Canada to sell 39 new American armored vehicles to Ukraine

Alexander Sychev

This armored vehicle was supposed to replace the existing fleet of Bison light armored wheeled vehicles and M113 tracked vehicles in the Canadian army, but instead they will go to Ukraine. True, at the end of summer.

Canadians themselves began to receive LAV II ACSV vehicles in 2020 under a contract that was concluded a year earlier with the American company General Dynamics Land Systems. In total, the Canadian Army has ordered 360 LAV II ACSV units and has not yet received all of them. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to give back, and the army crossed these vehicles off the list of expected deliveries from the United States.

Actually, LAV II ACSV is a modernized Piranha III. The machine was developed by the Swiss company MOWAG back in the 1970s. In 2010, General Dynamics bought this company, whose armored Piranha for various purposes in the amount of almost 11 thousand pieces dispersed in 20 countries of the world.

The hull of the LAV II ACSV is built according to a common anti-mine form - with a narrower bottom and diverging sides at an angle. The thickness of the armor reaches 14.5 millimeters and, together with the anti-mine form, provides a fairly high protection against fragments and small arms. Energy-absorbing seats provide additional protection.

The American version has a 350 horsepower Caterpillar engine coupled to a transmission with seven speeds forward and one reverse. On the roads, the car can move at a maximum speed of 100 kilometers per hour. The cruising range on one gas station is 450 kilometers.

The seventeen-ton machine is served by a crew of three people. The armored personnel carrier can take on board seven more servicemen with weapons.

The main armament of the armored personnel carrier is the 25 mm M242 automatic cannon. It can fire 175 rounds per minute. The effective firing range is three kilometers, and the maximum is almost seven. 252 shots are placed in the ammunition feed tape.

The cannon is paired with a Belgian 7.62mm C6 machine gun based on the Browning M1918 automatic rifle. John Moses Browning created in 1917. In the version for the armored personnel carrier, only the chamber has been changed. It was adapted for tape feed. The machine gun is reliable and unpretentious, and therefore has been serving for the second century.