The conflict in Afghanistan has led to a massive increase in the demand for electrical power in battlefield theatres. One of our customers specialises in the provision of Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) for mission critical equipment such as perimeter defence.

The UK MoD DLO recently instructed R E Thompson's customer to proceed with an Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) which required a UPS to be delivered and tested in a very short time. In addition, previous UPS built by our customer were typically indoor units, and therefore did not need the high levels of insulation from the elements. This unit did - and it was to be the largest UPS the customer had ever built for the MoD.

R E Thompson worked with the customer's design team to produce an IP65 unit which would be capable of meeting all the functional and environmental requirements. The joint R E Thompson-customer team also had to meet a number of physical requirements such as not exceeding the weight limit for a two man lift. The design that was jointly reached is as per the images as shown below.

The customer duly delivered the first units to the UK MoD to ship to theatre in another two weeks, beating the very ambitious target set at the start of manufacture.

Since then the units have performed flawlessly with the UK and US military in-theatre and is being evaluated by the Canadian and Australian armed forces for similar applications.