Sweden has now together with Finland, Latvia and Germany signed an agreement for a new generation of troop transport vehicles. At the same time, a first order for 20 vehicles has been placed, and they will be delivered to the Swedish Armed Forces already in May.
Creates opportunities for collaboration
The troop transport vehicles, with a price tag of roughly 11 million kroner each, will form the backbone of the Swedish stockpile in the coming years and will be added to the regiments that are being built up with increased defense spending.
– Sweden will eventually order several hundred of this vehicle, says Mats Warstedt, head of the Nordics at the defense and technology company Patria, whose majority owner is the Finnish state.
“This will be a vehicle that is robust, easy to drive and with low maintenance costs. It creates opportunities for cooperation both in terms of production, maintenance, further development and joint use or what we call interoperability,” writes FMV to SVT.
The idea is that troops from different countries should be able to use and maintain each other’s vehicles without special training.
In the vehicles, ten soldiers can sit protected from shrapnel and fire, and a gunner can defend the vehicle. They are modular and can be converted into, for example, medical transport vehicles, and as an optional feature they can swim across bodies of water.
Closer cooperation with Finland
Sweden cooperates more and more closely with Finland on many levels in defence, and there is a strong desire to deepen the cooperation also in production, says FMV. International collaborations play an increasingly important role in Swedish defence.
Panzerterrängbil 300, as they will be called, have engines and armor made in Sweden and can travel up to one hundred kilometers per hour.
Watch when SVT’s reporter drives an armored vehicle in the clip above.
