Seeing the great progress people have made in scratch building “slat” armor for the Stryker has got me thinking. Why hasn’t the LAV been outfitted with a similar amor kit? Is it a weight issue or a speed performance thing? Or is the vehicle just less of a target of opportunity for the insurgents?

Anyway, I sure there’s a very good probably obvious answer – but go easy, I’m an armor novice.

The Australian ASLAV has a slat armour package.

It is used in Iraq on the ASLAV but the hull slat armour has been removed but the turret slat armour is still mounted.

I don't know the exact reason, but could only guess.

The LAV-25 has no surface panel bolt-heads for add-on armor; the sides are totally flat and flush, meaning there's no way to attach the slat armor package because there are no hull fasteners on the USMC LAV-25, being a much older LAV generation.

However, the USMC LAV-25 does use LAST ceramic add-on hexagonal armor which is adhered by velcro strips and bumps up hull protection from 7.62mm to 14.5mm.

Well, a simple answer would be so that it could still be transported on ships, swim, and do its job of Recce.

The last thing you want on a Recce vehicle is giant pieces of slat armour...kinda defeats the whole "sneaky" part of Recce.

I think there would also need ot be suspension upgrades to handle the extra weight...I think upgrades were done to the ASLAVs.

Why did they pull the slat armor off of the hull?

It reduced the mobility in the urban areas.