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Logistic Vehicle Modernization Project - Replacing everything from LUVW to SHLVW

https://english.nv.ua/nation/canadi...rmored-vehicles-for-kyiv-report-50412623.html

Roshel is in my opinion starting to look like a solid potential choice for the LUV program. The 140 vehicles a month is an impressive production schedule for a company of their size. Made in Canada and a helluva a lot cheaper than Hawkei too. That said, with C4 kit, weapons packages and trailers that gap would close pretty quickly I imagine.
 
https://english.nv.ua/nation/canadi...rmored-vehicles-for-kyiv-report-50412623.html

Roshel is in my opinion starting to look like a solid potential choice for the LUV program. The 140 vehicles a month is an impressive production schedule for a company of their size. Made in Canada and a helluva a lot cheaper than Hawkei too. That said, with C4 kit, weapons packages and trailers that gap would close pretty quickly I imagine.
I think it should be a no brainer, but there's always more to these things than I'm aware of.

A Canadian company, manufacturing vehicles using Canadian suppliers, employing Canadians, with a production line that's already hot, producing a vehicle that's already deployed in numbers to probably the hottest warzone on Earth - and all without any big government subsidies or 'forgivable loans'

It seems like a far better deal than buying vehicles manufactured on the other side of the planet, that can't really promise us a stable or reliable supply of spare parts. Plus we'd probably end up paying a good chunk more money for.



I'm rooting for Roshel on the LUV project
 

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — Brig. Gen. Beth Behn, the Army’s chief of transportation, spent a large chunk of 2023 in eastern Ukraine observing the ongoing war there before taking over her current role.

What she saw changed her thinking about the some 200,000 tactical wheeled vehicles her command employs to move soldiers and supplies on battlefields.

“I came back from Ukraine with my hair on fire to modernize our doctrine, our training and, of course, our equipment,” she said at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Tactical Wheeled Vehicles Conference held recently on the outskirts of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Her main takeaway: what the Army has been predicting as the battlefield of 2030 is here and now in Ukraine.

The words “future operating environment” are already moot, she said.

This is an expanded battlefield in terms of time, geography, domains and actors. So, we’ve got to think about minimizing the size and the visibility of our support areas. We’ve got to mask our sustainment efforts. We’ve got to frequently relocate stocks or support capabilities. If you can be seen, you can be targeted. And if you can be targeted, you had better be able to hide or move fast,” she said.

As one of the leaders who shapes requirements for the Army’s small, medium and heavy tactical wheeled vehicles, she had a long to-do list to modernize the fleets and make them more survivable.

New armor was absent from the list.


First, they must operate over extended or exposed lines of communication.

They must be able to extend their range without increasing fuel demand.

“We’ve got to get beyond reactive maintenance and get to a proactive decision-based approach,” she said.

Artificial intelligence can be used for that and to chart ideal routes to minimize exposure and save fuel.

Advanced manufacturing should be used to create parts to sustain tactical wheeled vehicles during widely distributed operations.

They must be more mobile, and they have got to be able to integrate advanced communications equipment and maintain the ability to mount weapon systems or other kits and then traverse rough terrain off or on improved roads.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” she concluded with perhaps one of the more notable understatements of the conference.

Brig. Gen. Samuel Peterson, program executive officer for combat support and combat service support, is the Army’s point person in charge of modernizing the service’s tactical wheeled vehicle fleets.

The office has four modernization priorities: autonomy, electrification, fuel demand reduction and predictive logistics, he said.

“These are the capabilities that are going to enable us to succeed in a multi-domain environment. And we need industry’s partnership on all of these fronts,” he added.

As far as autonomy and electrification, the Army has put out a lot of requests for information to contractors, but some testing activities were delayed until Congress finally passed a fiscal year 2024 defense appropriation in March.

Steve Roberts, project lead for integration in Program Executive Office Combat Support and Combat Service Support, said for now the Army is going after “low-hanging fruit” when it comes to saving fuel. One example is anti-idling systems. Like what’s available in the consumer market, these systems turn the engine off but can keep things on like heaters, air conditioners and other vital systems using lithium-ion batteries.

“That way you can sit on station for three, four hours without running that engine” while keeping sensors, radios and climate control systems running, he said.

The next step is hybridization, which can give a truck extra power. The program executive office is experimenting with the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles and a vehicle integration power kit that can draw about 120 kilowatts off the vehicles. One use case showed that the trucks’ engines could help power a microgrid and reduce generator usage, he said.

“There is real operational savings by going to these electrified vehicles,” he said.

As far as all-electric, the ability at the tactical edge to recharge vehicles with large battery packs — needed even for light vehicles — is not feasible at this time, Roberts said.
“Each one of these steps — the crawl, walk, run — builds on the next, and we learn from them,” he said.

As far as robotic systems, the Army has kicked off the Autonomous Transport Vehicle System program — a follow-on to the Leader-Follower program, which has one truck in a convoy with a driver and the rest operating autonomously.

The Army issued three contracts for companies that are currently doing preliminary design review ahead of building prototypes, said Kyle Bruner, project manager for force projection.

Carnegie Robotics, Neya Systems and Robotic Research have been tapped by the Defense Innovation Unit and the PEO in a joint effort to develop autonomy kits called the Ground Expeditionary Autonomous Retrofit System, or GEARS, for the Palletized Load System. The kits could later be adapted for other types of vehicles, a DIU press release stated.
The goal is to have the first unit equipped by fiscal year 2026, Bruner said.

Not on the priorities list, but still vitally important, is to harden the cybersecurity requirements as potential opponents launch ever more sophisticated electronic warfare attacks, Peterson said.

So the weight of armoured protection will be ditched in favour of more on- and off-road mobility and more onboard, exportable energy.

Packets will be smaller, with fewer drivers and tactical driving will be the order of the day.

I believe Canadian practice had evolved to having two people in every truck cab in a convoy.

This direction of travel appears to be headed towards one or two people in a packet with most of the packet self-driven.
 



So the weight of armoured protection will be ditched in favour of more on- and off-road mobility and more onboard, exportable energy.

Packets will be smaller, with fewer drivers and tactical driving will be the order of the day.

I believe Canadian practice had evolved to having two people in every truck cab in a convoy.

This direction of travel appears to be headed towards one or two people in a packet with most of the packet self-driven.
We also have convoy escort vehicles….
They look sort of like your TAPV ;)
 
I think it should be a no brainer, but there's always more to these things than I'm aware of.

A Canadian company, manufacturing vehicles using Canadian suppliers, employing Canadians, with a production line that's already hot, producing a vehicle that's already deployed in numbers to probably the hottest warzone on Earth - and all without any big government subsidies or 'forgivable loans'

It seems like a far better deal than buying vehicles manufactured on the other side of the planet, that can't really promise us a stable or reliable supply of spare parts. Plus we'd probably end up paying a good chunk more money for.



I'm rooting for Roshel on the LUV project
Roshel's interesting, at least from a publicity standpoint they seem to have jumped ahead of Streit, Inkas and whoever else is out there
 
Roshel's interesting, at least from a publicity standpoint they seem to have jumped ahead of Streit, Inkas and whoever else is out there
I'm curious to see what their 6x6 and 8x8 will look like. They do seem to be pushing the limits of the civilian conversion APC. Their MRAP looks pretty slick and seems effective.

That said, the Canadian MIC has a long history of this with armoured cars which were quite effective going back to the Second World War.
 
What does AM General and Armatec build?
AM General did the Hummer, they submitted an UpArmored Hummer for JLTV as well as a different vehicle JLTV A2

Armatec does protection packages only as far as I know.
 
400-450 COTS doesnt seem like a lot, are these just training vehicles or everyday runabouts?
 
Seems like Roshel’s pick up truck version is a pretty solid rig, nothing too fancy but also not a Somalian Technical.
 
They'll be admin runners like milverados. 1800 milspec.
seems like a small number still replacing over 1000 milverado
also not much on the list comparison wise for the COTS other than the AM Chieftan and the Roshel offering if its based on a 550 seems heavy

 
seems like a small number still replacing over 1000 milverado
also not much on the list comparison wise for the COTS other than the AM Chieftan and the Roshel offering if its based on a 550 seems heavy


They'll use milspec vehicles like how milverados were used. They're just reducing the non deployable stocks in favour of increasing the deployable stock. It's smart imo considering the LUV is what is intended to be used in A/B echelons and for RAS/TACSEC tasks. The LUV is also the ARes RCAC primary vehicle so the more gun trucks the better.
 
AM General did the Hummer, they submitted an UpArmored Hummer for JLTV as well as a different vehicle JLTV A2

Armatec does protection packages only as far as I know.
Seems like a light list of favourites. RIP dreams of Hawkei. I sure as shit hope the Humvee isn't selected. Terrible ergonomics and off-road capability. On a ex with Americans when our LUVW fleet was still viable the Humvees spent most of their time stuck and high centred, they couldn't keep up with GWagons.

I think the Roshel Senator MRAP and Pickup are probably the favourites.
 
Seems like a light list of favourites. RIP dreams of Hawkei. I sure as shit hope the Humvee isn't selected. Terrible ergonomics and off-road capability. On a ex with Americans when our LUVW fleet was still viable the Humvees spent most of their time stuck and high centred, they couldn't keep up with GWagons.
The Hummer is a way better off-road vehicle than the GWagon, the issue is the UpArmor Hummers aren’t, as they have an extra 2 and a half tons of armor on them that the suspension cannot handle. The Armored GWagon is probably a worse turd simply due to the high CoG.

I think the Roshel Senator MRAP and Pickup are probably the favourites.
The biggest issue is there is a major difference between a purpose build armored vehicle and an armored kit adding to an originally unarmored platform.

Once you armor a vehicle that wasn’t never designed for it, you basically have made a single season disposable. Much akin to the State Dept Armored Suburbans - as the power train and suspensions give up quite quickly, as they are just 8 lug trucks and designed for 3/4 ton cargo - not a ton of armor and a bunch of passengers. Plus you get frame issues from door sag, as even if some of the chassis were designed for the weights, the basic frame generally isn’t unless it’s a purpose built shell.

However you still end up with brake lines, fuel etc that were not designed for an armored vehicle.
 
The Hummer is a way better off-road vehicle than the GWagon, the issue is the UpArmor Hummers aren’t, as they have an extra 2 and a half tons of armor on them that the suspension cannot handle. The Armored GWagon is probably a worse turd simply due to the high CoG.

The Hummer has been a piece of shit since day one. The I5 was notoriously underpowered. Heck, there's a reason Hummer is dead and gone beyond the EV posing as a Hummer for 'memberberries and that the GWagon has been a proven mil and offroad vehicle for decades. It's vastly superior offroad. Problem with our GWagons is we didn't get milspec. We got the milcot civvie GWagons and they've been beaten hard for 20+ years. It's a testament to their quality they still run as well as they do.
 
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I’ve driven German GWagons it’s still a piece of shit. Your suffering rectal cranial inversion if you think the Hummer is a crap Mil vehicle.
 
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