Fox Armoured Reconnaissance Vehicle

The FV721 Fox Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Wheeled) (CVR(W)) was a 4 × 4 armoured car manufactured by ROF Leeds, deployed by the British Army as a replacement for the Ferret scout car and the Saladin armoured car. The Fox was introduced into service with B Squadron, 1st Royal Tank Regiment (Aliwal Barracks, Tidworth) in 1975 and withdrawn from service 1993–94.

It had a crew of three and had a low profile rotating turret armed with a 30 mm L21 RARDEN cannon, which was manually fed with three-round clips; 99 rounds were carried. A coaxial L37A2 7.62 mm machine gun was mounted with 2,600 rounds. The weapons were not stabilised. This turret was also equipped with a set of two 4-barrelled smoke dischargers. The vehicle had a combat weight of 6.75 tonnes and was designed to be air-portable. The Fox had aluminium armour and was fitted with a flotation screen. It lacked protection against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Powered by a Jaguar 4.2-litre 6-cylinder petrol engine, the Fox was one of the fastest vehicles of its type.

The all-welded aluminium armour hull and turret protected against small arms fire and artillery splinters but not from heavy (.50 calibre) machine gun fire. The driver sat at the front and had an integral periscope/hatch cover that lifted and opened to the right. The centre mounted turret held the commander-loader on the left and gunner on the right. They each had a rear-opening hatch cover.

Without preparation, the Fox can ford one metre of water and a flotation screen can be erected in two minutes. Drive when floating was solely from the road wheels, giving poor performance and the screens were removed from most UK vehicles early in their service life. Air portable, three Foxes can be carried by one C-130 Hercules aircraft, two of which can be parachute dropped.

The Fox was principally used by the Royal and Queen's Own Yeomanry, the brigade reconnaissance regiments in 2 Div, BAOR's rear area formation. Small numbers were also attached to air mobile, armoured and mechanized infantry battalions to form a reconnaissance platoon.