Battelle to build armored trucks and SUVs with Special Forces vetronics and communications
MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., 14 July 2016. U.S. unconventional warfare experts are developing armored sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and trucks that look like ordinary stock vehicles, but that have military-grade vetronics, communications, night vision, ballistic protection, mobility, and tires designed to survive enemy small-arms fire.
Military vehicles experts at U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., are looking to the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, for the five-year potential $170 million Non-Standard Commercial Vehicles (NSCV) program. SOCOM announced the NSCV contract (H92222-16-D-0043) to Battelle on Wednesday.
The company will manufacture modified commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Toyota Land Cruiser SUVs, Toyota Hilux crew-cab pickup trucks, and Ford Ranger light pickup trucks that retain the original equipment manufacturer's profile while supporting new armor, heavy-duty suspension and brakes, run-flat tires and wheels, vetronics, and communications equipment.
The contract is for as many as 556 vehicles -- 396 armored and 160 unarmored -- with most of them consisting of the Toyota Land Cruiser models 76 and 79, officials say. SOCOM officials may order fewer of these modified vehicles if they choose.
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SOCOM experts are ordering trucks and SUVs that offer low risk in system survivability, system-level maturity, manufacture, supportability, and life cycle costs.
Battelle will provide all materials, equipment, hard tooling, personnel, and facilities necessary to manufacture, fabricate, integrate, produce, and test the up-armored trucks and SUVs with Special Operations communications gear aboard.
The Toyota and Ford SUVs and pickup trucks will have various levels of enhanced crew protection, mobility, and operational capabilities. Vehicles will have special armor, suspension, brakes, frames and body reinforcements, as well as infrared lighting, blackout mode, and Special Operations command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) equipment.
The Battelle-modified trucks and SUVs will go through a design review process and approval after the Special Operations upgrades are completed, and then will be integrated into an initial vehicle lot.
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The modified vehicles then will go through a contractor and government production qualification test. After testing, the government may issue delivery orders for production.
This indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity NSCV contract has a five-year potential $170 million ordering period with a potential $60 million two-year option.
On this contract Battelle will do most of the work in Columbus, Ohio, and should be finished by July 2023. For more information contact Battelle online at www.battelle.org, or SOCOM at www.socom.mil.
John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
