I Marine Expeditionary Force
The I Marine Expeditionary Force is a Marine Air Ground Task Force of the United States Marine Corps composed of the 1st Marine Division, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, 1st Marine Logistics Group. It is based at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. I Marine Expeditionary Force is the largest of the three MEFs in the Fleet Marine Force and is referred to as the "Warfighting MEF" for its consistent involvement and contributions in major armed conflicts, it is presently commanded by Lt. Gen. Joseph Osterman; the deputy commander is Brig. Gen. Rick Uribe. Pronunciation of the Roman numeral designator: As a Roman numeral the capital letter "I", representing one, is properly pronounced as "One." However, there are some who erroneously pronounce the number as either "First," or either intentionally, or unknowingly, pronounce it as "Eye," as in the letter "I." The convention of using Roman numerals to designate a MEF, itself the Marine Corps equivalent organization to an Army corps, stems from the U. S. Army practice that began in the American Civil War, continues today, of numbering corps with Roman numerals.
Corps, themselves being the first-level sub-unit of a "field army," or a numbered, or named, army. During the First World War, the 4th Marine Brigade, as part of the U. S. Army 2nd Infantry Division, came under the U. S. Army I Corps, American Expeditionary Forces. With the expansion of the Marine Corps to six divisions and five air wings during the Second World War, the Marine Corps created two "Amphibious Corps," I Marine Amphibious Corps and V Amphibious Corps, continuing the custom begun by the Army. Modern Marine Expeditionary Forces, or MEFs continue the U. S. Marine Corps legacy as corps-equivalent organizations designated by Roman numerals; when directed, I MEF deploys and is employed as a Marine Air Ground Task Force in support of Combatant Commander requirements for contingency response or Major Theater War. Activated on 8 November 1969 at Okinawa, Japan as the I Marine Expeditionary Force Redesignated on 18 August 1970 as the I Marine Amphibious Force Relocated in April 1971 to Camp Pendleton, California Redesignated on 5 February 1988 as the "I Marine Expeditionary Force" Ground combat element: 1st Marine Division Aviation combat element: 3rd Marine Air Wing Logistics combat element: 1st Marine Logistics Group Command element: I Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group I MEF Headquarters 1st Intelligence Battalion 1st Law Enforcement Battalion 1st Radio Battalion 9th Communication Battalion 1st Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit Operation Desert Shield – Southwest Asia – August 1990 – April 1991 Operation Desert Storm – Southwest Asia – August 1990 – April 1991 Operation Restore Hope- December 1992 – May 1993 Operation Southern Watch – Iraq – January 1998 – February 1998 Operation Desert Thunder – Iraq – February 1998 – June 1998 Operation Enduring Freedom – Kuwait, Afghanistan – November 2002 Operation Iraqi Freedom – Iraq – March 2003 – 2010 I MEF official website
HMS Cornwall (F99)
HMS Cornwall was a Batch 3 Type 22 frigate of the Royal Navy. She was the first Batch 3 to be built, the last to decommission. Cornwall was based at HMNB Devonport in Devon, part of the Devonport Flotilla, she was built by Yarrow Shipbuilders and launched by Diana, Princess of Wales at Scotstoun on the River Clyde in October 1985 and commissioned at Falmouth in 1988 by the ship's sponsor, Princess of Wales. HMS Cornwall had battle honours from Barfleur in 1692, the Falkland Islands in 1914 and the Dardanelles in 1915. Cornwall undertook duties in the North and South Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean and Baltic Seas throughout her time in service, completed several patrols to the Persian Gulf and deployments to the Far East. In 1996 she served as flagship of the First Sea Lord in Saint Petersburg, during the 300th anniversary celebrations of the Russian Navy, followed by a period as flagship of NATO's Standing Naval Force Atlantic. In 2001 she was part of the Royal Navy Task Force engaged in the invasion of Afghanistan.
In 2003 she was again committed to Standing Naval Force Atlantic, supporting Operation Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean Following the death of the Princess of Wales in 1997 the role of sponsor was assumed by Mary Holborow, Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall. Ceremonial activities have included acting as flagship for the Battle of the Atlantic Fleet Review in 1993, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic, in 2002 delivering a 21-gun salute as part of celebrations of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. On 28 January 2006 Cornwall was rededicated, following a period of docked maintenance, in a ceremony at Falmouth attended by Lady Mary Holborow. On 23 March 2007, fifteen sailors and Royal Marines from HMS Cornwall were detained by elements of the Navy of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution following a routine search of a vessel suspected of smuggling, in the vicinity of disputed territorial waters. In February 2011, while operating in the Gulf of Aden as part of the Combined Maritime Forces, boarding teams from HMS Cornwall participated in the rescue of five Yemeni fishermen and the capture of 17 Somali pirates from a fishing dhow, seized by pirates on 11 November 2010.
On 26 April 2011 she returned to Plymouth for the last time, decommissioned on 30 June 2011. Her decommissioning pennant was presented to the Davidstow Airfield and Cornwall at War Museum on 5 October 2011; the ship's bell was presented to Truro Cathedral on 18 October 2011. She was towed to HMNB Portsmouth, where she lay with sister ships HMS Cumberland, HMS Campbeltown, HMS Chatham. All four were put up in July sold to Swansea Drydocks for demolition, she left Portsmouth, being towed to Swansea, on 24 October 2013. Should a future ship be named Cornwall, her ship's company will be able to visit Truro to revive the Royal Navy's links with the County and return the Bell to the County's affiliated ship. Cornwall was affiliated with a number of military and civilian organisations and bodies: County of Cornwall HMS Cornwall 1939-1942 Association 3rd Battalion The Rifles the 2nd Battalion, The Light Infantry Worshipful Company of Leathersellers Cornish Rugby Football Union TS St Petroc, Padstow TS Queen Charlotte, Guildford TS Pellow, Truro TS Robert Hitchens and Penryn 6th Falmouth Sea Scout Group CCF Colston's Collegiate, Bristol CCF Berkhamsted Collegiate School, Herts Cornish Royal Naval Association Accenture 99 Squadron RAF Devon & Cornwall RNA Units.
Colledge, J. J.. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy. London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. OCLC 67375475. MaritimeQuest HMS Cornwall F-99 pages MaritimeQuest HMS Cornwall F-99 message board BBC profile HMS Cornwall service history at helis.com database HMS Cornwall
Fort Benning
Fort Benning is a United States Army post straddling the Alabama–Georgia border next to Columbus, Georgia. Fort Benning supports more than 120,000 active-duty military, family members, reserve component soldiers and civilian employees on a daily basis, it is a power projection platform, possesses the capability to deploy combat-ready forces by air and highway. Fort Benning is the home of the United States Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, the United States Army Armor School, United States Army Infantry School, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, elements of the 75th Ranger Regiment, 3rd Brigade – 3rd Infantry Division, many other additional tenant units, it is named after Henry L. Benning, a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. Since 1909, Fort Benning has served as the Home of the Infantry. Since 2005, Fort Benning has been transformed into the Maneuver Center of Excellence, as a result of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission's decision to consolidate a number of schools and installations to create various "centers of excellence".
Included in this transformation was the move of the Armor School from Fort Knox to Fort Benning. Camp Benning was established in October 1909, after President Woodrow Wilson called for a special session of Congress, culminating Congressional work in the creation of the Revenue Act of 1913, reintroducing an income tax which lowered tariffs, assigning permanent status in 1909. Providing basic training for World War I units, post-war Dwight D. Eisenhower served at Benning from December 24, 1918, until March 15, 1919, with about 250 of his Camp Colt, tankers who transferred to Benning after the armistice. On December 26, 1918, a portion of the Camp Polk tank school was transferred to Camp Benning "to work in conjunction with the Infantry school". Camp Benning tank troops were moved to Camp Meade from February 19–21, 1919. In February 1920, Congress voted to declare Camp Benning a permanent military post and appropriated more than $1 million of additional building funds for the Infantry School of Arms, which became the Infantry School.
By the fall of 1920, more than 350 officers, 7,000 troops and 650 student officers lived at Camp Benning. The post was renamed to Fort Benning in 1922, after Henry L. Benning, a general in the army of the Confederate States of America. In 1924, Brig. Gen. Briant H. Wells became the fourth commandant of the Infantry School and established the Wells Plan for permanent construction on the installation, emphasizing the importance of the outdoor environment and recreation opportunities for military personnel. During Wells' tenure, the post developed recreational facilities such as Doughboy Stadium, Gowdy Field, the post theater and Russ swimming pool. Doughboy Stadium was erected as a memorial by soldiers to their fallen comrades of World War I. One of the Doughboys' original coaches was a young captain named Dwight D. Eisenhower. Lt. Col George C. Marshall was appointed assistant commandant of the post in 1927 and initiated major changes. Marshall, who became the Army Chief of Staff during World War II, was appalled by the high casualties of World War I caused, he thought, by insufficient training.
He was determined to prevent a lack of preparation from costing more lives in future conflicts. He and his subordinates revamped the education system at Fort Benning; the changes he fostered are still known as the Benning Revolution. In his life, Marshall went on to author the Marshall Plan for reviving postwar Europe and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. During World War II Fort Benning had 197,159 acres with billeting space for 3,970 officers and 94,873 enlisted persons. Among many other units, Fort Benning was the home of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, their training began in December 1943 and was an important milestone for black Americans, as was explored in the first narrative history of the installation, Home of the Infantry; the battalion expanded to become the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, was trained at Fort Benning but did not deploy overseas and never saw combat during World War II. During this period, the specialized duties of the Triple Nickel were in a firefighting role, with over one thousand parachute jumps as smoke jumpers.
The 555th was deployed to the Pacific Northwest of the United States in response to the concern that forest fires were being set by the Japanese military using long-range incendiary balloons. The 82nd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion was activated July 15, 1940, trained at the Fort; the 17th Armored Engineer Battalion became active and started training July 15, 1940. The 4th Infantry Division, first of four divisions committed by the United States to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and completed its basic training at Fort Benning from October 1950 to May 1951, when it deployed to Germany for five years; the Airborne School on Main Post has three 249-foot drop towers called "Free Towers." They are used to train paratroopers. The towers were modeled after the parachute towers at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Only three towers stand today. During the spring of 1962 General Herbert B. Powell, Commanding General, U. S. Continental Army Command, directed that all instruction at the Infantry School after July 1 reflect Reorganization Objective Army Division structures.
Therefore, the Infantry School asked for permission to reorganize the 1st Infantry Brigade under a ROAD structure. Instead, the Army Staff decided to inactivat
Arabic
Arabic is a Central Semitic language that first emerged in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. It is named after the Arabs, a term used to describe peoples living in the area bounded by Mesopotamia in the east and the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west, in northwestern Arabia, in the Sinai Peninsula. Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage comprising 30 modern varieties, including its standard form, Modern Standard Arabic, derived from Classical Arabic; as the modern written language, Modern Standard Arabic is taught in schools and universities, is used to varying degrees in workplaces and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, the official language of 26 states, the liturgical language of the religion of Islam, since the Quran and Hadith were written in Arabic. Modern Standard Arabic follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic, uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties, has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties.
Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-classical era in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, construed as a multitude of dialects of this language; these dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are acquired in families, while the latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children; the relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Latin and vernaculars in medieval and early modern Europe. This view though does not take into account the widespread use of Modern Standard Arabic as a medium of audiovisual communication in today's mass media—a function Latin has never performed. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe in science and philosophy.
As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence in vocabulary, is seen in European languages Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese, Catalan, owing to both the proximity of Christian European and Muslim Arab civilizations and 800 years of Arabic culture and language in the Iberian Peninsula, referred to in Arabic as al-Andalus. Sicilian has about 500 Arabic words as result of Sicily being progressively conquered by Arabs from North Africa, from the mid-9th to mid-10th centuries. Many of these words relate to related activities; the Balkan languages, including Greek and Bulgarian, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history; some of the most influenced languages are Persian, Spanish, Kashmiri, Bosnian, Bengali, Malay, Indonesian, Punjabi, Assamese, Sindhi and Hausa, some languages in parts of Africa. Conversely, Arabic has borrowed words from other languages, including Greek and Persian in medieval times, contemporary European languages such as English and French in modern times.
Classical Arabic is the liturgical language of 1.8 billion Muslims, Modern Standard Arabic is one of six official languages of the United Nations. All varieties of Arabic combined are spoken by as many as 422 million speakers in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet, an abjad script and is written from right to left, although the spoken varieties are sometimes written in ASCII Latin from left to right with no standardized orthography. Arabic is a Central Semitic language related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, various other Semitic languages of Arabia such as Dadanitic; the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense; the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense.
The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms. The development of an internal passive. There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of the northern Hejaz; these features are evidence of common descent from Proto-Arabic. The following features can be reconstructed with confidence for Proto-Arabic: negative particles m *mā.
Iraq War
The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition that overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict continued for much of the next decade as an insurgency emerged to oppose the occupying forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government. An estimated 151,000 to 600,000 or more Iraqis were killed in the first three to four years of conflict. In 2009, official US troops were withdrawn, but American soldiers continued to remain on the ground fighting in Iraq, hired by defence contractors and private military companies; the U. S. became re-involved in 2014 at the head of a new coalition. The invasion occurred as part of a declared war against international terrorism and its sponsors under the administration of U. S. President George W. Bush following the unrelated September 11 terrorist attacks. In October 2002, President Bush obtained congressional approval from a Democrat-led Senate and Republican-led House authorizing war-making powers.
The Iraq war began on 19 March 2003, when the U. S. joined by the U. K. and several coalition allies, launched a "awe" bombing campaign. Iraqi forces were overwhelmed as U. S. forces swept through the country. The invasion led to the collapse of the Ba'athist government. However, the power vacuum following Saddam's demise and the mismanagement of the occupation led to widespread sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis, as well as a lengthy insurgency against U. S. and coalition forces. Many violent insurgent groups were supported by al-Qaeda in Iraq; the United States responded with a troop surge in 2007, a build up of 170,000 troops. The surge in troops gave greater security to Iraq’s government and military, was a success; the winding down of U. S. involvement in Iraq accelerated under President Barack Obama. The U. S. formally withdrew all combat troops from Iraq by December 2011. However, with no stay-behind agreement or advisers left in Iraq, a new power vacuum was created and led to the rise of ISIS.
Nine months after President Trump was elected, U. S.-backed forces captured Raqqa. The Bush administration based its rationale for the war principally on the assertion that Iraq, viewed by the U. S. as a rogue state since the 1990–1991 Gulf War, possessed weapons of mass destruction and that there was concern about an active WMD program, that the Iraqi government posed a threat to the United States and its coalition allies. Select U. S. officials accused Saddam of harbouring and supporting al-Qaeda, while others cited the desire to end a repressive dictatorship and bring democracy to the people of Iraq. Hundreds of chemical weapons were found in Iraq, which were determined to be produced before the 1991 Gulf War, intelligence officials determined they were "so old they couldn't be used as designed." From 2004 to 2011, US troops and American-trained Iraqi troops encountered, on six reported occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons from years earlier in Saddam Hussein's rule. 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs were discovered.
The rationale of U. S. pre-war intelligence faced heavy criticism both domestically and internationally. From 2009 to 2011, the UK conducted a broad inquiry into its decision to go to war chaired by Sir John Chilcot; the Chilcot Report, published in 2016, concluded military action may have been necessary but was not the last resort at the time and that the consequences of invasion were underestimated. In the aftermath of the invasion, Iraq held multi-party elections in 2005. Nouri al-Maliki became Prime Minister in 2006 and remained in office until 2014; the al-Maliki government enacted policies that were seen as having the effect of alienating the country's Sunni minority and worsening sectarian tensions. In the summer of 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant launched a military offensive in Northern Iraq and declared a worldwide Islamic caliphate, eliciting another military response from the United States and its allies; the Iraq War caused over a hundred thousand civilian deaths and tens of thousands of military deaths.
The majority of deaths occurred as a result of the insurgency and civil conflicts between 2004 and 2007. Strong international opposition to the Saddam Hussein regime began after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990; the international community condemned the invasion, in 1991 a military coalition led by the United States launched the Gulf War to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Following the Gulf War, the US and its allies tried to keep Saddam in check with a policy of containment; this policy involved numerous economic sanctions by the UN Security Council. The inspections were carried out by the United Nations Special Commission. UNSCOM, in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, worked to ensure that Iraq destroyed its chemical and nuclear weapons and facilities. In the decade following the Gulf War, the United Nations passed 16 Security Council resolutions calling for the complete elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Member states communicated their frustration over the years that Iraq was impeding the work of the special commission and failing to take its disarmament obligations.
Iraqi officials harass
Dammam
Dammam is the capital of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The judicial and administrative bodies of the province, plus several government departments, are located in the city. Dammam is the largest city in the Eastern Province, the sixth largest in Saudi Arabia, after Riyadh, Mecca and Taif. Like the other 12 regional capitals of Saudi Arabia, Dammam is not included within any governorate. Dammam is a major administrative center for the Saudi oil industry. Together with the nearby cities of Dhahran and Al Khobar, Dammam forms part of the Dammam Metropolitan Area, known as greater Dammam and has an estimated population of 4,140,000 as of 2012. Dammam and its suburbs form the center of the Dammam metropolitan area known as Greater Dammam, linked to the city through social and cultural ties; the city is growing at an exceptionally fast rate of 12% a year - the fastest in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab world. As of 2016 Greater Dammam is the 4th largest area in both size and population in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The Dammam metropolitan area and the rest of the Eastern Province are served by the King Fahd International Airport, the largest airport in the world in terms of land area, about 20 km to the northwest of the city. Dammam's King Abdul Aziz Sea Port is the largest on the Persian Gulf, its import-export traffic in is second only to Jeddah Seaport in the Middle North Africa. The origins of the name "Dammam" are disputed; some say that it is onomatopoeic and was given to the area because of a drum positioned in a nearby keep, sounded to alert the residents of returning fishermen's ships. Others say that the name comes from the Arabic word "dawwama", which indicated a nearby sea site that dhows had to avoid. Dammam was first inhabited by Al Bin Ali is from the original tribe "Al Utabi" descendent from " Bani Sulaim" the tribe that conquered Bahrain and fought against the British Empire; this tribe is of Al Maadeed known for their courage and generosity. The origin of this tribe is Najid and are spread into Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and UAE.
In early 1923, the Albinali family, led by Sheikh Nasir Ahmad Albinali, were invited by HRM the late King Abdul Aziz from Bahrain to come back and inhabit Dammam. While Al-Dousary clan settled in Al-Khobar the location was chosen for its proximity of the island of Bahrain as the clan hoped to head back there soon, but the British rule in the region made it hard for them to move in every sense so they realized they had to settle for good in the lands which by that time they inhabited; however this tiny episode gave a population to Khobar boost as well as close ties with the bigger city of Dammam. When the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932, the area was the site of several hamlets that depended on fishing and pearls for their survival. Over a span of a little more than half a century, the area has developed into a thriving hub of industry and science, home to more than a million people; the area's transformation was launched with the discovery of oil in commercial quantities.
The Eastern Province sits atop one of the largest oil fields in the world, it was here in Dhahran in 1936 that Aramco, the predecessor of the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco, dug the famous Dammam No. 7 well that proved beyond doubt that the Kingdom possessed a large supply of hydrocarbons. The discovery of new oil fields to the south and north of Dammam in the 1940s and 1950s, which now account for a quarter of the world's proven oil reserves, triggered a building boom; the Albinali Family, led by Sheikh Muhammad Nasir Albinali and Brothers played a crucial role in the development of the city of Dammam and the Eastern province in various fields. This company was the first Saudi construction company to develop Aramco, the roads from connecting the new industry's roads necessary for the economical development of the country. To name a few are: Dammam to the pertrolum wells to the north, Dammam to Riyadh, Dammam Port Expansion so tankers can load up, the first covered shopping center in 1953 in the city of Dammam known as Ayal-Nasir.
This in turn led to expatriates and technicians from throughout the kingdom and the world gathering to help search for new oil fields and bring them on-stream. New pipelines had to be installed, storage facilities built and jetties constructed to handle tankers; the growing number of experts working in Dhahran required the building of housing, schools for their children and other amenities. Before long, the corporate headquarters of Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company in the world, was spilling out into the desert in all directions; the growth of the oil industry in the region had a similar impact on the small fishing village of Dammam and the hamlet of Al-Khobar. Within two decades of the discovery of oil, the mudbrick huts of the fisherman that crowded the shore and which constituted the only permanent dwellings in the area had given way to concrete buildings, modern housing and landscaped streets. Located to the east of Dhahran on the Persian Gulf coast, Al-Khobar became the shipping point for Saudi Arabian crude oil to the refinery in Bahrain.
In the years leading up to World War II, Saudi Arabian oil production was limited, since the company had no refinery of its own, most of the oil was sent by small tankers to Bahrain. With the construction of a pipeline to Bahrain and the subsequent
Variants of the M113 armored personnel carrier
A huge number of M113 Armored Personnel Carrier variants have been created, ranging from infantry carriers to nuclear missile carriers. The M113 armored personnel carrier has become one of the most prolific armored vehicles of the second half of the 20th century, continues to serve with armies around the world in many roles. In 2005, Afghanistan received 15 second-hand M577A2 command and control vehicles from the United States. In 1967, the Argentine Army received from USA 250 M113A1 APC, 10 M577A1 command and control vehicles and 12 M548A1 cargo carriers. In 1992, they received from USA 200 M113A2 APC, 25 M106A1 mortar carrier, 10 M577A1 command and control vehicles and 16 M548A1 cargo carriers; some variants are modified by the Army's Comando de Arsenales. M106A2 - M106A1 mortar carrier modified with a 120mm FM mortar. M113 Defensa Aerea - M113 APC with a 20mm Oerlikon GAI-BO1 cannon. M113 Sanitario - M113 APC modified to serve as an armoured ambulance. M113 Recuperador - M113 APC modified to serve as an armoured recovery vehicle M113 Comunicaciones - M113 APC modified to serve as a communications vehicles M548A2 - M548A1 cargo carriers modernizated to A2 version.
M113A2 RASIT - M113A2 APC fitted with a RASIT radar to serve as reconnaissance vehicle. M113A2 w/ 20mm turret - M113A2 APC fitted with a CITEFA 20mm turret; some Australian AFVs have the suffix "AS" appended by a model number. Speaking, Australian models are modified from the original models, in the case of the M113A1 series this included the AN/VIC-1 communications harness, large dust filters for the passenger compartment ventilation blower, heavy steel track manufactured by ADI, provision for 600 kg of belly armor, the Cadillac-Gage T-50 turret mounting twin.30 Brownings or a.30/.50 Brownings machine guns for APC/LRV versions, a traverse bar to prevent the crew commander traversing the turret to the rear over the troop compartment roof hatch with the guns depressed low. For some reason, besides the M577A1 command vehicle, all of versions of the M113A1 had the passenger compartment heaters removed. In the late 1980s, the fleet was issued with German BM8005 image intensifying night vision driving periscopes, with the aid of an adaptor, could be fitted to replace the driver's central periscope for night driving.
In the early 90s, the fleet was issued with VINSON family cipher equipment a single KY-57 per vehicle. This allowed the command net to be enciphered, but the admin net would work en clair. M113A1 Fire Support Vehicle - Full designation Carrier, Fire Support, Full Track M113A1 Saladin Turret was a variant fitted with the turret from the Alvis Saladin armored car; the FSV was introduced into Australian Army units in the mid-1960s following the withdrawal of the Saladins and was armed with a 76mm gun, a.30 caliber coaxial machine gun and a.30 caliber machine gun mounted on the roof of the vehicle's turret. The M113 was an interim vehicle and was replaced by the M113 Medium Reconnaissance Vehicle in the late 1970s, it was referred to by Royal Australian Armoured Corps crews as the "Beast". M113 Fitter - Armored recovery vehicle with HIAB crane on hull roof. M113A1 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle/APC - A standard M113A1 with a Cadillac Gage T50 turret as used on the V100/V150 series of armored cars, mounting two Browning machine guns, a.30 caliber and a M2.50 caliber machine gun.
While the standard armored personnel carrier version in Australian service is fitted with the T50 turret, it carried only twin.30 caliber machine guns. In service, the LRV and APC versions both carried the 30/50 combination and the only difference between them was roles. LRVs, which carried a crew of 2 or 3, were used in the sabre troops of the Cavalry regiment and the recon troop of the Armoured regiment. APCs carried a crew of 2 plus several dismounts, either infantry, assault troops, engineers or other troops. In practise, an LRV was perfectly capable of carrying troops, though in somewhat more cramped conditions as LRVs carried additional stores and ammunition and had seats removed and replaced with storage lockers. For a short period of time in Vietnam, the Aircraft Armaments Incorporated Model 74C Cupola/Command Station was used, but it was replaced by the T50. Used by the New Zealand Army until the M113 was replaced in 2005; the T50 turret was fitted with an optical sight, however in years this was removed and the guns were aimed using ranging bursts of 6-10 rounds.
The diesel burning heater is removed from the M113A1 - though numerous diggers note that this is not the case with the Australian Army's M577s. M113A1 Medium Reconnaissance Vehicle - Full designation Carrier, Fire Support, Full Track M113A1 Scorpion Turret was an Australian variant similar to the M113 FSV, but using the turret from the FV101 Scorpion light tank, instead of the older turret of the Saladin armoured car, that the FSV had used; this turret was equipped with an Image Intensifier sight for the main armament. This II sight was the first effective passive night sight fitted to an Australian AFV, giving the MRVs a night fighting capability exceeding the Leopard AS1 and all other Australian AFVs of the period. Whilst amphibious, the MRV was fitted with a light sheet-metal foam-filled trim vane and side pods; these pods and the trim vane were intended to provide additional flotation and stability on the water. Other changes included a modified driver's hatch which pivoted toward the centre-line of the vehicle instead of opening to the rear of the driver's hatch.
