The Eland is an air-portable light armoured car based on the Panhard AML. Designed and built for long-range reconnaissance, it mounts either a 60mm (2.4 in) breech-loading mortar or a Denel GT-2 90mm (3.5 in) gun on a very compact chassis. Although lightly armoured, the vehicle's permanent 4X4 drive makes it faster over flat terrain than many tanks.
The Eland was developed for the South African Defence Force (SADF) in South Africa's first major arms programme since World War II, with prototypes completed in 1963. By 1991, 1,600 examples had been built for home and export; prominent foreign operators included Morocco and Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). Local overhauls incorporating lessons from internal operations have resulted in a vehicle capable of withstanding the unforgiving Southern African environment and highly mobile operational style of the SADF.
Development history Background For many years the standard armoured car of the South African Defence Force was the Daimler Ferret, which was developed in the late 1940s and armed with a single general-purpose machine gun. By the mid-1960s, Ferret spares were becoming difficult to obtain, and its armament was considered less than adequate. In 1961, South Africa accordingly secured a similar platform with a much wider range of armament installations: the French Panhard AML. That July a South African military delegation headed by Minister of Defence Jim Fouché and Commandant-General Pieter Grobbelaar, chief of the SADF, went to France to negotiate a licensing agreement with Panhard. The AML was favoured because the SADF's priorities at the time were fighting a possible counter-insurgency campaign or an unconventional bush war, the basic requirements of which were light armoured vehicles with the greatest mobility and most simplified maintenance.
One hundred AMLs were purchased, presumably for preliminary evaluation purposes, as well as enough turrets, engines, and other associated parts for the later assembly of another 800 in South Africa. Panhard also approved a licence for domestic production of the AML chassis in South African plants. A separate licence was obtained from the French government's Direction technique des armements terrestres (DTAT) between 1964 and 1965 for the manufacture of the AML turrets and armament. The result was the VA (Vehicle A) Mk2, first offered to the SADF's armoured car regiments and reconnaissance commands in 1964. Bids were accepted from four local companies for the manufacture of 300 AMLs with working armament, along with another 150 turretless demonstrators; this contract was claimed by Sandock-Austral, now Land Systems OMC. The production lines were set up with technical assistance from Henschel, an engineering firm based in the Federal Republic of Germany. Panhard subcontracted the project to Henschel rather than carrying out the work itself as it was anxious to avoid criticism from its potential clients in other African states.
Sandock VAs initially fared rather poorly; all 56 models furbished in 1966 were rejected by the South African Army. An extensive rebuild programme followed - the Panhards were returned to the manufacturer, completely disassembled, restructured, and trialled again. These new vehicles claimed a local content of forty per cent but remained heavily bolstered by components imported from France in 1961. Upon undergoing several upgrades to the steering (Mk2) and brakes (Mk3), each vehicle was also equipped with a custom fuel system; the electric clutches were concurrently replaced by more conventional pressure plate clutches (Mk4). While South Africa's AMLs remained externally similar to their French counterparts, up to two-thirds of their parts were of local origin by 1967, the main part of that balance being a new water cooled inline-4 cylinder petrol engine installed in the Mk5. Subsequent models were officially designated Eland.
Panhard's initial licensing contract with the South African government extended to the local assembly or manufacture of up to 1,000 AMLs. Furthermore, all vehicles produced under the terms of this licence could only be re-exported with written permission from the French Minister of Defence. It is unclear whether these restrictions extended to the second generation of Elands, which were produced with wholly South African parts and components beginning in 1973. South Africa may have renewed the original Panhard licence as part of a larger agreement with France concerning the transfer of arms and defence technology around January 1974; another 700 Elands were manufactured between 1974 and 1986. By 1985 production had reached two hundred vehicles a year. A surplus of parts were manufactured for the Eland as well as the original AML series; according to General Jannie Geldenhuys, after 1979 Panhard actually fulfilled orders for older AML parts it no longer produced by sourcing them from South Africa.
Operated by a crew of three, each Eland was built on a small and remarkably lightweight 4X4 chassis with a height of 2.5 metres, a length of 5.12 metres, and a weight of 6 metric tons. The Eland had a maximum range of 450 kilometres and a mileage of 2 kilometres per litre.Freedomways. New York: Freedomways Associates, Incorporated, 1985, Volume 25 pp. 136—137. As South Africa was primarily interested in a light patrol vehicle armed for counter-insurgency purposes, most Elands were armed with the 60mm Brandt Mle CM60A1 gun-mortar, better known by its South African manufacturing code K1 and also designated in SADF service as the M2, as well as two 7.62mm Browning machine guns. This was known as the Eland-60.
The second most common variant was designed specifically to fulfill a South African requirement for a gun-armed armoured car capable of furnishing mobile fire support for the mounted units and undertaking aggressive reconnaissance as needed. As the SADF had been organised along the lines of Commonwealth doctrine in general and British doctrine in particular, it wanted a vehicle capable of filling the same role as the Alvis Saladin. Although the Saladin was evaluated favourably since it shared most of its interchangeable parts with the army's Alvis Saracen armoured personnel carriers, the AML licence had already been purchased and there was an advantage to fulfilling the same requirement with another preexisting vehicle type. Negotiations to purchase Saladins from the United Kingdom also stalled after the election of Harold Wilson and his incoming Labour Party government, which took a harder line on arms sales to South Africa.
In response to SADF inquiries concerning an AML more similar to the Saladin in terms of armament, Panhard produced the AML-90. There was substantially more firepower in the new variant: its 90mm low-pressure rifled cannon, with a range of 1,200 metres, enabled it to knock out all but the heaviest contemporary tanks. This evolved into the Eland-90 in South African service.
Service life Elands formed the mainstay of the South African Armoured Corps for nearly three decades, although as early as 1968 SADF officials were discussing their replacement or supplementation with something more suited to countering tank warfare as the prospect of conventional military conflict in southern Africa became increasingly likely.Warwick, Rodney. Operation Savannah: A Measure of SADF Decline, Resourcefulness, and Modernisation. Scientia Militaria, 2012, Volume 40 Issue 3 p. 364-377. That year the armoured corps undertook a feasibility study for replacing the Eland with a larger, more mobile, and more heavily armed wheeled vehicle. While acknowledging the Eland was sufficient for border patrol and counter-insurgency, South African strategists were also concerned that it was unsuited for conventional battlefields. During a wargaming exercise designed to simulate a foreign invasion of South West Africa, the SADF found that the Eland-90 suffered from three major disadvantages: it had no trench-crossing ability, its off-road mobility was limited due to its four wheels and high ground pressure, and the 90mm cannon was ineffective against enemy armour at long range. In 1969, South African officials proposed fitting the existing fleet with ENTAC wire-guided anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). This was never implemented but the advantages of an ATGM capability in armoured car regiments were recognised as a means to compensate for the mediocre range of the Eland-90's main armament. Another proposal for an Eland variant armed with an autocannon appeared in 1971. The armoured corps evaluated several Elands armed with 20mm and 40mm autocannons between 1971 and 1972 and finally settled on the Hispano-Suiza HS.820 as its armament of choice. This was known as the Eland-20 but was not adopted by the SADF.
In 1970 the South African Army was operating 500 Elands of various marks, with another 356 on order. The fleet then consisted of 369 Eland-60s and 131 Eland-90s. This was followed by the Eland Mk6 programme, which entailed older models upgraded to Mk5 standards. By 1975 the army had 1,016 Eland Mk5s and Mk6s in service. The Eland was first tested in combat that year against Cuban and People's Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) forces during Operation Savannah.Bell, Kelly. Operation Savannah: Task Force Zulu & the Rommel of Angola. Modern War, 2006, Volume 1 Issue 4 p. 45. Reports of PT-76 and T-34-85 tanks being fielded by FAPLA during the Angolan Civil War perturbed South African military advisers then involved in training FAPLA's rivals, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and its armed wing. The advisers reported that UNITA's anti-tank capabilities were next to nonexistent and requested a squadron of SADF armoured cars, along with their crews, to help turn the tide against FAPLA. Twenty-two Eland-90s were flown out to UNITA's headquarters at Silva Porto in mid-October 1975, and soon clashed with FAPLA armour. Elands were to acquire a fearsome combat reputation in Angola, where they earned the moniker "Red Ants" due to unorthodox but effective crew tactics and the lack of any equivalent Cuban or FAPLA vehicles. Less than two months later, Cuban general Abelardo Colomé Ibarra cited his inability to counter the Elands' superior manoeuvrability as one of the greatest tactical challenges facing the Cuban-FAPLA coalition in Angola. Nevertheless, with the onset of the Angolan rainy season the wheeled vehicles were increasingly hampered by mud, and their crews found fighting capability constrained when operating on terrain better suited for tracked vehicles. They criticised the lowness of the hull as well, which made sighting difficult over thick bush. The Elands' reliability was also somewhat called into question: nearly half the armoured cars in the squadron were rendered unserviceable at one time or another due to engine failures. These limitations emphasised the need for the development of a new mark of Eland further modified for southern African conditions.
The Eland continued to enjoy distinction in SADF service, especially with the 1 Special Service Battalion and 61 Mechanised Infantry Battalion Group. During Operation Protea and Operation Askari in 1981 and 1983, respectively, Eland-90s proved capable of eliminating Cuban and FAPLA T-34-85 and T-54/55 tanks at close range. The SADF began to gradually retire its Elands beginning in the mid-1980s, replacing them with the larger and notably more dependable Ratel-90 and Ratel-60 infantry fighting vehicles, which could carry the same armament but also a squad of infantry.