THE HAGUE, 01/10/05 - Defence State Secretary Kees van der Knaap is considering cancelling the Boxer project. As an alternative, he is looking at a variant of the Swedish infantry armoured car, the CV90, he said in a letter to parliament Friday.

The Netherlands wants to replace its outdated YPR and M577s with 257 other armoured vehicles and was thinking of the Boxer. For an initial series of 200, 617 million euros has been set aside, including 113 million for development costs.

The Artec consortium (Stork and Krauss Maffei Wegmann), which is preparing for serial building of the Boxer, was to provide clarification this month of the price of this armoured wheel vehicle, but this is now not likely to be before November. Van der Knaap indicated he is not happy with the postponement and fears the price will be too high.

The only alternative at the moment is the Swedish caterpillar vehicle CV90. Van der Knaap already ordered 200 vehicles of this type last year for a billion euros. He says there are efficiency benefits to be gained by ordering the same make. A possible switch to the Swedish armoured vehicle will however mean the loss of the 113 million euros for the development costs of the Boxer.?