The HSTV-L... or the LAV-75... or the RDF/LT... who knows...

The High Survivability Test Vehicle - Lightweight or HSTV-L was a light tank testbed developed under the US Army's Armoured Combat Vehicle Technology program in the late 1970s.  Only one of these vehicles was ever produced and it while it was originally made to test the concept of speed instead of armour, it was also used to test a number of other concepts, including its 75mm Automatic main gun.

Who doesn't approve of the idea of a 75mm Panther type gun, firing modern ammunition in something like full auto mode!

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about this vehicle here - mainly because there are some excellent websites out there with all that information so if you what to find more - here is a good place to start - that's a link to the Tank Encyclopedia article on the HSTV-L.

I came across this vehicle sometime around 1986 when I purchased this book:

Which has a number of illustrated plates of various vehicles including this one:

In TW:2000 it was always known as the LAV-75 - so that's my preferred nomenclature.  In that setting the LAV-75 equipped the divisional light tank battalions in the US Army's Light Divisions, as well as the assault gun battalions in the US 9th ID (Motorised) and replaced the Sheridan in the 82nd Airborne Div.

In Battlefront's Team Yankee game I believe they call this the RDF/LT.  I understand that was one of the many programs undertaken to replace the Sheridan, but beyond that I'm not really sure.

In my Cold War setting for Battlegroup, so far the LAV-75 is a Speculative Weapon that is one of the Light Tank/Assault Gun options useable by the US 9th ID (Motorised).  I intend to expand that at some stage to also cover the Light Divisions and the 82nd.  Maybe more...  Here's the AFV Data Card for the LAV-75

Anyway - a while back I bought an STL for the HSTV-L from Wargaming3D.  It's a lovely little model which I scaled up to 1/72 and it printed very nicely.  It comes with a large turret stowage rack which I now understand was used for instrumentation during some of its testing.  It's not shown in photo or TW:2000 drawing above.  I decided to leave it on as I like stowage, and I bet most tank crews like having a place to stow things as well.  The rack is quite light - so if you don't want it, it wouldn't be any drama to cut it off - or if you're more skilful than me - simply don't print it.  I printed 4 tanks to make up a platoon and here they are:

 

This will be my Platoon Commander's vehicle, with a Friendship Models commander.

 This is the second vehicle in the Platoon Commander's section of the platoon.

This is the Platoon Sergeant's vehicle, again with a Friendship Models commander.

This is the second vehicle in the Platoon Sergeant's section of the platoon.

Here's the platoon together

One thing I had a hard time with while I was making them was just how big I thought they were.  So once I had finished them I thought it might be worthwhile to put them besides a M1 to check out whether or not they really were that big.  I thought the result was quite interesting:

So they really were much, much smaller - just with a really long main gun barrel!

So that's my LAV-75 platoon.  I have more US Light Tank options in the pipeline, but before they get finished, I've got some Canadian vehicles coming up next.

So let me know if you like these crazy speculative vehicles and would like to see more and/or include them is some 1980's Cold War action.  You never know, if I can sort it out you may get to see a couple of LAV-75 derivative vehicles as well!

Thanks

Richard