LAAD 2015: The Iveco Next Generation Vehicle of the Brazilian Army

The VBTP, known as the GUARANI, is a new family of 18t 6x6 (based on a ballistic steel monocoque hull design) armoured, amphibious vehicles. It uses an Iveco-FPT 9-litre, 281 kW (383 HP) bi-fuel common-rail engine, coupled to an automatic gearbox. It is capable of carrying 11 soldiers. The vehicle is 7.0m long, 2.7m  wide, and 2.3m high and can be transported by C-130 HERCULES and KC-390 aircrafts. The VBTP can be equipped with manned and unmanned turrets carrying armament from 5.56 to 105mm.

Iveco GUARANI

This new family of armoured vehicles has been developed jointly by IVECO and the Brazilian Army following the contract signed on December 18, 2009. The supply of the VBTP-MR will amount to 2044 vehicles, being delivered until the year 2030, with a contract value of over €2 billion.
Designed to provide the basis for a family of vehicles capable of filling a multitude of roles such as personnel carrier, reconnaissance, rescue, ambulance, etc, the GUARANI will meet a whole range of operational needs and will reinforce the Army’s operational capability in scenarios which are particularly suited to this type of vehicle. The use of COTS main assemblies (Commercial Off The Shelf) ensures outstanding levels of reliability and consequently excellent fleet availability, ease of maintenance and low whole life costs.

The vehicle are being produced in a new production unit in Sete Lagoas (Brazil) with an estimated production capacity of more than 100 units per year.

Alltogether there will be at least four different turrets:

• HITFACT 105/120mm modular turret by ARES and OTO Melara. As options the turret can be equipped with a canisters UAV launch system, add-on armour (protection level up to 4/5) and active protection. At the moment the Brazilian army is only looking at the 105 mm, not the 120 mm – but because it is a modular turret that could change in the future. In this first part of the program, that includes the supply of one prototype and 13 pilot phase turrets (100+ planed for series production), the high value of local content and nationalization will be emphasized by ARES supply of various important components, including the Optronic systems, that are already installed on the UT30 and REMAX turrets on GUARANI 6x6 vehicles, guaranteeing the logistic commonality among these three systems, and by IMBEL local contents (the company of Juiz de Fora) as the final assembler of the 105 mm turrets. IMBEL has signed with OTO Melara Italy and OTO do Brazil an Industrial Agreement that foresees the transfer of technology for the related activities inclusive the full life in-service-support of the supplied systems. In the end 60% of the workshare should be national content from Brazil (starting at 20% in the beginning). From Brazil and through its partners OTO Melara want to export to all other Latin America countries, turrets from 12.7 mm to 155 mm.
• The UT30BR system was designed to meet a range of requirements, including automatic tracking of targets in gyro-stabilized platforms. It will use the Orbital ATK BUSHMASTER MK44 30mm with AP, TP and HE ammunitions. This cannon is capable of 200 shots/min. and could also use air burst ammunition. The optical magnification of that turret will be up to 15x.
• The REMAX is a remote weapon station for M2HB 12.7mm or MAG 7.62mm.

On the ammunition side Orbital ATK is offering its 30mm air burst ammunition, the other offer comes from CBC. One of the first vehicles is presented by the Army at LAAD.