For decades there has been a debate about which traction method is better for an armored military vehicle: wheels or tracks.
Tracked vehicles eventually gained the upper hand for a time, but in recent years, wheeled armoured vehicles have been experiencing a new boom, even partially displacing tracked vehicles in certain roles, such as infantry fighting vehicles (IFV).
Yesterday I watched a very interesting video by Christian Thøgersen that may provide some insight into this discussion. The video shows a recent display of a Danish Army MOWAG Piranha V at the Panzermuseet in Oksbøl, Denmark. The wheeled vehicle initially demonstrated great mobility on a muddy surface, but eventually the Piranha V got stuck in the mud twice and had to be rescued by an old Leopard 1A5 tank:
You can see some screenshots from the video here. The first one shows us the Piranha V stuck in the mud:
This image gives us a clue as to what goes wrong with wheeled vehicles on this type of terrain:
In case you haven't figured it out, here's a better look: The wheels end up saturated and lose traction as mud fills the gaps between the tire studs. This is a problem when you have a vehicle that concentrates its total weight in less surface area, unlike what happens with tracked vehicles.
It should be noted that Oksbøl is home to the Danish Army's tank workshops, while the maintenance centre for the Piranha V is in Slagelse. The wheeled vehicle was playing on the opponent's field and lost. Looking at the comments on the video, it is clear that the tankers from Oksbøl enjoyed the spectacle.
Wheeled vehicles enjoyed a boom thanks to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries with many arid landscapes and where a wheeled vehicle offers more mobility than a tracked one. The Royal Danish Army sent its Piranha IIIs to those two countries and they performed very well. And someone thought that such a vehicle would be a good solution to replace its aging M-113 tracked troop carriers amid a trend of underspending on defense. It was then, in 2015, that Denmark bought 309 Piranha Vs. Deliveries began in 2017.
NATO warned Denmark that the Piranha Vs did not meet the requirements for a heavy brigade, but Danish politicians ignored these warnings and assigned the Piranha V to the 1st Brigade in Holstebro, a heavy unit assigned as a NATO rapid reaction force. This was a time when no one thought that a large-scale war could occur in Europe, and many politicians believed that it was not worth spending a lot on defense.
Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has shown what happens in a war in Europe, with muddy roads in autumn and winter that are more suitable for tracked vehicles, and combat environments that require well-protected vehicles. Denmark has not even been able to donate some of its Piranha Vs to Ukraine, as they are manufactured by the Swiss company MOWAG and that country has banned the delivery of Swiss material to the Ukrainians. As a result, Denmark had to purchase 115 CV90 infantry fighting vehicles in 2024, to meet NATO requirements, and another 40 in a joint purchase with Sweden, to donate to Ukraine.
This affects the Spanish armored vehicle project VCR Dragón. As I explained to you last month, this vehicle is based on the Piranha V. There is another coincidence with the Danish case: Spain will also replace part of its M-113s with the VCR Dragón. Obviously, we can think that it will be rare for these vehicles to be used on very muddy roads, that wheeled vehicles offer more speed on roads and that inconveniences like the ones we see in the video will be something exceptional. But the advantage that tracked vehicles offer, in being able to operate on terrain in very poor conditions at any time of year, remains undeniable, and to ignore it is to simply give up the ability to operate on such terrain and in such conditions.
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