The Ground Self-Defense Force attaches great importance to delayed combat, which is one of the defense combats that stop the advance of enemy armored units, but in that case, it is necessary to place a large number of personnel and equipment around the enemy advance route. The defense area is not always a place where vehicles can enter, and transportation to mountainous areas and muddy areas where trucks cannot enter before the introduction of this equipment is carried out by air, human power, or distributed transportation by small trucks. There was a need for an efficient means of transportation. Mountain transport vehicles and amphibious vehicles were also studied, but were never adopted. Therefore , this vehicle was introduced in 1990 with the aim of establishing efficient transportation capacity .
Material carrier transported by Type 73 heavy truck
With rubber tracks, it has a high climbing ability of 30 degrees and a super-building ability of 1 m, and has high off-road driving performance. Since it uses consumer products as it is, it has an unarmored separate cabin , with the driver’s seat on the left and the occupant’s seat on the right. Equipped with a crane with a lifting capacity of about 2 tons in front of the vehicle body, and a rear dump type loading platform at the rear of the vehicle body. Because it is small, it can be transported by Type 73 heavy truck . Although it is assumed to be operated on rough terrain, it is not amphibious and there are restrictions on its operation in lake areas.