$ 752 Million contract for 822 new "upgraded" MaxxPro's

08:24 GMT, September 5, 2008 Heavy truck maker Navistar International Corp. won the competition to provide the U.S. Marine Corps’s first batch of smaller Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. Within this contract worth $752 million (€528 million), the U.S. Marine Corps awarded Navistar Defense, LLC – a unit of Navistar International Corp - to produce some 800 lighter, smaller and more mobile variant of its International MaxxPro MRAP family of vehicles. In the same contract the Pentagon also awarded General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada and Force Protection for five test vehicles for $7 million (€5 million) a piece.

As a lesson learned from recent conflicts, the Pentagon urges the industry to redesign MRAPs to be more maneuverable and to reduce the center of gravity. The new upgraded vehicle of Navistar, called MaxxPro Dash, maintains the survivability system used on all MaxxPro MRAP variants while also allowing greater mobility in a smaller, lighter weight vehicle optimised for Afghanistan operations. “This vehicle can absorb EFP (explosively formed penetrators) protection and it has also been designed to absorb an anti-RPG kit, like an APS (active protection system),” Navistar vice president Patrick MacArevey explained.

The 4X4 MaxxPro Dashes are 2 tons lighter, 2 feet shorter in height and 8 inches shorter in length than the previous three MaxxPro variants, which weighed about 17-19 tons.

The upgrade helps to improve the turning radius and the torque to weight ratio and increasea the top speed of the vehicle. “The Dash embodies everything we do: survivability, mobility and adaptability,” said Archie Massicotte, president, Navistar Defense. The vehicle was already blast-tested in Israel by Plasan, which makes the armor for the MaxxPros.

“The program has gone a long way and continuously upgraded things that needed to be done and made light changes in order to adjust to different situations,” a Pentagon spokeswoman said. “We’ve always said that we will be flexible and we’ve always said that we will look at the requirement needs we they go along.”

Production of the MaxxPro Dash will begin in October at the company’s West Point, Miss. Plant. According to the contract announcement the vehicles are planned to be delivered by February 2009.

Navistar MRAP’s successes:

Since the initial contract in May 2007, Navistar built 5.200 MRAP vehicles. More than 2.900 of them are already in service with the Afghanistan National Police, Afghan National Army and the Iraqi Ministry of Defence. In May 2008 Navistar won a huge follow-on contract worth over $1.3 billion (€913 million) for more than 7.000 additional units.