Non-Subscriber Extract
Call of the wild: Deployable Dingo adapts to today's asymmetric warfare demands
By Rupert Pengelley
10 June 2009
A German Army Dingo 2 patrol vehicle in Afghanistan. This vehicle is fitted with a KMW 1530 overhead weapon station incorporating an MG3 7.62 mm machine gun, but later-production vehicles are to have a FL100 RWS instead. (KMW)
Every protected transport-vehicle design such as the Dingo is a compromise between the 'iron triangle' of payload, protection and mobility. Depending on the locality, the range of threats on today's asymmetric battlefield at various times oscillates between ballistic, shaped-charge rocket, mine-blast, vehicle-based and roadside improvised explosive device (IED), or explosively formed penetrator (EFP) attack.
Thus, in terms of the particular threats so far presented to the Dingo's users by unpredictable foes, its design team might reasonably claim to have struck an effective balance.
"We have had no fatal casualties aboard either a Dingo 1 or a Dingo 2," asserts Jens Wachsmann, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann's (KMW's) Executive Manager, Marketing, for Wheeled Armoured Vehicles.
"In many incidents there have been no more than minor injuries and the vehicle has been repaired after a day or two, while in others the vehicle may even have been written off but the crew has still survived."
The Dingo project originated with a structural test sample built as a private venture by KMW in 1995. The first demonstrator was unveiled by the company in 1996, in the guise of the ATF (Allzweck Träger Fahrzeug) all-purpose carrier vehicle.
Based on a Unimog chassis, its core characteristic was a protected crew capsule designed to resist attack by high-velocity rounds fired from the Dragunov sniper rifle and, through the addition of a V-shaped underbody deflector plate, the blast from anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. Higher protection levels were feasible at the expense of crew size, the baseline ATF being designed to carry up to six people.