ST Engineering Bronco to Morph into New Army Cold Weather All-Terrain Vehicle

The ST Bronco is a tracked machine designed for all-terrain use. It has been around since 2001, and presently comes in about 40 variants that can be deployed for anything from combat to patrolling dangerous areas.

Coincidently, the U.S. Army is presently on the lookout for such a machine, one it could deploy in cold, snow and ice-covered regions and replace the current Small Unit Support Vehicles (SUSVs). It even cooked up a program for the development of such a machine, one it calls Cold Weather All-Terrain Vehicle (CATV), and last week one of the entries was announced: the Bronco.

The tracked vehicle is being modified with the help of Oshkosh, and according to the two companies it has already been subjected to 1,860 miles of performance testing in arctic conditions. Oshkosh and ST are now working on providing the CATV with modularity, to provide conversion, for instance, from troop carrier to command and control unit in just 30 minutes, and by a two-person crew.

Two prototypes will be delivered when ready to the Army, one in the form of a general-purpose machine, and the other a cargo vehicle. Both should be tested by the Army toward the end of the year, with focus on payload, mobility, crush resistance, swimming, and transportability.

“The new vehicle design will be built with the combined expertise of Oshkosh Defense and draws on the rich heritage of the Bronco family of vehicles, a proven, robust and versatile articulated platform which has been in operation since 2001,” said in a statement Lee Shiang Long, President/Head, Land Systems, ST Engineering.

Sometime in 2022, the U.S. Army plans to order 200 new CATVs. The other entry in the competition is BAE Systems.