Rheinmetall UK and Mercedes-Benz UK have announced a strategic partnership, combining proven Mercedes-Benz vehicle technology with Rheinmetall UK’s specialist defence integration and mission-system expertise to support the British Army’s future tactical mobility requirements under the Land Mobility Programme. The partnership brings together Mercedes-Benz’s proven vehicle base with Rheinmetall UK’s defence programme leadership and military capability, creating a collaborative approach focused on delivering and sustaining capability for the UK.
As part of the partnership, Rheinmetall’s Telford Facility (RBSL) will become the Vehicle Integration Centre for Team Wolf, where systems integration, testing and validation of the capability will take place. Together, these capabilities create a strong industrial foundation for Team Wolf to deliver and sustain British Army mobility requirements.
At the heart of Team Wolf is a commitment to delivering and sustaining capability in the UK. Establishing the Vehicle Integration Centre at Telford will place critical integration activity in Britain, drawing on an established base of defence engineering skills, infrastructure and experience.
The centre will provide the focal point for systems integration, testing and validation, bringing together the people, facilities and technical capability required to integrate Team Wolf vehicles for British Army requirements.
This approach is designed to retain critical knowledge and skills in the UK and provide the foundation to support, adapt and evolve the capability throughout its service life.
Telford already plays an important role in UK land capability, including the manufacture of Boxer vehicles for the British Army, making the new integration role a natural extension of an established sovereign industrial base.
The programme is targeting up to 50% UK content, creating opportunities for British suppliers and SMEs and supporting skilled employment across engineering, integration and the wider supply chain. Rheinmetall has previously publicly committed to sourcing approximately 50% of its UK tactical-vehicle content from British suppliers.
Rebecca Richards, Managing Director, Rheinmetall UK, said: “Team Wolf is bringing together two organisations with complementary strengths and a shared ambition to deliver an enduring mobility capability for the British Army. Establishing the Vehicle Integration Centre at Telford is central to that ambition. It puts British engineering, integration and skills at the heart of our delivery model and provides a strong UK foundation from which we can deliver, support and evolve capability over the long term. This is about more than vehicles. It is about building sovereign capability, strengthening the UK supply chain and creating the skills and industrial resilience needed to support the British Army’s future force.”
Olivier Reppert, CEO & Managing Director at Mercedes-Benz Cars UK said: “For more than 45 years, the Mercedes-Benz G-Class has stood for strength, reliability and adaptability in demanding conditions. With Team Wolf, we bring this proven vehicle foundation and our long-term OEM expertise into a partnership designed to support the British Army’s future mobility needs. Together with Rheinmetall UK’s defence integration capabilities, we can help create mission-ready solutions with a clear path for support and further development.”
Rheinmetall UK strengthens UK testing capability
Rheinmetall UK has strengthened the UK’s sovereign defence engineering capability with a significant investment in a new Vibration Test Facility (VTF) at its Telford site. Currently supporting the development of Challenger 3, the British Army’s next-generation Main Battle Tank, the facility will help engineers test and assure complex defence platforms and systems in the UK, reducing reliance on lengthy physical trials and providing faster, detailed evidence to support engineering decisions.
The investment brings advanced testing infrastructure, specialist engineering expertise and high-value skills together in Telford, strengthening the UK defence industrial base and building capability that can support current and future defence programmes.
The VTF can recreate the demanding vibration and movement experienced by military vehicles and equipment in operation. Engineers can use real-world data to reproduce these conditions in a controlled environment, allowing them to assess reliability, identify potential issues and understand how platforms and their systems are likely to perform over extended periods of service.
For Challenger 3, this provides an additional way to understand how the vehicle and its systems respond to demanding operational conditions. The facility complements physical trials, modelling and other engineering analysis, helping build the evidence required to support the reliability and performance of the platform.
Crucially, the VTF has been designed as a long-term UK engineering capability rather than for a single programme. Its scale and flexibility mean it has the potential to support future defence platforms and technologies, as well as applications in sectors including aerospace, automotive, rail, energy and civil engineering.
Capable of accommodating structures and assemblies weighing up to 40 tonnes, the facility can reproduce complex combinations of movement, including vertical motion, pitch and roll. This enables engineers to recreate demanding operating conditions and conduct accelerated durability and reliability testing without relying solely on extended physical trials.
Rob Hunter, Vibration Test Manager, said: “The VTF gives our engineers a powerful new way to understand complex platforms. We can recreate demanding operational conditions, measure how equipment responds and use that evidence to make better-informed engineering decisions. Challenger 3 is an important application, but this is a capability we have deliberately designed with the future in mind. Its flexibility means we can adapt it to different engineering challenges, supporting future programmes and technologies while retaining critical engineering knowledge and skills here in the UK.”
The facility is supported by specialist engineers and technicians working across mechanical and electrical engineering, testing, instrumentation, software and data analysis. It will also provide opportunities to develop high-value, transferable skills among apprentices and the next generation of British engineers and technicians.
By combining advanced infrastructure with British engineering expertise and skilled people, the VTF demonstrates Rheinmetall UK’s continued investment in sovereign UK defence capability. As the UK strengthens its defence industrial base, investments such as the VTF help build the domestic skills, infrastructure and industrial capacity required to develop, assure and support increasingly complex defence equipment.
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