SHAH ALAM: IT appears that the Army is satisfied with the newly delivered and operational Outreach Command Control Centre (OCCV). So much so that it had issued a tender for another OCCV.
A request for bids for another OCCV was published on the Eperolehan website on July 15 and closes on August 9, a period of 25 days. With such a long lead time, it is likely the Army is open for another company to build the OCCV. As you are aware the newly delivered and operational OCCV was manufactured by Deftech.. Deftech delivered six 44-seat buses to the Army in June last year. And the delivered OCCV looks very much like these buses from the outside though it had a different paint scheme. The OCCV cabin is very much different though as can be seen from the picture below.
The first outing of the OCCV was publicised early this week with the Army chief General Zamrose Mohd Zain and his delegation using it to get to Taiping. He later flew to Kedah on board one of the RMAF newly delivered AW139s though without most of his delegation which travelled to Taiping. He went to Kedah to condole the families of two soldiers who died during operation last week and also victims of the flash floods in Baling. Some of the victims of the flash floods were serving soldiers attached to the Rejimen Sempadan.
As for the new OCCV, there is not much details on the public version of the Eperolehan website. It only stated that the tender is for supply and delivery of one OCCV. It further stated:
THE OUTREACH COMMAND CENTRE VEHICLE (OCCV) WILL BE USED BY ANY COMMANDER’S ADMINISTRATION AND OFFICIAL FUCNTION
It is likely that the new OCCV as well with the current one is equipped with communications gear as the Army chief needs to be with direct contact at all time with the Tentera Darat headquarters for obvious reasons. That said it may well be that a couple of FFRs were part of the OCCV convoy and used as relay to link the communication back to the Army headquarters.
The need to be in contact with the Army headquarters, is the reason whenever the Army chief travels to operational areas, he always traveled in a FFR vehicle (if its a new one) or have one following right behind his designated vehicle.
This is also the same for all the service chiefs as well as the senior leadership of the three services of the Armed Forces though the level of connectivity depends on their roles as well, obviously. For example, the Army training command commander will not be needing a FFR vehicle during his operational visit to one of his training facilities. The same cannot be said about the field, divisional and brigade commanders. During holidays or while traveling overseas, a designated commander will take over their roles and the FFR vehicle. This is also the same for the Armed Forces chief and the services commanders.
— Malaysian Defence
I was told by industrial sources there were 11 buses, 6 delivered last year as reported, 4 delivered this year after CNY, and this one new unit OCCV.
The Command vwhicle should be in camo colours instead of the brighr colours
Lee Yoke Meng
Army wanted nicer colour to attract new recruits and to promote the military. Just for publicity purposes. No point having camo colours when these Command vehicle is not bullet proof and only can be used on normal roads.