Army considers swapping some of its LAV fleet

The Government wants to swap about a quarter of the army's fleet of 105 LAV armoured vehicles to get a mix of variants of the eight-wheeled battle wagons.

The proposal was revealed at the Royal Returned and Services' Association annual conference in Wellington by Defence Minister Wayne Mapp yesterday.

It comes just six months after Dr Mapp, who had repeatedly criticised the previous government for buying too many of the sophisticated LAVs, indicated that some of the fleet might be sold off and that the defence review was all about getting equipment that Defence "actually use".

When challenged by one of the conference delegates yesterday, Dr Mapp said the Defence review was looking at the configuration of the fleet.

"One of the problems we've got is that they are all identical types and it would be helpful if we had a broader range of types."

These included similar LAV command and control vehicles, engineering vehicles, and variants able to carry more troops or fitted out as battlefield ambulances.

Commenting later, he said that Defence Chief Major-General Jerry Mateparae had suggested a broader range of vehicles, rather than having only the turreted versions that Defence now had.

Dr Mapp said a range of options was being looked at, including swapping some with the US Army, which has a range of what it calls Stryker armoured vehicles.

He was unsure how far discussions had gone but the idea was to swap about 20 to 30 vehicles and "in my view it shouldn't really cost very much to do this".

Whereas the Government had run into difficulties selling surplus military equipment – most notably in the case of the Skyhawk air combat fleet – "swapping would be the more logical thing to do".

Though the LAVs were not frequently deployed, they provided a capability that the army might need and "it is hard to imagine an army that does not have protected mobility".

Army capability chief Colonel Phil Collett said the different variants had not been available when the LAV fleet was ordered.

"Since then the Americans have made a whole range and the Canadians have modified their vehicles for command and control.

"We're looking around to see if we can do this cheaply and one option is, can we swap or sell some of our current ones to get the equivalent number of specialist vehicles?"

The army had approached the manufacturers but had not yet discussed the matter with other armies.

Colonel Collett said the Canadian Army LAV3 had a different chassis, whereas the American Stryker vehicles had the same chassis but none was fitted with turrets as the New Zealand ones were.

The army's 105 LAVs were built by General Motors Defence in Canada and delivered from 2003 at a cost of $677 million.