400 as the platform. Operators trained to operate the land system can operate the marine system. Once you know how to use our control interface, you can use any of our different weapon systems. It makes a lot of sense.
