In February 2023, the Romanian Ministry of Defense made a decision to procure 150 Piranha V wheeled armored vehicles in addition to the 227 units of this type ordered in 2017, which included partial localization of production at a joint Romanian-American enterprise established by Uzina Mecanică Bucharest and General Dynamics European Land Systems.
This decision clearly triggered some "phantom pain" among Romanian defense analysts, who regularly recall that Romania once worked on its own vehicle based on the BTR-80, known as the Saur project, and despite some progress in development, this armored vehicle never entered mass production.
For instance, in a recent publication, the Romanian defense portal Defense Romania cites the words of Patromil's head, Viorel Manole, indicating that the variant of the mentioned armored vehicle designated as Saur 2 ultimately did not interest the Romanian army due to its insufficient level of protection compared to Western armored vehicles, leading to the decision to choose the Piranha V instead.
However, in Manole's opinion, the Saur 2 project could have been given a boost if the Romanian army had ordered a certain number of these armored vehicles in a medical variant for use in emergencies, such as during floods.
Despite the clear issues with the level of protection of the Saur 2, the machine's capability to traverse water obstacles, as designed by its creators, is indeed valuable considering Romania's terrain. Moreover, the aforementioned Piranha V, which the Romanian army is acquiring in several variants, do not have the capability to cross water obstacles.
However, as further elaborated in the same publication, the Romanian military might have been dissatisfied with the Saur project not so much because of the vehicle's characteristics but rather due to the duration of the work, which actually dragged on for almost 30 years without yielding a significant result "at the output."
To be more specific, the Romanian defense industry began working on the basic Saur version based on the Soviet BTR-80 back in 1988, although at that time the vehicle was designated B33 Zimbru. Following the collapse of the USSR and the "Warsaw Pact," the project was put "on pause," but it was revived in the early 2000s and received the designation Saur 1.
However, a simple "repackaging" of the Warsaw Pact standard armored vehicle did not satisfy the Romanian military, as the country had by then become a NATO member. Thus, a new variant of this armored vehicle, designated Saur 2, emerged, during the testing of which issues with the level of protection and the performance of the powertrain were revealed.
Efforts by Romanian designers to rectify these issues and create a new version of the vehicle designated Saur 3 did not resonate with the Romanian Ministry of Defense, which was looking for a wheeled armored vehicle with an 8x8 chassis for the "National Armored Personnel Carrier" program.
Ultimately, by the 2010s, the project for the wheeled armored vehicle Saur transitioned into the status of a "prospective unrealized development" and became a subject of "phantom pain" for the Romanian defense industry.