Multi-Role Combat Vehicles Technology Demonstration Project

, The Multi-Role Combat Vehicles Technology Demonstration Project (MRCV TDP) is being demonstrated during a time of rapid and revolutionary transformation for the Canadian Army. The future battlefield will have extensive information available at all levels. With the US Army investing heavily in network-centric command and control, multi-role munitions and platforms, and robotics, it is essential for the Canadian Army to ensure its interoperability with the US and its other allies. 
 
Rapid technological innovations are a key driving force behind current Army modernization initiatives within Canada and other countries. This period of transformation will see the Canadian Army build on current strengths and take advantage of technological advances in critical areas, to ensure it remains strategically relevant and tactically decisive. To this end, the Canadian Army is exploring ways to exploit technological advances and new armoured vehicle concepts to ensure maximum combat effectiveness on future battlefields. 
 
Emerging from this environment is the MRCV TDP, a vehicle concept project encompassing distributed simulation experiments. The vehicle concept features a single vehicle crew capable of communicating with allied air defence, ground weapons and dismounted soldiers (soldiers on foot) concurrently. Working within a future net-centric environment, the Canadian and American operators are able to remotely identify and engage targets using both Canadian and US Army unmanned air and ground vehicles. 
 
The concept is being demonstrated in the third of a series of distributed and linked simulation experiments that have featured Canadian and American vehicle crews in a future combat situation, operating their own and each other's equipment. The linked simulation experiment is a cooperative effort between Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), the US Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Centre (TARDEC) and General Dynamics Canada. . 
 
MRCV TDP will result in a virtual vehicle that simulates advanced technologies, enabling the evaluation of operator and technology performance, battlefield effectiveness and interoperability with US forces. This concept offers a revolutionary increase in military capability, with enormous promise for enhancing combat effectiveness while improving the flexibility of employment and reducing crew size and logistics requirements. 
 
Results from this experiment will be relevant to Army transformation objectives in both Canada and the United States. The information gathered will advance efforts to improve Army interoperability and assess the merits of future Canadian and American technologies in a cooperative fashion, to maximize the research and development investments of both countries.