Finland and Latvia Move Ahead With Joint Armored Vehicle Program

On 29 January 2020, Finland and Latvia signed a Technical Arrangement on launching a development programme for sustained army mobility enhancement. Finland’s Minister of Defence Antti Kaikkonen and Latvia’s Minister of Defence Artis Pabriks signed the document for the participating nations.

The cooperation programme aims to develop a common armoured wheeled vehicle system. In case this development leads to vehicle system procurement in the future, the resulting common system enhances mobility, cost-efficiency, interoperability and security of supply of the armies of the participating nations.

At this stage, this is cooperation between Finland and Latvia, but the following phases allow also other countries to join the cooperation programme. This sets an excellent example of deepening defence cooperation between EU member states, Defence Minister Kaikkonen said at the signing event.

With the Letter of Intent signed in December, Estonia together with Latvia and Finland has shown interests for acquiring armoured vehicles for their national armed forces. Based on national and multinational tests and evaluations, the vehicle chassis platform chosen for the development in-progress is a Finnish-made Patria 6×6 armoured wheeled vehicle chassis platform that meets the set capability requirements.

https://www.defmin.fi/en/topical/press_releases?588_m=10192