Our tale starts of with the Canadian 1994 tender for a new APC to replace the aging M113, Grizzly and Bison APC’s. General Motors Diesel would enter this tender with a variant of the Piranha 3H designed by the Swiss MOWAG. In 1995 the GMD submission would be chosen and be dubbed the LAV 3. Deliveries of the first batch would start in 1997 and would be produced in Canada by General Motors Diesel Division of London, Ontario.
In 1999 under plan “Objective Force”, The USA starts to seriously look at a 8×8 APC to augment their Bradley fleet to allow for faster reaction and smaller logistical footprint operations. This starts of the Interim Armored Vehicle (IAV) program to adopt a vehicle to fill the role until the Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicles could come online and provide a tailor made solution.
In early 2000 General Motors and General Dynamics would team up for the IAV program and would submit a variant of the LAV 3. In late 2000 the duo would be awarded an 8 Billion USD contract for 2131 of the LAV 3 based vehicles. This order would be build at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama USA.
MOWAG would first be acquired by General Motors later General Motors Defense whom in turn would be acquired by General Dynamics and would later become part of the General Dynamics Land Systems Division. This had as result that MOWAG IP would now belong to a non Swiss company meaning that all vehicles produced with the IP outside of Switzerland would no longer be subject to Swiss export restrictions. This means the Strykers build in the US and LAV 3/6 build in Canada can be exported to Ukraine without the need for Swiss approval.
Meanwhile Those Piranha 3 and 5 build in Switzerland are still bound to Swiss export restrictions the same way Gepard ammunition made by Rheinmetall Air Defence AG located in Switzerland is.
