[Defense Column] Military Ambulance Modified from Armored Vehicle Released

[Monthly Defense Times Editor-in-Chief An Seung-beom] At the Seoul International Aerospace and Defense Exhibition 2021 (Seoul ADEX 2021) held last October at Seoul Airport, the Korean armored ambulance, the Medical Evacuation Vehicle (MEV), was unveiled for the first time. The necessity of armored medical evacuation vehicles has already been raised in modern battlefields where protecting the lives of combatants is the top priority.

Recently, our military requested the procurement of armored medical evacuation vehicles to ensure the safe transport of the wounded, and Hyundai Rotem, which mass-produces the Army’s main K808 8×8 armored vehicle, responded by introducing a wheeled armored ambulance.

This vehicle was produced by partially modifying the existing K877 wheeled command post vehicle chassis and applies the same engine, drivetrain system, driver’s thermal periscope, water jet, and additional armor plates as the K808 and K877 armored vehicles. It can transport 3 crew members, 4 stretcher patients, or 6 ambulatory patients, and is equipped with a generator for operating onboard medical equipment, a positive pressure system that also serves for heating and cooling, and a medical oxygen generator as standard.

It is a display-prepared vehicle that also considers the installation of negative pressure equipment (expected to be a combined positive and negative pressure device to be applied in the next-generation field ambulance) to prepare for biological warfare situations or infectious disease outbreaks such as COVID-19. Armored ambulances have become an essential element of modern battlefields as a means to safely evacuate the wounded occurring in combat zones while protecting them from enemy attacks.

Although wheeled field ambulances have not yet been adopted, they are vehicles that need to be introduced promptly and rapidly operationalized in line with the streamlining of forces.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.