Key Factors
- Textron Methods has begun manufacturing of 65 Cell Strike Power Autos for Ukraine at its Slidell, Louisiana facility beneath a $163.4 million USAI-funded contract.
- The MSFV is an enhanced M1117 Guardian variant with a lengthened hull, further armor, and improved underbody mine safety, with supply anticipated by November 30, 2028.
A manufacturing facility in Louisiana is producing armored autos for Ukraine for the primary time, as Textron Methods introduced that full car builds of the Cell Strike Power Automobile have begun at its Slidell manufacturing facility.
The $163.4 million contract is funded by means of the Ukraine Safety Help Initiative by way of the Overseas Army Gross sales mechanism, overlaying 65 MSFVs together with one yr of spare components help, with work anticipated to finish by November 30, 2028. The MSFV is a car with an uncommon historical past: it was initially designed for the Afghan Nationwide Military and final rolled off a manufacturing line round 2019, and its restart for Ukraine represents a direct second act for a platform that outlasted the navy it was constructed to equip.
The MSFV is an enhanced variant of the M1117 Guardian, a four-wheeled armored safety car that Textron’s predecessor firm Cadillac Gage developed within the late Nineteen Nineties for the U.S. Military Army Police Corps. The baseline M1117 weighs roughly 13,410 kg (29,560 lb), carries a crew of three and might carry two further passengers, and might attain a prime pace of round 101 km/h (63 mph), armed with a 40 mm Mk19 computerized grenade launcher and a .50 caliber M2HB heavy machine gun in its one-person turret. The M1117 was one of many first American navy autos constructed particularly round a mine-resistant hull, a design precedence that proved prescient when improvised explosive units grew to become the defining risk of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, driving demand for the car far past its authentic navy police function.
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The MSFV takes the M1117’s survivability baseline and improves it in a number of ways in which matter instantly on Ukraine’s battlefields. The hull was lengthened, further armor put in, and enhanced underbody landmine safety included, addressing the risk from mines and booby-trapped roads which have made mobility throughout jap Ukraine’s front-line areas extraordinarily harmful. The car employs a Cummins QSL 365 diesel engine coupled to a six-speed Allison 3500SP computerized transmission, with all-wheel drive and a central tire inflation system, and has a most size of 6.7 m (22 ft), making it considerably bigger than the baseline Guardian whereas retaining the platform’s core wheeled mobility and pace traits. The bigger body can carry as much as 10 personnel in sure variants, giving Ukrainian commanders extra flexibility in how they configure and deploy the car than the tighter baseline M1117 permits.
Ukraine already operates M1117 Guardians transferred from U.S. Military shares, with the primary autos showing in Ukrainian service in March 2024 with the 425th Skala Impartial Assault Battalion. These autos have since been fitted with improvised anti-drone protecting cages and extra armor panels by their crews, adapting the platform to a risk surroundings that the unique designers by no means envisioned. The identical modifications are broadly anticipated to be utilized to the incoming MSFVs, as first-person-view drones, the small, low cost, operator-guided explosive drones which have turn into a relentless hazard for armored autos on Ukraine’s entrance traces, signify a risk class that no quantity of standard armor can handle with out supplemental safety.
The Slidell, Louisiana facility the place the MSFVs are being constructed has an extended historical past with armored car manufacturing, and Textron describes a workforce with deep institutional data of the Commando platform household. Many members of the manufacturing crew contributed to earlier generations of Commando autos, bringing a long time of hands-on expertise to a manufacturing restart that required months of preparation and facility readiness work earlier than the primary car construct might start. The manufacturing course of runs from fabrication and welding by means of full system integration and testing on the similar website, which means the autos that go away Slidell are totally assembled and validated earlier than supply begins.
The contract construction, sole-source and awarded on to Textron as the one entity able to producing the MSFV, displays the specialised nature of the platform. No competing producer can produce this particular car, and the U.S. authorities decided that restarting manufacturing with Textron was the quickest and most dependable strategy to get 65 models into Ukrainian palms inside the contract’s efficiency window. Ukraine Safety Help Initiative funding, the mechanism used to pay for the contract, is particularly designed to obtain new gear for Ukraine quite than drawing down present U.S. navy shares, which is why this contract leads to factory-fresh autos quite than refurbished transfers.
The MSFV’s improved mine safety, bigger tires, prolonged hull, and extra troop capability make it higher suited to mine-heavy situations than the baseline M1117, a judgment that displays the precise operational situations Ukrainian forces face. Japanese Ukraine’s front-line areas include a number of the densest mine concentrations recorded in any trendy battle, with each Russian and Ukrainian forces having laid tens of millions of mines throughout contested terrain. A car designed from the outset with enhanced underbody blast safety is meaningfully higher suited to these situations than a regular armored car transformed after the actual fact.
