Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/235053
L LAND VEHICLES by Chris Thatcher laV 6.0 D LETHAL AN , MOBILE ED S PROTECT ince the Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) rolled into service 14 years ago, it has been the backbone of the Canadian Army's vehicle fleet. Over the better part of a decade in Afghanistan, the fleet sustained countless strikes from small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosives (IEDs). Over 350 were damaged during the mission, almost three dozen beyond repair. In a future operating concept of adaptive dispersed operations, in which all vehicles are important nodes in a digitized network, the LAV remains the core piece of the army's fleet. But the modernized version rolling into service over the next five years is a far cry from the LAV III that returned battered and bruised from Afghanistan. Built on the lessons of that campaign, the Balkans, and domestic operations, the LAV UP, or LAV 6.0 as it is being called, is predicated on what Major Pierre Larrivee, the program director for the Director of Land Requirements, calls the "perfect triangle" of protection, mobility and lethality. Upgrade might be a misnomer. Although every attempt has been made to reuse components – 25mm gun, turret drive, heater, automatic fire suppression system – much of the vehicle is new, from the larger Michelin tires to added protection in the hull. What remains the same are many of the core design elements that have proven successful. The result is a vehicle so improved that the government has used its enhanced protection as one reason to cancel the Close Combat Vehicle program. Distilling lessons The modernization program was based on more than 1,600 lessons learned since the vehicle was first fielded in 1999. According to Larrivee, who has been the driving force behind the current project, the team gathered technical reports from the past 12 years and interviewed 300 operators – crew commanders, gunners and driv22 DECEMBER 2013/JANUARY 2014 www.vanguardcanada.com ers – and technicians before developing the vehicle requirements. "We did due diligence and looked at the lessons learned," he said. "We looked not only at the technical aspects but also the TTPs (tactics, techniques and procedures), the way the vehicle was being used. We also looked at what was being developed on newer vehicles." The end result was 700 "deficiencies," areas of improvement that ran the gamut from the overly optimistic, such as a Teflon coating to make the vehicle easier to clean, to the practical, "a quick disconnect drive shaft for the technician." Those 700 were distilled down to high level mandatory requirements, but overarching all of those was the army's principal requirement: protection. That created a challenge. Protection means weight, but the army wanted a vehicle that could match the mobility of the original LAV. Before the LAV III was deployed to Afghanistan, its baseline weight was about 36,000 pounds; with add-on armour, payload and personnel, it topped 42,000. Following the LAV Operation Requirement Integration Task (LORIT) program in 2009 to address the threat of IEDs, which included new belly and side armour, an enhanced weapon station and attenuating seats, the vehicle weighed in at a top-heavy 52,000 once personnel and kit were piled on. The LAV 6.0 begins at a baseline weight of 45,000 pounds and climbs to 55,000 once it is fully kitted. With the full combat package of protection and ammunition, it reaches 63,000. "Mobility is also protection," Larrivee noted. "If you go fast, you are better protected. So we asked General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, give us at 55,000 pounds the same performance of a baseline LAV at 36,000. That was the challenge." Enhanced features In October 2011, General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada was