In the trenchesUnusual-looking truck to protect U.K. soldiers

Published 20 October 2009

The U.K. armed forces may be better equipped to cope with IEDs threats in the future, not least through a a truck with an unusual V-shaped hull and a design philosophy that takes protecting the crew as its starting point

As the number of U.K. soldiers killed in Afghanistan nears 200, the familiar accusations that U.K. troops are poorly equipped are growing louder. In recent weeks the Jackal, the British Army’s light-patrol vehicle, has come in for particularly harsh criticism. Since it was first deployed last year, fourteen soldiers have been killed in the vehicle, all of them victims of roadside bombs. Some have suggested that the vehicle’s design makes it particularly vulnerable to such attacks.

The Engineer reports that an unusual-looking truck unveiled earlier this summer at Millbrook’s Defense Vehicle Dynamics (DVD) event provides an intriguing glimpse of how the U.K. armed forces may be better equipped to cope with these threats in the future, not least through an unusual V-shaped hull and a design philosophy that takes protecting the crew as its starting point.

Developed and demonstrated by Lockheed Martin in the United Kingdom, the AVA-2, a 6x6 armored truck, is the second prototype vehicle to be produced using the company’s adaptive vehicle architecture (AVA). A 4x4 variant, AVA-1, was demonstrated last year.

Heavily armored, capable of a sprint speed of more than 50mph, and based on the same basic High Mobility Truck (HMT) design that underpins the Jackal (Lockheed bought HMT from Supacat in 2006), it is tempting to view the vehicle as a direct replacement.

According to Lockheed Martin, though, this is just one potential application of the technology. The aim of the AVA program is to use the same basic components to build an entire fleet of land vehicles — from troop carriers to command-and-control vehicles and cargo trucks. Lockheed Martin believes the concept could help significantly reduce the cost of meeting several emerging U.K. requirements, including the Operational Utility Vehicle System (OUVS).

Explaining the background to the concept, Phil Ashworth, Lockheed U.K.’s land systems business manager, said that when the U.K. arm of the defense giant entered the land-vehicle arena three years ago, it made a conscious decision to buck the existing trend of developing bespoke military vehicles. “We decided to take a different approach and develop a flexible vehicle architecture that could be easily modified and form the basis for a variety of different military vehicles.”

The AVA concept can be broken down into three core components: the chassis, the cab, and the mission module.

Subtle modifications to these components can lead to very different types of vehicle, explained Ashworth. “We have a family of vehicles that don’t just fit one