Unthought-of roles: there is no <>, said Brigadier General Jeffrey Sorenson, the Deputy for Acquisition Systems Management in the Office of the Secretary of the Army, on 13 December 2004.

Since the end of the Cold War there has been a shift toward wheeled armoured fighting vehicles that combine the advantages of rapid tactical deployment and protected mobility with reduced life cycle costs. Studies undertaken by Nato, the US Marine Corps and the Canadian Army, among others, indicate that the life cycle costs of wheeled vehicles are about 40 to 60 per cent less than that of tracked vehicles, as peacekeepers deployed in the Former Yugoslavia have well learned.

The ability of the US Army's 8 x 8 Stryker--captured in the lead photo by the US Department of Defense--to deploy rapidly over long distances is a characteristic exploited by planners in Iraq. <<It doesn't shake the crew like a typical Bradley does,>> said Brigadier General Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia, which included the first Stryker Brigade Combat Team. <<We often launch strikes that go over 100 kilometres into the desert. That's tough to do in a Bradley. But it is important to remember that it is not an 'either-or' proposition. There is a definite place for Bradleys and main battle tanks.>>

Programmes such as the FCS and the British Army's Future Rapid Effects System (Fres), although less ambitious than the US project in terms of 'leap ahead technology', are intended to combine the strategic and tactical speed of deployment of a light force with the battlefield punch of a heavy force. However, some industry officials and military officers argue that the requirement that all FCS and Fres variants weigh no more than 20 tonnes so that they can be carried by a C-130 Hercules is imposing an unrealistic constraint upon designers. They point out that to move strategic distances larger aircraft such as the C-17 or A400M will be used, and that for tactical operations it is unlikely that any aircraft, including the C-130, would be risked landing on an airfield that has not been secured. If that is the case should the ability to fight off the ramp of a C-130 be a defining requirement for new fighting vehicles?

Giat has designed the French Army's new 28-tonne 8 x 8 Vehicule Blinde de Combat d'Infanterie (VBCI) around the requirement that it be carried by the A400M. The German Army's tracked Puma, scheduled to be rolled out at the end of the year by a Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann joint venture, is designed to be carried by the A400M with its baseline protection (the A400 is thus definitely setting a new air transportability yardstick in Europe). Another aircraft will carry the eleven tonnes of armour that brings the vehicle to its maximum combat weight.

The Puma, with a maximum combat weight greater than that of the Russian T-62, will certainly blur the distinction between medium and heavy vehicles. The distinction between light and medium vehicles has long been unclear. Panhard's 3.5-tonne Vehicule Blinde Leger (VBL) is certainly not in the same category as the General Dynamics Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV), despite their names. Its name did not deter the US Army from selecting the LAV for its Medium Interim Armoured Vehicle requirement.