DSA 2016: FNSS to assist further AV8 production
19th April 2016 - 3:18 by
Tim Fish in Kuala Lumpur
The production of the
AV8 Gempita 8x8 vehicle for the Malaysian Army is expected to ramp up this year following a slow start.
Plans were to build about
56 vehicles in 2016, but spokespeople from both DRB-HICOM Deftech, which is building the vehicles in Malaysia and the original equipment manufacturer FNSS in Turkey stated that the figure for this year is about 65-70 vehicles.
It appears this is to make up for the shortfall in 2015, which saw just 27 vehicles handed over for acceptance by the Malaysian Army, when it was slated to be 40.
These initial 27 vehicles are the Infantry Fighting Vehicle 25 (IFV 25) variant equipped with the Sharpshooter turret that is fitted with an 25mm cannon from ATK, and an FNSS spokesperson said most of these have been deployed to Sabah for testing.
General Datuk Raja Mohamed Affandi Bin Raja Mohamed Noor, Chief of the Malaysian Army told
Shephard at DSA in 2014 that he expected the IFV 25mm and AFV 30mm variants to be
completed that year.
The FNSS spokesperson confirmed that the
first 12 were built by his company in Turkey, with the remainder assembled in Malaysia and although DefTech can assemble and manufacture hulls ‘some are still done in Turkey because of the new schedule.’
The total number of IFV variants expected is 46. A spokesperson from DefTech said that deliveries of these have almost been finished.
FNSS said that although there are changes to the schedule, building all the vehicles depends on acceptance by the army project office and it is just a matter of time to complete deliveries which will go out to 2018.
The total AV8s on order is 257.
According to the FNSS spokesperson the armoured fighting vehicle 30mm (AFV 30) variant, fitted with the LCT30 two-man turret and 30mm gun from Denel is in acceptance testing with the anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) variant – with an LCT30 turret fitted with the Ingwe anti-tank missile – in production.
He said five had completed design and testing with a sixth ongoing, whilst the spokesperson from Deftech added that the first 10 LCT30 units would be delivered in May. He added that production of the ATGW variant would be accepted next year. Of those vehicles fitted with the LCT30 turret, 68 of the AFV 30 vehicles are due to be built along with 54 of the ATGW variants.
Of the remaining vehicles, there are due to be 13 command post (or ACV) variants; just three signals (or AVS) variants; 24 surveillance variants; 10 more IFV variants fitted with a remote-control weapon station (RCWS) instead of a turret to allow space for soldiers; eight mortar carriers; 10 ambulance; nine recovery; nine fitter variants; and four CBRN variants.
The DefTech spokesperson said that the RCWS variant was coming ‘soon’.
SARP
