Squad Vehicle Charlie: A VEHICLE SPEARHEADED BY THOMASIANS

More often than not, national security comes down to the quality of equipment just as much as the brave soldiers that operate them on the front lines. In the case of military transport vehicles, Anos Research Manufacturing (ARM) has become a recent game-changer in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Modernization Program, having recently unveiled its brand new Squad Vehicle Charlie in Camp Aguinaldo.

While ARM has been a leading figure in the firefighting vehicle industry, having manufactured and sold over 540 of its own trucks and apparatus since 1976, it has recently ventured into designing and supplying various classes of military transport vehicles, with the Squad Vehicle Charlie set to take center stage as the first among National Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-standard military vehicles produced entirely in the Philippines.

The Squad Vehicle Charlie (SVC) is ARM’s proprietary design of an Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV). It is a high-speed, all-terrain, light utility vehicle intended for a variety of applications such as troop transport, ambulance, firetruck, and as a weapon-mountable armored vehicle.

The SVC contains the following features: a six-speed manual transmission, all-wheel drive, 3.0 Liter Turbo Diesel Engine, and a weight of 2,800 kg. On top of that, the SVC project has provisions for equipment such as radio antennas, a gun turret, and a mobile rocket launcher, depending on its intended mission objectives. Its modular design (removable doors, panels, and components) allows it to be converted into a full armored vehicle (and many other variations) in just a matter of minutes. All of these features, while not entirely unique, still manage to put it in the same rarefied level of