Phil
Good article on Latin American armour
September 18, 2009 12:00 AM
Now, while I dilly and dally and dance from topic to topic when it comes to most aspects of military history, there are (as regular blog readers, and certainly most of the Osprey Bloggers, will know) two subjects for which I am a stone cold sucker.
Essentially, if it's Latin America, I'm sold. Similarly, if it's up-gunned and up-armoured vehicles* (the more improvised the better!), I'm there with bells on.
So, when I passed Joe's desk earlier this week and saw him grinning like the Cheshire Cat, I was more than a little bit scared. Fortunately, this wasn't one of his 'how much Mountain Dew can you drink' ideas, but a link to a rather interesting article describing the increasing popularity of up-armoured vehicles, both in civilian use, as well as in armed forces across the region – ranging from improvised responses to Mexico's narco-insurgency to Venezuela's acquisition of Russian vehicles. Well worth a read.
*Watch out for Vietnam Gun Trucks, coming October 2011.
COMMENTS
Chile has recently bought a load of German Leopards, expected to be deployed mostly in the north of the country. This is of copurse a historical flashpoint and is another sign of the arms build-up in the area.
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Hola Phil, thanks for the article, looks good, at least in Nicaragua, the army in the Somoza Regime just to have only Sherman and some small tanks, until the Sandinistas we start watching more heavy armour like the t-55, as they mention in the article, the geography of Latin American countries prevent the use of big tanks. We the interest of Chavez in the T-72 many Governments from Latin America are trying to update they fleet of heavy armour. I think there is some comments on the use of the Sherman tanks in latin America in the osprey vanguard title about this American tank.
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