Cougar 4x4's will wear the name "Ridgeback" with the Brits

Via "Defence of the Realm":

After what seem interminable delays – with the announcement having made in Parliament in December – a formal notification has been made to Congress that the UK is looking to buy 157 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles with associated equipment and services. The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $125 million.

These are the Force Protection 4x4 Cougars which, in British service, will be named "Ridgebacks" and, although the order has not been formally placed with Force Protection, this is the final stage of clearance before a sale can go ahead. It would seem reasonable now to assume that we will shortly be hearing the final details of a contract with the British government.

Force Protection's weak rival (reorganized to avoid bankruptcy last we checked) Protected Vehicles Inc. must be slightly miffed that their "Ridgeback" MRAP isn't the vehicle being sold to the British. PVI marketed its Golan MRAP to the British but the Cougar/Ridgeback came out on top.

I had assumed that the new Cougar order would be up-armored into a new set of Mastiffs, currently in service in Iraq and Afghanistan for our British allies. As it turns out, the Cougar is the Mastiff and the Cougar is the Ridgeback, but a Mastiff isn't a Ridgeback. It could have been worse. The Ridgeback could have been the Mastiff while the Cougar was the Ridgeback where the Cougar was not also the Mastiff.

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