The Lviv Armor Vehicles Factory has received a defense procurement contract for production of 20 Dozor-B armored cars, as well as full overhaul of T-64 and T-72 tanks and other heavy vehicles for Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
A light and highly mobile carrier, it can be used as a battlefield transporter for manpower, cargo or ammunitions weighing up to 2,000 kilograms, or during combat surveillance operations.
Providing the so-called level 3 defense under NATO’s STAGNAC 4569 standards, Dozor-B can protect its crew and passengers from gunfire and infantry landmines, or even from biological or chemical warfare influence. After actual combat tests, Dozor-B were recognized as generally reputable and reliable war machines adequate to demands by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense.
The contract became known from a Lviv Oblast commercial court decision published on March 24.
During court hearings on debt enforcement between the Lviv Armor Vehicles Factory and the Kharkiv Tractor Plant, the Lviv representative, a respondent to the case, presented duplicate contracts on production for Ukraine’s armed forces to prove its financial credibility.
According to the document, for 2017, the Lviv Factory got an Hr 10.6 million ($390,600) contract on repair of T-72 main battle tanks under the state procurement program. Also, for Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, the factory will perform a full overhaul of the T-64 tank, the BRM-1K armored surveillance vehicle and the GMP-54 armored firefighting unit with heavy TBS-86 dozer scoop.
The Lviv Factory had also been given work to service military hardware engaged in fighting in the war in the Donbas, including T-72 and T-80 tanks, BREM-1 heavy evacuation vehicles and equipment for combat repair of armored weaponry.
The serial production of Dozor-B was launched at the Lviv Armor Plant in September 2014 because of the dire shortage of light armor cars in Ukraine’s armed forces amid the most gruesome months of war in Donbas. However, the first 10 units had been produced and handed over to Ukraine’s elite 95th Airborne Brigade to be deployed at war zone in the east only by July.
Previously, on Feb. 2, Ukraine’s state-run defense concern Ukroboronprom claimed that it had issued a production order for the Lviv Armor Factory, providing it a full workload for 2017 thus enabling the plant to avoid layoffs for 900 workers due to financial problems. For the present year, the factory planned to launch producing “dozens” of Dozor-Bs.
The court paper does not specify terms of the production of the cars, although it delays the Lviv factory’s debt servicing by Aug. 30, 2017 until probable funding from the state contractors, thus new Dozor-Bs can be produced through 2017.
According to information from Ukroboronprom, producing one Dozor-B unit would cost at least 3 million hr ($111,000) and take 6 months.
