Lola. From the Altranet satellite dish mounted land vehicle to the Le Mans race car as well as the Talisman exterior, the full range of Lola activities were exhibited as pictured .
The Millennium ship: HMS Kent dockside at DSEi London Excel.
Onboard Anika tries out the Captain’s chair and surveys the panoramaic views (above). Immediately to the fore were located the vertical launch missiles capable of speeds of Mach Two and can be deployed without any human intervention whatsoever, they explode out of the vertical encasements - no further information could be disclosed, particularly not the number of any particular armaments carried on board. Around the bridge were located a number of defensive weaponry mounts. Sea-Gnats are a common defensive technology deployed universally throughout the services. This anti-missile technology can be rapidly deployed in less than two seconds to meet and greet incoming missiles. Powder metallic explosions near the ship produced by the detonated Sea-Gnats can provide a larger and distanced target area for the missile to either detonate prematurely or in the wrong location. Similar technologies are common place on many land vehicles and follow a similar if not smaller configuration. Their immediate deployment can be actioned from three stations on board the ship as opposed to the normal deployment through the various chains of command.
Located either side of the bridge adjacent to the Sea-Gnat were the mini-guns, which can only be described as anything but mini. Firing 4000 rounds a minute they never do so as the four rotating barrels begin to melt after the first 30 second salvo of 2000 rounds, bullet cases are fed away from the operators by an exhaust tube which delivers the spent cases onto the lower decks, where no photography was allowed. Three decks down we were given a tour of the impressive combat information centre (CIC) onboard HMS Kent. In the near corner were located the controls for the large shell gun above deck. No one is allowed on the above deck during the firing of this weapon which is activated by a foot pedal underneath the operator’s desk. Diametrically opposite a day light projector displays in-theatre data. In battle conditions this is the brightest source of illumination as operators either side of the room have only a small yellow directed beam of light shining down onto a focused patch of their workspace. Otherwise all data is displayed electronically to operators working four hours on and eight hours off then four hours on each day.
The combat information centre located three decks down from the bridge is situated around the water line to reduce the roll experienced by the operators. The CIC is crammed with all the usual technology such as passive
and active radar, fire control, and underside illuminated navigation map tables. All of the vessels we toured at the DSEi were capable of passive radar. NATO catalogues on board provide the necessary data to identify every vessel down to its name just from the vessels own radar detection signal. Navigation maps were kept under lock and key in the navigator’s office behind the bridge for the duration of the tours. The CIC was mainly monitor driven, the engineering centre of the ship was driven by walls of diagnostic equipment where screens
