1. Introduction
Armored Vehicles Companies; The sophisticated weapon systems that have been developed nowadays have led to an idle position of the traditional tools for defense, such as infantry and armored vehicles. Infantry is not very efficient for locations like mountains, cold environments, and urban places. Armored vehicles also have their problems, being heavy, lacking mobility, and being very expensive. However, modern defense strategies still assume the use of armored vehicles in conflicts. The number of vehicles may be reduced for each unit, but it is certain that the number will not tend to zero. An alternative for the “classic” armored vehicles is the development of a “new” kind of vehicle that can use very lightweight armor or composite armor, using passive and active protection systems such as RPG nets and antiballistic control systems. These are called Armored High Mobility Patterns of High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles meant to perform part of the uses of the classical vehicles, limited to the drawbacks of the classic vehicles.
The research questions are: “Are the light infantry and the heavy mechanized infantry orthodox? Do specialists want to use the imbalance through hi-tech? Or is tradition better and pro-active defense history?” A case study was made based on the structural analysis of an infantry company, done through matrix analysis. There are three different final results. These require three different solutions. According to the superficial large scalometer model of reality, appearances are deceitful. Like the expression of the mass-energy is E=mc2, there is hidden matter and forces. Our light and tactical pilots developed an Infinity Chassis for new species of armored vehicles through four strategic morphologies: speed mobility, speed performance, chassis expansion, and commons plumbers. The units created in 1999 are using them, and the freshmen obtained multiple motorizations and electronics. High composites and low inferences are future steps. These lethal machines managed a qualitative superiority. Some pilots obtained tangible and poly-chromatic speed-mobility from their heavy machines. Few red-lions started to have the iron-will. Some new-kind red-lions have a miraculous chassis. The main lesson was called “Beware that knowledge is sacred and the superior-leaders are watching you.” Be non-content and re-active. Be a brave mastodon.
2. Historical Evolution of Armored Vehicles
With the evolution of war strategies, the means of attacking changed, and therefore the defense mechanisms also had to evolve. This is how the first human armor appears as a method of increasing the survival capacity of the combatants. This concept is also verified in the animal kingdom, where animals are able to survive through the existence of an exoskeleton or other protective layers. Nowadays, the concept of an armored vehicle is linked to the development of the car since it was exclusively the attraction capacity of this one that allowed the transport of the boats whose defense capacity was limited. Initially, this problem was circumvented through the development of tanks or indigenous means of confrontation such as the imposing and fearsome Roman legions and their onagrii.
At the end of the 18th century, the development of naval engineering opened the way to the appearance of ironclad ships, based on armored plates that protected the vital parts of the ships. This concept was soon copied into the field of military vehicles, and the first patents for bulletproofing trains appeared at the end of the 19th century. Independently of one another, both the Trok, a kind of armored cart, as well as the Motor War Car, which embodies the first designs of the so-called modern armored vehicle, appeared in 1898. The date is almost always when the armored vehicle was born. The Industrial Revolution promoted the need for equipment like armored vehicles, and their demand grew during the first half of the 20th century. At that time, it was aimed at overcoming the trenches, from which the foot soldier had trouble leaving.
At the moment, and although it exists in the near future, with a growing internal and external political instability, while sophisticated and discrete equipment is on the march among our potential adversaries, in Portugal, the VTBLs and revisers of a fleet of unemployed armored vehicles await a fate other than just judged. For those who are spent and await the turntable in squares where they serve and will serve the Homeland for decades, this book goes, hoping that it will contribute to improving the battered and forgotten image they suffer.
3. Key Players in the Armored Vehicles Industry
The recoverability of an armed organization in today’s asymmetric conflict is critical. The diverse methodology of modern conflict obliges military strategists to adopt strategies that involve all infantry. Indeed, the traditional military profession of securitizing land and civil society has adapted. The new mission involves providing peace and security for all inhabitants of the area of operations, including the soldier manning a trench, a lorry carrying aid to a patrol, or vehicles. Previously, military developments concentrated with integrating defensive and offensive units, as well as putting the soldier at the center of the fighting. The soldier has been invisible; his technical and logistical support has all been blurred. In recent years, this defense policy has been shifted. The latest military technology from the company has built Germany’s top army. Efficient armored combat vehicles must also be produced, as well as all of the support land systems of the future.
4. Technological Advancements in Armored Vehicles
As the development of technology is advancing and especially in the defense sector, armored vehicle companies, such as OEMs, body builders, and defense contractors, have a significant role in meeting the modern defense sector and military’s high expectations and requirements. This is achieved by developing smarter, safer, more efficient, more reliable, advanced tools and weapons systems that will cover the high-threat environments of the battlefield. In that manner, the military’s need for operational scenarios is met by the capabilities of all different kinds of vehicles. These high-tech and purpose-built vehicles are used to carry out administrative, support, and combat tasks as well.
Meeting the standard requirements causes an ongoing increase in systems and applications complexity of armored fighting vehicles. Fielding modern systems such as communication suites, combat management systems, surveillance systems, and power distribution systems boost the need for state-of-the-art automotive technologies in the fields of electric power supply generation and distribution, power electronics, high-voltage energy storage management, vehicle weight reduction, fuel consumption decrease, but also the increasing electrical power requirements for future vehicle missions to be carried out. Accounting for these requirements and technological advancements in armored military vehicles, their suppliers need to find efficient solutions in applying software models for testing and refining the vehicle in a Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) simulation environment to predict the impact of complex systems sub-contracts on the vehicle platform.
5. Infinity Chassis Units: Design and Features Armored Vehicles Companies
In this study, we aim to provide an alternative way of decreasing military expenses of armored vehicles. Our claim, which can only be proved by conducting comprehensive case studies, is that it is possible to determine updated and flexible defense strategies based on the concept of chassis units. Furthermore, we would like to present updated armored vehicles (named as modular vehicles), types and quantities of these updated armored vehicles, the design of a chassis unit which may be an alternative solution to the problem of producing the updated armored vehicle, trade-off analysis of modular and classical combat vehicles and support vehicles, force structures of the modular combat units, and strategies using modular vehicles. For the years 2015 and 2020, a comprehensive alternative armored vehicle is defined in this study called the Infinity Chassis Unit. Integral numbers are used to define and create optimal combat units.
The aim of this study is to show that a new idea will facilitate the use of current maintenance strategies and, at the same time, result in a significant increase in battle capability. The developed tool forces the development of new maintenance strategies based on the interchangeable configuration of combat vehicles. This research shows all the steps, including modular vehicle designs that can be the platforms of each army in order to meet these needs. Detailed modular combat unit examples are given for a military operation in four different time zones. For the years 2015 and 2020, a comprehensive alternative armored vehicle is defined in this study called the Infinity Chassis Unit. Integral numbers are used to define and create optimal combat units. After determining the parliamentary values of the objective function used, the military strategist will define what type of modular combat units or rapid reaction units they will need.
5.1. Armor Composition Armored Vehicles Companies
The company’s expertise and market knowledge allowed for the development of a medium-tonnage chassis suitable for military usage. Challenging the conventional concept of armoring light vehicles, it proposes relocating the immunity layer to the vehicle’s assembly while controlling the loss of mobility through a mix of different systems-level mitigation measures. This provides the army with a vehicle with high ballistic and anti-mine capability, a wider internal space that allows for more effective seating arrangements in the back section. The design of the vehicle is robust, resistant to wear and materials aging, and can also be upgraded (e.g. hardware and software upgrades).
Analysis of the top market solutions and market trends, such as Rotatable Wheel Units and Clear View Armor (barriers of air between armor and chassis and different levels of layers, providing an effect like a sticker effect for piercing projectiles), as well as other anti-ballistics and anti-mine solutions, conducted by the company, shows that the current response for more compact and inexpensive solutions is not being satisfied. Equipping vehicles with both anti-ballistic and anti-mine capacity is a requirement for light armored vehicles, falling into a category loosely called MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected). However, this compromises the initial unit’s payload design, which accordingly needs to be resized or requires specialized or proprietary power pack and transmissions, resulting in higher logistic costs. These solutions make the built unit increasingly heavier, as seen in many commercial offers for MRAP versions of light 4×4 off-road vehicles, and provide only a blade shape in the case of a non-rotating mine floating the ground effect, in the absence of the vehicle’s immunity layer and anti-ballistic coverage provided by other components responding to the same Surface Effect technology principle. Defeating this risky situation would require installing these protective devices not on the vehicle, raising up from the ground, but around it, requiring all the project’s design effort so far.
5.2. Mobility and Maneuverability Armored Vehicles Companies
Armored Vehicles Companies; It is possible to say that the development of war strategies and tactics, favoring the use of vehicles, is one of the advances of the philosophy of Greek civilization during the domination of the Roman Empire. The designs of Leonardo da Vinci and Gustave stated the need of conducting protected people from intrigues through the applications of the sciences. More recently, during the two great wars, the extensive use of all kinds of vehicles, motorized and not, exerted enormous influence on the development of theories and tactics of combat, due to the combat technique that must be developed. It is essential to have armored vehicles in order to maintain an existence, many times, still at the experimental level. As we observed in Chapter 2, there have been various experiences.
Furthermore, it is to be observed that in a possible war between sovereign nations after these studies are not completely unnecessary the problems still unsolvable of: a) The fighting of these means against mines; b) The means to increase the probability of survival of our vehicles in the area of influence of anti-tank missiles; and c) The means to increase the effectiveness of our vehicles in the destruction of the enemies is also of our enemies. Our people and equipment, in other words at any time a real top priority, has always been to improve the maneuverability: it is taken for granted the best we maneuver, and the simpler it becomes to defend themselves and to survive, even if it is attacked above all from the direction we want, for thirty years, with modifications but still with a single type of MBT (Leopard A4-A5), which involves an extremely large number of extremely complex parts expensive. We cannot ignore these basic considerations.
5.3. Firepower Capabilities Armored Vehicles Companies
Nowadays, every defense in the world is based on movable armor. The way of producing has to answer this demand quickly but offering innovative solutions, once the platforms in use are multi-years. An exploratory, qualitative and single case research has been developed. The unit of analysis is the set of platforms produced in a high-level process of integration of different components and systems that allow adding the arms and other missile-based weapon systems. The case study focuses on an armored vehicle design-and-produce company, leader in the Portuguese market since the 80’s. They characterize themselves as not being a traditional weapons company. Instead, they describe themselves as a defense company proposing solutions for defense strategies. Company A’s business model was created to offer a complete vehicle, mission-ready, and in different configuration options, adaptable to the multiple theaters of operation. The indirect object of the study, the modules that are designed to be placed in combat vehicles like those produced by companies A and B. These are not just simple modules. These systems are part of Corporations A and B’s differentiations, supported by a number of registered patents.
The term defense company will distinguish the companies that enter from that moment in the production of defense weapons, especially for armored vehicles. Only then will the transfer of technology, directly aimed at developing new products generated by the requirements of their country’s different armies. The F-Types, Invictus are production vehicles, each based on a chassis, where multiple modules are engaged that are common to the different units of A or B. Armored vehicles’ firepower is not only the product of vehicle properties but also results from the other weapon systems that are implemented in vehicles known as: MBT Main Battle Tanks; APC Armored Personnel Carriers; AFV Armored Fighting Vehicles; AIFV Advanced Infantry Fighting Vehicle; ASV Armored Security Vehicle. That is, the difference in firepower results from the platform plus the different modules. This firepower has to answer the present and future asymmetric threats. The internet, with the support of modern communication systems, used, for good and bad, by multiple sources of information, does not allow for a delayed innovation process. But what, in the technical field, is doing this mode of production creating the front industrial strategy of each nation?
6. Impact of Armored Vehicles on Modern Defense Strategies
Military vehicles, especially light bulletproof vehicles (LBVs), are the equivalent of land power in any defense strategy in the history of the modern era starting from the late equipment of when the bow and arrow were used for hunting deer, use in combat zones. The prestige of some countries increased and political power was extended with such land power in human history. Armored carriers’ influence on defense strategies is more decisive and more meaningful. With the accelerated complexity of modern combat equipment and the increasing demand for terrain information and transmission technology, defense applications of light armored vehicles will become crucial.
With the end of World War II, reports on military modernization during Iraqi and Vietnamese wars were submitted to corporate companies to guarantee the general characteristics of the armored vehicle. The performance requirements in the armored trial range from improving the shock resistance of the occupants and maintaining the vehicle’s mobility on the roads to its maximum, to the capabilities of various Special Forces. Consequently, military engineering made the breakthroughs in automotive and ballistic design of armed carriers in the 20th century as a step forward. Vehicles with development, such as military amphibians, were prominently used in engineering support, transporting troops and participating in some specific operations. They may play some other roles in the army, such as transport, reconnaissance, and electronic warfare. Once the capabilities of the armor-supported carriers have crossed the basic demand capabilities of the military units, there is a trend to use their multiple capacities more effectively. In other words, the use of armored carriers in the army is not only designed to protect the land forces from deadly threats from terrorists but also to increase the mission statement of the land forces.
