With yet another rainy season pending in a medium risk mission in Africa we find our colleagues in theatre reliant on Piranha WAPCs once again.
While the quality of the PIII seems to be widely accepted it does have certain built in limitations when the roads turn to mud.
My question, is there room for a supplementary tracked logistics/patrol vehicle in the Defence Forces - clearly funding would be an issue but it would fill a very noticeable capability gap.
The Irish units in Liberia already worked along side BV 206s or BVS 10s and now the Battalion minus in Chad will be getting a comparative demonstration of their wheeled APCs against the Dutch BVS 10 (Viking) vehicles when the rainy season hits.
Is obtaining a similar capability really that far of a stretch.
The Dutch paid around €52million for their 74 vehicles in June 2005 with first deliveries in early 2006.
My argument would be.
1. They offer an enhanced mobility assett for patrolls and logs functions in low to medium risk environments.
2. They offer similar levels of protection to the WAPCs already in service.
3. They are already a proven and trusted vehicle in use with key future partners i.e. Sweden, Netherlands, UK.
4. There is already a unit (sub unit really) in the Defence Forces whose remit includes maintaining a training and operations capability with Tracked vehicles*.
5. For the increase in the logs burden of supporting another type of vehicle at home and on operational deployments outside the state you are getting a vehicle in use with partner nations, widespread availability of spares (there is some compatibility with the older unarmoured BVs) which both increases the total number of troops we can put under armour protection and retains superior manouevrability in all seasons with true off road capability.
6. Like the Infantry PIIIs they are not a fighting vehicle in the true sense so there would be a minimum of doctrinal adjustment required to deploy them on operations.
*It would also make the Scorpions a much more useful assett in that they would be capable of keeping pace with Vikings in places such as Liberia or Chad as well as the simple streamlining of logistics and maintenance in having two tracked types.
http://www.army-technology.com/projects/viking/ - Basic fluff link.
Note that the spiel states a dismount capacity of 11 - which probably indicates it could realistically carry a section of 9 if being used as an APC.
While the quality of the PIII seems to be widely accepted it does have certain built in limitations when the roads turn to mud.
My question, is there room for a supplementary tracked logistics/patrol vehicle in the Defence Forces - clearly funding would be an issue but it would fill a very noticeable capability gap.
The Irish units in Liberia already worked along side BV 206s or BVS 10s and now the Battalion minus in Chad will be getting a comparative demonstration of their wheeled APCs against the Dutch BVS 10 (Viking) vehicles when the rainy season hits.
Is obtaining a similar capability really that far of a stretch.
The Dutch paid around €52million for their 74 vehicles in June 2005 with first deliveries in early 2006.
My argument would be.
1. They offer an enhanced mobility assett for patrolls and logs functions in low to medium risk environments.
2. They offer similar levels of protection to the WAPCs already in service.
3. They are already a proven and trusted vehicle in use with key future partners i.e. Sweden, Netherlands, UK.
4. There is already a unit (sub unit really) in the Defence Forces whose remit includes maintaining a training and operations capability with Tracked vehicles*.
5. For the increase in the logs burden of supporting another type of vehicle at home and on operational deployments outside the state you are getting a vehicle in use with partner nations, widespread availability of spares (there is some compatibility with the older unarmoured BVs) which both increases the total number of troops we can put under armour protection and retains superior manouevrability in all seasons with true off road capability.
6. Like the Infantry PIIIs they are not a fighting vehicle in the true sense so there would be a minimum of doctrinal adjustment required to deploy them on operations.
*It would also make the Scorpions a much more useful assett in that they would be capable of keeping pace with Vikings in places such as Liberia or Chad as well as the simple streamlining of logistics and maintenance in having two tracked types.
http://www.army-technology.com/projects/viking/ - Basic fluff link.
Note that the spiel states a dismount capacity of 11 - which probably indicates it could realistically carry a section of 9 if being used as an APC.
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