Deal worth £180m for armoured vehicles

The MoD has ordered 200 armoured Ocelot vehicles - to be renamed Foxhounds - to aid frontline troops in war zones like Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

Although the vehicles will be put together in Shoreham, Force Protection is already advertising 50 extra engineering jobs to handle the high-end design work at their base on the Ricardo site in Radford Semele.

The decision to replace the lightly armoured Snatch Land Rovers was made some time ago and Force Protection was instrumental in coming up with prototypes for a stronger vehicle better able to withstand the blast from roadside bombs.

On Wednesday, Julian Forsyth, the company’s business development director, said “We hope to deliver a training fleet of 30 or 35 Foxhounds by the end of next year with the whole order being supplied by 2010.

“At Radford Semele we will need engineers, project management staff and quality assurance people to handle the high-end of the design work. This will double our workforce to about 100.”

At one stage it was hoped the manufacturing work would be done locally.