Land Rover Wolf

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Land Rover Wolf

General characteristics
Crew	2+4 passengers
Length	5.17 m
Width	2.49 m
Height	2.63 m
Weight	1.60 tonnes
Armour and armament
Armour
Main armament	12.7mm heavy machine gun
Secondary armament	7.62mm general purpose machine gun
Mobility
Power plant	Land Rover 300 Tdi engine 111 hp (83 kW)
Suspension	Wheel 4×4
Road speed	160 km/h
Power/weight	hp/tonne
Range	510 km

The Land Rover Wolf is a military utility vehicle in service with UK Armed Forces and the Dutch Marine Corps. The vehicle is famous for being the primary utility vehicle of the British Army.

The term "Wolf" was a project name used by Land Rover to cover the British Army's recent range of vehicles. The name is not officially used by the MOD but adopted by soldiers as a generic term. The project designations were MOD: Higher Specification (HS) or Land Rover Ltd: eXtra Duty (XD) and there are twenty-three variants.^[1] The term "Wolf" should not be confused with the militarised Mercedes Geländewagen based "Wolf" marketed by Rheinmetall Defence

The Wolf is a UK MOD bespoke militarised version of the Land Rover Defender. Designated in service as Truck Utility Light or Truck Utility Medium (TUL / TUM (HS)), the Wolf carries a variety of crews, equipment and communication and information systems for commanders.

Some Wolf Land Rovers are winterised and waterproofed: a snorkel allows the vehicle to wade through water up to windscreen level and an engine fluids heater is fitted to pre-warm the engine – along with the other modifications to enable the vehicle and crew to operate in extreme conditions. Other modifications are made for operations in tropical environments.

A variant of TUM is the Weapons Mount Installation Kit (WMIK, pronounced ‘Wimik’^[2]) for use as reconnaissance and close fire support vehicles. WMIKs feature a strengthened chassis and are stripped down, fitted with roll cages and weapons mounts. Typically the vehicle will carry one 12.7 mm Heavy Machine Gun or a 7.62 mm General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), on the rear ring-mount, with an additional pintle mounted GPMG on the front passenger side. In late 2006, the MoD announced it was purchasing 40 new belt fed Automatic Lightweight Grenade Launchers (ALGL) made by Heckler and Koch (HK GMG) that can fire up to 360 grenades per minute up to 1.5 km away, they are to be mounted on WMIKs in Afghanistan. More orders may follow depending on performance.

The vehicles have become eminent as the symbol of British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In keeping with their hearts and minds philosophy they were chosen for patrol duties instead of armoured fighting vehicles such as the Challenger 2 MBT and the Warrior IFV. Following a spate of incidents, there has been concern that the unarmoured nature of the Wolf exposes the crews to excessive danger, and are being replaced in front-line roles by the Bulldog APC.

Land Rover is being supplemented by the now British built Pinzgauer and the new Alvis Panther in some utility and liaison roles.