What Can be Achieved When "Why Not?" Becomes a Mantra

In 2003 Plasan developed its first armoured vehicle design, the M1114GR HMMWV and changed the way the military industry related to vehicle design. This is the designer's very personal story of how it came about

"Nir, you realise that it can't look like this?".

• "Why not?".

"Because the customer doesn't care what it looks like".

That's what I was told around 16 years ago when as an enthusiastic, perhaps slightly na?ve young designer, still only a year at Plasan, I threw down my original design sketches for a HMMWV (Humvee) for the Greek military onto the large table in the meeting room. My response to the reaction was simple; "Great. So why can't it look like this then?".

I was told that a military vehicle can't look like a sports car. I wasn't even particularly aware that what I had drawn was that outrageous. Just a few years out of university where I had studied Transport Design, I was just doing what I do, trying to answer requirements and make the vehicle look good in the process. So who says that a military vehicle can't look like this? Where was this rule that I was breaking written? The conversation slowly moved on from the subjective to objective technical issues. My design had a crease down the side and our composite armour couldn't be formed like that. This was an objection that I could work with, so I started discussing with the engineers about what we could and couldn't do, but always my reflex response to any "it can't be like that" was a pointed "why not?" intended to elicit a base problem that we could try to solve. This round table conversation continued for a while. Plasan had already won the order for these vehicles. We were still a very small company back then and it was the biggest order we'd ever had, our first significant project for an overseas company and one in which we'd be working with the Humvee manufacturer, AM General, and their Greek partner, ELVO. A lot was at stake, and the willingness to take risks was, understandably, very low. We already had this in the bag, we didn't need to persuade anyone to let us produce the armoured body for this Humvee, the project was already ours. To some around the table it was as if we had a large cheque in our hands and I was asking to use it for origami, just to see if we could.

it was as if we had a large cheque in our hands and I was asking to use it for origami, just to see if we could

But there was also some appreciation for what I was suggesting that we do. After much debate that had felt like me against the world someone gave out a final frustrated, "Nir, it just can't look like that!".

And then our CEO, Dani Ziv, who had been sitting uncharacteristically quiet throughout the whole discussion, finally opened his mouth.

"Why not?"

"Why not?", he asked, to my eternal relief and appreciation. Dani is an architect by training, a visionary who has been leading Plasan since its establishment in 1985, and he could see what this design would actually mean to Plasan and the wider industry. He told me to listen to everyone's legitimate problems with the design, go away and solve them, and to come back in exactly one week to present answers to everything. Following that, management would take a decision whether we go with my ambitious design, or to play safe with a simple armoured box like the ones that everyone else made, like the one that we had produced previously for the IDF, and which the customer was quite happy to accept, indeed, it was what they had signed up for.

Just seven days later I returned with a new pile of drawings. It included ghosted views, and cutaways, and sections, and details, attempting to answer all of the challenges that the engineers had thrown at me. We reviewed it all in depth and at the end Dani looked straight into my eyes and asked me if I really believed that we could make this vehicle look like this "because I think it looks great, and if we do this it will change everything".

I was 27 years old, and this was far and away the biggest responsibility that anyone had put on my shoulders as a designer. Until someone looks you in the eye and asks you if you can see a project through to production, the magnitude of the task isn't apparent. This was no longer a student project, some drawings, a model, and a grade at the end. This was a company gambling its future on what I was suddenly strikingly aware was my hubris. If I had any doubt at all that we could pull this off, now was the time to admit it. I paused, and I am sure that everyone could sense the trepidation as I considered the learning curve that we were all going to have to climb to build a full running prototype of this within 9 months. I took a deep breath and said, "I don't believe that there is any problem here that we can't solve".

This was a company gambling its future on what I was suddenly strikingly aware was my hubris

And that was it. Dani slammed his hand down on the table and declared, "let's do this. We'll change the world".

The following year was intense. Back then our design and engineering technology was very primitive. We made plywood bucks and reverse engineered them in 2D AutoCAD. I was doing 3D trigonometry on scraps of paper to calculate the angles of bends and brackets. There were hand-made molds for vacuum-formed and glass-fibre parts. The entire process was shockingly manual in retrospect, certainly compared to how we work today with a large department of designers and engineers creating intricate detailed 3D models in Catia, running advanced dynamic FEA simulations, and with the entire infrastructure behind us that we built in the years following this first major vehicle design project.

But despite the basic resources and small team, we did it. Within 9 months there was a full-size, fully functional prototype of the drawing that I had thrown down on that table, sitting in the workshop, and from there it was undergoing testing.

And Dani Ziv was right. It made a big impact on the industry when it was first shown publicly at the Eurosatory exhibition in Paris in June 2004. It put Plasan on the global map, the first "armour provider" that had shown that after all, military vehicles didn't have to look like they always had. They could have style and finish like regular cars do. Even the engineers from AM General conceded that they didn't realise a Humvee could look this good. The customer and end-users were pleased with the very special vehicle that they received; it was way beyond their expectations. And then other customers came. Suddenly Plasan wasn't just an armour provider being asked "can you add armour to our vehicle?", the conversation started to change to "can you design our armoured vehicle for us?". And when we have that design freedom we can save much more weight and cost and the vehicle gets better still. We mostly design armoured bodies and vehicles for other companies. It is in both of our interests to design a better vehicle because if they don't sell vehicles, we don't sell the armour kits that are our main business.

That M1114GR HMMWV is often forgotten behind the greater Plasan successes that followed. The Navistar MXT and MaxxPro MRAP, the Oshkosh MTVR, M-ATV, and JLTV, the Thales Hawkei, and of course our own SandCat are all much better known, and then there are the many vehicles that we can't publicly take credit for but that actually were designed here in Plasan. But it all began with this Greek Humvee. The first armoured vehicle that had really been designed rather than merely engineered. And I am forever grateful for all the brave, visionary, and creative people here who made it happen. Because we didn't just build a vehicle, we built a capability that has since seen Plasan become the world leader in armoured vehicle design.

Nir Kahn is the Director of Design for Plasan and has been responsible for vehicle design in the company for over 17 years, including the design of the Navistar MaxxPro MRAP, Oshkosh M-ATV, and the Plasan SandCat