“The more I see of the Redkat the more I am impressed by its spirit. It just won’t back down, not even to an Afanc twice its size. Considering the situation with the Argentines I can’t help thinking the Redkat makes a pretty good role model for our infant colony.

Catherine Wellon:

Field Notes and Personal Diaries, Volume 1

University of Victoria Press,

2207

As Wellon has matured as a nation, gradually decreasing its reliance on the UK, one essential priority has been the nurturing of an indigenous arms industry. The reasoning is not distrust of the UK, far from it, but a simple realisation that, as an independent state, Wellon might occasionally find itself forced by realpolitik into taking a different position to the mother country. The emergence of the Kafer threat has only emphasised that need, if the Invasion had gone differently then Wellon and the other Tiranean nations might have found themselves facing a war to the death without the support of their Terran sponsors.

While still heavily reliant on the UK for first-line vehicles, Wellon has consistently earmarked a high proportion of other projects for Wellonese companies only and has expended considerable effort in encouraging established companies moving into military procurement from other endeavours.

One project brought in under this initiative was the Family of Wheeled Combat Vehicles procured in the early to mid ‘90s to replace the collection of old wheeled, tracked and hover support vehicles that had accumulated over time in various second line roles. While first-line Wellon forces were scheduled to receive the Rifleman HIFV and Cavalier HBT, second-line units and those operating in adverse terrain such as Wellon’s desert, jungle and arctic regions, required a vehicle of their own, one that was ideally cheap, all-terrain capable and designed and built in Wellon.

The resulting competition was won by the newly established Military Vehicles Division of North Wellon Vehicles of Knightsbridge with their Redkat submission. The result was bitterly contested, going all the way to the Court of Appeals as Woolf Military Vehicles, backed by the regional government of its New Birmingham stronghold, and the not inconsiderable influence of its Grafton Arms parent, charged that the award had been decided on political grounds outside of those acceptable under Wellon tender law, with the primary intent of placing a major procurement in the economically stagnant Wellon Arctic Territories. A second argument of their suit alleged that the whole programme aimed at developing a wider based arms industry was counter to both Wellon law and an artificial subsidy incompatible with Wellon’s politico-economic norms. The dispute was long, legally complex and drew much attention in both the press and parliament, but in the end their Lordships upheld the MoD’s position that they were at liberty to select any supplier who met the tender requirements, even if that meant favouring a new supplier over an established one with a submission of equal quality and a lower tender price.

Index

Vehicle Design

FV841 Redkat Infantry Fighting Vehicle

FV8411 Redkat Command Post Vehicle

FV8412 Redkat Armoured Personnel Carrier

FV8413 Redkat Anti-Armour Vehicle

FV8414 Redkat Fire Support Vehicle

FV8415 Redkat Mortar Carrier

FV8417 Redkat Drone Launch Vehicle

FV844 Redkat Armed Reconnaissance Vehicle

Despite the controversy raging over its selection, the Redkat moved through troop trials with no more than the usual number of problems—evidence that NWV’s extensive headhunting on behalf of the Military Vehicles Division had borne fruit. Without an established range of vehicles to draw on for design inspiration NWV were able to approach the requirement with a clean-sheet design that is practically unique in modern military vehicle design. Technically an 8X8, the Redkat is perhaps better considered as two linked 4X4s. The front half of the vehicle, the Command Module, contains the driver commander and gunner seated three abreast with the driver’s position in the centre and slightly forward of the other two seats to ease direct communication between commander and gunner. Access hatches are located above both Commander’s and Gunner’s positions. The Command Module is common to all configurations although in some cases no gunner is carried. The crew workstations use a standard set of inceptors and displays, reconfiguring the operation of each as necessary. The driver uses a joystick for control of the vehicle, but all three positions have standard Commonwealth voice, dataglove, trackball, touchscreen and neural jack inputs. Crew helmets are the TISS compatible Black Arrow Integrated Combat Vehicle Helmet and include helmet-HUD functionality for use when riding head-out. The second, Mission, Module is linked to the Command Module by a flexible coupling capable of flexing up to forty-five degrees in any direction. A patented magnetorheologic joint allows infinitely variable resistance in the coupling and can actually be completely locked at any angle. The software package for each Command Module crew position automatically updates from the Mission Module whenever a new pairing is created.

Both modules have engine bays in the lower-half of the hull, the engines, or more correctly generators, outputting onto a multiply-redundant power-bus feeding electric motors in all eight wheels. The Redkat suffers a less than 5% mobility loss from the loss of any single wheel, 10% from any two wheels on different modules or different sides of the same module. It suffers a 30% loss in mobility from the loss of any three wheels not all on the same side or module, but is theoretically immobilised by any other combination of wheel loss (during the New Africa campaign one Redkat crew from Jameson’s Scouts managed to bring their severely damaged vehicle out of the FEBA despite the loss of four wheels and destruction of the Command Module’s engine bays by swapping all four surviving wheels onto the barely-functional Command Module, powering them from the Mission Module and using the Command Module to drag the wheel-less Mission Module over swampy ground as a sledge).

The fuel-cell engines of the Redkat are an interesting design element. The Command and Mission Module engines are identical units, each further subdivided into four identical sub-units. For all intents and purposes the Redkat has eight engines and the redundancy that goes with them. As part of considerable thought that went into maintenance the sub-units are each mounted on slide-out trays and can be changed-out by two men in no more than ten minutes, fifteen if only a single man is available and he is forced to use the lifting frame built into the hull. With support from an ARV’s powered lifting arm change-outs have been accomplished in as little as five minutes from coming to a halt. As an alternative to the engine sub-units the mounting trays are also capable of mounting a specially designed battery pack for vacuum ops, or even compact internal combustion powered generators if the customer should so choose. The vehicle is pre-plumbed for droppable long-range fuel or oxidiser tanks to be mounted on the sides of the Mission Module allowing extended range or to allow the fuel cells to be used in noxious atmospheres or even in vacuum.

Performance reaches the levels laid down by the original requirements, with the flex-coupling giving a useful increase in traction at some cost in reliability. Any negative maintainability impact of the flex-coupling is generally considered to be more than outweighed by the gains in engine maintainability over more conventional installations. A secondary advantage of the two module design is the ability to ‘mix-and-match’ battle-damaged vehicles to get at least a portion of them back into the field in relatively short order. The flex-coupling can be disconnected or reconnected in as little as fifteen minutes making ‘mix-and-match’ the preferred tactic for forward repair units whenever they have more than one damaged Redkat on hand.

While it is possible to drive a Command Module without an attached Mission Module (and this is in fact the recommended method of mating a Command Module to a disconnected Mission Module), the forward module alone has too short a wheelbase for its height to be entirely stable cross-country and the WEME team certifying acceptance for Controller (Ground) Release insisted that the vehicle be fitted with a governor to limit ground speed to 5KM/H in this configuration. In practise any WEME mechanic and most Redkat crewmen are perfectly capable of removing the governor in only a few minutes.

INDEX

Springing from the Family of Wheeled Combat Vehicles requirement, the Redkat was always intended to form the basis for an entire family of variants and NWV staffed their design department with the intention of rapidly establishing a complete range of Redkat variants, both to meet the requirements of the MOD and to attract the attention of other customers.

FV841 Redkat Infantry Fighting Vehicle

The standard section carrier vehicle, the FV841 carries a driver, commander and gunner in the Command Module and eight dismounts in the rear module. The armament package consists of the Class A1 turret mounting an L647A2 Plasma Gun (the same basic model used on the Bowman combat walker, but with increased rate of fire) and a coaxial VR5 7.5mm MG. Four Green Hunter AVMs are mounted on the side of the turret and a Verlet Defender Point Defence System on the turret roof completes the package. The dismounts are provided with firing ports in the hull side (three to each side) and rear (two). If need be the commander can also fight the turret, but standard practise is for the commander to operate the vehicle sensors with the gunner concentrating solely on weaponry. A Class A2 Turret is also available, replacing the Plasma Gun with a 25mm autocannon for customers who prefer that option.

 INDEX

FV8411 Redkat Command Post Vehicle

The Redkat Command Post Vehicle entered service at the same time as the Redkat-IFV in the company command vehicle role, but has slowly been spreading into other roles as additional software packages become available. Redkat-CPs are now standard at both battalion and company level in Redkat equipped units and are also operational in the FAC, Forward Observer and Drone Controller Roles. The FV8411 carries the same Class A1 turret as the FV841, making it difficult to distinguish between the two in combat, but internally the dismounts have been traded for four workstations and a detailed examination will reveal a considerable number of conformal antennae. In theory the vehicle should carry a WEWS network technician and four command staff, but the net-tech is often displaced to one of the support vehicles to give additional space in the cramped rear module, swapping into the Redkat-CP only for problems that can’t be resolved remotely.

 INDEX

FV8412 Redkat Armoured Personnel Carrier

The Redkat-APC is a simpler, less expensive vehicle than the Redkat-IFV and actually preceded the baseline vehicle into service by several months. The vehicle mounts the Class B turret with a VR-5 and a co-axial VR-8 30mm AGL in place of the more expensive Class A package. A Verlet Defender is an optional add-on to the Class B turret, which is referred to as the Class B1 with the PDS and Class B2 without. In all FV8412s the turret is controlled by the vehicle commander rather than carrying a specialist gunner. Intended as the baseline for a sub-family of specialist Combat Support vehicles, the roofline of the Mission Module is 0.4M higher than that of the Redkat-IFV giving greater internal volume for the specialist role packages. The baseline APC configuration is referred to as the Mod 0.

The FV8412 has been procured as an armoured logistics vehicle for use by the Wellon Logistic Corps with the troop seats stripped out and a cargo handling system installed, this configuration is referred to as FV8412 Mod 1, the Class B2 Turret is standard. The FV8412 Mod 2 is an armoured ambulance capable of carrying three stretcher cases and three seated wounded along with two med-techs. FV8412 Mod 2s were originally procured without turrets but those vehicles destined for the French Arm have been re-equipped with the Verlet Sentry Remote Weapon Station as the FV8412 Mod 2*. FV8412 Mod 3 is a workshop configuration vehicle for use by WEME, the B2 turret is standard. FV8412 Mod 4 is a more extensive modification into a Combat Engineering Vehicle fitting a rear-mounted dozer blade, shovel arm and various other specialist engineering tools. The B1 Turret is standard, and the flex-coupling is a specially strengthened variant to allow the vehicle to direct the full power of the 8*8 configuration through the dozer blade. As the dozer blade is mounted where the rear ramp would normally be located a hatch on the left-hand side of the Mission Module provides access for the four engineers carried, who function as dismounts as well as equipment operators. RWE mixes Mod 0 and Mod 4 vehicles on a 1 for 1 basis in its field squadrons. Mod 5 is a recovery vehicle for WEME that mounts a lifting arm on the Mission Module roof, the B1 turret is standard.