gear kereta

Posted by: Anthony Lim

It's not something you'll see parked in your neighbour's porch, heaven forbid, or stuck alongside you in your daily crawl to work (well, it wouldn't really be stuck in traffic ...), but it has wheels, eight to be precise, and eight-wheel drive to boot, so it makes the news run here ...

It's called the Rosomak 8x8 armoured modular vehicle, and Naza Bumar, a subsidiary of Naza Defence, unveiled it at the Defence Services Asia 2010 exhibition at Putra World Trade Centre. The Rosomak, which is Polish for wolverine, is developed by Polish company Bumar and is currently in use with the Polish Land Forces in contigents serving in Afghanistan, Chad and Iraq as well as in the armed forces of Croatia, Finland, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.

The main feature of the vehicle is in its modular design, which allows the incorporation of different turrets, weapons, sensors, and communications systems on the same platform. Weighing in between 18 and 26 tonnes depending on variants with different armour, turrets/weapons systems, ammunition and crew configurations, the 7.8m long vehicle is powered by a Scania DI 12 56A03PE 12l diesel engine offering 480bhp and 1,970Nm of torque, with a ZF 7HP 902S Ecomat seven-speed gearbox powering all eight wheels.

Specs include a top speed of over 100kmh and a range of 800km, and it even has amphibious capability - two shrouded propellers, one on each side at the rear of the hull, offer a swimming speed of around 10kmh.

Features include good mine protection and the ability to withstand explosions up to 10kg in TNT charges, as well as a frontal arc ballistic protection level of up to 30mm APFSDS rounds. It comes with independent suspension for all eight wheels, 14.00 R 20 tyres with run flat devices, disc brakes and a central tyre inflation system.

There are plenty of deployment options for the Rosomak, but the infanty fighting vehicle variant, equipped with an Oto Melara Hitfist-30P gun turret and 30mm ATK Mk 44 chain gun/7.62mm NATO round UKM-2000C machine gun combi should be the preferred choice on urban streets ....