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22 Jul 13. MoD vehicle sums wrong? Sources close to BATTLESPACE suggest that the MoD is going to have to re-work its vehicle fleet figures given the larger TA. Having disposed of the majority of the Land Rover Defender fleet there is now a Requirement for around 4000 vehicles for the TA fleet. Another shortage on the horizon is a Gun Tractor for the 105mm Light Gun where the current Pinzgauer 6×6 fleet is running short of spares. There are approximately 240 plus vehicles required for this requirement where the Army is rumoured to be looking again, as it did in 1980, for a MAN truck to perform this role. The MAN truck has a high silhouette and high towing departure angle which causes towing problems The Gun Tractor shown by Marshalls at DVD in 2011 is rumoured to have been dismantled as the MoD wanted the chassis back. This was one of the key reasons why New Zealand went for new MAN vehicles, not MoD spares as there were none! Initial estimates suggested that there would be 2000 surplus MAN vehicles.

21 Jul 13. Turkey will buy scores of armored vehicles and weapon carriers under two contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, officials said. In the first deal, Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz said on July 3 that Turkey would look for a new supplier for the 175 mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles a local company failed to deliver. “In coordination with the armed forces, we will look into a new model that will substitute for the undelivered Kirpis,” Yilmaz said. Procurement officials said that in addition to the 175 Kirpis for the Army, the police force could order 20 more. Follow-on orders from the Army and the police are also likely, they said. This year, the Turkish Armed Forces terminated a contract with Turkish armored vehicles producer BMC for the acquisition of 468 Kirpi vehicles. The Kirpi is the country’s first locally designed and developed MRAP. Under a 2009 contact with the Turkish government, BMC produced and delivered an initial 293 Kirpi vehicles but failed to comply with the original delivery schedule. One source at BMC blamed “acute financing difficulties and failure to have access to a helping credit line” for the failure to deliver on time. Immediately after the termination of the contract, the country’s procurement agency, the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries (SSM), fined BMC €8m (US $10.5m). (Source: Defense News)

23 Jul 13. A fully upgraded version of India’s locally developed Arjun Mk II main battle tank (MBT) will be begin its final round of trials in the Rajasthan desert in early August, according to officials. Although trials of the partially retrofitted version are currently under way, one fully integrated Arjun Mk II MBT with 73 of 93 ‘improvements’, including 19 major ones demanded by the army, will be evaluated by the service over the next few months. Dr P Shiv Kumar, head of the Combat Vehicle Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE), which is responsible for the Arjun Mk II retrofit, told IHS Jane’s on 23 July that the remaining 20-odd improvements were ammunition-related and would be undertaken separately. (Source: Jane’s)

21 Jul 13. Suriname is to receive its two EE-9 Cascavel armoured reconnaissance vehicles that are being refurbished in Brazil by late 2013. The two vehicles, which are armed with a 90 mm gun, are being refurbished under the supervision of the Brazilian Army’s Logistics Command at the regional maintenance workshop in Rio de Janeiro. The work was committed to by Brazil’s Minister of Defence, Celso Amorim, to his Surinamese counterpart, Lamure Latour, while visiting Suriname in September 2012. Together with two refurbished EE-11 Urutu armoured personnel carriers – recommissioned on 21 June – the two