Assault Breacher Vehicle Provides Marine Engineers With A Safer Ride

Civilian mechanics have created a bomb-busting armored vehicle that Marines in Afghanistan now use to destroy roadside IEDs.

The civilian mechanics at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama usually only fix vehicles for the Army, not design them for the Marine Corps. But as Marines push into contested areas of Afghanistan, their engineers face a persistent threat from roadside bombs. The mechanics at Anniston saw they could build a safe ride for these military engineers by adding off-the-shelf equipment to an M1A1 Abrams battle tank. The result, called the Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV), maximizes the depot staff’s experience at fixing the M1A1 and their ability to mount heavy engineering equipment, including a 12-foot plough, onto its hull. The Army donated excess tank parts from its inventory to create the ABV.

After about two years of trials and training, the Marine Corps delivered the first ABVs late last year to southern Afghanistan, where they quickly saw action clearing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from the roads leading to the Taliban stronghold of Now Zad in Helmand province.

The Breacher crew’s preferred method of clearing the roads involves shooting an MK155 linear charge—a nylon rope beaded with 1750 pounds of explosive C4—so that it lies across the unpaved roadway, and then detonating the line to create a safe path more than 300 feet long and 50 feet wide. The system was designed in the 1960s to defeat pressure-fused mines, but is finding a new use in clearing IED-infested roads. Intercepted enemy radio transmissions, quoted in a Marine Corps release, indicate that the enemy fled Now Zad as the explosive strings erupted, saying, “Get out, the big boom is coming!”

By: Shelldrake