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M113 Ultra

The M113 Ultra is the product of an upgrade program for the Singapore Ministry of Defense carried out by Singapore Technologies Automotive (STA), a subsidiary of what was then the Singapore Technologies Group (which subsequently became ST Engineering). The core component of the upgrade is an improved powerpack and transmission, a variant of which was subsequently offered for sale by Kinetics Drive Solutions, Inc (KDS), a subsidiary of ST Engineering. The KDS upgrade package included powerpack upgrades from 275 to 400 horsepower and an HMX1100 transmission, along with a microprocessor managed driver control system.

In 1993 STA was awarded a 300 million SD (212 million USD) contract to upgrade the Singapore Army's fleet of M113 armored personnel carriers while development of the planned replacement infantry fighting vehicle was completed. The first trial vehicle was delivered in 1994 and it was expected that by 1998 STA would have completed upgrading the entire M113 fleet. Combined with the upgrade program managed by STA to improve the vehicle's automotive components, Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS), another division of ST Engineering, was also awarded a contract, valued at 53 million SD (38 million USD) to provide appliqué armor and a new weapon station. The CIS designed weapons station combined a 40mm CIS automatic grenade launcher with a CIS 12.7mm machine gun in a 1-man, open-topped turret. The turret did not prevent the mounting of 2 additional 7.62mm machine guns at the rear cargo hatch as had previously been done. The resulting vehicles were referred to as M113 Ultra 40/50, and also as M113A2. However, the latter nomenclature only referred to the fact that the vehicles had been brought to a standard comparable to US Army M113A2 vehicles and the two were not otherwise related.

The M113 Ultra vehicles became the basis for further subvariants as the vehicles continued to serve even after being supplemented by new Bionix Infantry Fighting Vehicles beginning in the late 1990s. In 2005, a number of Overhead Weapon Stations (OWS) fitted with a 25mm M242 cannon were procured from Rafael of Israel. These vehicles were referred to as M113 Ultra OWS. In the late 1990s, Singapore had also acquired a number of SA-18 Igla surface to air missiles from Russia. ST Engineering subsequently developed the Igla (Mechanized) Integrated Fire Unit, which combined a turret with 4 ready to fire SA-18 missiles and a 2D pulse Doppler radar mounted on an M113 Ultra vehicle.