An Era Ends In The Netherlands

An Era Ends In The Netherlands

YPR765
July 10, 2012: The Netherlands Army has retired the last of its YPR765 IFVs (Infantry Fighting Vehicles). The YPR765 is actually one of the several upgrades of the American M113 armored personnel carrier design. Holland ordered over 1,600 of these vehicles in the last 40 years. They most recently served in Afghanistan.

CV90
Holland is replacing all those TPR765s with 184 Swedish made CV90s, 400 4x4 10 ton Fennek recon vehicles and 200 Boxer wheeled armored vehicles. While the Fennek is similar to an armored hummer while the CV90 and Boxer are more heavily armored combat vehicles. The Netherlands has shrunk its armed forces since the Cold War ended in 1991, which led to the retirement of most YPR765s. The remaining YPR765s were considered old, and out-of-date.

Development of the CV90 began in 1988, with production starting in late 1993. The 28 ton tracked vehicle has a crew of three and carries seven passengers (usually infantrymen). With a top road speed of 70 kilometers an hour, the CV90 can go 300 kilometers on internal fuel. The vehicle turret carries a 30mm autocannon and a coaxial 7.62mm machine-gun. Also in the turret is a thermal imager for night operations. The vehicle armor protects against projectiles of up to 30mm caliber.

Boxer
The Boxer is an eight wheeled armored vehicle, with a combat weight of 26 tons. The vehicle carries up to eleven people. Top speed is 104 kilometers an hour, and it can travel about a thousand kilometers on roads, without refueling. Standard weapon is a 12.7mm machine-gun. There will be many variants, as the Boxer is meant to be a standard armored personnel carrier, and a replacement for the many M-113 tracked vehicles. The Boxer has been in development since 1999, with Britain, Germany and the Netherlands cooperating on the project.

It was in 1960 that the United States began building a boxy armored personnel vehicle called the M-113. Over 80,000 have been built since then, and more than fifty nations have used them. There have been 40 variants of the 13-15 ton M113, for everything from air defense, command, carrying cargo and so on.

M2 Bradley
In the 1980s, the 21 ton M-2 Bradley replaced M-113s as the principal infantry vehicle in the United States. The main reason for this was the need for a vehicle that could keep up with the M-1 tank, and a larger vehicle to carry more weapons (25mm cannon and anti-tank missiles.) But the M113 continues to receive upgrades. Currently, you can put a new suspension, engine (diesel/electric) and tracks (rubber) in a M113 and make it as nimble as the Bradley, and quieter. The move to introduce wheeled armored cars into rapid deployment brigades has run into these more effective (and lighter and cheaper) M113s, much to the chagrin of planners who assume that if it's better, it's gotta be brand new.


http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htarm/articles/20120710.aspx

Nemo me impune lacesset,

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"The chief aim of all government is to preserve the freedom of the citizen. His control over his person, his property, his movements, his business, his desires should be restrained only so far as the public welfare imperatively demands. The world is in more danger of being governed too much than too little. It is the teaching of all history that liberty can only be preserved in small areas. Local self-government is, therefore, indispensable to liberty. A centralized and distant bureaucracy is the worst of all tyranny. Taxation can justly be levied for no purpose other than to provide revenue for the support of the government. To tax one person, class or section to provide revenue for the benefit of another is none the less robbery because done under the form of law and called taxation." John W. Davis, Democratic Presidential Candidate, 1924. Davis was one of the greatest trial and appellate lawyers in US history. He also served as the US Ambassador to the UK.