ARMOR FOR THE ARCTIC
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t’s 8 a.m. on a cold December morning in Fairbanks, Alaska. Te outside temperature without windchill is well below minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit and together, with the wind- chill, can cut through protective wear numbing body parts
in a matter of minutes. Frostbite on exposed skin can occur in five to 10 minutes. It’ll be another two hours until sunrise, and there will be a little over four hours of daylight for today. Soldiers under these conditions need to exercise extreme care to success- fully reach the end of the day. It’s no different for equipment.
For all things automotive, it’s also a rough start to an incredibly short day. Temperatures overnight have dropped to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Metal, plastic, electrical wires, fuel and all other automotive component characteristics have changed. Metal and plastic are now brittle, wires no longer want to bend and fuel lines freeze. Vehicle systems, much like their human counterparts, react differently to these freezing temperatures. Getting vehicles to start under these extreme conditions is challenging enough, but then the vehicles themselves still have to support Soldiers and their missions wherever they may lead. Te vehicle that can perform under these conditions also needs to be extreme. Enter the Cold Weather All-Terrain Vehicle (CATV), one of the U.S. Army’s newest additions to meet the Arctic challenge.
Alaska itself is a land of extremes. At a little over 570,000 square miles, Alaska is bigger than the next three states, Texas, California and Montana, combined. It’s a region of extreme temperatures, with summers that can reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit and winters that can bottom out to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit or colder. Alaska is 1,824 miles from the North Pole, and as such, has
extreme changes in daylight. In line with its size, Alaska has over 3 million lakes, its own mountain ranges and has the larg- est forest of any state. For the diverse terrain and challenging weather conditions during summer and winter, the CATV is suited for the extreme.
In August 2022, the Army announced a new vehicle for Arctic regions and started making preparations to take delivery of the CATV. Te CATV will renew the Army’s capability to conduct operations in extreme cold weather on the frozen tundra of Alaska and other cold regions within the continental United States. Te CATV will be unarmored and unarmed, having the primary mission of transporting people and material support- ing missions across unforgiving terrain in temperatures down to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Te CATV will replace the Small Unit Support Vehicle (SUSV), which was also unarmored and unarmed. With the Army’s interest in expanding capability and deterrence in the Arctic, the CATV is part of increasing the Army’s ability to operate in the Arctic.
Te current CATV configuration can partner with allied nations in the Arctic but is limited to peacetime operations in an uncon- tested environment. But with its unarmored crew cab, it may not be the right capability that enables Army Alaska units to employ a credible, capable force that can deter potential attacks. Its role as part of a capable force in the first line of defense is limited with its unarmored crew compartment. Armored capability and transitioning the CATV vehicle to a more capable weapons plat- form as part of a first line of defense formation comes with some potential tradeoffs.
(Photo by Staff Sgt. Matthew Winstead, United States Army Alaska)
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Army AL&T Magazine
Summer 2023
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