From what I can remember the UK can only purchase military equipment from other NATO countries, there was a major issue when a French company got the old Racal company.
Now an Indian company owns Landrover and the fact that India are not a NATO member does this mean the UK forces will have to choose a different supplier for the many Landrovers they use.
No they can buy from whoever they like except where it would mean the transfer of sensitive technologies to a non UK or NATO country.
Jeff
That Tranny engines abit 'sensitive' so thats put the kybosh on that!
Tim
The British military use plenty of equipment that comes from non-NATO sources. Price is, as always, the over-riding factor in the purchase process :-(
Back in the 1970's, at the height of the cold war, final drive bearings for Chieftain tanks were actually made in Russia ~ they even had a hammer and sickle stamped on them :-)
I thought they'd already announced that the land Rover wasn't suitable for the replacement vehicle because of load carrying issues.
On the other hand the US vehicle is too wide to fit down back alleys in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US Special Forces have bought loads of Land Rovers...
.. but s*it for patrols, due to the explosive risk.
Hmm, there's not that many tanks relatively speaking and their vehicle requirements seem to be concentrating on IED attacks and rocket-propelled grenades so not sure where this idea of an obsession about tank battles comes from.
Only in area that are not pacified.
They worked fine in Northern Ireland, in areas where the locals are hostile and so are the local authorities you have problems that can only be solved by armoured vehicles.
The US Hummers are getting blown to bits as well, but nobody is saying 'don't buy any more, they're rubbish at something they weren't designed to do'...
The replacement is unfortunately blurred.
The British army needs a family of vehicles that can do a lot of things, from Special Forces deep penetration missions to being an ambulance to being the thing the regimental policeman runs about in when they're at home to functioning as a car in rear areas.
Land Rover Defenders are no longer suitable for the Special Forces mission due to a claimed load carrying requirement, and seem to have problems when used to fight heavily armed and well equipped irregulars holed up in the mountains. Mind you, nothing much ever works in the mountains of Afghanistan...
Because of this the British army seems to want to introduce a series of much heavier and far more expensive vehicles to replace the thing when they'd probably be better off sourcing a few specialist vehicles and keeping the old Land Rover and using it as what it is, a light utility vehicle.
The 'tank battle' thing is a legacy of the late NATO requirement to defend Western Europe, which has resulted in large numbers of American generals being obsessed with the ability to fight and win large armoured battles.
The British don't suffer from this quite so badly, mainly because of the singularly British phenomenon of 'The Parachute Generals', but the USA tells NATO what to do and the US Army keeps telling its masters that NATO needs tank armies...
Yep, that's true.
There was the conflict however recently in part of Iraq where the land rovers weren't armoured enough to stand up to occasional explosive attacks in mostly pacified areas, while the current vehicles they had that were armoured were regarded as too intimidating and so were likely to push more people over to side with the remaining insurgents! Not a nice problem to try and crack ;-)
I'm not sure if things like the Panthers would be better, they're better for landmines but not so sure about side protection or rocket attacks. Stand-off armour doesn't help with a vehicle's width or make it look more cuddly!
From the military mags the British special forces are rumoured to be going for the Supacats as weapons carriers while the Iveco-sourced Panther was supposedly going to be the generic land rover replacement, although I've not been paying that much attention recently so that could have all changed!
Are they actually replacing all land rovers? I can't recall what was going on with that. It would appear to make sense to keep landies for general runabouts in less dangerous areas. Whether there's procurement shenanigans or not is another matter, that appears to play more of a role than perhaps it should!
Well, better that than them being obsessed with nuclear weaponry ;-)
Mind you ISTR battlefield nukes being available..
A Tranny engine?
I want to see Sabine driving a Defender around the Nurburgring.
The Supacat can't actually carry (or pull) any more than a Defender...
But it looks cool...
I don't know how much better it is over the terrain they're busy fighting over at the moment. My understanding is that it was primarilly designed for European conditions and can't climb the steep bits any better than a Defender...
It certainly can't cross water that's as deep as a snorkle equipped Landy can and it only floats if it's almost empty.
The British Special Forces are no longer the old 'three men and a dog' outfit with less than 200 men in total but, with the Special Forces Support Group' and the 'Special Reconassance Regiment', are now pushing up to reinforced brigade strength in total and their vehicle requirements will be a matter for the MoD procurement people rather than the old 'The boss wants...'
Production of the 'Wolf' series of vehicles has ceased.
Production of the WMIK is now over as well.
But...
The Panther is over two meters wide, weighs twice as much, can't carry that much more (1200Kg rather than 1000Kg) and carries half the number of people.
It's fine if you want to wander about in a minefield but a lousy vehicle for patroling somewhere nice and quiet...
It doesn't work as a military 'car'.
Whether there's
No tactical nuclear weapons in UK service anymore...
The warheads were all American anyway.
And, I happen to know, they're in the market for a replacement for their Mahindras.
I doubt the 24V electrics will happen. they've been on FFR vehicles for years and everyone hates it.
The British army still needs a 'car' that looks military.
They will be very reluctant to abandon Land Rovers in that role as it's a major image change.
That's an absolute dead certainty
I have a suspicion that they'll try to sell the current Land Rover Defender/Wolf to the Indian army right out of the box and use the cash to develop a new model.
It would get their investment back and Tata is not noted for squandering money before they do that. They specialise in good industrial relations rather than technical innovation...
The Indian market for a decent medium-weight civilian 4x4 that will function in a foot of water is huge as what they've got at the moment (Mahindras, aWillys retread, the Gypsy, a Suzuki with a crap engine and the Qualis, an old Toyota with the 4x4 gear removed) is all rubbish. The local rich kids/politicians/film stars all drive imported Range Rovers or Land Cruisers if they want to go anywhere rural, or anywhere at all much in the monsoon...
The military supposedly regard independent suspension as the thing to use for smaller off-roaders (i.e. not mid to heavy trucks) as they reckon it's got a 2-3 fold speed advantage over rough terrain, I know my pinz rides bumps at spee much better than my Defender off-road, and even on a local business park access road there's speed bumps so savage (they're like lengths of drainpipe rather than humps) I have to drive the Defender over at walking pace and it still thumps and jars, whereas I can hit them at 30MPH in the pinz and it just makes a thudding sound and the body moves a little, it's a huge difference. Whether the supacat's better at speed than a Defender on rough terrain I don't know.
Probably not but with the honking great big front overhangs that most military off-roaders seem to have including the pinz, it looks like extreme terrain requirements are secondary to fast speed over rough ground these days. If I was going to go rock-crawling a Defender with diff locks would probably beat my pinz at a lot of things due to the overhangs and suspension travel differences between them.
Well there's not much that can cross water as well as a truck with a snorkel but they can all normally be equipped with one, I know on pinzes old and new the fording depth is about a metre or so, but they can all have snorkels fitted to raise that as high as you need. The supacats are bound to be the same, although they probably are more likely to have snorkels for dust rather than water!
No, but it has been designed to resist mines and supposedly have a low radar profile and heat profile to help avoid detection, so this will result in compromises all over the place. Without those design requirements the landy is bound to be smaller and lighter.
The bloody cab on the panther too! It's got more switches than a switch factory. Gawd knows what they all do.
I hope they don't re-brand them..
They'll almost certainly not do that in the UK market, where their cars are already sold under the 'Rover' badge .
In India the LR will almost certainly get a 'Tata' badge, especially if they flog it to the army or the cops...
Their getting rid of the 90 fleet (or most of) and refurbing 110's to a Sort of half way to WOLF standard. Past some the other day all older than my ex mod 110, but they had flashy outside Roll bars over the cab.
In a bikini or is that just me?
Derek
The procurement have been buying elsewhere
On or around Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:50:00 GMT, "Derek" enlightened us thusly:
If she drives like that, I'm not sure it matters what she wears.
AOL.
I don't think she'd look bad, but who needs the distraction. We;d all be looking at the Land Rover, anyway.
Wouldn't we?
Three years ago the MoD started a project to look at replacing military wheeled vehicles (the Land Rover). It used an online voting system whereby relevent people from different areas of defence could list what they needed from the vehicle. For example, quick evacuation in a fire fight, able to load a casulaty etc etc.
The analysis and results of this project should all be due this year.
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