Patria unveiled a functional prototype of their new FAMOUS ATV tracked platform for the first time, during a 19 March 2025 live fire demonstration at the Rovajärvi firing range, in the northern Finnish region of Lapland.
Patria’s new tracked platform is being developed under the joint European Future Highly Mobile Augmented Armoured Systems (FAMOUS) programme, and while it currently does not have an official name yet, it is being referred to by the working title ‘FAMOUS ATV’ (All-Terrain Vehicle).
Diving into the details
During the live fire demonstration, ESD was provided with more details on the platform from Timo Mennala, the Programme Director for Tracked Vehicles at Patria.
The base platform is 7.2 m long, 2.9 m wide, and 2 m high, and has a nominal ground clearance of 0.55 m. Vehicle weight is dependent on configuration and armouring options selected, but the baseline light armoured APC configuration is notionally intended to run at an empty weight of 11.5 tonnes, with useful payload capacity of 3.5 tonnes, for a total permissible combat weight of 15 tonnes. Regarding how this weight would be used for different configurations, Mennala said that the APC configuration would be expected to sit at a combat weight of 15 tonnes. According to Patria, the vehicle is rated for operating in temperature conditions from -46 °C to +44 °C.
In terms of arrangement, the platform has a front-mounted engine and the driver and commander’s compartment directly behind, with the dismount/payload compartment taking up the middle and rear. In the APC configuration, the vehicle seats two crew and 10 dismounts. The driver and commander sit side-by-side at the front, each is provided with a door for access and egress, the commander is also provided with a forward-opening single-piece roof hatch, while the driver is provided with a yoke for steering, as well as front and rear cameras – on the production version of the vehicle, these will be day and night capable. The dismounts are seated facing each other in blast-attenuating seats, in an arrangement typical on modern APCs, and provided with a simple door for access and egress.
Mennala noted that the company opted for a hydro-pneumatic suspension system over torsion bars, because in relative terms the former provides weight savings, along with greater ground clearance, and for allowing clearance adjustment to suit different terrain types. Mennala added that at this stage, the company was testing several hydro-pneumatic suspension systems available on the market, and was also developing such suspension elements with its partners as part of the FAMOUS programme.
Caption: A close-up view of the running gear showing the hydro-pneumatic suspension system, and track cleaner behind drive sprocket. [Mark Cazalet]
As a relatively lightweight platform with fairly wide tracks at 550 mm, the vehicle achieves a very low ground pressure of 32 KPa (0.326 kg/cm2), allowing it to navigate soft soils, boggy terrain, and snow with relative ease. To put this figure into context, the Russian DT-30PM articulated tracked vehicle, often used as an extreme example of engineers prioritising very high off-road mobility in soft terrain types, has a ground pressure of 29.43 Kpa (0.3 kg/cm2). Of course, DT-30PM achieves this largely due to having extremely wide tracks, at 1,100 mm in width per track. Yet overall, the FAMOUS ATV’s ground pressure is very close to one of the most extreme offroad military vehicle designs available today. To compare the FAMOUS ATV to an older vehicle in the same class, the MT-LB had a combat weight of around 11.9 tonnes, and used 350 mm wide steel tracks, resulting in a ground pressure of 45.1 KPa (0.46 kg/cm2).
In terms of navigation systems, the prototype shown by Patria was fitted with a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) transceiver, however, Mennala noted that “in this stage the role of GPS is more of testing purposes to collect all possible data and location information. In the near future [the] vehicle will have more advanced INU [inertial navigation unit] and geographic information systems.”
In terms of protection, the basic vehicle is rated at a STANAG 4569 Level 1 ballistic and Level 1 mine protection, with an option to go up to Level 2 ballistic protection. However, opting for the higher protection rating would somewhat eat into the vehicle’s available payload capacity, which could limit some armament or payload options. According to Mennala, the vehicle can also be fitted with NBC protection if required.
In this vein, and in terms of expectations for the most likely initial candidates for armament solutions, it is worth noting that Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace is both a 49% stakeholder in Patria, a participant in the FAMOUS 2 programme, and has multiple products in its portfolio which would work on this class of platform. Indeed, the FAMOUS ATV demonstrator shown at Eurosatory 2024 featured a Kongsberg remote weapon station (RWS) armed with a M230LF 30 mm automatic cannon along with what appeared to be a 7.62 mm machine gun.
The FAMOUS ATV in context
Having run through its essential characteristics, it is important to explain what this platform is and what it is not. The FAMOUS ATV is not intended to be a medium-weight armoured vehicle geared toward frontline direct fire combat. Rather, it is a lightweight tracked platform which can be used for many different light roles, where the superior terrain trafficability characteristics of tracks over wheels are required. Typically this would mean any role where the vehicle would be expected to spend an extended time operating in soft soils, boggy or swampy terrain, as well as deep snow.
It can perhaps best be thought of as a spiritual successor to the venerable Soviet MT-LB, developed by the Kharkiv Tractor Plant in Ukraine, and in use with the Finnish Armed Forces; or to a lesser extent, the US FMC M113 platform. The M113 and MT-LB first entered service in 1960 and 1964, respectively, and since then have been adapted into a truly staggering variety of roles. However, since that time, there arguably hasn’t been anything similar available to the West, with the majority of tracked vehicle development efforts focussed on either the medium-weight segment typically occupied by IFVs (such as CV90, ASCOD, KF41), or within the articulated tracked vehicle segment (such as BvS10, Beowulf, and Bronco). By comparison, developments focussed on the light tracked platform segment have been very thin on the ground over the last few decades, with a slight exception to this seen in the unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) segment.
As a lightweight tracked platform, FAMOUS is also expected to be significantly cheaper to procure and maintain compared to most typical medium-weight tracked vehicles. The use of Soucy CRTs helps matters further here, by decreasing maintenance requirements compared to steel tracks, both through their longer lifespan between track changes, and through their vibration-damping qualities, which help reduce vibration-related wear and tear on many sensitive vehicle subsystems. Additionally, being lighter than steel tracks, CRTs decrease the unsprung mass of the vehicle, which also provides further savings in the form of lower fuel consumption.
Trending toward commonality
For the FAMOUS (study phase) and FAMOUS 2 (development phase) programmes, Patria has acted as the coordinator for a large industrial consortium of companies from many different countries. Table 1 shows all participant countries and companies within both the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP) FAMOUS programme (at a cost of EUR 9.9 million), and the follow-on European Defence Fund (EDF) FAMOUS 2 programme (with an estimated total cost of EUR 122.4 million):
| Table 1: FAMOUS/FAMOUS 2 Programme Participant Summary | |
| Country | Companies |
| Finland (lead country) | Patria (industrial coordinator) FY-Composites Millog Savox Communications Spinverse |
| Austria | AVL List (FAMOUS 2 only) Steyr Motors Betriebs (Initially joined FAMOUS 2, but then opted out) |
| Belgium | John Cockerill Defense |
| Denmark | Integris Composites |
| France | Arquus KNDS France |
| Estonia | Cybernetica (FAMOUS only) |
| Germany | Diehl Defence DST Defence Tracks (FAMOUS only) FFG (FAMOUS only) KNDS Deutschland (FAMOUS only) |
| Greece | ISD |
| Latvia | LMT |
| Norway | Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (FAMOUS 2 only) |
| Spain | EM&E Indra Sistemas Piedrafita Sport |
With the FAMOUS ATV, Patria looks set to continue its collaborative approach when it comes to enabling procurement. Looking back over several major milestones, the company secured licence production agreements for their AMV 8×8, most notably with Poland who manufactured the vehicle as the Rosomak, and more recently exemplified by the CAVS programme to procure the Patria 6×6.
With regards to similarities between the CAVS and FAMOUS programmes, ESD spoke to Jukka Holkieri, Patria’s Executive Vice President, Global Division. Holkieri noted: “FAMOUS is the name for the development program, which has also EU money in it, and in our part of this, it materialises on this new armoured tracked vehicle. And obviously what we have seen is, is that the CAVS model seems to work very well. So we ask ourselves, and we ask countries, ‘how about doing something similar for the for the track vehicle as well’? Whether it would be within the CAVS, or whether it would be kind of ‘CAVS 2’, or whatever it could be called, but kind of copying the CAVS model for procurement, also to FAMOUS. CAVS is also a development program. There is, there are these different variants and packages in the R&D agreement. So in that sense, FAMOUS is a little bit different, because it started as a broad development program, whereas CAVS had very few nations to start with, and now it’s getting wider, but once we get into the procurement part and the production part, and then the life cycle support part, which is also, by the way, very important, I think the CAVS model could be copy/pasted there, but maybe [with] some modifications, of course.”
Caption: View of the right-hand side of the FAMOUS ATV, showing crew compartment. The GNSS antenna housing is visible on the hull roof, just forward of the turret. [Mark Cazalet]
Commonality would certainly seem to be a logical approach for a vehicle in the FAMOUS ATV’s class, when considering the potential for different variants. The main drivers behind M113 and MT-LB spawning so many variants in so many different roles was their relative simplicity, and low cost, which allowed them to become near-ubiquitous with NATO and Warsaw Pact armed forces respectively. The FAMOUS ATV looks to be driving into much the same territory, at a time when almost no competitor models in this class exist.
In conjunction with its lack of competitors in its class, there are two other factors worth noting which look likely to work in the FAMOUS ATV’s favour regarding adoption. Firstly, this is a European project which is coming to fruition at exactly the same time as Europe’s defence spending taps are opening, and where European solutions look to be favoured over US solutions. Secondly, since FAMOUS is a collaborative project, it has generated a large number of stakeholders across many European countries, with a vested interest in helping to push the product forward, at a time where the EU is looking to promote greater defence-industrial cooperation. In sum, this very much looks to be a vehicle whose time has come.
