- Yes
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Welcome to another suggestion, here we’ll be looking at a Belgian missile carrier: the AIFV-B MILAN
The AIFV is the result of a US program set up to replace the M113. The FMC company responded to this request with the XM765, basically a heavily upgraded M113A1. The US was unimpressed with this result and chose instead to develop the Bradley. The story of FMC is not over though, they chose to continue work on the vehicle on their own accord. At first they developed the PI M113A1, another failure, before going back to the drawing board. The result would become the AIFV. While the US was still not interested, the type did find plenty of success in export sales. Several large orders followed to countries like Turkey, South Korea, the Netherlands and also Belgium.
Belgium made an order for 514 units of the vehicle in 1979, together with another order of 525 M113A2s. Both were intended to replace the aging AMX VCI and M75 APCs that were the mainstay of the armored forces at that time. Part of the agreement for the vehicles was local production, all Belgian service vehicles were produced in the country, and some quantity of export orders also ended up being produced by the Belgians. 5 models entered service with the armed forces of Belgium: a driver trainer, a command post, a simple troop transport, an AFV with a 25mm cannon and finally the MILAN missile carrier.
The latter was a relatively simple modification of the AIFV chassis. Besides the standard 12.7mm machine gun, a pintle mount for the MILAN ATGM was added. This setup is very similar to other M113 based missile carriers seen in the inventory of armed forces around the world. The Belgian variant is a bit unique just because of its use of the MILAN missile. Most other nations, including The Netherlands, usually employed this type of vehicle with a TOW missile, a type that Belgium never had in the inventory.
The first deliveries of the 1979 order would be made in 1982, with deliveries continuing at a steady rate of about 20 vehicles a month until the full order of M113s and AIFVs was completed in 1988. AIFVs in Belgian service mostly knew a fairly uneventful life, but they were deployed under the UN task force during the Yugoslav war in the 1990s. After the end of the Cold War, the Belgian army became the victim of severe budget cuts, and these also impacted the AIFV fleet. Several dozen vehicles were sold off to other countries and the remaining fleet was eventually retired in favor of a much smaller force of wheeled vehicles.
Belgian AIFVs would eventually be brought back into service however, not by Belgium, but in service of the Ukrainians who now employ them in their war against Russia.
General characteristics:
- Crew: 3-5
- Length: 5.26 m
- Width: 2.82 m
- Height: 2.3 m
- Weight: 12.3 tons
- Engine: Detroit Diesel Allison 6V-53T (providing 267 hp at 2800 rpm)
- Maximum speed: 61 km/h
- Power-to-weight: 19 hp/ton
Armament:
- 1x MILAN missile launcher
- 1x 12.7mm Browning machine gun
Place in-game:
The AIFV-B MILAN is a curious missile carrier, straying away from the usual combination of M113 based chassis with a TOW missile by replacing it with the MILAN. The MILAN is not as potent a missile as the TOW, which would likely mean the AIFV-B MILAN can sit at a slightly lower battle rating to compensate for it. It would undoubtedly play very similar to other missile carriers already present in-game, being a tried and tested playstyle that makes maximum advantage of natural cover by exploiting the good gun depression limits. The French tech tree currently lacks any vehicles that fulfill this exact role, and the AIFV-B MILAN can fill it while still being ever so slightly unique.