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Abbreviations


 

British Army - Royal Engineers BR90 Family of Bridges - Close Support Bridge - General Support Bridge - Spanning Systems - BR-90 Carrier - Armed Forces - a8a8

THE ROYAL ENGINEERS

BRIDGING EQUIPMENT - BR90 - BR-90 CARRIER

 

BR90 Bridge on Titan

The RE BR-90 family of bridges are built from a range of seven modular panels of advanced aluminium alloy fabrication.

These are interchangeable through the various bridge types, to form two interconnecting trackways with a 4 m overall bridge width and a 1 m girder depth. BR90 is deployed with Royal Engineer units in both Germany and the UK.

The production order was valued at approximately £140 million in 1993.

These bridges entered service from 1999, and comprise the following elements:

  • General Support Bridge

  • Close Support Bridge

  • Two Span Bridge

  • Long Span Bridge

Close Support Bridge - This consists of three tank-launched bridges capable of being carried on a tank bridgelayer and a Tank Bridge Transporter truck.

There are three basic Tank Launched Bridges (also known as Close Support or Assault Bridges): the No 10, No 11 and No 12.

General Support Bridge - This system utilises the Automated Bridge Launching Equipment (ABLE) that is capable of launching bridges up to 44 m in length. The ABLE vehicle is positioned with its rear pointing to the gap to be crossed and a lightweight launch rail extended across the gap. The bridge is then assembled and winched across the gap supported by the rail, with sections added until the gap is crossed. Once the bridge has crossed the gap the ABLE launch rail is recovered. A standard ABLE system set consists of an ABLE vehicle and 2 x TBT carrying a 32 m bridge set. A 32 m bridge can be built by 10 men in about 25 minutes.

Spanning Systems - There are two basic spanning systems. The long span system allows for lengthening a 32 m span to 44 m using ABLE and the two span system allows 2 x 32 m bridge sets to be constructed by ABLE and secured in the middle by piers or floating pontoons, crossing a gap of up to 60 m.

 

BR-90 carrier - The Unipower 8x8 TBT is an improved mobility transporter for the BR 90 bridging system.

It can carry one No 10 bridge or two No 12 bridges.

The TBT can self load from, and off-load to, the ground. The TBT task is to re-supply the Chieftain and Titan AVLB with replacement bridges.

 

Photo Copyright BAe Systems