Babcock General Logistics Vehicle in Focus ~ Pt 1

The Babcock General Logistics Vehicle or GLV is being developed as a potential replacement for the UK Forces TUM and TUM(HD) fleet, reports Bob Morrison.

~

Primarily a family of private venture conversions of the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Babcock GLV was conceived as a potential replacement for the Land Rover Defender Truck Utility Medium batch ordered in 1996 and the Pinzgauer Truck Utility Medium [Heavy Duty] batch ordered in 1994, as well as other currently in-service variants of both vehicle types.

The UK MoD 1990s Land Rover TUM 4×4 (aka Wolf) and Pinzgauer TUM [HD] 4×4 procurements were originally envisaged as having a 15-year service life before being replaced and relegated to rear echelon or reserve stocks (like the pre-Defender MoD coil sprung Land Rover fleet from the mid to late 1980s) but since the middle of the last decade both vehicle types have had their OSD (Out of Service Date) extended to 2030. Hopefully the 2030 OSD will not be further extended, especially as sourcing OEM spare parts is becoming increasingly difficult, but with another Strategic Defence Review expected in early 2025 from the new UK Government nothing can be ruled out.

The Land Rover and Pinzgauer replacement project, what was formerly the General Support Utility Platform or GSUP programme, is now the first of three Category A Sub-Programmes of the UK Land Mobility Programme. The latest designation for this sub-programme is the Light Mobility Vehicle or LMV programme and as of September 2024 this sub-programme specified trucks with a gross vehicle mass of less that 3,500kg to allow them to be driven on a Class B licence; however it is expected that heavier variants may need to be procured for certain roles or future requirements.

According to the Babcock GLV Brochure (V1) of October 2023: “After 75 years of service, the British Army’s relationship with the iconic Land Rover is nearing its end. The search is now on to find a worthy successor that will help the MoD to deliver its mission well into the 21st century.
“This is an opportunity to transform the combat support vehicle capability to reflect the needs of the modern military force, increasing performance, comfort and safety, and reducing cost and environmental impact.
“As a company, Babcock is uniquely placed to help the MoD with this programme, combining specialist vehicle design and development, modern, UK-based production facilities, and the experience of delivering in-service support throughout the UK’s Armed Forces.
“We are now ready to work with you to create a platform specifically tailored to the needs of the military. One that soldiers can rely on, and become a new icon for the British Army.”

The new platform Babcock propose entails reworking the Toyota Land Cruiser 70-Series, but it is not a simple coachbuilder bodywork conversion and the specialist Babcock Land team at Walsall has both uprated the mechanical side, using COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) Toyota components, and reworked the body to better suit UK MoD requirements. Company publicity material states: “Although it’s based on a Japanese platform, around 70% of the GLV’s value is delivered by UK industry. This includes vehicle design, all the specialist military components, and the final vehicle assembly.”

For the first three or so decades of its existence the Land Rover was the iconic military utility vehicle in the light and medium payload categories but, as just a small part of first British Leyland and then the Rover Group, from the 1980s onwards its Government & Military Ops sales team was never really able to secure sufficient funding to undertake a major engineering rework of the standard civilian model to better meet evolving military requirements. The 1990s ‘Wolf’ version, as still in regular use by UK Forces, was able to build on the computer design programme conceived for the chassis of the 1994 P38A Range Rover rework, but the commercial success of the 1989 Discovery and 1997 Freelander models, plus the reluctance of new owners BMW (from 1994-2000) to be deeply involved in military markets, plus the UK Government not placing any Defender batch orders between 1996 and production stopping in 2016, ruled out major company investment into keeping the defence side of the marque evolving.

Babcock Land, on the other hand, are not focussed on producing hundreds of thousands of vehicles every year to keep civilian dealer showrooms around the country and the world full of the very latest in fashionable automobiles, but they are keen to keep their hundreds of specialist mechanics and vehicle assemblers in the West Midlands and the Southwest working on Government & Military vehicle contracts. It therefore makes sense to them to take a well-proven, widely available, mass-produced commercial off-road vehicle and modify it specifically to suit potential UK MoD requirements. Now I appreciate I might be sounding a little bit like a sales rep, but having both quietly observed the evolution of the GLV for over a year and then discussed it in detail with the Babcock Land Head of Mobility Solutions and Head of R&D, as well as visiting the team at their inner sanctuary on the Walsall site, I can see exactly where they are coming from.

Several prototypes in different body configurations on medium and long wheelbase chassis have already been manufactured for testing, with no less than six examples having been displayed at DVD 2024 in September, and a short wheelbase version is also on the drawing board. Both 6×6 and WMIK-type prototypes have also been built and displayed, though these have a different chassis to suit specific requirements but share maximum Toyota parts commonality to maximise fleet spare parts availability; we will no doubt return to these partner company vehicles a little further down the line.

To keep this feature comfortably readable across all device types without having to endlessly scroll I have split it into two parts; I propose to cover dimensions and specifications etc. in Part Two. Although Babcock are well down the road to developing and testing their GLV, it must be underscored that until UK MoD finalise their precise requirements for the LMV sub-programme and then call forward manufacturers to submit vehicles for trials, what you see here is just a glimpse of what might be rather than what will be replacing the Defender Wolf and Pinzgauer. [Other brands, to quote BBC television presenters, are available … see Light Mobility Vehicle Contenders at DVD 2024.]

[images © Bob Morrison unless noted]

• See also:- Babcock General Logistics Vehicle in Focus ~ Pt 2

Footnote: It is no great secret that I am a Land Rover fan, having not only owned a couple of classic ex-military versions but driven a very wide range of civilian, former military and prototype examples on four continents during the three decades that I penned a monthly military column for Land Rover Owner and then Land Rover Monthly magazines. That said, I also have experience of driving Toyota Land Cruisers during my tenure as Military Editor of International Off-Roader magazine and towards end of the 1990s I even participated in consecutive Toyota Desert Challenge events across the Moroccan and Tunisian Sahara, picking up a trophy each year. I was also the only journalist aboard the RAF flight that delivered the Royal Artillery Pinzgauer 4×4 TUM [HD] gun tractors into Croatia for their very first operational deployment (under United Nations service in the Former Yugoslavia in June 1995) and a few months later I joined the Commando Gunners in the Zone of Separation on the Inter-Ethnic Boundary Line in Bosnia as they positioned a gun battery on a mountain top with their Pinzgauers when NATO took on the IFOR mandate.

I may love Solihull’s finest, but I am not just a Land Rover fan, and though of course I would have liked to have seen the Wolf TUM replaced by a revised and modernised Wolf TUM, I suspect that particular ship sailed long ago; recently, however, I have been picking up vibes that a Land Rover G&MO team might have been formed again.

~ $ ~