Armoured fighting vehicle Information

An armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) or armored fighting vehicle is an armed combat vehicle protected by armour, generally combining operational mobility with offensive and defensive capabilities. AFVs can be wheeled or tracked. Main battle tanks, armoured cars, armoured self-propelled guns, and armoured personnel carriers are all examples of AFVs.

Armoured fighting vehicles are classified according to their intended role on the battlefield and characteristics. The classifications are not absolute; two countries may classify the same vehicle differently, and the criteria change over time. For example, relatively lightly armed armoured personnel carriers were largely superseded by infantry fighting vehicles with much heavier armament in a similar role.

Successful designs are often adapted to a wide variety of applications. For example, the MOWAG Piranha, originally designed as an APC, has been adapted to fill numerous roles such as a mortar carrier, infantry fighting vehicle, and assault gun.

The concept of a highly mobile and protected fighting unit has been around for centuries; from Hannibals war elephants to Leonardos contraptions, military strategists endeavoured to maximize the mobility and survivability of their soldiers.

Armoured fighting vehicles were not possible until internal combustion engines of sufficient power became available at the start of the 20th century.

Modern armoured fighting vehicles represent the realization of an ancient concept - that of providing troops with mobile protection and firepower. Armies have deployed war machines and cavalries with rudimentary armour in battle for millennia. Use of these animals and engineering designs sought to achieve a balance between the conflicting paradoxical needs of mobility, firepower and protection.

Siege engines, such as battering rams and siege towers, would often be armoured in order to protect their crews from enemy action. Polyidus of Thessaly developed a very large movable siege tower, the helepolis, as early as 340 BC, and Greek forces used such structures in the Siege of Rhodes (305 BC).

The idea of a protected fighting vehicle has been known since antiquity. Frequently cited is Leonardo da Vincis 15th-century sketch of a mobile, protected gun-platform; the drawings show a conical, wooden shelter with apertures for cannons around the circumference. The machine was to be mounted on four wheels which would be turned by the crew through a system of hand cranks and cage (or "lantern") gears. Leonardo claimed: "I will build armored wagons which will be safe and invulnerable to enemy attacks. There will be no obstacle which it cannot overcome." Modern replicas have demonstrated that the human crew would have been able to move it over only short distances.

Hussite forces in Bohemia developed war wagons - medieval weapon-platforms - around 1420 during the Hussite Wars. These heavy wagons were given protective sides with firing slits; their heavy firepower came from either a cannon or from a force of hand-gunners and crossbowmen, supported by infantry using pikes and flails. Heavy arquebuses mounted on wagons were called arquebus à croc. These carried a ball of about 3.5 ounces (100 g).

The first modern AFVs were armed cars, dating back virtually to the invention of the motor car. The British inventor F.R. Simms designed and built the Motor Scout in 1898. It was the first armed, petrol-engine powered vehicle ever built. It consisted of a De Dion-Bouton quadricycle with a Maxim machine gun mounted on the front bar. An iron shield offered some protection for the driver from the front, but it lacked all-around protective armour.

The armoured car was the first modern fully armoured fighting vehicle. The first of these was the Simms Motor War Car, designed by Simms and built by Vickers, Sons and Maxim in 1899. The vehicle had Vickers armour 6 mm thick and was powered by a four-cylinder 3.3-litre 16 hp Cannstatt Daimler engine giving it a maximum speed of around 9 miles per hour (14 kilometres per hour). The armament, consisting of two Maxim guns, was carried in two turrets with 360° traverse.

Another early armoured car of the period was the French Charron, Girardot et Voigt 1902, presented at the Salon de lAutomobile et du cycle in Brussels, on 8 March 1902. The vehicle was equipped with a Hotchkiss machine gun, and with 7 mm armour for the gunner. Armoured cars were first used in large numbers on both sides during World War I as scouting vehicles.

In 1903, H. G. Wells published the short story "The Land Ironclads," positing indomitable war machines that would bring a new age of land warfare, the way steam-powered ironclad warships had ended the age of sail.

Wells literary vision was realized in 1916, when, amidst the pyrrhic standstill of the Great War, the British Landships Committee, deployed revolutionary armoured vehicles to break the stalemate. The tank was envisioned[by whom?] as an armoured machine that could cross ground under fire from machine guns and reply with its own mounted machine guns and cannons. These first British heavy tanks of World War I moved on caterpillar tracks that had substantially lower ground pressure than wheeled vehicles, enabling them to pass the muddy, pocked terrain and slit trenches of the Battle of the Somme.

The tank eventually proved highly successful and, as technology improved. it became a weapon that could cross large distances at much higher speeds than supporting infantry and artillery. The need to provide the units that would fight alongside the tank led to the development of a wide range of specialised AFVs, especially during the Second World War (1939-1945).

The Armoured personnel carrier, designed to transport infantry troops to the frontline, emerged towards the end of World War I. During the first actions with tanks, it had become clear that close contact with infantry was essential in order to secure ground won by the tanks. Troops on foot were vulnerable to enemy fire, but they could not be transported in the tank because of the intense heat and noxious atmosphere. In 1917, Lieutenant G.J. Rackham was ordered to design an armoured vehicle that could fight and carry troops or supplies. The Mark IX tank was built by Armstrong, Whitworth and Co., although just three vehicles had been finished at the time of the Armistice in November 1918, and only 34 were built in total.

Different tank classifications emerged in the interwar period. The tankette was conceived[by whom?] as a mobile, two-man model, mainly intended for reconnaissance. In 1925, Sir John Carden and Vivian Loyd produced the first such design – the Carden Loyd tankette. Tankettes saw use in the Italian Royal Army during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935–1936), the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and almost everywhere Italian soldiers fought during World War II. The Imperial Japanese Army used tankettes for jungle warfare.

The British Gun Carrier Mark I, the first Self-propelled artillery, was fielded in 1917. It was based on the first tank, the British Mark I, and carried a heavy field-gun. The next major advance was the Birch gun (1925), developed for the motorised warfare experimental brigade (the Experimental Mechanized Force). This mounted a field gun, capable of the usual artillery trajectories, on a tank-style chassis.

During World War II, most major military powers developed self-propelled artillery vehicles. These had guns mounted on a tracked chassis (often that of an obsolete or superseded tank) and provided an armoured superstructure to protect the gun and its crew. The first British design, "Bishop", carried the 25 pdr gun-howitzer, but in a mounting that severely limited the guns performance. It was replaced by the more effective Sexton. The Germans built many lightly armored self-propelled anti-tank guns using captured French equipment (for example Marder I), their own obsolete light tank chassis (Marder II), or ex-Czech chassis (Marder III). These led to better-protected tank destroyers, built on a medium-tank chassis such as the Jagdpanzer IV or the Jagdpanther.

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