TSAMTO, October 29. The Agency for the Acquisition of Norwegian Defense Products (Forsvarsmateriell / Norwegian Defense Materiel Agency – NDMA) received the first three of the six ordered armored repair and evacuation / engineering vehicles "Visent-2" (Wisent 2).
According to the NDMA, the official transfer of equipment took place at the Redsmoen training ground (170 km north of Oslo) after demonstrating the capabilities of the machines. BRAM will be located in Rene, one of the largest military bases in Northern Europe. The remaining three BRAM "Vicent-2" should be transferred to the customer in 2022 and placed in the north of Norway.
NDMA signed a contract for the supply of six Vicent-2 BREMS with Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft in September 2018. Its cost was 45 million euros. The first car was handed over for acceptance testing in 2019.
The Norwegian Armed Forces already have 6 units of the Vicent-2, acquired in 2015, as well as 13 BREMS on the Leopard-1 MBT chassis. In addition, there are 22 NM189 armored engineering vehicles, also made on the basis of Leopard-1.
Made on the chassis of the Leopard-2 MBT, the Vicent-2 machine can be used for various tasks. Reconfiguration from the BRAM version to the engineering machine version and vice versa takes only a few hours. The platform in both configurations can be equipped with a minesweeper.
The main task of "Vicent-2" is to pull out and evacuate damaged armored vehicles, as well as to assist crews during their repair and maintenance in the field.
The own weight of the Vicent-2 is 57 tons, the maximum permissible mass of the evacuated equipment is 69.5 tons. The BREM is equipped with an MTU MB 873 Ka 501 engine with a power of 1100 kW, a RENK HSWL 354 transmission and is capable of reaching a maximum speed of 68 km/ h (the speed when towing the Leopard-2 is 25 km/h). The main winch provides a pulling force of 40 tons (the length of the 33-mm cable is 160 m). The machine is equipped with a crane with a maximum lifting capacity of up to 32 tons, which allows dismantling of power plants and towers of the Leopard-2 MBT. "Vicent-2" can be equipped with an excavator bucket with a volume of 1.3 cubic meters. m and a bulldozer blade. The productivity when working with an excavator bucket is more than 300 cubic meters. m per hour, trench depth - up to 4.4 m.
The machine provides ballistic protection for a crew of three, meeting the requirements of STANAG 4569 "Level.5", and mine protection corresponding to STANAG 4569" level.4A/4B".
