The ocelot, or Leopardus Pardalis, is a feline predator native to Latin America. Due to intense hunting in the middle of the last century, the ocelot became a rare animal. Its namesake, the armored car Ocelot, developed by order of the British army, on the contrary, promises to become the most massive military all-terrain vehicle, sending the famous Humvee to retirement.
In Afghanistan, NATO troops are faced with the same problem that our Limited Contingent could not solve in due time. The most widespread and dangerous type of combat operations was not the assault on fortified areas and training bases for the rebels, but the elementary supply of ammunition and food to the garrisons scattered throughout the country, and any movement along the roads. The classic war with the front line and cunning tactical maneuvers is a thing of the past - the enemy has become almost invisible, well equipped technically and extremely sophisticated. And it turned out that the good old M1114 Humvee and its British colleague Land Rover Snatch are completely unprepared for this.
With excellent cross-country ability and sufficient firepower, the heroes of Hollywood blockbusters became an easy target for landmines - the main weapon of the rebels. IEDs stuffed with metal flatten the Humvee and Snatch like tin cans. Even not very powerful explosions put them out of action for a long time, tearing out an unprotected suspension with meat. Additional armor on light vehicles increases their survivability. Dressed in a "body armor" Humvee holds a 7.62 caliber impact, fragments of a 155-mm artillery shell, detonation of 5.5 kg of TNT under the front axle and about 2 kg - under the rear. But the flat bottom, which takes on all the power of the blast wave, nullifies all efforts.
Of course, the coalition troops are armed with real fortresses on wheels - Cougar, Mastiff, Ridgeback and the impenetrable monster Buffalo, which swallows land mines and grenade launcher shots without any problems. But experience shows that the lot of heavy vehicles with MRAP mine protection is convoy escort, fire and technical support. Military engineers and supplies are delighted with them, but the marines and special forces soldiers, who come into direct fire contact with the enemy, frown - in the mountains and off-road, steel dinosaurs are practically useless.
Concussion free
It is for these reasons that the Pentagon and the British Department of Defense have decided to completely replace the retired Humvee and Snatch with a new generation of vehicles. This is not an easy task - the proven practice of modernizing serial industrial chassis, taking into account the requests of the military, is not suitable here. But now all military equipment with mine protection, including six-wheeled Buffalo, is produced in this way. Force Protrection buys bare chassis from Mack tractors and dresses them in MRAP chain mail made of puff Israeli armor plate, after which bulwarks are hung on the hull and standard weapons are installed. The controls and the interior of the Buffalo driver's cab will seem familiar to any trucker - this is a pure Mack from steering wheel to polics. It turns out to be relatively cheap and very cheerful. In the same way, Navistar turns the harmless heavy truck International 7400 into the formidable MaxxPro. But Humvee and Snatch are a different matter.
It is not possible to adapt the base of the MRAP body kit or the powerful armored V-shaped reflector to the bodies of cars of the lightest weight category. Preparing a Humvee and Snatch for daily combat work costs almost $ 100,000 per copy, but even after that they remain virtually disposable. The very first land mine "caught" on the road puts them out of action for several weeks. Thank God if the crew does not add to the list of irrecoverable losses. Severe contusions and spinal injuries do not count - they are included in the duty menu by default. And if iron is not a pity, then the fighters of the elite units are piece goods.
A new war requires a new vehicle. The UK Department of Defense plans to decommission 400 Snatch and Snatch Vixen vehicles in 2011. More than a dozen companies responded to the tender announced in 2009, but only two projects reached the finish line - Supacat's SPV400 and Ocelot, developed by a team of specialists from Force Protection Europe and Ricardo. The design of the last challenger is so original that it deserves a detailed story.
The main requirements of the military are the maneuverability at the level of the M1114 Humvee, the curb weight of the order of 7-8 tons and the mine protection of the crew at the level of the heavier Cougar. The vehicle must maintain the integrity of the troop compartment during the explosion of 14 kg of TNT under any of the axes. Weight is a key factor, it directly affects the level of congestion that occurs. For example, six-ton armored Humvees on such charges fly up to 3-5 meters. Another factor is the shape of the bottom, which affects the distribution of the blast wave. It should be V-shaped. The wedge-shaped bottom diverts a cloud of incandescent gases and projectiles away from the body. The first to come up with such an extremely effective solution were South African designers back in the mid-1970s.
In the fight for a contract for £ 100 million (200 armored vehicles), Force Protection specialists turned to the British company Ricardo, whose engineers have long been famous for their non-standard approach to solving complex problems. In 2008, a special team, Team Ocelot, was created, which included not only experts from the former military, past Afghanistan and Iraq, but also motorsport celebrities - former chief engineer of the Mitsubishi WRC rally team Roland Jacob-Lloyd and composites guru Michael Kahlan, in Past - Chief Designer of F1 McLaren. In addition, BMW and Jaguar-trained professionals have contributed to the development of the Ocelot's suspension. We worked at such an intense pace that the first prototype of Ocelot was presented to customers in September 2009. Moreover, the car was created literally from scratch - the project was based on the innovative idea of Graham Rumball, the project manager for Ricardo.
Into a skateboard fight
Rumball suggested using a skateboard type chassis. A draft of such a concept was created in the mid-1990s by the Swedish company SKF, commissioned by General Motors. The essence of the "skateboard" is the placement of the power plant, auxiliary units, suspension and fuel tank inside a flat platform, on which a body of any configuration can be hoisted. The Skateboard, designed for the future Ocelot, is a compact V-shaped body made of multi-layer armor plate, inside which is located the engine, transmission, steering components, differentials, fuel tank and independent suspension mounts. Outside the skateboard, only powerful A-arms with longitudinal torsion beams and damping spring struts are visible. And, of course, huge toothed wheels.
The top of this gutter is open and equipped with six simple hinges similar to conventional door hinges. Four side ones are intended for attaching the hull with the cockpit and the troop compartment, and the two front ones are for the folding armored hood, under which the engine and gearbox are hidden. This chassis layout ensures maximum crew safety. And it's not just the reflector - the composite sandwich of the hull completely isolates the landing party from the deadly debris of the power plant resulting from the explosion.
The carrying "skateboard" is the heaviest part of the Ocelot, which means that the center of gravity of the machine is as low as possible above the ground. According to Roland Jacob-Lloyd, the Ocelot's handling and incredible stability when maneuvering is very close to a sports rally car. The original longitudinal torsion bar arrangement provides the fully independent Ocelot suspension with a tremendous rebound travel. The four steerable wheels take the vehicle's agility to a new level.
An indestructible skateboard chassis is not the whole story of Ocelot. Equally interesting is its quick-release and incredibly rigid composite body. On the outer surface there are attachment points for additional armor plates, with which the machine is not afraid of the RPG-7 and a large-caliber machine gun. There are three compartments inside the case, separated by vertical partitions. In the front there is a cockpit with controls and two places for the crew, on average there are four seats for the landing force, in the stern there are shelves for attaching anti-mine electronic equipment and a large swing door. The vehicle commander has a separate door and upper hatch, and two hatches at the top of the troop compartment are intended for firing.
The body has a perfectly flat floor, and the automatically folding seats are attached to the side wall or ceiling. The Ocelot Group has tried at least three types of special compensating mine action seats. It is most likely that the future production car will have chairs or even ShockRide benches of the American company ArmorWorks with four-point seat belts and a compensating mat that prevents foot injuries when blown up.
Aibolite for an ocelot
In addition to the standard six-seater patrol version of the hull, Team Ocelot has developed an open-top two-seater cargo and 2 + 2 combat version. To turn a patrol car, for example, into an ambulance truck, it is enough to unlock the hinges of the mountings by removing the “fingers” from them, and swap the housings. All manipulations are carried out in an hour using the standard equipment of the fleet of combat vehicles. Repair and maintenance of the power plant is carried out when the body and hood are tilted. True, the help of another machine is required here. Graham Rumball claims that a complete replacement of the power plant by the crew takes no more than half an hour.
The same can be said for the Ocelot suspension. Initially, all its elements are made interchangeable - front and rear spring struts, levers, torsion bars and even drive axle shafts can be interchanged. When the combat situation changes on Ocelot, you can hang up to 2.5 tons of additional armor of various configurations or light bulwarks. The high-torque Steyr straight-six with a volume of 3.2 liters will forgive the crew, only slightly sagging in response to pressing the accelerator pedal.
For all its external brutality and dimensions, the Ocelot is only slightly larger than the Snatch. The level of its firepower is also in line with its predecessors. It can be loaded with a standard WMIK module with a large-caliber machine gun and an automatic grenade launcher or an integrated firing module with remote control RWS, which the shooter controls using a joystick and TV cameras with night vision devices. At the same time, within a radius of 2 km from the car, the enemy will have to squeeze into the ground in order to stay alive.
Summing up, we can say that Force Protection Europe and Ricardo managed to create a vehicle of a completely new architecture, head and shoulders above the reference M1114 Humvee in terms of crew protection and survivability. Whether it will be adopted for service is still unknown. But without a doubt, this "skateboard" will travel very far into the future. And not necessarily as a basis for a combat vehicle - literally simultaneously with the advent of Ocelot, the American company Trexa presented a "civilian" flat modular chassis with an electric power plant at a very sweet price.
