The user nicknamed Nathan White has posted a tweet with an attached photo of what looked like a hull of an unknown US combat vehicle on its way to Alaska.
“Any ideas what this is? Like a tank/afv chassis with crash test stickers on it. We are shipping it to Alaska,” White tweeted.
The website Defence Blog suggested that it is the “newest combat vehicle” which “perhaps will be delivery to the United States Army Cold Regions Test Centre, at Fort Greely, Alaska”.
Another Twitter user, however, asserted that the hull is being transported to Alaska in line with the “friction stir welded hull manufacturing prototype [contract]” related to the US Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Centre (TARDEC).
The 2017 contract stipulates Concurrent Technologies Corp. (CTC) cooperating with TARDEC to conduct fatigue, ballistic, and other qualification testing on welds before 27 September, 2022.
Earlier this year, CTC’s manager of advanced technologies PJ McMullen touted his company’s unique capabilities to manufacture lightweight combat vehicles with high survivability.
One of such vehicle “offers 26 feet of longitudinal stir-head travel and can move 13 feet vertically. It can weld high-strength 2000-series aluminum plate, up to 3¼-inches thick, in a single pass,” he was quoted by Defence Blog as saying.
The user Mitchell Prothero has suggested that the hull is part of the Bradley US infantry fighting vehicle, while one more netizen nicknamed Felix Burckhardt argued, “that may be a Merkava chassis” in an apparent nod to Merkava, the main battle tank used by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
The publication of the photo comes after US President Trump announced the deployment of 20 new ground-based interceptors in Alaska, as well as new radars and sensors "to immediately detect foreign missiles launched" against the US, in line with new US Missile Defence Strategy unveiled by US President Donald Trump in January 2019.