The Fuchs Evolution APC can be controlled remotely.
German military equipment manufacturer Rheinmetall has shown a new modification of a wheeled tank and announced that Ukraine is to be the first customer for it.
On the test track at its Kassel plant, defense contractor Rheinmetall shows what the well-known Fuchs APC equipped with the Evolution package is capable of.
The new Evolution model now has a 455 hp engine. The seven-meter-long machine, which weighs up to 24.5 tons, has a top speed of 100 kilometers per hour.
“For now, the first customer will be Ukraine,” says Marius Meyering, Head of Sales at Rheinmetall Landsysteme GmbH, about the new model. The company established a joint venture with the Ukrainian state-owned enterprise Ukroboronprom. The new Fuchs may also be assembled there, but “the most important parts still come from Germany.”
“Fuchs has historically been the backbone of the Kassel plant,” emphasizes Meiering. It was once developed by Daimler-Benz and the Thyssen-Henschel arms company, which was taken over by Rheinmetall. Today, the Kassel plant alone repairs more than 100 Fuchs tanks a year. In addition, new machines are being manufactured. Of the plant’s 1,200 employees, about 150 work on wheeled tanks.
One of the most interesting features of the new model is the ability to remotely control it using virtual reality technologies. A remote driver-operator can control the machine from a distance using special goggles and cameras that provide a 360-degree view.
The six-wheeled armored vehicle is sold in eight countries, and the Bundeswehr still has 825 of them in service.
The Fuchs is available in many versions: engineering, ambulance or for explosive ordnance disposal. He took part in Bundeswehr missions abroad in Mali, Somalia, and Afghanistan and discovered a weakness: the armor was reinforced, but the engine remained the same. That is why a more powerful engine is installed on the new version.
