15 Oct 2009

No point in modifying army vehicles - military analyst

10:46 am on 15 October 2009

A military analyst considers that spending any more money on the army's light armored vehicles would be a bad use of the Defence budget.

One hundred and five LAVs were bought by the previous Government for $653 million, in a deal criticised as impractical and expensive.

Defence Minister Wayne Mapp says some of them could be modified, or swapped for a different type of armoured vehicle.

Dr Mapp says it would help if the army had more variants of the LAVs including ambulances, engineering and command vehicles.

However, Waikato University defence and strategic studies lecturer Ron Smith says the vehicles have not been deployed overseas yet and he does not see the point of modifying them.

He says it would make more sense to sell a substantial number of the vehicles.