On 11 May 2022, the OCCAR-EA Director signed the contract for the integration of Slovenia into the BOXER Programme. The Slovenian Customer has ordered 45 BOXER vehicles including an initial In-Service Support Package, with a total contract worth of around € 281 Million excluding VAT. The BOXER is an 8×8 all-terrain heavily armoured utility vehicle with a unique modular concept of a common drive module and an exchangeable mission module, making it a flexible military vehicle, thus ensuring maximum strategic and tactical mobility in a wide range of operational scenarios. BOXER can operate in high intensity conflict, in rapid reaction peace support and in humanitarian operations worldwide.
The first vehicle deliveries are expected in 2023 from Krauss-Maffei Wegmann through the ARTEC consortium. The Slovenian BOXER vehicles will be based on the Lithuanian BOXER (named VILKAS) design including a remote controlled turret from Rafael. The BOXER Programme now has 5 Participating States, with other nations including Germany, Netherlands, Lithuania and the United Kingdom. The BOXER Programme provides the German (DE), Netherlands (NL), Lithuanian and the United Kingdom (UK) Armies, with a new generation of all terrain armoured utility vehicles on the basis of balanced capabilities of transport capacity, mobility, protection, survivability, growth potential and efficient Life Cycle Costs.
In December 2006, OCCAR placed the contract for series production of 272 vehicles for DE and 200 vehicles for NL with ARTEC GmbH – a consortium formed by Krauss Maffei Wegmann, Rheinmetall Landsysteme and Rheinmetall Nederland. For DE, all vehicles have been delivered and are undergoing retrofit to the A2 variant. A new batch of 131 A2 vehicles are now in progress. For NL, the last deliveries of batch 1 is due in December 2020, and the responsibilities for the in-service NL fleet will be handed over from Defence Material Organisation to NL Army. In 2016, Lithuania joined the Programme with a contract to buy 91 BOXER vehicles via OCCAR in five different variants on the basis of the DE vehicle design. The first vehicles were delivered in 2019, with production running until 2021.
In Dec 2019, the UK joined the BOXER programme following integration activities and contract negotiations. The UK will see a delivery of over 500 vehicles in 4 Build Configurations, with first vehicle delivered expected in 2022 following a design and verification phase. The BOXER Programme has been tasked to develop and procure new BOXER variants for the DE customer, including Joint Fire Support and Short Range Air Defence and to investigate on a Heavy Weapon Platform variant. More vehicles are also being procured for NL, including additional Integrated Logistic Support packages. Australia has joined the BOXER Programme as an observer state, where information and lessons learned will be shared between nations for a cooperative relationship between all user nations of the BOXER vehicle. Collaborative working will be investigated where possible where an economic or user gain can be realised.
