That’s because defense manufacturers are mirroring commercial manufacturers’ assembly lines to become more efficient and cut costs in an increasingly crowded armored vehicle manufacturing industry. Parts are delivered directly to the line site in sequence, eliminating inefficiencies such as time and labor spent retrieving parts from warehouses.

“We build these vehicles and we apply the same manufacturing processes that an OEM vehicle manufacturer would apply to a Range Rover or a BMW – just-in-time deliveries, just-in-sequence deliveries … all of the usual efficiency applications that OEMs would use,” said David Perry, operations director at NIMR Automotive.

“A typical commercial automotive plant has each vehicle move down the production line. The parts go to a fixed station, and the vehicle progresses down the line and the parts are built upon the vehicle as it goes,” Perry said.

“What we’re really trying to do here is create an automotive environment rather than duplicate an old-style defense environment,” Perry said.

The need to customize

There is a distinction from the typical Ford assembly line model, however, considering commercial manufacturers mass produce their vehicles, while defense makers deliver fully customized vehicles with assembly lines that roll them out at far lower rates. NIMR’s production facility in Abjan, Abu Dhabi, for example, has three assembly lines for up to 5 vehicles to be produced, tested, and delivered every day.

“We need added flexibility because we might be making contracts of 40 of this, 50 of that. We need to be able to make different vehicles down different lines,” Perry said. “So we wouldn’t necessarily try to operate to a balanced capacity. What instead we try to is … balance the flow; we work on [eliminating] the bottlenecks.”

So what’s the key to getting rid of those bottlenecks? Local suppliers.

“Given where we are … it’s in our interest to develop [capabilities] locally so that we don’t have the supply chain [or] the inventory tied up in three months’ worth of shipping volumes,” Perry said.

As the UAE comes off its oil and gas high and faces ever more pressure to find its next-largest driver of economic growth, its procurement division has become increasingly selective. Defense vehicle manufacturers, meanwhile, are seeing great benefits from that. The government is focusing on creating a highly skilled local labor force for a more lucrative domestic defense industry. For armored vehicle makers, that means greater access to local suppliers, which will increase efficiency and build new capabilities.

“We are trying to be ready for the post-oil era with emphasis on products that are made in the UAE by UAE hands,” Saif Al Hajeri, former CEO of Tawazun Economic Council, said at the Global Manufacturing and Industrialization Summit in Abu Dhabi in March. “That is the main driver for Tawazun, and other entities are also pushing in that direction.”

“It was difficult to convince and bring the locals to the floor to operate machines. Using locals as assemblers, technicians and others was new. But it has grown very quickly. The more locals you have, the more [will come]. It’s a snowball effect,” he said.

The Tawazun Economic Council, created in 1992, oversees the UAE offset program by driving partnerships and joint ventures with international defense contractors. Tawazun Holding, the TEC’s strategic investment arm, is a shareholder in EDIC, established in 2014 in to localize the UAE’s defense supplies. NIMR, the UAE’s first military automotive vehicle maker and second-largest defense vehicle manufacturer in the Gulf, is a subsidiary of EDIC.

NIMR’s announcement at Abu Dhabi’s International Defense Exhibition in February that it would manufacture over 1,750 combat vehicles for the country’s armed forces indicates the UAE’s confidence in its domestic manufacturers’ know how. “The UAE’s decision to expand its current fleet of NIMR-made vehicles is testament to the standards and increased capability [of] our products,” NIMR Chief Executive Officer Fahad Harhara said.

Further, expanding the global market share of defense automotive manufacturers in the UAE at lower costs while growing their innovative practices provides local suppliers with the expertise to ensure the manufacturers’ vehicles are kept running.

“Part of [localization and offsets] is formed [by] enabling the local partner to do all of the long-term, in-country logistics support – providing the maintenance, servicing, spare parts, as well as the ongoing training for the user,” Miles Chambers, NIMR’s senior international business executive, said.

“That gives the user the confidence that they really do have a product that is localized and that they have their local support base formed,” Chambers said. “So by using innovative manufacturing processes, introducing best-practice commercial automotive practices, it allows us to be really competitive with our marketspace.”

Proven performance in such extreme conditions, whether they be blazing hot or frigidly cold, is among the differentiators of the company’s Rapid Intervention Vehicle, company executives told Defense News during a visit to the UAE facility, which included a desert test drive in the vehicle. 

Indeed, as the company designed and manufactured its vehicle in temperatures that reached near 150 degrees Fahrenheit, NIMR looked beyond the borders of countries within the Gulf Cooperation Council to those with colder climates to widen its market. The vehicle is fully customizable for countries in Eastern Europe, in particular, that are faced with insurgency and in need of armored vehicles for border security.

NIMR and partner MIRA, an engineering company based in the UK worked closely with the reconnaissance and special operations teams of the UAE Armed Forces to develop the vehicle specifications “focused on the military capability that’s required,” said Maj. Gen. Carey Wilks, NIMR’s chief operating officer.

“We needed something that would go inside a chinook and to be able to deploy from a chinook without preparation, to deploy straight into action,” Wilks said.

The RIV is designed to travel by land or helicopter, either within a CH-47 or strapped below, carrying a 12.7 millimeter caliber heavy machine gun. The vehicle is equipped with an add-on ballistic armor kit, a self-recovery winch, C4I command and control and tactical communications.

The vehicle is manufactured and tested at its facility in Ajban, Abu Dhabi. NIMR’s new test track at the location allows for test driving of the vehicle on a wide range of terrain, including a 60 degree slope, shallow water, and rocky ground.

“The challenge was not the individual technology,” said Mark Carter, MIRA’s senior manager of electrical and control engineering. “The challenge was balancing the power, the top speed, the power-to-weight ratio, the train accessibility, the air transportability. But also, [ensuring] it can operate comfortably in environments that we see today,” he explained.

“It’s hugely challenging at 150 degrees. People shouldn’t underestimate the amount of work we have to put into controlling the temperature cooling system,” Carter added.

NIMR also includes a winterization kit in the RIV with engine and cabin heating to ensure the necessary fuel systems are heated for temperatures that reach near -25.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Speed and mobility remain “key design characteristics of a special operations vehicle like the RIV,” said Miles Chambers, senior international business development executive. But what company executives recognized with engagements in Eastern Europe is that conditions are as important.

“Designing vehicles for the hot climate is suitable for the local and regional market, but the same engineering effort is going into the control of these vehicles for a wider market for cold climates,” Chamber noted, pointing to the need for winterization and winter testing and winter kits to ensure the automotive components of the vehicle, for example, can perform in cold climates.

The vehicle is equipped with large tires and a central tire inflation system to manage the air pressure, which can be adjusted to allow for low ground pressure, a vital feature to allow for mobility in terrain both in hot and cold environments. 

“In the design of our vehicles, of course, being based here in the UAE, a key focus of these vehicles has been performance in the desert environments, where you have soft sands,” Chambers told Defense News. “Interestingly, that has very similar positive effects in colder climates, like snow and mud, where users have the same requirement [for] low ground pressure. So those mobility characteristics have the same benefit of giving mobility in different terrains, of course, for those colder climates.”

As Eastern Europe struggles with the growing threat of insurgency amid growing investment by Russia in its military, the region faces international pressure for increased investment in defense capabilities.

“We’ve seen [this] in the Czech Republic as they start to phase out the Land Rover Defenders. They now have a requirement to replace these with more militarized-capable vehicles,” Chambers said. Across the region, “there’s a broad spectrum of equipment they’re going to now need to look into replacing, [shifting] away from commercial platforms to true militarized platforms where the vehicle life now extends from the 3-year of the commercial vehicle to up to 15 years of the military platform,” Chambers said.

The demand stretches from Eastern Europe right through to Southeast Asia, he added, pointing to the Philippines and Thailand, where increased demand for armored vehicles is “complemented by highly trained special operations, special forces that can be deployed  for a mission – a covert mission – [in] counterinsurgency,  then rapidly extract themselves.”

Marcuse advised the U.S. Army to reconsider the acquisition process. Software should not be treated the same as a billion-dollar helicopter that is supposed to last for 50 years, he said. Instead, he mentioned having software developers on site with units, solving problems in real time. He also recommended obtaining government-owned code and buying services rather than one-time acquisitions.

In his keynote presentation, Gen. Gustave Perna expressed his desire to buy intellectual property when he purchases items for the Army, but emphasized his frustration with the bureaucratic process.

Perna, commanding general of U.S. Army Material Command, mentioned how detrimental continuing resolutions can be to transactions in his department, causing long hours when the budget is finally approved and halting transactions beforehand. He also mentioned his desire to put an end to sequestration in the law.

Perna pushed for consistent and predictable funding, noting how efficiency can only be achieved if there is trust in the ability to pay for programs.

“We need to change our culture … we need to push back on bureaucracy,” he said, lamenting the nine years of continuing resolutions.

Maj. Gen. Stephen Farmen, commanding general of United States Army Security Assistance Command, or USASAC, meanwhile, voiced his disappointment in how slow the foreign military sales process, or FMS, is taking, emphasizing how the program contributes significantly to United States’ readiness. He said the Trump administration and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis are particularly skilled at using FMS as leverage, as they did in Saudi Arabia.

Both Farmen and fellow panelist Vice Adm. William A. Brown, director for logistics for the U.S. Navy, zeroed in on the significance of allies’ readiness for the U.S. Army’s sustainment.

While Farmen said the biggest risk is that allies are not investing enough in sustainment and training, Brown, who is responsible for logistics planning and execution in support of joint force readiness, said that there is no way the U.S. would be capable of going to war without our allies today.

He commended the recent efforts of NATO, saying, “I’ve never seen them churning like they’re out there churning now.”