Buffalo

Army, Mar 2005 by Gourley, Scott R

One of the latest additions to the U.S. Army's emerging counterinsurgency arsenal traces its origins to the struggles against earlier insurgencies on the African continent.

Manufactured by Force Protection, Inc., the Buffalo is a new, heavyweight armored wheeled vehicle, designed principally for land mine and route clearance operations, that is now being applied in a wide variety of Army force protection activities.

"Our company was founded in the mid-1990s by an ex-Rhodesian Special Forces officer named Garth Barrett, who had had a lot of experience working with the South African forces during the 1970s and 1980s," explained Scott R. Ervin, interim Chief Executive Officer for Force Protection, Inc. "During that time, the South African Republic was facing a lot of insurgent action, particularly mine and IED-type booby traps and other threats used by insurgency forces."

In response to these insurgency threats, the South African government tasked CSIR, that country's central scientific research and development resource, to conduct basic research and practical development on vehicles that could safely transport troops through a threat array of booby traps, land mines, IEDs, sniper fire and ambush attacks.

According to Ervin, the process resulted in a proprietary technology that combines a mix of materials, procedures and techniques to produce a mine-protected/blast-protected vehicle. Garth Barrett subsequently licensed the technology to develop mine- and blast-protected vehicles in the United States.

The resulting Buffalo vehicle combines this proprietary technology in the steel hull with standard commercial off-the-shelf American-made truck automotive components, including Mack engine, Allison transmission, Fabco axles and Michelin run-flat tires.

With a curb weight of 45,320 pounds and a maximum payload weight of 38,680 pounds, the Buffalo measures 323 inches long, 97 inches wide and 117 inches high. The armored compartment, which extends for 150 inches behind the front seats, allows the vehicle to be used in a variety of roles that range from mine clearance to command and control.

"The philosophy behind the Buffalo is to provide a safe cocoon for the occupants of the vehicle," Ervin said. "And when they're hit with a blast, we don't care if the tires get blown off, or an axle gets blown off, or the exterior fittings get damaged. Those are all sacrificial items that can be very quickly repaired and replaced so the vehicle can go back into operation in a very quick turn-around timeframe."

Following this philosophy, the company developed two Buffalo prototypes that were purchased by the U.S. Army and extensively tested at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., during 2000-2001. Following weeks of rigorous testing, the Army seemed to confirm the design wisdom by promptly ordering 10 more vehicles.

Those vehicles, which started coming off the production line in late 2003, were immediately deployed overseas, initially into Afghanistan and then into Iraq. Subsequent contract awards in April 2004 and October 2004 added 21 and 15 more Buffaloes respectively, with those deliveries expected to conclude around March.

According to Ervin, the vehicles were initially deployed strictly in mine clearance roles. Noting that the vehicles can be fitted with steel wheels, he explained, "With those steel wheels and with a chain flail on the ground behind it, the vehicle is capable of driving into minefields that are seeded with antipersonnel mines. It literally drives up and down like a farmer planting corn, and sets off the land mines with the steel wheels. The vehicle is capable of clearing thousands of mines per hour through this technique."

"So in the initial deployment into Afghanistan, they did go with some steel wheels and they did some mine clearance," he added. "And the experience was just staggering for the military, because they have been so used to treating the threat of explosives as being essentially catastrophic. For a vehicle to take a blast, usually there is somebody who is seriously injured and usually the vehicle is a complete write-off. But the Buffalo takes a licking and keeps on ticking. It just goes in and drives around, takes these hits and blows off antipersonnel mines without any particular impact."

He noted that the Buffalo also provides crew protection against antitank mines, acknowledging that those enormous devices would certainly damage tires and axle sets.

"Particularly in Iraq, what happened was that the threat of IEDs became the growing threat. And it turns out that Buffalo can take an unbelievable level of blast impact from an IED. We have more than 20 deployed now in active duty. They're used every day and we get field reports back on some of the incidents. We've had some blasts that were calculated as two 155 mm artillery shells taped together and detonated at a distance of two to three meters against the side of the vehicle. We had significant damage to the undercarriage of the vehicle-the axles, the drivetrain, the wheels-but we have never had a penetration of the blast-protected armored capsule. We have never had a serious injury of any of the occupants riding in the vehicles. The usual repair cycle is 24 to 72 hours to simply strip off the broken equipment, bolt on new equipment and off she goes, so every vehicle remains in operation."