Yesterday, as part of ongoing research into UK LMV contenders, I visited Portsmouth Aviation for a briefing on the HERCULES High-Capacity MRAV, reports Bob Morrison.
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The PORTAV (Portsmouth Aviation) HERCULES High-Capacity Multi-Role Assault Vehicle first popped up on my radar at the 2024 DVD (Defence Vehicle Dynamics) defence expo, but as this was my first foray to an event following completion of a course of life-preserving radiotherapy I was unable to spend very much time with its designers. My next opportunity to photograph HERCULES would be at the British Army ‘Farewell to the Land Rover‘ event at Bovington in March of this year, when the Portsmouth Aviation Land Systems Team issued an invitation to visit their Portsmouth Airport manufacturing facility whenever I had time to receive a one-to-one briefing on the history of this interesting vehicle and the reason behind its development.
Although the PORTAV HERCULES is being offered to UK MoD for consideration for its current Light Mobility Vehicle requirements, this 3-tonne payload 4×4 was not specifically conceived for this programme but has its roots in a SpecOps requirement from one of the nations the 97-year old UK company has a long pedigree in supplying with other defence sector products. Key members of its design team were previously involved with development of other successful military vehicle projects, including the in-service British Army R-WIMK conversion which provided a higher payload and increased performance heli-transportable airborne and airmobile assault vehicle, and knowledge gained from that project and working with its users was fed into HERCULES from the outset.
Much as I’d love to lose myself in writing, my primary focus has to be keeping JOINT-FORCES running as smoothly possible on a daily basis and I cannot just set everything aside to research and write up features and select then edit relevant images for the article ~ oh for the past luxury of weekly and monthly print deadlines ~ so I’m afraid the main HERCULES story will necessarily take a little longer to appear but in the meantime here’s an image or two to whet your appetite.
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