Canadian Army rolling out new, improved armoured combat support vehicle

Article / November 29, 2024 / National Defence

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By Steven Fouchard, Army Public Affairs

The Armoured Combat Support Vehicle (ACSV) comes in eight distinct variants for a wide range of roles from Ambulance and Command Post to Engineer and Mobile Recovery Vehicle. It is a new addition to the Canadian Army (CA)’s vehicle fleet but looks at lot like an older one.

Much of the ACSV’s lower hull is based on the Light Armoured Vehicle 6.0, but there is a lot on the inside that is different, and better, making it a good replacement for the CA’s Bison and Tracked Light Armoured Vehicle fleets.

In the following interview, Major Alexandre Bazinet and Major Phil Gartner, members of the team that worked on the ACSV project, discuss those improvements, the rigorous testing process, and why testing never really ends.

What exactly is combat support?

That refers to support to forward elements. And that means the soldiers on the ground, on the front lines. It’s just behind the tip of the spear - the spear being the fighting echelon. We use a letter system. So, we have an A echelon and B echelon. So, this vehicle is part of the A echelon, providing moment to moment support to the fighting echelon.

All the ACSV variants are based on the LAV 6.0 hull and chassis. Have there been any improvements?

We can't go into too many details due to operational security, but there are improvements to the drive trains, suspension, and brakes. Also blast protection: the ACSV has a ‘double-v’ hull which is set at an angle that directs blasts away from the vehicle. There’s a health management system which tells us the state of the vehicle and what kind of faults might be on it, and what the most likely cause is. That will help reduce repair times.

Which of the variants are ready to be fielded?

We started fielding the Ambulance in October 2023 and 30 of the 49 have been fielded to date. The remaining Ambulances to field were either testing vehicles that are being repaired prior to fielding or part of the initial donation to Ukraine and will be replaced in 2025.

The project team is working closely with the CA to field five ambulances to Montreal for deployment preparations. The Troop/Cargo Variant (TCV) began fielding in February 2024 and the process will be completed in Fall 2024.  

Several Command Posts have been delivered to 4^th Canadian Division to support training for Maintainers and Operators and are fielding to the other Divisions in fall 2024. To date, more than 60 platforms have been fielded.

The other more complex platforms such as the Maintenance Recovery and the Electronic Warfare will take a bit more time. They will be fielded once qualification, testing, and production are completed. The Remote Weapons Station (RWS) began fielding to Depots in Fall 2024.

What does the testing process look like?

We did reliability, availability, maintainability, and durability testing, which is basically putting the vehicle through its paces. We asked the soldiers to drive the vehicle over 30,000 kilometers. We fired over 100,000 rounds from the RWS. Basically, we simulated almost the whole life of the vehicle. And during the testing we noted things that we can improve in our training. We also made some amendments based on our observations and user feedback. A good example of that is with the RWS. We were noticing some instances of spent ammunition casings jamming the operation of the system, and an Army Electronic-Optronic Technician designed a casing deflector that seemed to resolve it.

Will you continue to seek feedback on the ACSV’s performance?

The testing never really ends. Just like we do with every fleet that we’ve ever fielded, there’s a constant feedback loop between us and the users. There’s probably going to be a laundry list of other things we'd like to test to improve the product. We’re always seeking improvements for a better platform to give the CA what it needs. This translates into follow-on testing within the Project or transferring longitudinal testing and data to the Equipment Management Team (EMT) as the variants field. This helps drive mid-life upgrades and user- desired changes that are not specific to the ACSV project.

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