The Ranger Vehicle Project

RANGER is an innovative family of general utility wheeled armoured vehicles, designed from first principles to operate on the 21st century battlefield and to be ‘best in class’ for its performance, survivability, reliability and mission utility. The system can thus be provided in a wide range of variants and configurations and fulfil a variety of roles.

The vehicle provides the World’s best survivability system against blast, ballistic and fragmentation threats whilst also retaining a very high degree of tactical and operational mobility.

It is designed to operate over the most demanding terrain thus allowing troops to have the freedom to manoeuvre off road, and giving the greatest flexibility in route selection and avoidance of vulnerable points (VPs).

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Ranger Mission Profiles

• a. Patrol and security
• b. Personnel Carrier
• c. Command and control
• d. Surveillance and Reconnaissance
• e. Armoured ambulance
• f. Logistic resupply and load carrier
• g. Weapons platform/fire support
• h. Special Forces support vehicle
• i. Engineer Squad support vehicle
• j. Explosive ordnance disposal (EOD)/IEDD rapid response vehicle

Survivability

Ranger has been designed from its inception to provide a very high degree of crew protection from both conventional and asymmetric threats. Whilst most such patrol vehicle designs strive to achieve STANAG 4569 Level 4 protection, RANGER takes this as its baseline and start point.

The heart of the design centres upon an advanced, hardened steel monocoque crew safe ‘survivability’ capsule. During extensive trials, the capsule has been subjected to multiple detonations of military grade high explosives directly under the hull and it has survived with inferior (vertical) accelerations inflicted upon the occupants which are well below those known to cause significant injury.

This module has been successfully tested against attack by a 28kg military grade explosive underbelly charge and has proven to defeat both blast and penetrative effects which would otherwise have caused death or critical injury to the crew.

(click here for Key Features)

This survivability solution includes:

• a. A ‘V’ shaped hull.
• b. An armoured belly plate
• c. A floating floor
• d. An energy absorbing, suspended crew seating system which is designed to be quick release in an emergency and the individual seats can then be used as a stretcher to evacuate casualties who are WIA
• e. An Integral spall lining
• f. A tuneable survivability solution with options including:
• 1. Passive Armour
• 2. Active or Reactive Armour (ERA)
• 3. Hard kill DAS solutions
• 4. All automotive components are fitted out with of this resilient hull. Only the steering column enters this capsule.

Results indicate the following overall net survivability package:

Ballistic	STANAG 4569 Level	Comment
ATMB	4b+	Far exceeds this standard significantly
Kinetic	4	Level 4+ with ERA fitted
CE (Shaped charge)	RPG	Pg7v/n/m with ERA fitted
IED	EFP from 80-120mm warhead	15
Overmatched threats	50-70%	Cone Surface Reduction

Flexibility

Conventional in-service patrol vehicles invariably sacrifice their tactical mobility, and thus their inherent manoeuvre capability, in order to achieve their higher protection parameters. This makes them vulnerable to ambush at critical points along their route. RANGER does not make such a compromise.

Against UK Defence Standard 26-06 Issue 4, it easily achieves ‘Improved Medium Mobility Load Carrier’ (IMMLC) status. Indeed, in all but 3 of the requirements, it exceeds the IMMLC parameters and sits in the ‘High’ mobility definition. With a top speed of 107 kph and an unrefueled range of up to 1000km, its operational mobility is also outstanding.

In order to achieve this performance, the vehicle is powered by a 540 horse power, turbo charged, Euro 5 compliant diesel engine for optimum speed and performance.

RANGER will accelerate from zero to 50 kph in just 7 seconds. This is very quick for a 19t platform.

Configuration

RANGER can be provided in a number of axle and crew/load configurations, some of which are illustrated below:

• 4x4 Short capsule – Driver, commander and gunner plus 4. E.g. EOD fast response vehicle
• 6x6 Standard capsule – Driver, commander, gunner plus 6 or flatbed load platform. E.g. Convoy protection platform
• 8x8 Extended capsule – Driver, commander, gunner, 4/6 man cab and flatbed. E.g. Logistic resupply vehicle

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Payload

In the latter 2 axle layouts, the available payload is 6 tonnes. This reflects the ever increasing crew, role and support equipment carriage demanded on contemporary deployed operations. A two man ‘crew cab’ arrangement will allow for a flatbed load platform [capable of carrying up to 3 NATO pallets] to the rear of the vehicle. A towing pintle is provided and a high mobility trailer can also be supplied if required to increase lift.

Electrical Power Demand

An ever growing electrical power budget to provide communications, electronic counter measures (ECM), air conditioning, lighting and other mission/role equipment now taxes conventionally fitted alternators. To overcome this, and provide spare capacity for future growth, RANGER is fitted with an independent 2000 Amp Auxiliary Power Unit (APU).

Modularity

Ranger is a ‘chassis-less’ vehicle. The monocoque provides the backbone of the vehicle and all automotive, drive train and related systems are bolted to the outside of the capsule. Thus, if the front end of the vehicle sustains mine strike damage, it can be quickly removed and a new module fitted, thus putting the vehicle back into service in the fastest possible time.

Weapon Fit

RANGER has an open architecture data bus and weapons/sensor options can therefore be specifically designed and integrated to meet individual customer mission profiles.

The vehicle may be equipped with any of the weapons fits described below:

• a. Heavy Machine Gun (HMG)
• b. 1 man turret
• c. Remote Weapon Station (RWS)
• d. ATGW
• e. 30mm canon
• f. 7.62mm coax plus L25 or 40mm grenade launcher