Spain has hundreds of M113 armored personnel carriers in service and the local company Star Defense Logistics & Engineering (SDLE) wants to give these tracked APCs a "second life" by turning them into unmanned vehicles, as Infodefensa reports.
This project is part of the company's strategic program in the field of unmanned ground systems. The "philosophy" of the M113 idea is quite simple: to take an easy-to-maintain and universal vehicles and turn it into an unmanned one.
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The company even conducted the first field tests with the "the M113 autonomous platform": currently the prototype of the unmanned armored personnel carrier can independently follow (without the operator's participation) other vehicles, both manned and unmanned.
Robotic M113 can be used both for evacuating the wounded or for breaking through minefields, as well as for logistical support of units on the battlefield.
As previously reported by Infodefensa, the M113 armored personnel carrier has been in service with the Spanish army for more than 50 years, and the total fleet of these vehicles includes about 1,300 units in various versions. In 2015, a large-scale project to update this armored vehicle was launched in Spain, which should be completed this year. It covers about 770 vehicles in the first stage with a gradual reduction in the number in the following stages. In addition, the Spanish are also working on decommissioning the other 600 armored personnel carriers. At the same time, as part of the VAC program, a replacement for these APCs is being prepared in Spain.
Defense Express reminds that earlier this year, in early February, Spain announced the transfer of 20 of its M113 armored personnel carriers to Ukraine in the mortar version.
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