Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain and Germany as the lead nation have initiated a new project under the auspices of the European Defence Agency (EDA) the aim of which is to investigate opportunities and challenges of lightweight constructions for Armoured Multi-Purpose Vehicles (the L-AMPV project).
Governmental experts from participating Member States and ten industrial and research entities involved in the project execution (coordinator KMW, Airborne, Camattini Meccanica, CEIIA, IABG, IVECO, Scania Netherland, Tecnalia, TNO and UROVESA) convened for a kick off meeting held at the European Defence Agency on 16 December 2015.
The L-AMPV project is addressing a problem identified by military users referring to Armoured Multi-Purpose Vehicles currently in-service being far too heavy; this reduces off-road mobility and/or leaves insufficient room for additional equipment or protection enhancements.
Consequently, the project aims at (i) delivering detailed information (material, weight, size and price) of vehicle components/parts currently used; (ii) determining the items which contribute most weight and (iii) recommending how to reduce the weight of these parts taking into account the need for the solution to last throughout the life-cycle of the system.
The overall objective of this Research and Technology (R&T) project is firstly to investigate opportunities and challenges of lightweight constructions for Armoured Multi-Purpose Vehicles, including new construction techniques for the vehicle parts, in order to define a proposal for a technology demonstrator, which could be the basis for a follow-on project.