The Guardian has this on Gordon Brown’s fabled 100 million pounds for the replacement of Snatch Land Rovers.
The government is to urgently order new armoured vehicles to replace the army’s fleet of thinly protected Snatch Land Rovers, the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, will announce later this week.
Years after soldiers first complained about the lack of protection offered by the adapted soft-skinned vehiclesagainst increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ainsworth will tell MPs that the MoD has ordered some 200 “light-protected patrol vehicles” at an estimated cost of £100m, officials said.
Yet if we have a look at history we find this tender from 17th February 2009, more than a year ago. It talks about up to 400 LPPV’s
Title attributed to the contract by the contracting authority: Light Protected Patrol Vehicle (LPPV).
The Specialist and Utility Vehicles (SUV) IPT has a potential future requirement for the supply of up to 400 Light Protected Patrol Vehicles (LPPV) to be production ready in 2010 and delivery into service in 2011. SUV IPT would welcome information from Industry on current products available now or under development that could meet this demanding requirement.
The LPPV will be a wheeled vehicle with an estimated gross vehicle weight of around 6 to 7 tonnes, capable of carrying up to 6 crew (2+4), integrated with a range of communication and electronic equipment providing protected mobility. LPPV will replace in-service light legacy platforms based on the Land Rover based SNATCH vehicle. Additionally, the platform may be used as the basis for the replacement to Land Rover WMIK.
The vehicle must provide the optimum levels of protection against a number of known and emerging threats of a varied nature including Ballistic, Blast, Mine and Fragmentation. As a guide the requirements for protection should be a minimum of level 2 ballistic and level 2 blast as detailed in STANAG 4569.
LPPVs are principally required for a wide range of patrol tasks and are normally expected to operate on roads and rough tracks and trails in urban, semi-urban and rural environments; they need to be sufficiently agile to provide high cross country mobility. To achieve the desired levels of urban manoeuvrability the vehicle will ideally have a width less than 2m and a turning circle less than 12m.
A pre-qualification questionnaire including draft requirements document will be made available to Industry following an initial down selection activity, which will provide more details of the requirement. Certain details within the document will be protectively marked (e.g equipment to be integrated into the vehicle) and will therefore only be available to potential contractors or their sub-contractors who hold, or are prepared and able to obtain, appropriate UK or equivalent national security accreditation.
The LPPV programme is currently funded to identify and develop solutions that have a potential to meet an Urgent Operational Requirement in mid 2010.
Depending on the technical feasibility of responses to this advert a programme will be formalised under normal UOR procurement procedures.
This advert is a risk reduction measure to investigate the possible options available to replace in-service legacy vehicles.
Expressions of interest may be submitted in writing and should include comprehensive vehicle technical specifications.
So whilst the order may now be urgent, they have taken over a year to finalise the tender and select a vehicle.
Government to place £100m order to replace maligned Snatch Land Rovers | UK news | guardian.co.uk.
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