Journal of KONES Powertrain and Transport, Vol. 18, No. 1 2011 CONCEPTION OF MILITARY VEHICLE CLASSIFICATION Robert Sosnowicz, Przemysáaw Wachowiak Maciej Dorczuk Military Institute of Armoured and Automotive Technology Department of Tanks and Tracked Vehicle Okuniewska Street 1, 05-070 Sulejówek, Poland tel.:+48 22 8811122, fax: +48 22 6811073 e-mail: roberts@witpis.eu Abstract This study presents the vehicle classifications existing in various documents: “The Encyclopaedia of military Technology”, The Polish Norm PN-V-01002: ”Armoured Equipment. Parameters and comparative ratios. Terminology and classification”, Structure of Car Transportation of Polish Armed Forces, The Defence Equipment Classification, The Allied Research Procedures Publication AVTP 00-07 ”Military Vehicles Categories” (STANAG 4357 and 4358), The Common Procurement Vocabulary, established by the European Commission) and Fixed Assets Classification. The authors of the article take note of the inaccuracies in existing classifications and point out the necessity to create new, logical error free classification. The conception presented in the article is an attempt to put this situation in order. Presented conception of classification vehicles used in the army, primarily as weapons carries, necessary combat and logistics equipment, and also as means of transport and protection of sub-units of infantry, in order to eliminate chaos in military vehicle nomenclature used in documents such us: acts, regulations, norms and instructions. The conception characterizes certain level of generalization. For further detailed division can be used criteria named in the article: general criteria and particular criteria. Keywords: classifications, military vehicles, conception, structure, combat vehicles, special vehicles 1. Introduction Vehicles operated in the army are primarily used as carriers of weapons, necessary combat and logistics equipment and as means of transportation and protection of sub-units of infantry. Conformity to all requirements placed on military vehicles in a single vehicle is impossible and results mainly from mutually exclusive requirements, e.g. high resistance of a vehicle to enemy fire (high weight) and its dynamic characteristics. Thus, depending on the predicted use of military vehicles, they have been given specific performance characteristics. The diversity of vehicle characteristics caused the creation of a multitude of such vehicles differing in, e.g. use, maximum acceptable total weight (combat), ability to overcome obstacles, level of resistance to fire and others. Military vehicles’ diversity caused the need to classify them for various reasons. The effects of assumed different classifications of military vehicles are described in appropriate normative documents. It is often difficult to find a common part in the accepted classifications, which causes misunderstandings between interlocutors using different classifications. This results mainly from the possibility to classify a given military vehicle to different groups, types of adopted classification. Attempts to merge several classifications into one are also not uncommon, the fact of which speaks of the incomprehension of the problem, which often leads to unexpected effects. The difficulty of establishing an unequivocal terminology and classification of military vehicles had formed the base for this work.