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Land Systems / Battlefield

Walid (Walid Gomaa Mohamed)

Armored Scout Car / Reconnaissance Vehicle / Armored Personnel Carrier [ 1967 ]

The Walid armored scout car has enjoyed a healthy and long operational tenure with many global military and security forces.

Authored By: Staff Writer | Last Edited: 08/01/2017 | Content ©www.MilitaryFactory.com | The following text is exclusive to this site.

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In the 1960s, the Egyptian Army invested in a new armored car based on its experiences with the Soviet-era 4x4 wheeled BTR-40 reconnaissance car and the 6x6 wheeled BTR-152 Armored Personnel Carrier (APC). The result became the "Walid Gomaa Mohamed" (more simply known as the "Walid") which mated the chassis of a West German Mercedes-Benz UNIMOG truck (detailed elsewhere on this site) to an armored hull superstructure of local design. The vehicle was manufactured under the "Arab Organization for Industrialization" (AOI) Kader Factory banner.

The Walid was developed along the lines of a reconnaissance car / APC but grew into other needed roles including Command Vehicle (CV) (outfitted with additional communications gear), a riot control car, government security forces vehicle, and a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). In the latter version, a 6- or 12-round rocket launcher pack was fitted over the rear section of the vehicle containing 80mm rockets held in individual launch tubes while featuring a typical operating crew of two.©MilitaryFactory.com

The base Walid scout car was given dimensions of 6.12x2.57x2.3 meters. Ground clearance amounted to 0.4 meters to which the vehicle could ford up to 0.8 meter deep water sources, overcome a 0.5 meter vertical slope, and manage a 60% gradient. The standard operating crew was two and a 7.62mm PKM or similar medium machine gun was typically fitted for local defense. Armor reached 8mm of steel that protected against small arms fire but little else. Beyond its crew of two, the car held room for up to ten combat-ready infantrymen and, depending on the production mark, the Walid came in either a soft-top or hard-top form to suit the mission role or customer requirement. Drive power was a Deutz AG diesel-fueled engine outputting at 168 horsepower which gave the Walid a maximum road speed of 86 kmh and road range out to 800 kilometers.

The Walid car has since found many global operators in what has turned out to be a long, healthy operational service life. The list once included Angola, Algeria, Iraq, North Yemen (now Yemen), and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) while current operators remain Burundi, Sudan, and Yemen. The Israeli Army captured a number of the cars from Egypt during the Six Day War (1967).©MilitaryFactory.com

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Specifications

BASICS [+] MANUFACTURER(S) [+] OPERATORS [+] ROLES [+] DIMENSIONS & WEIGHTS [+] POWER & PERFORMANCE [+] ARMAMENT [+] AMMUNITION [+] VARIANTS [+] HONORS [+]

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