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LAV User Nations Group (LAVUNG)
18 May 2010
By Captain Brett Grieve
Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) programme representatives from United States Marine Corps(USMC), United States Army, Canada, Australia and New Zealand met in Trentham in March to share engineering and logistics information.
The conference enabled the NZLAV Equipment Management Group (EMG) to acquire Battle Damage Repair engineering information from its partners who are engaged in major re-build projects.
Discussions were held with the US Army Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT) about their survivability upgrade programme. New Zealand intends to adopt the Stryker energy attenuating driver seat (a seat that can withstand blasts) once its development is complete. The Army has already integrated Stryker mine protection kits and energy attenuating troop seats on deployed NZLAV. Each of these products requires significant capital expenditure to develop, and through the LAVUNG relationship, we have already benefited from more than $20M in development costs.
The pricing and lead time for each product was also greatly reduced due to SBCT order quantities resulting in a $130,000 per vehicle saving and being able to meet operational timeframes.
The working group consists of national presentations and specific presentations on this year’s theme of Survivability, Reduced Support Costs and Weight Management. The NZLAV EMG put on a display in the SPEL workshop where attendees got to view the Steering Bearing Flange Upgrade retrofit line, the Turret cable tester and LAV001 with survivability upgrades installed. This display was a welcome break from an otherwise intensive week in the Messines conference centre.
The next LAVUNG Systems Engineering Working Group is in October 2010.
Working Group attendees found the conference beneficial.
“We appreciate NZ’s contribution to LAVUNG as we share the same turret enabling us to resolve maintenance issues concurrently,” said John Smith, ASLAV Senior Technical Adviser.
“The USMC is very hands on in our approach to LAV management much the same as New Zealand therefore we enjoy discussing technical problems and find the New Zealand contribution beneficial,” said Matthew Koneda, USMC Director of Engineering.
“New Zealand is leading the world with its steering bearing flange upgrade, and the information received at this LAVUNG will assist Canada greatly as we proceed with our upgrade program,” said Alain Hodak, Systems Engineering Manager, WLAV, Canada.
This page was last reviewed on 31 May 2010 and is current.
