Armored Wheel Loaders
The Israeli Combat Engineering Corps use armored Caterpillar 966 wheel loader for construction and combat engineering missions in hostile territories such as the West Bank. They are often seen building or removing road blocks, building bases and fortifications and starting in 2005, demolishing small houses. The IDF added armor plating for the loader, protecting it against rocks, stones, molotov cocktails, and light gunfire.
Rio de Janeiro's police elite squad BOPE have recently acquired one wheel loader of military purposes to open routes and make way for the police in Rio de Janeiro's slums, which are controlled, and blocked, by drugdealers. It is nicknamed "The Skulls' Transformer", being a reference to how they call themselves -- "The Skulls".
Several if not most countries have similar equipment. The Dutch armed forces for instance use models like the Werklust WG18Edef, which weights 15 tons, 2 more than the corresponding unarmored civilian model. On top of that there were extra armor modules covering most of the window surface with steel and bringing extra protection. These were not popular with the crew however due to low visibility.
Read more about this topic: Loader (equipment)
Famous quotes containing the words armored and/or wheel:
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For watermelons gutted to the crust,
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Mud for the armored Diesel fishing tubs that thud
A year and a day to wind and tide; the dust
Is on this skipping heart that shakes my house,”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“Helpless, unknown, and unremembered, most human beings, however sensitive, idealistic, intelligent, go through life as passengers rather than chauffeurs. Although we may pretend that it is the chauffeur who is the social inferior ... most of us, like Toad of Toad Hall, would not mind a turn at the wheel ourselves.”
—Ralph Harper (b. 1915)