Departments which invest in the development of their own police command vehicles need to look at the issue not only from the point of view of what will happen on the very first day when the vehicle will enter its service. The vehicle itself may last quite a number of years while the equipment used by the department officers may undergo considerable changes within the same time period. Thus, communications equipment, networking systems, surveillance technologies, computers, video display screens, recording systems, and other mission technologies may all need an upgrade in the course of time.
What this raises is the question whether it will be possible to cope with such changes without a full-scale rebuilding of the vehicle.
Planning from the perspective of the future means looking first of all at the systems which are subject to changes and the components of the vehicle itself which may be upgraded without difficulties. One can look at equipment space, workstations, cabling, power needs, networking, cooling, and access to systems installed in the vehicle.
Furthermore, departments need to consider how technological advancements may impact their staff. Newer communication and surveillance systems may have the need for different operators, displays, controls, and layouts. Once the interior of the vehicle has been configured to one layout, changes in the future will be tough to achieve and may even be costly.
The other factor that needs to be considered is that of mission expansion. Initially a police command vehicle may have been purchased to handle certain types of missions but in time it may end up being deployed on special events, investigations, emergency management, tactical operations, and other missions.
This means that in considering the purchase of police command vehicles, departments need to consider more than just specifications in use currently. They need to consider what sort of room there is in the design of such platforms to change and adapt to any new capabilities that will be needed in years to come.