Army Confident About Move To Wheeled Combat Vehicle.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

The U.S. Army will receive its new light armored vehicles in February 2002, approximately 28 months after the chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, announced the service would start trading tracks for wheels.

The first four LAVs-2,131 are expected to be built over seven years--will come from London, Ontario. The rest will be assembled in Lima, Ohio.

Army officials have praised the choice of the eight-wheel LAV III as the vehicle for the so-called "interim brigade combat reams," the front-line units that Shinseki conceived as a lighter, more mobile alternative to heavy brigades. Any vehicle or weapon platform used by the IBCTs, Shinseki said, must be able to fit on C-130 medium-lift cargo airplanes. The plan is to field at least six brigades during the next decade.

But the notion that the Army's premier rapid-response force, the IBCTs, will have only wheeled vehicles has prompted criticism from retired servicemen and analysts who wonder whether the Army is wise to do away with tracked platforms in the IBCTs and rely on a vehicle that has limited ballistic protection. Some critics also have questioned the "deployability" of the 38,000-pound LAV, complaining that it requires modifications in order to be able to roll on and roll off a C-130.

The first two IBCTs, at Fort Lewis, Wash., have been training with 32 Canadian LAVs and will continue to do so until the new vehicles arrive, said Brig. Gen. Paul Eaton, the Army's training and doctrine deputy commander. Each IBCT, he said, will require 217 trips by C-17 heavy-lift planes to deploy--half of the airlift needed to move a heavy brigade. The Army wants the vehicles to fit on smaller C-130s, because the Air Force has hundreds of those, compared to only a few dozen C-17s.

The Army awarded a $4 billion contract last year to a consortium of General Morors Defense of Canada and General Dynamics Land Systems, in Sterling Heights, Mich., for the development and production of the LAV III. The LAV is a derivative of Swirzer-land's Mowag Piranha. The design was licensed to General Motors Defense, which now owns Mowag. Different versions of the LAV are used by various countries around the world. The U.S. Marine Corps has operated a Generation I version of the LAV for more than 20 years. The LAV that the Army selected is a Piranha Generation III.

For the U.S. Army's program, 50 percent of the work will be done in the United States, 32 percent in Canada and 18 percent in other countries (Germany, Israel and the United Kingdom).

During a news conference in Washington, Eaton said he expects to have a fully-equipped LAV brigade by the second or third quarter of 2003. He told reporters that the LAV is not a "peacekeeping vehicle," even though the IBCTs were...