March 4, 2021: In late 2020 South Korea decided to spend $458 million to purchase 110 M3 amphibious bridging and ferry vehicles. These are used to quickly create a floating bridge capable of moving tanks and the heaviest armored vehicles over a waterway. The South Korea M3 vehicles will all be delivered by 2025. These will be used to replace South Korean bridges damaged by a North Korean attack or to provide needed bridges if South Korea advances into North Korea. The M3 is the latest improvement over truck mounted pontoon bridge equipment first developed during World War II and widely used ever since. Some pontoon systems used inflatable pontoons but these took more time to prepare and were more susceptible to damage. Russia designed the first self-propelled pontoon bridging system when it put the PMP Folding Float Bridge vehicles into service during the early 1960s. This demonstrated its capabilities during the 1973 Arab Israeli war when the Egyptians used PMP vehicles to quickly construct float bridges across the Suez Canal. This came as a surprise to the Israelis, who expected the Egyptians to use older systems that took longer to implement.