Army Confident About Move To Wheeled Combat Vehicle.

The U.S. Army will receive its new light armored vehicles in February 2002, approximately 28 months after the chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, announced the service would start trading tracks for wheels.

The first four LAVs-2,131 are expected to be built over seven years--will come from London, Ontario. The rest will be assembled in Lima, Ohio.

Army officials have praised the choice of the eight-wheel LAV III as the vehicle for the so-called "interim brigade combat reams," the front-line units that Shinseki conceived as a lighter, more mobile alternative to heavy brigades. Any vehicle or weapon platform used by the IBCTs, Shinseki said, must be able to fit on C-130 medium-lift cargo airplanes. The plan is to field at least six brigades during the next decade.

But the notion that the Army's premier rapid-response force, the IBCTs, will have only wheeled vehicles has prompted criticism from retired servicemen and analysts who wonder whether the Army is wise to do away with tracked platforms in the IBCTs and rely on a vehicle that has limited ballistic protection. Some critics also have questioned the "deployability" of the 38,000-pound LAV, complaining that it requires modifications in order to be able to roll on and roll off a C-130.

The first two IBCTs, at Fort Lewis, Wash., have been training with 32 Canadian LAVs and will continue to do so until the new vehicles arrive, said Brig. Gen. Paul Eaton, the Army's training and doctrine deputy commander. Each IBCT, he said, will require 217 trips by C-17 heavy-lift planes to deploy--half of the airlift needed to move a heavy brigade. The Army wants the vehicles to fit on smaller C-130s, because the Air Force has hundreds of those, compared to only a few dozen C-17s.

The Army awarded a $4 billion contract last year to a consortium of General Morors Defense of Canada and General Dynamics Land Systems, in Sterling Heights, Mich., for the development and production of the LAV III. The LAV is a derivative of Swirzer-land's Mowag Piranha. The design was licensed to General Motors Defense, which now owns Mowag. Different versions of the LAV are used by various countries around the world. The U.S. Marine Corps has operated a Generation I version of the LAV for more than 20 years. The LAV that the Army selected is a Piranha Generation III.

For the U.S. Army's program, 50 percent of the work will be done in the United States, 32 percent in Canada and 18 percent in other countries (Germany, Israel and the United Kingdom).

During a news conference in Washington, Eaton said he expects to have a fully-equipped LAV brigade by the second or third quarter of 2003. He told reporters that the LAV is not a "peacekeeping vehicle," even though the IBCTs were designed to fight in "small-scale contingencies."

In Penragonese, small-scale contingencies mean operations such as non-combatant evacuations, peacekeeping and humanitarian relief missions. In these missions, "one doesn't simply go in and blow everything apart, what in Vietnam came to be known as 'destroying the village to save it,"' said Dan Smith, a retired Army colonel and defense analyst.

Troops participating in small-scale contingencies, Smith said, focus on "fundamental patrolling, area security, and techniques of dispute mitigation, such as separating hostile groups using a display of--but measured--force."

M-1 tanks and heavy artillery don't fit these missions, he added. "Troops need a mobile, fast vehicle that offers sufficient protection against small arms and most light weapons. ... Rapid response is paramount, both getting into a theater and then operating on the ground," Smith said. "The LAV as an interim vehicle seems to fit the bill."

There will be two variants of the LAV III, the infantry carrier vehicle--which has eight different versions--and the 105 mm mobile gun system. The MGS is not expected to enter service for several years, because it still requires some development work.

The modifications will shorten the height of the MGS by 10 inches, in order to fit into a C-130, said Peter Keating, spokesman for General Dynamics Land Systems. "The MGS was not designed to be C-130 transportable," he said.

The turret will be lowered five inches in the hull and the vehicle will be equipped with a "height management system," Keating said, which will shorten the vehicle by five mote inches. "The HMS provides the ability to lower the entire chassis to meet height restrictions of the aircraft," said Army Capt. Steven T. Wall, assistant program manager for IBCT. According to Wall, the LAV-equipped units will be restricted in how much ammunition, fuel and other "mission equipment" they can transport, in order to meet "fly-away weight limits and safety requirements."

Maj. Gen. Joseph L. Yakovac Jr., program executive officer for the Army's ground combat support systems, cautioned that there is more than one definition of C-130 transportability. "We don't anticipate C-130s going into a hot drop zone to get these vehicles off, and so what you have is a vehicle that's capable of coming off, doing minimal reconfiguration and being totally combat-ready."

Using a central tire inflation system, Yakovac said during a news conference, the vehicle can be lowered a few more inches by letting the air out of the tires.

"We're comfortable and confident that we have an interim family of vehicles that is, in fact, C-130 transportable," he said.

Meanwhile, the Military Traffic Management Command has begun a study on the transportability of the LAV on C-130 aircraft. This is part of a standard evaluation conducted in every vehicle acquisition program, said William Cooper, director of MTMC's transportation engineering agency.

The agency performs "transportability engineering analyses of every wheeled and tracked vehicle in the U.S. Army inventory prior to every acquisition milestone in accordance with Army regulations," Cooper said. The first of these analyses, of the infantry carrier vehicle, will be completed on time for the first vehicle delivery in February 2002, he said.

Cooper stressed that the study was not designed to refute a previous MTMC white paper on C-130 lift capabilities. That paper was the source of an article in Army Times that concluded, based on the white paper's data, that the LAV in a C-130 would be a "tight squeeze."

Regardless of the outcome of the study, it seems clear that the LAV "meets the transportability requirements set by Gen. Shinseki," said Greg Fetter, senior defense analyst at Forecast International DMS, an industry intelligence firm.

But Fetter said he is bothered by the fact that the IBCTs will have only LAVs, and no tracked vehicles. "I am not opposed to wheeled vehicles," he said. "I think the Army should have embraced the concept much earlier." However, he added, "We don't know where these brigades will be deployed, what conditions, what topography." Fetter is not convinced that the LAV can maneuver in every type of rugged terrain. "Wheeled vehicles have come a long way in the last 20 years, [but] they still cannot totally replace a tracked vehicle for all types of terrain." In Fetter's opinion, the IBCTs should have a mix of LAVs and M8s, a tracked mobile gun system that the Army developed in the early 1990s and canceled in 1996.

The Army tested the LAV extensively in different types of terrain, said Yakovac. But he noted that some mobility had to be sacrificed to gain other attributes the Army liked in the LAV. "There are things that you evaluate, and they're traded off," he said. "A difference in mobility was outweighed by the other capabilities that this [LAV] gave to us." It is not an "issue of wheeled versus track," said Yakovac.

"Wheels have been good for peacekeeping operations," said David Grange, a retired Army brigadier general who commanded the 1st Infantry Division, in Germany. "But in a combat situation, the mobility will become an issue. You should have flexibility." Fielding a light vehicle that can go on a C-130, he said, is "only part of the equation."

"The majority of the missions that we had in Somalia, in Bosnia, Task Force Hawk in Albania, Kosovo were over secondary roads," Eaton said. The LAV, he said, can travel at 60 miles an hour and is comfortable, so the crews are not "worn out by the time they get out of this vehicle."

Another feature that the Army agreed to trade off by selecting the LAV was armor protection, Yakovac explained. He said the Army is satisfied with the 14.5 mm ballistic protection--7.62 mm in the basic steel hull and a ceramic applique added on top.

The Army also requested an additional applique armor package for protection against rocket-propelled grenades, known as RPGs.

Of most concern is the RPG-7, an infantry-portable light antitank weapon capable of breaching the armor of a main battle tank at 300 meters. It is reported that it can penetrate about 12 inches of conventional armor plate. The RPG-7 has been used extensively by terrorist organizations in the Middle East and Latin America and is thought to be in the inventory of many countries around the world, said Fetter. "Everybody has these weapons," he said. Fetter said the Army should have embedded, rather than modular, armored protection in the LAV against both RPG-7s and 20 mm bullets. "A lot of countries have 20 mm cannon on light wheeled vehicles," he said.

As the Army moves forward with the fielding of the LAV, it also must prepare to conduct a comparative test between the infantry carrier version of the LAV and the M113, the service's current light infantry tracked vehicle. Congress mandated the test in the fiscal year 2001 defense authorization bill. Among the sponsors was Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.), who claimed the Army was biased in favor of wheeled vehicles and arbitrarily ruled out an M113 variant in the competition that the LAV won last year. The M113 is made by United Defense LP, in Santorum's home state. The company protested the Army's decision last November, but lost the case.

The comparative evaluation is scheduled for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2002. It will rely on "modeling, simulation and a field exercise," said Wall, the Army captain.

An Army major general who spoke at a defense industry conference last month said that the side-by-side test "won't prove anything." The Army, he said, already made its decision. "We'd rather spend the test money on something else."

Marine Corps Light Armored Vehicles Get Makeover

The U.S. Marine Corps plans to upgrade 759 light armored vehicles during the next seven years, in order to keep them running until 2015.

The LAV first entered service in the early 1980s, so many vehicles are beginning to run out of operational life.

The Corps will spend several million dollars on a so-called service life-extension program, or SLEP. The vehicle upgrades, however, will cost a small fraction of the price tag for new vehicles, according to Marine Corps documents.

The SLEP will involve seven variant of the LAV, which is used by the Marine Corps' light armored reconnaissance battalions for various missions.

The contractor selected to do the work, Metric Systems, in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., designed 21 different upgrade kits, said Howard Hudson, the company's program manager. Many of the improvements are aimed to simplify the maintenance of the vehicle and to reduce its visual and acoustic signatures by adding camouflage features and a shroud over the engine exhaust.

Five SLEP prototypes currently are being tested at Aberdeen Proving Ground, said Hudson.

At about $300,000 per vehicle, the LAV 25 will be the most expensive variant to upgrade, because it includes a thermal sight said Marine Corps Capt. Burrell D. Parmer, a service spokesman. The SLEP kit unit prices for the other variants range from $46,300 for the LAV logistics model to $50,055 for the anti-tank version. The cost estimates are for hardware only, Parmer said.

If the Corps had opted to purchase new vehicles, several considerations would have come into play, he explained. The manufacturer, General Motors of Canada, no longer makes the Generation I LAVs that the Marines currently use. The closest configuration, fielded by Saudi Arabia, is the Generation II LAV, which includes upgrades to the suspension and other components, Parmer said. The unit cost for a Generation II LAV-25 vehicle is about $1.6 million to $1.9 million.

If the Corps were to buy replacement vehicles for the current fleet, however, the preferred choice would be the Generation III version, he said. That would the same vehicle that the U.S. Army selected for its new brigade combat teams (See related story). The estimated unit cost for a Generation III LAV-25 vehicle is between $1.2 million and $1.6 million, depending on the size of the order.

Sandra I. Erwin