NATO Vehicle I-D: Idaho shows you how to engine swap a 1:1 scale M113

Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 31MAR2021.

Idaho Army National Guard’s Maneuver Area Training and Equipment Site (MATES) might have a Boise address, but it is actually located on the Orchard Combat Training Center (OCTC, formerly known as Orchard Training Area or OTA), about 18 miles south of Boise, on federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) property.

Dust storm on the OTCT. Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 13AUG2021.

OCTC is in the middle of nowhere, and MATES is where depot level work is done on ground vehicles.

An M113 Command Post, official nomenclature is M577, now being used as an ambulance. Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 10MAR2021.

Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 11MAR2021.

Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 10MAR2021.

A gutted M113 engine/transmission compartment.

Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 10MAR2021.

Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 31MAR2021.

Idaho based 116th Cavalry (Cav-all-ree) Brigade Combat Team’s MATES operation is considered a ‘premier’ maintenance shop, servicing vehicles for Army National Guard units in Idaho, Nevada and Oregon.

Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 31MAR2021.

Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 07APR2021.

Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 09APR2021.

M113 Mortar Track, official nomenclature is M106, waits for fire orders on OCTC. Idaho Army National Guard photo by Thomas Alvarez, 18MAY2021.

‘My” M981 FiSTV (artillery forward observer M113), on Idaho’s Orchard Training Area (now called Orchard Combat Training Center), Summer 1997.

U.S. President Joseph R. Biden Junior ordered 2-hundred M113s for Ukraine. It has been revealed that those M113s are coming from the Army National Guard inventories of at least five states! Is the President planning on replacing them for those states?

On 27APR2022, the Indiana Army National Guard issued video (by Sergeant Hector Tinoco) explaining their part in sending Ukraine Viet Nam era M113 APCs: