Qinetiq has been awarded $2.7m to help develop the US military’s next generation of armoured fighting vehicles.
The Farnborough-based company will apply its electric hub-drive technology in the Ground X-Vehicle Technologies (GXV-T) programme, an initiative launched by US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in August 2014.
Qinetiq’s hub-drive replaces multiple gearboxes, differentials, and drive shafts with compact, high-powered electric motors contained within wheels. The company said that this approach reduces overall weight of the vehicle and introduces new design possibilities that improve safety and increase performance for military and civilian vehicles.
The technology also has the potential to enhance current military vehicles, such as multiple-wheeled infantry vehicles that could be retrofitted with the hub-drive system to exploit the extra power and agility that comes with reduced weight, or use the saving to offset extra armour, equipment, or personnel.
Current armoured vehicles face ordnance that is increasingly effective at penetrating them, but and adding extra armour incurs penalties in terms of vehicle speed, mobility, and increased development and deployment costs.
Similarly, conventional drive systems can become lethal projectiles when an explosion occurs beneath the vehicle.
Dr David Moore, director of Research Services at Qinetiq, said: “Moving the drive system to within the wheels removes this threat and disrupts the trend of vehicles becoming heavier and less mobile due to increasing protection and weaponry.”
The latest $2.7m investment, awarded in July 2016, will take the technology from a concept design into the building and testing phase, including production of two fully working units.
Qinetiq is also looking at opportunities to introduce similar hub-drive systems into commercial sectors such as transport, agriculture, mining, and construction.
“The system could be scaled up or down for use on any number of vehicles, from dump trucks to space rovers,” Dr Moore said. “The benefits of enhanced power, high torque, efficiency, and agility are not limited to military vehicles, so we are keen to explore opportunities to use this technology in new and innovative ways.”
“electric hub-drive” .. google to see over a century of context now being consolidated commercially!
I have always skeptical of contractors’ perpetual predictions of how maneuverability & digital technology will make armour obsolete. The 21st century battlefields close to civilians where ambush is almost unavoidable if anything has made conventional protection more relevant than ever.
Nevertheless there is huge potential for technology like the hub drive to lighten and simplify (two of the most vital things for military hardware) almost any given platform significantly increasing its effectiveness, regardless of what form it eventually takes.
Electric hub-drive is not the optimal technology for this or any other vehicle. The two-axle, four-wheel plan is an even worse compromise. The ride/handling compromise inherent in conventional suspension places limits on real-world performance, which any CGI can easily hide. The apparent specification of pneumatic tyres defies logic.
In 2001 I built a proof-of-concept model that demonstrated the principle of separating suspension from the chassis-levelling function. It is perfectly obvious to a school-kid that displacement of the spring medium is confined to heave mode, and this model travels at speed over worse terrain than that shown in the video. It is irrefutable evidence that a simple, passive engineering is far superior to any adaptive or active suspension. It is robust, reliable and low maintenance.
In Nov. 2002 I met with two engineers in FST – Vehicle Systems at QinetiQ under the ‘protection’ of a confidentiality agreement. I’ll spare their blushes and keep their names to myself. The outcome was a couple of letters revealing they didn’t understand what their eyes told them, putting a price tag of £100k to make a ‘mule’ and confessing that “The current restructuring of QinetiQ equates to very little funding for internal research.” If I had revealed the internal workings of the model and covered the cost, QinetiQ would be fourteen years ahead of where they are now.
The ideological mantra of ministers and civil servants has always been that innovation in general and IPR in particular are not matters for the public sector. “Exploitation is for the private sector, rather than the government.” – Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. 29 Jan. 2003. This has always proved to be an economic strategy of commercial suicide for UK industry. My simple solution is to again offer my IP to the MoD for nothing, purely in the country’s interest, but the ‘rules’ are set in stone:-
“investment should be driven by demonstrated support from business.”
“public support should not directly subsidise industry’s near-market research.”
Ref: Science & Innovation Ten-Year Investment Framework. Par. 4.12
The Dstl is the last remnant of public sector R&D. “The MoD has a Code of Practice to encourage unsolicited innovative proposals . . backed up by internal policy, mandating staff compliance.” In flagrant breach of The Code, staff ignored the revolutionary proposals I put forward.
Seven years later the MoD announced, “We have been going round the international market to see if there is another vehicle – it doesn’t exist. We are spending over £30m to upgrade all Snatch vehicles, to provide the same level of manoeuvrability with increased protection.” Better protected vehicles weren’t procured because they lacked ‘manoeuvrability’?!?! No, they cost more.
I’d like to revive the challenge I put to The Engineer in my letter of 21 Feb. 2014. A simple tilt-steer gravity-racer would prove that the proposals outlined here are not actually fit for purpose. Put out a request for assistance from British engineering firms and get it built. How hard can it be? I am past caring about the potential value of patent ‘protection’, (If neither business nor government give a toss, I’m powerless to persuade them.) but anybody who can afford it is welcome to try.