French combat unit to adopt newest FELIN from September

The French Defense Procurement Agency (DGA) announced on Monday that the French army will start to equip its combat units with the newest Integrated Equipment and Communications Infantryman systems (FELIN), the modular infantry combat suites, from this September.

The first 90 French infantry combat systems were delivered on May 27, DGA said in a news release. But the first batch has been used in French infantry school for training, so the 1st French infantry regiment based in the northeast of France has to wait another several months.

After that, the 13th mountain infantry based in the French Alps will also be endowed with FELIN from the end of this year. With a target to equip four new regiments each year, the last system of the 22,588 FELINs will be delivered in 2015.

The French FELIN update program will cost a billion euros (1.22 billion U.S. dollars), and involves 25 European subcontractors in and outside France.

The new FELIN system includes a vest of protection, a battle dress, a dress for nuclear-bacteriological-chemical protection, aiming sights and optronics suites for day-night time, systems of communication and information, and individual or collective weapons.

According to DGA, FELIN can largely improve the mobility and the fight at night through increased capacities of observation and location, and will give the soldiers "a real capacity of fighting in network."

Source: Xinhua