Thread by @JonHawkes275

With news of Pearson buy out by Rafael, a short thread to show some appreciation of what a remarkable dominance of their market they have, for a ~75 person company in a large shed in Newcastle.

In summary, unless theyre getting mine clearance kit from Russia (this pic the odd sight of a Finnish Leopard 2A4FIN with Russian KMT-5M roller), when you see a mine plough/roller on an AFV essentially anywhere in the world, they probably bought a Pearson product.

Obviously start with the home market - UK has a lot of Pearson gear, most dramatic (or menacing?) are the full width mine plough (FWMP, recently rebranded the Route Opening Mine Plough) on Trojan AEVs, which you'll see all over the world on heavy engineering AFV.

A lot of NATO users bought Pearson rollers and other front-end equipment (FEE) throughout the time in Afghanistan and Iraq, and many endure in route clearance packages and doubtless in storage when needed again.

In some ways the most impressive achievement is that the US M1150 ABVs mount Pearson FWMP, where you'd surely expect this to be mandated or at least by now superseded by a US supplied item. Taking that market is impressive.

Assorted highlights from around the Europe: Germany's Wisent 2, Finland's Leopard 2R, Netherlands AEV3 Kodiak, many more out there.

At another end of the spectrum, the Indian T-90S/SK fleet use the track width mine plough (TWMP recently rebranded the Self Protection Mine Plough), with 1,500 ordered. One where you might have expected a KMT roller from Russia to go with the Russian tanks. Also Arjun uses TWMP.

Further East, Singaporean Kodiak AEV use FWMP as do South Korean K600 CEV (as well as the General Purpose Blade (GPB) which you also see on many MBT like the pic of a Challenger 2 here).

Brazilian Guarani 6x6 have been trialed in an engineering configuration with Pearson front end kit, including dozer blades and excavators.

Another trial was of the VECTOR 'self-protection mine plough' on the upcoming Spanish VCR Dragón (Piranha 5 derivative). Most vehicles have tested a Pearson device at some point (CV90, Boxer and PARS here).

More recently we've seen smaller scale Pearson gear on a variety of uncrewed systems as conceptual vehicles (and i still stand by by idea for a Milrem/Pearson/Plasan uncrewed route clearance package concept being cool:

https://twitter.com/JonHawkes275/status/1536643548493250560?s=20&t=X7NFJNveQTelvoAnr5kOng

)

Enough unpaid and unsolicited PR for Pearson, but just to hammer home what a cool story it is of a niche but global requirement being dominated by a small company from Newcastle. Or now a small department of a big company from Haifa. Anyway, well done Pearson is the point. /end