Fourth Norwegian Army Order for the LAV
Iveco Defence Vehicles (IDV) announced on 6 February that it has delivered the final tranche of 62 Light Armoured Vehicles (LAV) to the Norwegian Army – the fourth procurement of the vehicle by the Norwegian armed forces. Handover to the Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency (NDMA) took place at IDV’s headquarters in Bolzano, Italy, with Brig.-Gen. Morten Eggen, Head of NDMA’s Land Systems Division, accepting the vehicles.
The fourth generation LAV, which Norway has deployed extensively in overseas missions, is a development of the Light Multirole Vehicle (LMV) design, integrating a variety of improvements requested by the customer. These include the new driveline, which offers a higher performance and a new air filtration system. In addition, the LAV incorporates a variety of lessons learned from the field, providing increased payload, better performance and higher reliability. The internal layout of the crew cell has been extensively redesigned to improve crew ergonomics and incorporate new seats, a next-generation dashboard and an upgraded hardtop. These measures have the additional benefit of significantly increasing usable internal volume.
With total sales of more than 4,000 units to 13 different countries, IDV describes the LMV as “Europe’s vehicle of choice to date in its category.” Customers include Albania, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Tunisia and the United Kingdom.
Tim Mahon