Australian Special Forces
is getting
Supacat HMT Extenda
vehicles
Copyright: SUPACAT (www.supacat.com)
UK company Supacat's High Mobility Transporter - HMT that was initially designed in late 1990's is now widely accepted as one of the best special purpose military vehicles. The HMT vehicles are now manufactured under license from Lockheed Martin.
HMT has 4x4 and 6x6 variants and a late eddition to the family is the Extenda variant which is convertable from 4x4 to 6x6 and vice versa.
Copyright: SUPACAT (www.supacat.com)
Extenda has an air spring suspension that offers Ride Height Control, which is a nice capability that allows the vehicle's ground clearance to be increased / decreased to adjust for terrain conditions.
Extenda 6x6 has a total length of 7 meters with 2m width. The vehicle has a combat weight of 10.5 tons in 6x6 configuration and it drops to 7.6tons in 4x4.
The vehicle can be configured with a ballistic and mine protection kit as shown below.
Copyright: SUPACAT (www.supacat.com)
Extenda specs can be reached at from this Link.
Copyright: SUPACAT (www.supacat.com)
The variant of Extenda that is specifically designed for Australian Special Forces is called Special Operations Vehicles Commando or SOV-Cdo as short.
Australia very recently ordered 89 of these vehicles per their JP 2097 Phase 1B project that concentrates on Special Forces C4ISTAR capabilities and mobility which aims at providing a modern fleet of vehicles.