BAE Systems has delivered its new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) Turreted Mortar prototype to the Army for upcoming testing, the company said on Wednesday.
The new turreted mortar variant of the AMPV, which is outfitted with a
Kongsberg and Patria 120mm weapon system, is the second version of the platform to feature a payload integrated using the company’s newly developed External Mission Equipment Package (ExMEP) universal top plate.
“Handing this remarkable capability over to the Army for evaluation is an important step in creating broader multi-purpose options for soldiers to maintain combat overmatch on the battlefield,” Bill Sheehy, BAE Systems’ AMPV program director, said in a statement. “The AMPV Turreted Mortar prototype was born from a capability discussion we had with the Army in 2022—the same year ExMEP was conceptualized with industry partners, and we look forward to its evaluation. The collaborative, future-driven approach to develop it will benefit the warfighter, and that is what the AMPV program is all about.”
BAE Systems unveiled the AMPV C-UAS, the first version of the platform with a new payload integrated using the ExMEP top plate, last October at the Association of the United States Army’s (AUSA) annual conference in Washington, D.C., which company officials said at the time opens possibilities for future variants of the platform (Defense Daily, Oct. 9).
“What we’re trying to show is our ability to integrate quickly to hit the Army’s requirements and give them solutions while keeping it pretty low cost and being able to move fast,” Jim Miller, BAE Systems’ vice president of business development, told reporters at the time. “We think we can put just about anything on an AMPV very quickly as a result [of the ExMEP], which gives the Army lots of options. If they want an engineering vehicle with a remote weapon system on it or if they want an air defense vehicle, it’s very easy to do. If they want some kind of rocket launcher…or it’s on a turret, we can make it work.”
Sheehy told Defense Daily in December the company had conducted a successful live fire demonstration for the Army with AMPV C-UAS, which features the same Moog Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform (RIwP) turret that’s on the Army’s Stryker Maneuver Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) platform (Defense Daily, Dec. 1).
BAE Systems said the AMPV Turreted Mortar variant handed over to the Army is now set to go through “rigorous field evaluations to mark its capabilities against what soldiers would require in the battlefield.”
“This new AMPV Turreted Mortar prototype offers a significant enhancement that would not only allow for increased capabilities and force protection, but also keep soldiers completely under the armor protection provided by the vehicle,” BAE Systems said in a statement.
BAE Systems added that Kongsberg and Patria’s NEMO 120mm turreted mortar capability on the AMPV is able to fire “five mortar rounds [that] can hit targets simultaneously in less than four seconds while the vehicle is stationary or on the move.”
The NEMO 120mm weapon system has gone through U.S. testing over the last two years as part of the Foreign Comparative Test Program, a Kongsberg spokesperson told Defense Daily.
Sheehy previously told Defense Daily the Army is a “partial payer” in the AMPV Turreted Mortar variant, as the services assesses the capability.
BAE Systems’ AMPV is the Army’s replacement for its legacy M113 armored personnel carriers, with the service reaching the “first unit equipped” marker for the new platform in March (Defense Daily, March 14 2023).
The Army last year awarded the company a full-rate production contract for AMPV, which may be worth up to $1.6 billion, and is delivering five current variants: a general purpose vehicle, the mission command vehicle, a mortar carrier, a medical evacuation vehicle and a medical treatment vehicle (Defense Daily, Sept. 1 2023).