Breaking news
US Army to replace old M113 armored personnel carrier with AMPV Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle 031013.
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Defence & Security News - United States |
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Thursday, October 3, 2013 08:56 AM | |||
U.S. Army to replace old M113 armored personnel carrier with AMPV Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle. | |||
The
U.S. Army is looking into best possible options to replace M113 tracked
armoured vehicle personnel carrier with modern battle-ready units that
are fit to perform roles in modern warfare. Some of the vehicles in the
Army's present inventory were put into service as early as 1961. |
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AMPV Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle of BAE Systems |
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Marked for replacement
are between 2,000 and 3,000 assorted vehicles, many dubbed "battle
taxis" because of their relatively light armor and potential unsuitability
for some modern warfare scenarios, industry analysts said. The Armored Multi-Purpose
Vehicle (AMPV) is the proposed United States Army program for replacement
of the M113 Family of Vehicles (FOV) to mitigate current and future
capability gaps in force protection, mobility, reliability, and interoperability
by mission role variant within the Heavy Brigade Combat Team (HBCT).
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U.S. Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, fire the M120 Mortar system out of a M113 Armored Personal Carrier (APC) on Forward Operating Base Taji, Baghdad, Iraq, April 25, 2009. |
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While M-113s no longer serve as infantry fighting vehicles, five variants of the M-113 are used as command and control vehicles, general purpose vehicles, mortar carriers, and medical treatment and evacuation vehicles. An estimated 3,000 of these M-113 variants are currently in service, defense-aerospace.com said. The AMPV is intended to be a "vehicle integration" or non-developmental program, apparently to avoid controversy and to forestall failure in the acquisition effort. Candidate
vehicles chosen by the army will be either existing vehicles or modified
existing vehicle but not vehicles to be specially designed. Exactly how many vehicles will be bought remains unclear. Defense News said the Army wants to buy 2,097 AMPVs over 13 years costing roughly $1.8 million apiece. Other reports cited up to 3,000 vehicles earmarked for replacement. The Army plans to award a five-year engineering and manufacturing development contract in May 2014 to one contractor, which will manufacture 29 vehicles for government testing, followed by a three-year low-rate initial production contract starting in 2020, Defense News said. |
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