South Korea acquires 110 GDELS M3 vehicles
GDELS M3 Amphibious Bridge. (Photo: GDELS)
M3 vehicles will be jointly produced by GDELS and Hanwha Defense Corporation under the Korean Amphibious Bridging Vehicle programme.
General Dynamics European Land Systems (GDELS) announced on 30 September that the company have been selected by South Korea to supply 110 M3 amphibious bridging vehicles for the Republic of Korea Army.
The vehicles will be jointly produced with Hanwha Defense Corporation under the Korean Amphibious Bridging Vehicle programme.
A press release from GDELS noted that South Korea will operate the largest M3 fleet in the world with more than 1.3km of bridge length.
It was added that this platform provides load capacity, assembly time and manoeuvrability both on water and land in addition to ‘mobility, availability and seamless land-to-water transition’.
The M3K was chosen in a competitive selection process and competed against the FNSS Armoured Amphibious Assault Bridge (AAAB) from Turkey.
The M3 is already operated by the militaries of Germany, the UK, Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia.
According to Shephard Defence Insight, the M3 is a self-propelled amphibious bridging vehicle developed from 1982-92 to meet the requirements of the British and German armies.
It is operated by a crew of three and has a maximum road speed of 80km/h. When driven into the water, the M3 is propelled and steered in water by two fully traversable pump jets at speeds of up to 14km/h.
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