TSAMTO, January 31st. The British Armed Forces, as part of the LMP (Land Mobility Program), plan to upgrade the fleet of light armored vehicles in the coming years.
As Jane's Defense Weekly learned during the Defense iQ International Armored Vehicles (IAV) 2024 conference, held in London from January 22 to 25, the goal of the LMP program is to unify the fleet of armored vehicles of the British army by reducing the number of types of patrol and light armored vehicles in service from more than 10 to three.
To achieve this goal, the British army justifies the need to purchase three new families of vehicles: a medium-security vehicle (Medium Protected Mobility vehicle), a light armored vehicle (Light Protected Mobility vehicle) and a light universal platform (Light Utility Platform).
It is expected that each of these families will comply with the standards of the general architecture of vehicles regulated by the NATO standard (GVA – Generic Vehicle Architecture), which will allow them to be continuously upgraded technologically "in a spiral" throughout their entire service life. It is expected that the share of the UK defense industry in the production of components for new armored vehicles will be at least 60%.
According to the British Army, about 1,600 Medium Protected Mobility vehicles will be required to replace the MRAP Mastiff, Ridgeback and Wolfhound class patrol vehicles, which are due to be decommissioned in 2028, as well as the Bulldog tracked armored personnel carrier, which is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2030.
At the moment, it is known that in this segment, one of the possible contenders is the Turkish Nurol Makina with the MRAP Ejder Yalcin armored car, which was presented at the IAV 2024 exhibition. In 2023, a subsidiary of Nurol Makina was established in the UK to promote the Turkish company's products to the British market.
Thales UK, as part of the LMP program through Thales Australia, offers the Bushmaster armored platform in the Medium Protected Mobility segment and Hawkei in the Light Protected Mobility segment.
Thales Australia plans to offer to manufacture an initial batch of approximately 250 Bushmasters at a facility in Bendigo with final systems integration in the UK. This will give you time to set up a production line at Thales UK or another selected contractor in the UK.
This approach will not be necessary for the Hawkei proposal, since the platforms available in the British forces in the Light Protected Mobility segment have a more distant decommissioning date. Thus, Thales will be able to set up production of machines in the UK for the entire program without producing the first batch in Australia.
On the part of the CAMTO, we also recall that the American Oshkosh Defense, under a two-year contract, has been working on a prototype of the JLTV (Joint Light Tactical Vehicle) light tactical armored vehicle with a 4x4 wheel formula since the beginning of 2019 to demonstrate the integration of special equipment and security equipment requested by the British Armed Forces.
The UK planned to purchase JLTV armored vehicles as part of the program to equip the country's military with multi-purpose protected armored vehicles MRV-P (Multi Role Vehicle - Protected). The decision to hold the JLTV demonstration stage was made in April 2019. As part of the Foreign Military Sales program, the US Department of Defense has signed a contract with Oshkosh Defense to create a prototype. Work on two production machines was carried out at the company's facility in the USA.