This is the first public showing at SOFIC for the DAGOR vehicle from Polaris Defense. Last year, it was still under wraps amd interested parties were shuttled to a nearby warehouse to take a peek. 
DAGOR is Polaris Defense’s first vehicle built specifically for military use from the ground up. While Polaris products are well known in the military space, they have all been adaptations of commercially available items. From the beginning, Polaris had a nine man vehicle in mind and set the design to fit well into a specific gap in the SOF Family of Vehicles.
In fact, if they were to create a new vehicle today to comply with the Ultra Lightweight Combat Vehicle requirement, Jed Leonard Manager Advanced Mobility Platforms at Polaris Defense told me that it would look like DAGOR.
I asked Leonard about the vehicle’s strength and he related that DAGOR is optimized to carry military payloads in extreme terrain, and is a great balance of Transportability, Usability and Mobility. That means you can get it where it needs to be and reliably drive it while you’re there.
DAGOR is built with commercially available components such as the drive train. This commonality means spares are available worldwide at lower pricing and makes them easier to work on. Additionally, Polaris Defense is working with Rousch for vehicle performance enhancement.
In order to answer the specifics of the recent Ultra Light Combat Vehicle program, Polaris added a roll over protection system to the rear compartment of vehicle as well as other requirement specific items.
They’ve related that DAGORs are currently in service with SOF customers and that they’re getting great feedback. All certification testing is complete including airdrop, sling load and internal transport. They’ve also completed government durability testing.
The vehicle curb weight is less than 4,500lbs to maximize tactical aircraft operational range and has a payload capacity of 3,250lbs. The width of DAGOR facilitates rapid loading into the CH-47 Chinook platform without modification and the weight allows it to be sling loaded under the UH-60 Black Hawk. The vehicle has completed certification testing for CH-47 Chinook Internal Air Transport (IAT), air drop and UH-60 Black Hawk Sling Load.
While I won’t get into specifics, I can say that I’m very surprised at how cost competitive the DAGOR is when compared to other vehicles in the same weight class. It’s available commercially off-the-shelf, right now. Also, the use of COTS parts makes maintenance sound much less daunting than many other vehicles which should result in lower life cycle costs.
www.polaris.com
