As the UK defence procurement sloth lumbers on I took a brief look at several Light Military Vehicles (LMV) on display at Eurosatory 2026, writes Bob Morrison.
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Far from moving forward at pace, the UK Ministry of Defence programme to replace the aged Land Rover and Pinzgauer fleet (mostly dating from the middle of the last decade of the 20th Century and increasingly afflicted by a lack of genuine spare parts) has slipped backwards again. Incredibly, rather than progressing to the next stage of procurement, in May the MoD buying team issued a calling notice for an Early Market Engagement or EME for the Light Mobility Vehicle (LMV) Project to again “engage with industry about the current requirement, explore key challenges and opportunities, and gain a clearer understanding of current market capabilities and offerings which may be relevant to how we deliver this requirement in the future”.
A cynic might be forgiven for querying just how many more years the supposed procurement specialists in Bristol are going to string out the process of buying what are essentially just some simple light and medium utility vehicles, albeit slightly modified for military use, along with a small quantity of more militarised variants sharing some commonality. “A Common Based Platform delivering warfighting roles across the Joint Force” is said by MoD to be desirable, but a realist might think true commonalty is unlikely to be achievable for the varied roles demanded and payloads required… unless UK MoD buys the automotive equivalent of race-bred camels but dresses down the majority to fulfil the lesser roles of donkeys and ponies.
Maybe the above photo album from Eurosatory 2026 in Paris of mostly 4×4 utility vehicles (6×6 a is a long-proven way of achieving commonality with higher payload) which are capable of being militarised might assist the UK MoD procurement team in their exploration and help them “gain a clearer understanding of current market capabilities and offerings”. Not only are some of these vehicles in service with NATO allies, but at least one of them has already been recently procured by UK MoD; as, too, has another slightly militarised large pickup truck which was not in Paris. Incidentally Chrysler, now Stellantis, General Motors, now GM Defense, and AM General have all produced this CUCV (Commercial Utility Cargo Vehicle) category of slightly militarised commercial-off-the-shelf or COTS vehicle for US Forces and NATO Allies for the last 50 years so militarised pickup trucks are not exactly a new concept.
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UK LMV Footnote: On 22 June 2026 the Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, Luke Pollard, confirmed to Parliament in a Written Answer that it was the Toyota Hilux (see further up this page) which was recently urgently procured under the £20million Project NIALA contract to equip “11 Brigade following its transition from a Security Force Assistance Brigade to a Tactical Recce Strike Brigade”, with the project providing “270 Recce Strike Vehicles and associated support.” Until the Minister brought this into the public domain, also stating “Project NIALA is separate from the Light Mobility Vehicle (LMV) sub-programme within the Land Mobility Programme”, the ‘Special Operations’ aspect stopped us mentioning the 30 March 2026 contract.
UK LMV Footnote 2: Suppliers are contractually prevented from discussing many MoD contracts with the media unless/until the procures publishes an announcement first, which these days is almost as rare as spotting an unspun Whitehall media statement, so we have been unable to obtain comments from them on the newly purchased MoD vehicles. However through monitoring company financial statements we spotted a few weeks back that Babcock had announced they had received an order for a batch of 270 military vehicles ~ which we now know from publicly available redacted MoD documents they are providing via a prime contractor. There are several other recent tender requests and/or placed contracts for 4×4 utility vehicles, mostly associated with Task Force RAPSTONE and Task Force HIRST and with UK support for the Ukrainian Armed Forces and/or the plans to provide a multinational in-country Peace Monitoring Force if a ceasefire is declared. Naturally manufacturers who have been successful in meeting UK requirements are remaining circumspect, and we don’t particularly wish to incur the wrath of the Whitehall Warriors, but I think it is safe to stick my head briefly above the parapet to point out that those new NATO Green vehicles spotted running on British Army ERM plates in the UK and Germany (thanks for the tip-offs guys) are not part of the ongoing LMV procurement process….. though with possibly as much a third of the anticipated LMV total buy believed to already be on recent order for possible Urgent Operational Requirements, who knows what the future might bring.
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