Technical Solutions Group protects troops, removes mines in world’s hotspots

A while back, Garth Barrett took his Cougar for a drive down to Florida for a business trip. The vehicle made quite an impression on the other drivers along the way.

“The lookie-loos were almost causing accidents,” he said.

Of course, it was no Mercury Cougar that he was driving. It was a 14-ton armored Cougar made by Barrett’s Ladson-based company, Technical Solutions Group Inc. — a hulking, black, lethal-looking vehicle, next to which a HumVee looks like a Mini.

TSG’s vehicles are usually found in places that are even more hostile and dangerous than Interstate 95. Right now, a number of them are hauling U.S. and British soldiers around Iraq and Afghanistan, and helping keep those soldiers alive.

The company’s specialty is mine-protected vehicles. While all armored vehicles protect the occupants from small-arms fire, TSG’s vehicles offer an increased level of protection against landmines and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs — the roadside bombs that have been used repeatedly against coalition forces in Iraq.

TSG makes a variety of mine-protected and other vehicles — with names like Buffalo, Lion, Rhino, Iguana and its newest model, the Typhoon — for military uses, including not just troop transport but also landmine and bomb removal.

It’s a product line that is currently very much in demand.

“With all the activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is obviously a dramatic need for our products at this time,” Barrett said.

The company began shipping finished Buffalos to the U.S. Army last year and so far has sold it 13. Separately, TSG has sold eight Tempest vehicles — an upgraded version of the Cougar — to the British army.

It also recently received an order for one Lion — a “military-class vehicle designed with the latest in blast and ballistic protection technology” that also “can be configured to protect against nuclear, biological or chemical threats” that is geared toward the civilian market. The buyer, U.S. Marketing Group LLC, plans to use itsLion as a demo model to sell the vehicles to the “VIP transport market,” according to a press release.

TSG, the main operating subsidiary of Force Protection Inc., also based in Ladson, has been in the Charleston area since 1999, first at the former Naval Base and since last October at the former General Electric plant on U.S. Highway 78 in Ladson.

The move to the GE plant, now owned by Charleston financier Jerry Zucker’s InterTech Group, allowed TSG to consolidate all of its functions in one building and to bring some work in-house that the company previously had to hire contractors to perform.

Barrett brings an extensive background in mine-protection to his job as president of TSG. A native of the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, he retired from that country’s Special Air Service — a unit similar to the Navy SEALs — and went on to join the South African army, where he rose to the rank of colonel.

And South Africa was the right place to be involved, he said.

“South Africa is regarded as having the best mine-protection capability in the world,” he said. “TSG has acquired a lot of that technology, but we’ve done a lot of Americanization.”

What “Americanization” means in terms of making TSG’s vehicles is that auto manufacturers here don’t make most military vehicles from the ground up. Instead, companies buy already-built trucks and use them as a base on which to build the military model.

In TSG’s case, that means buying Peterbilt 4×4 or 6×6 trucks in most cases — the company has also used Mack trucks — and incorporating the drive train and some other parts into their own coach and chassis designs, which are drawn to military specifications.

The resulting vehicles may not deliver the smooth ride and passenger comforts you might expect from a vehicle that costs $200,000 and up, but they gets the job done.

“We have Buffalos in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we have had our Tempest vehicles with the British army in service in Iraq,” Barrett said. “And we have had successes. We have rescued U.S. personnel from minefields. Recently, one of our vehicles hit a large mine in Afghanistan with no casualties.”

It’s a record that should keep TSG busy.

Technical Solutions Group Inc.

Location: 9801 Highway 78, Ladson

Top executive: Garth Barrett

Year founded: 1997

Employees: Varies, 35-150

Annual revenues: $6.2 million (2003)