Looks like the RAF at Akrotiri ahve been playing with the Army's new toys and have broken them just before Christmas! Troop carrier 'crashed on joyride' - Yahoo! News UK "We thought is was a harrier - honest guv!" Details of Warthog BvS 10 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Saw one of them on the back of a lorry on the M4 not long ago, wondered what it was called. I'll ask a friend who is based at Akrotiri if they have any inside info.
I love the way these vehicles are called 'new' and given a 'Gucci' name. Looks like the old Royal Marine BV to me that was/is used in Norway and probably is with a few cheap mods to keep folk happy. The Marines were using them in Iraq in 2003 with quite a few in Basra Palace when I arrived. Another old relic revamped is the FV 432 now called the 'Bulldog'. They were scraping them before Iraq and then decided to keep the shell and just upgrade the suspension and transmission and add a gucci looking GPMG gun mount etc. As I remember in theater chaps in 4 Arm Bde were over joyed when they found out they were loosing their armoured role to the new light role and were going to move from Germany to Catterick with these 'new' vehicles. The 432's were rubbish in Iraq and were always breaking down-Infact I think they were the worst bit of kit I used out there.
It's even better than that. According to Wiki, the once-mighty British Army is procuring vehicles developed and manufactured in a state the size of the Isle of Wight (i.e. Singapore). it goes on to say, once delivered, they will be fitted out to MoD specs - does that mean they will be tinkered with until they stop working? The Warthog (Bronco) looks like a new vehicle rather as it's twice the weight of the Viking.
I sense a rewrite of the MoDs political correctness risk assessments in the near future - naming the bloody thing after a pig will go down well with the target audience.
