Awesome Personnel Carrier

aka: Cool APC

Lovely wheels, shame about the ground clearance!

"One APC... alone... betrayed by the Let's Play series it loves, now its only hope in its final hour of need."

— Battlefield 315, Let's Play Battlefield 1942, Episode 57

Sometimes in war, neither the Cool Car nor the Cool Tank is enough. You need something that can carry The Squad into and out of battle and even fight alongside it if need be. How do you do this with a simple Armored Personnel Carrier? Easy, slap some more armor on it. Give it a BFG or three and maybe even the ability to crush other things like a tank!

Enter the Awesome Personnel Carrier, the all-around badass vehicle not just meant to be an overpriced and underarmored taxi. In modern warfare settings, expect these to be ripped off from the BMP and M2 Bradley series of vehicles or some of their relations. In sci-fi settings, this might incorporate more elements of the Cool Tank or have an exotic unloading method, or even exaggerate it by being a Drop Ship.

Special mention should be given here as to terminology. The term IFV denotes Infantry Fighting Vehicle, as in a vehicle that directly engages and suppresses the enemy while the squad does its thing after exiting the vehicle. An APC, or Armored Personnel Carrier, simply shuttles the squad to and from battle. It might not actually do any fighting whatsoever. But that doesn't mean it can't be cool on its own. APC is commonly used to cover both types of vehicles despite this being incorrect, although the line between armed battle-taxi and light IFV can be quite blurred.

Naturally, compare Tank Goodness. Merkavas cheat by being both, and the Russian Mi-24 Hind ups the stakes again by flying. If the APC often gets confused with an actual tank you've got Tanks, but No Tanks. For more information on APCs and IFVs, see Armored Fighting Vehicles.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The opening scene in one of the Appleseed movies has Deunan and her squad being attacked by two APCs armed with gatling guns that effortlessly jump through walls and reduce the battlefield to even finer rubble.
• In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Section 9 relies on a disguised delivery van (complete with harmless-looking corporate logo) that actually doubles as both a personnel carrier and a communications hub.
• Gundam:
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin retcons the amphibious mobile suit Acguy into one, able to fit an entire frogman squad into its comparatively wide torso.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn gives us the D50C Loto, a 12-meter-high mobile suit that can transform into a tank-like vehicle and carry a squad of special forces troops inside it, doesn't get more awesome than that. Note the height, however — the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam from the same series is nearly twenty meters tall plus an extra meter or two in Destroy Mode. The Loto is so small that the 1/144-scale model kit had to be doubled up (two in a single package) in order to match up with the content and price point of a regular Gundam model.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing mostly rejects space warships, unlike other Gundam series, because most of the combat in the setting is counter-insurgency rather than large-scale. Space deployment thus embraces this trope on a Mobile Suit scale.
• Rebuild World: Considering most of the cast are Private Military Contractors in an After the End wasteland, these show up from time to time, usually with built in weapons, also being used for Car Fu:
  • During a Kaiju bounty hunt the Drankam PMC takes on, and Akira gets hired into under Shirakabe, both Shirakabe and Katsuya's forces use them. Shirakabe’s deploys armed motorbikes out the back.
  • Mad Scientist Yatsubiyashi gets one to serve as a field hospital where he takes advantage of wounded hunters via Leonine Contract offers, while investigating a loose experiment.
  • Due to the excessive amounts of ammo Akira expends, he eventually buys one for himself to hold spares (and his Cool Bike). He uses it's Automated Automobiles functions to take naps mid-battle, which is important due to his Heroic RRoD tendencies.
  • Carol, being relatively wealthy, has a hybrid camper/apc that acts as a full Base on Wheels.
• Yakitori: Soldiers of Misfortune. Averted with the carrier that Unit K-321 are allocated that has an unfortunate resemblance to a school bus. Later they get rescued by Space Marines who are driving a far more impressive carrier.

Comic Books

• In We Stand on Guard, La Résistance has modified an oilfield transport to sport a variety of jerry-rigged weaponry to fend off the vehicles of the American occupation.

Fan Works

• In the The Tomorrow Series fic, Ellie's Heroes, Ellie and her friends steal a 10-wheel Piranha APC and use it to great effect in a raid on an enemy-held city.
• Noting the glaring lack of such a vehicle in the Mobile Suit Gundam canon, A Feddie Story introduces a the M74A6 Wolfhound, which is based off the canonical Type 74 Hovertruck. An impeller-fan-based hover vehicle with six fans, it has sufficient armor to withstand small arms and low-end anti-vehicle weapons, transports a squad of twelve infantry in (very cramped) conditions, and is armed with a 60mm cannon, a coaxial machinegun, and either a wire-guided or laser-guided antitank missile system depending on the model. They're larger and considerably faster than the tanks they usually operate in support of.
• The Lancer seen in Borderlands shows up in Fractured (SovereignGFC), albeit heavily modified for long-range travel. In the sequel, Origins, Fireant blastboats serve this role IN SPACE since troop-carrying shuttles without armaments have (justifiably) been out-of-favor for as long as ships have had point-defense guns, starfighter escorts, or Flood infestations.

Films — Live-Action

• The Colonial Marines APC^note (built around the chassis of a surplus Hunslet ATT 77 Aircraft Towing Tractor) carried by the Drop Ship in Aliens. It includes sliding armored side doors, front minigun turret, Plasma Cannon turret (with reduced clearance option), no-flat tires, and a fully integrated command station that could provide the platoon leader with real-time video feeds from every grunt. Although it manages to be bigger inside than out — the squad can stand up within the APC but are taller than it outside.
• Avatar features the C-21 Dragon Assault Ship, featuring eight 50MM sentry guns, dozens of missile pods, not one but two cockpits, and enough cargo space for a squad of AMP suits.
• Billion Dollar Brain: The tanker-trucks of Texas oil billionaire General Midwinter are disguised troop transports armed with machine-gun turrets and rocket launchers. Subverted when they're curb-stomped by the Soviet Air Force; no matter how awesome your personnel carriers are, you still need air support.
• In Black Hawk Down, the Pakistani troops display this trope by playing The Cavalry the smart way: by charging in heavy APCs that can withstand the withering crossfire that the American Humvees couldn't. However, once rescued, the Americans aren't happy to be told they're expected to ride on top of the vehicle, out in the open.
• The "Land Master" from Damnation Alley. Amphibious, heavily armed, RV-like and by Major Denton's own admission the only way the survivors will make it to Albany from California.
• Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan: The tropical climate means the relief column's M113s are actually rusty as hell, but the Gunship Rescue they and their fifty-calibre machine-guns deliver is first-rate.
• Subverted in Die Hard. After the initial assault on the front doors fails, SWAT sends in "the car", an APC^note It is a Ford M8 Greyhound, a World War II-vintage armored car used in the reconnaissance role. It had a small caliber cannon and a crew of four, but no troop transport capacity. The one used by the LAPD has had the turret and gun removed. that immediately gets stuck on the railings of the front steps, then hit by an RPG. Then by another one. So much for full frontal assault on a fortified position. The bad guy hacker calls it "an RV", and when it gets blown up, gleefully shouts that "the quarterback is toast!"
• In Doomsday, Sinclair's team enters virus-infected Scotland through the rebuilt Hadrian Wall in a pair of sleek-looking APCs said to be the last of their types. They look heavy, but a crossbow arrow kills one of the drivers, though the action doesn't let audience wonder about armor long enough to suspend suspension of disbelief.
• The Herkimer Battle Jitney in Mystery Men. Dr. Heller — "Wait! You have a Herkimer Battle Jitney? That's the finest nonlethal military vehicle ever made!"
• In The Pentagon Wars, inverted to hell and back by the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, a stupid Master of None rolling deathtrap designed by the whims of bureaucracy and self-interested politics. It is conceptualized as a combined weapons platform, troop transport and scout vehicle, and cannot effectively do any of those things. It can't fight because the armour is too thin (to save weight for the insane amount of stuff it carries, especially as it is also designed to be amphibious) and dedicated combat vehicles will chew it up and spit it out; it can't carry a full squad because the planned spaces for the men were removed to make room for all the ammo; and it can't be stealthy because it is twelve feet tall and has a colossal cannon and missile launcher on it, which make it an obvious target for every enemy on the field. While the Bradley IFV's development history really was long complicated, a lot of how it is represented in the film is highly exaggerated or misrepresented; check out the Real Life section below.^note  Summarized briefly, the Bradley was not originally a troop carrier that snowballed out of control, but rather was built around its main weapon from the start. It was always intended to be a hard-hitting vehicle with a large gun, and the relatively thin armor (though comparable to the BMP-1 and 2 it was intended to fight) and tall height was compensated for by using its firepower to knock the enemy out before they could fire back. The reduced capacity was understood as a Necessary Drawback in order to carry the firepower, because IFVs in general have a different set of priorities to traditional APCs.
• The villains in Sheena use a UR-416 armored car as one of their main vehicles. Subverted in that it gets taken out by an elephant, who easily overturns it during the climax.
• Soldier's Crawler APC is just as sophisticated as the Colonial Marine APC: armored side doors, missile launchers, a dual machine gun turret, a remote-controlled mortar, tires larger than its passengers and a command interface fixed onto the driver's pod. The director claims that the Crawler is almost as powerful as a tank. The model was built from a stripped-down tractor. However, just like the Colonial Marine APC, it had interior size problems when it comes to people 6 feet tall. The solution: hire 5-footers. Oh, and just in case you're wondering, this is what it looks like◊.
• A number of the vehicle in the Star Wars movies would count, with the regular troops often outnumbering crew.
  • The Empire Strikes Back: The most famous example in the franchise is the AT-AT, a large quadrupedal carrier that looks like a mechanical elephant without a trunk. This is subverted occasionally though, in that some vehicles that are called transports in fact aren't.
  • The AT-TE from Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Although not specifically referred to as a transport, it is one, and also mounts enough fire to be a respectable threat in their own right.
• The EM-50 from Stripes is an example that is Played for Laughs (but is still Awesome).

Literature

• In The Doomfarers Of Coramonde by Brian Daley, a sorcerer from a parallel sword-and-sorcery universe grabs an APC and its crew from out of the middle of the Vietnam War...in order to fight a dragon. (The sorcerer was actually trying for a full-scale tank, somewhat to the irritation of the APC crew.)
• The Endworld novels by Dave L. Robbins features the Family, a benevolent survivalist group made by an extremely rich movie star. The star also paid unemployed Detroit engineers and scientists to create a prototype vehicle called the SEAL. Officially a large recreational vehicle, it's actually a solar-powered, amphibious troop transport that's sealed against hostile environments. It's exceptionally well-armoured being made with experimental plastics and alloys and can combat various enemy types with its arsenal of .50 machine guns, rocket launcher, flamethrower and stinger missile launcher.
• Downplayed initially in The First American Rising series by William C. Dietz. First Lieutenant Robin "Mac" MacIntyre has several Stryker APCs in her mercenary company "Mac's Marauders". They're very modern vehicles and all are equipped with a birdcage armor set to protect against rockets. Unfortunately each of her Strykers are only armed with a .50 machine gun. The main hitter for the company is an Apache attack helicopter that joined her company. Later in the first novel, the company gets a number of new Strykers that carry a 105mm cannon.
• The main characters of The Fungus use a heavily modified Alvis PV2 "Stalwart" to venture forth into a London that has been taken over by Festering Fungus.
• Rebuild World:
  • Shirakabe, due to his rank in the Drankam Private Military Contractors, has one. It's noted that it's standard to get a double share of mission rewards to pay for its upkeep. It has automated machineguns on it, and it's used to launch two of his buddies on motorcycles out the back during one battle, and for medevac operations during another.
  • The Mad Scientist Yatsubiyashi sets up a field clinic as an excuse to track down one of his escaped test subjects, setting it up in a large converted APC where he overcharges injured hunters in order to force them to work for him in exchange for discounts. He ends up lifting it off its side, which he can do due to his Professor Guinea Pig experiments giving himself Super-Strength.
  • Due to the high ammo consumption of his chain-gun equivalent SSB multi-weapon rifles, Akira buys a small APC to make sure that he doesn't run out of ammo and rides his Cool Bike out the back of it. It ends up getting blown to pieces (like most of his vehicles), but only after Akira's used up all the spare ammo inside.
• These appear in Worldwar, used by the Lizards (given the technology used by them, they're likely comparable to a Russian BMP, albeit powered by hydrogen). While described as combatable by Tosevite landcruisers... er, human tanks, the missiles often carried by them are quite nasty against said tanks.
• The Zone by James Rouch features the FV499 Hovercraft APC used by the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits in the Crapsack World of World War III Europe. According to the stats at the start of "Hard Target":
  A planned production of 300 was cut to 60 due to shortage of engines. Issue is limited to Armoured Reconnaissance and Special Anti-tank units. In both roles they have proved highly popular with users, exceptional speed and cross-country performance giving them a survival rate three times that of any other NATO combat vehicle. A major drawback of the type is the difficulty of recovery if battle damage results in total loss of power. Plans for a special transporter were shelved when production was curtailed.

Live-Action TV

• Power Rangers S.P.D.: With the Power Rangers' SWAT Mode comes with a SWAT truck that's loaded with cannons and can crash through pretty much anything.
• UFO (1970): The fully tracked Mobiles of SHADO have a radar dish on top and carry a squad of assault rifle-toting Red Shirts for taking on the anonymous alien invaders yet are small enough to be deployed via aircraft.

Tabletop Games

• BattleTech fields a number of APCs and IFVs which include wheeled, tracked, hover, and flying varieties. It is also quite guilty of mixing the categories. The ten-ton 'generic' APCs aren't much to write home about and thus not this trope (and in fact can't even be used as APCs without optional rules because their infantry bays are too small for a full platoon) — on the other hand, one gets things like the Maxim Heavy Hover "Transport", which dedicates all of three of its fifty tons to transport space (just enough for a single platoon on foot), but packs a fair-sized array of missiles and machine guns to 'defend' itself with. Adding to this, OmniMechs and -Vehicles of any stripe can serve as Awesome Personnel Carriers to battle armor infantry, a friendly four- to six-trooper unit of whom can simply hitch a ride on any of them by clinging to dedicated handholds on the outside.
• Dungeons & Dragons has the Siege Crab, a magically altered and reinforced Giant Friend Crab with a cabin hollowed out of its body. A magical piece of headgear lets the wearer control the crab, so it can be used to both carry people through dangerous environments and crush enemies in its four claws.
• Rifts has a plethora of these, such as the heavily armed Coalition Mark V, the amphibious Iwo Jima-class hovercraft, or the German Leopard III, which not only carries infantry, but can also lug around a small tank' for extra firepower. Extra points for many Coalition APCs being VTOL aircraft, and one giant 8-wheeler. While not bristling with turrets like a Victorian battleship in the manner of the previously mentioned Mark V or Leopard, it is immense as it carries a squad of Powered Armor.
• Traveller: The ATV (not to be confused with those four-wheeled dirtbike things) is a fully enclosed and pressurized vehicle capable of carrying 15 passengers, has a hardpoint for a turret, and is a common add-on for spaceships. The AFV sacrifices some passenger space for a triple laser turret. Finally, G-carriers are essentially Hover Tanks that can carry passengers.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Imperial Guard has the Chimera, which is essentially a BMP Recycled In SPACE.
    • Not to mention the Valkyrie Gunship, which is essentially a Hind In SPACE!
  • The Space Marines have Rhinos, which are essentially metal BAWKSES M113s IN SPACE! They also have the Land Raider, which is essentially a mobile fortress packing twin-linked heavy bolters and lascannons. Alternatively, one can view the Land Raider as just a World War I tank IN SPACE!
    • Note, however, that the Rhino isn't particularly awesome for this trope's specifications: its armour and firepower are rather modest for game standards (the IG Chimera mentioned above is better armed and armoured). Then again, the Space Marines inside are also better armed and armored than the Imperial Guard.
    • The Rhino, apparently, is such an Awesome Personnel Carrier that with the exception of the aforementioned Land Raider, Rhino chassis form the basis for every tank the army fields. Need an IFV? Reduce the transport and stick a couple of heavy weapons on top (The Razorback)! Need a Main Battle Tank? Slap some more armour on the front (internally!) and a turret on top (The Predator)! Need a Multiple Missile Launcher? Just... you get the picture (The Whirlwind).
    • Let's not forget that this same "APC" is used by the Arbites — the police — on Imperial worlds. The cops don't drive around in squad cars. They drive around in fucking tanks. And they will use a whole station house's worth of Rhinos to barricade a damn street if they need to.
    • The Land Raider has, recently, undergone the same level of insane modding as its Rhino cousin. Anything you can stick on a Rhino these days, you can stick on a Land Raider — but more. (Helios has a multiple missile launcher like the Whirlwind, Prometheus has a massive comms array like the Damocles Rhino, Redeemer has a pair of super flamers and assault cannons like a Bhaal Predator... and so on, up to one variant which has a fortress-busting siege cannon on its forward miniturret.)
    • With the capacity to carry eight guys in power suits originally designed for performing maintenance on active plasma generators from the inside.
  • The Imperial Guard also has a super heavy transport, the Crassus. Or, as Memetic Mutation demands, the CRASSUS ARMOURED ASSAULT TRANSPORT, which can carry thirty Guardsmen or two Cyclops.
  • And the Gorgon, which is basically a scaled-up WWII landing craft with caterpillar tracks, able to carry fifty infantrymen or two Cyclopes, or, if you really want to bring the pain, three Space Marine Dreadnought combat walkers.
  • The Marines have the Spartan Assault Tank, an up-armored, up-gunned, and enlarged Land Raider that can carry 25 marines or 12 Terminators. They have something even larger, the Mastodon, with a capacity of up to 40 marines or 20 marines with 2 Dreadnoughts.
  • The Sisters of Battle use the Immolator, which is also built on the Rhino chassis and usually features turret-mounted flamers — essentially, a Razorback modded as a chapel. They also field the Reppressor, an even more awesome version of the basic Rhino, with expanded transport capacity, a flamethrower miniturret, and a massive bulldozer blade. Like the Marines, they also have the Exorcist, which mounts a Pipe Organ/Multiple Missile Launcher.
  • The Tau have the Devilfish Skimmer, which packs on a burst cannon, some deployable Attack Drones, or multiple-firing smart missiles, with the option to mount a couple of anti-tank missiles for good measure.
  • Orks have Wartrukks and Battlewagons.
  • The Eldar have the Wave Serpant grav-tank fitting into the APC role, with an energy-shielded prow and a pair of heavy infantry scale weapons mounted on top, while their Falcon grav-tank fits into the IFV role, being able to carry smaller squads than the Wave Serpent but having superior weaponry for suppressing enemy armor and infantry.
  • The Imperial Guard have the Stormlord Super Heavy Tank, its basic chassis is shared with that the other Imperial Guard Super Heavies (i.e., BaneBlade Shadowsword) and it can carry 40 guardsmen and has enough firepower to slaughter any infantry in sight.
  • Don't forget the Eldar Storm Serpent in Epic; this thing doesn't carry infantry like a normal APC but has an in-built webway gate which can pump out as many reinforcements as you need from half the galaxy away.
  • The Dark Eldar Raider, which looks uncannily like a scaled-down version of Jabba the Hutt's sail barge in Star Wars.
  • The Empire's Capitol Imperialis and Leviathan. Both are giant tanks the size of, and capable of going toe-to-toe with, Titans. The former is 50m tall and sports a main gun large enough to fit several regular tanks, which also carries a few companies of infantry. The latter scales the guns down a bit but is a dedicated troop transport capable of carrying a decent-size army on its own.

Toys

• In BIONICLE, the Toa Terrain Crawler is a living example. It's only used once.
• The Earth Defense HQ set from LEGO Alien Conquest. It helps that the set is, by common consensus, exceedingly well-designed and as such is something of an Ensemble Dark Horse among LEGO's 2011 lineup.
  "You will respect the truck! You will keep the truck's weapons loaded and its tank fueled up! You will polish the truck's armor plating each and every day! When the truck saves you from alien brain-drainers — and it will — you will thank the truck sincerely! Now get on board and MOVE OUT!!!"

Video Games

• Most of the CESO tanks from Achron can carry infantry with them, which basically turns CESO armies into battlegroups of Awesome Personnel Carriers.
• Act of War features many Real Life carriers, including the Stryker and the BTR-80, all of them beautifully modeled.
• The APCs of Advance Wars got an upgrade in Days of Ruin; now they are Rigs, which in addition to transporting infantry and resupplying any adjacent units (including naval and even air units, as well as other rigs) can also build repair stations for naval units (on beaches) and air units (on plains).
• Aliens: Extermination lovingly recreates the APC from Aliens, with an entire level having the players evacuating in the APC while gunning down surrounding alien drones in a tunnel.
• In Alpha Protocol, you fight a Stryker at the end of the Saudi Arabia hub. Later on, if you chose SIE as your handler for "Intercept Surkov at US Embassy", you'll get to "Assault Brayko's Mansion" manning the turret of another.
• In ARMA and ARMA II, the successors to Operation Flashpoint, the latter's Bradley is replaced by variants of the LAV-25. The OPFOR continue to use BMP variants.
• Armored Warfare features a whole slew of IFVs, ranging from early model BMPs to cutting edge vehicles such as the T-15 Armata. They usually have good mobility, excellent stealth, and a combination of autocannon and anti-tank missiles that can output very high amounts of sustained damage. Their unique Troop Compartment module grants faster repair of damaged modules and higher base capture rate, though they can't actually deploy mechanized infantry until the American Dream update.
• Most Battlefield games have this in one form or another. BF2 gives us the LAV-25 and its Chinese and Russian counterparts, which are in fact so well-rounded in terms of firepower, armour and speed that most people forget they were initially meant to transport and fight alongside infantry. In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, APCs are referred to as "light tanks", but that name is misleading.^note However, BMP is based on a light tank chassis, and does count as one in international treaties in Real Life. With 3 machine guns and 1 autocannon, a fully crewed "light tank" can murder infantry in any direction, and it never runs out of ammo. With the alternative weapon upgrade, it can also utilize its wire-guided missile launcher to fight off enemy tanks. Special mention goes to the A3-Goliath IFV from Battlefield 2142, a truly massive vehicle armed with grenade launchers, autocannons, and machine guns, with armor that is strong enough to withstand strikes from orbit. Oh yeah, and its armor regenerates. It usually takes a lot of heavy firepower to put that beast down.
• Battlezone (1998) has a hovering APC for both the Americans and the Soviets. They are heavily armored but have no inherent weapons, instead relying on their ability to deploy half a dozen heavily armored and comparatively tiny soldiers that are difficult to hit. The ISDF in Battlezone II retain the APC, which instead of hovering close to the ground, flies a hundred meters in the air above the range of most defenses before landing in the middle of an enemy base to deploy even more heavily armored shock troopers armed with bazookas and grenades, who can wreak havoc in a densely built-up base.
• Borderlands gives us the Lancer in the DLC The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. It seats 4 players, all of whom have some kind of weapon they can use against enemies. It also has at least 50% more hitpoints than the next strongest vehicle in the game.
• Brothers in Arms has the Sdkfz 251 half-track used by Heer Infanterie units. Aside from serving as mobile machine-gun platforms, they're also used to transport German reinforcements into battle, or helping to tow artillery pieces into position.
• In Camp Defense from stereo7 Games, taking place in their Last Defense setting, you are fighting off zombies and raiders with a heavy-duty truck that has a multi-storied frame in its back. The frame carries various post-apocalypse heroes that can shoot or use special abilities. Additionally, modules may be added to the frame, ranging from a cauldron of coals to the turret of a tank and a four-barreled AA gun to a force-field generator.
• The Cops in Carmageddon don't fuck around. Their solution to stopping an Ax-Crazy speedster who's been mowing down innocent pedestrians: send a bunch of APCs known as Squad Cars to wreck him/her to death. These Squad Cars are fast, extremely resilient and hit hard. When they don't work, the Special Forces come in with the ultimate in road justice: the Suppressor. Bigger, faster and harder than the Squad Cars, this behemoth can wreck pretty much any other car in the game and can even outrace them. It appears near the end of the game, but if you waste it, you get it and the remainder of the game will be a cakewalk.
  • It returns in TDR 2000 and is notable for being That One Boss. It appears as the final target in the last mission, driven by the police commissioner who has the killswitch to the nuke he had armed. You have to wreck him before the timer runs out, and you don't have much time... and his Suppressor is nigh-invulnerable, only being weak on its underside, so you'll have to flip him on his side somehow. All this while you're being rammed around and grenaded by a bunch of lesser cop cars. Yeah. Unless you can find the Nuke power up somewhere near your starting position which can be used to wreck it in one shot, provided that you yourself stay clear from the explosion...
  • As a nod to the first game, in the last race immediately before the last mission, a Degraded Boss version of the Suppressor (though actually a brand new one fresh from the production lines) will be parked near the starting line, though its actually there to confront you when you make a full lap. Naturally, you might capture its attention should you go backwards when the race begins, along with the attention of two cop cars.
• Featuring throughout the Civilization series, the Mechanized Infantry represents the ultimate form of infantry unit in most entries. They are generally intended for defensive roles — e.g., city garrisons — and often modeled after real-world examples of this trope like the M2 Bradley.
• The Battle Fortress, IFV, Humvee and the many other forms of it in Command & Conquer. Some forms, like the Battle Fortress, can crush other vehicles!
  • One particularly hilarious example from Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is the Bullfrog, an otherwise-normal APC armed with an anti-air gun. Its only outstanding feature is its method of delivery: instead of unloading the troops, it fires them out of a cannon on its back. So we've got a scenario in which you can parachute armored war bears onto a group of infantry, and the bears have a stun ability and instant-kill attacks. The downside is that it's suicide to unload the troops in an area where the enemy has anti-air defenses.
  • Also from Red Alert 3 is the Sudden Transport, a hovering APC that can disguise itself as an enemy vehicle to sneak its troops past enemy lines. Completely unarmed, though.
  • The Allied Multigunner IFV, also from Red Alert 3, is billed as an IFV despite only carrying one soldier. However, its weapon changes to match that unit's specialty — i.e., loading a rocket trooper gives it (more) rocket pods, and loading a Cryo Legionnaire gives it an ice beam. It can even gain weapons from troops of other factions.
  • The Nod Subterranean APC in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun combines this with Drill Tank. Even more awesome still for being able to carry the Cyborg Commando, the ultimate Nod unit in the game, right into the center of an enemy base. Unfortunately, its Weaksauce Weakness is the inability to burrow through concrete, meaning the enemy can rather cheaply cover his entire base with concrete slabs, preventing the APC from surfacing.
  • The Reckoner from Kane's Wrath is a bit of an odd ball. It is completely unarmed, and infantry can't fire from within it until it deploys, at which point it becomes a permanent bunker.
  • Humvees in Command & Conquer: Generals can be equipped with drones for self-repair and scouting. Not only that, but it can also carry up to five infantry that can all fire out of the windows, essentially making the Humvee a mobile bunker. Additionally, Overlords are so damn large that you can build a Bunker on top of its turret (and the Chinese tank general has Emperor Overlords that can carry both a Bunker and a Propaganda Tower). The GLA has their Battle Bus, an alleged transport that can carry ten infantry and has double health. If destroyed once, it becomes a stationary bunker from which troops can fire out of until it is destroyed again.
  • Honourable mention to Command & Conquer: Red Alert's Phase Transport. It shows up in a single mission in the Aftermath expansion, and it can only carry one infantry unit... but on the other hand, the machine gun is replaced with high-powered missile launchers, and it cloaks.
  • Let's not forget the Behemoth from Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars, which combines APC with Heavy Artillery.
  • The MARV Tank, Eradicator Hexapod and the Redeemer Hero Units which the GDI, Scrin and Nod, respectively, can build in Kane's Wrath can carry four, three or two infantry units, respectively, to serve as support weapons. Unlike other cases, however, the infantry they carry cannot leave the vehicle.
• As also noted in the Real Life section, the British Kangaroo carrier in Company of Heroes. It's the chassis of a full battle tank, just with the turret removed and the interior filled with seating. It's not particularly well-armed (though infantry can fire their weapons out of the top of it), fast or even pretty, but boy, can the thing take a pounding, and they have the highest capacity of any troop carrier in the game — 15 men in 4 squads. Many British players prefer them over the unit they replace, the Cromwell medium tank, as they solve many of the faction's flaws, chief among which is a vulnerability to snipers and flamethrowers.
• Crysis: The enemy APC is essentially a Bradley clone, complete with chain gun and missiles.
• Dawn of War uses most of the major APCs from Warhammer 40,000, upgrading them to Clown Car status in the process. The Chimera holds 42 soldiers in some incarnations, though they still die like Guardsmen. Special note should be made to the Space Marines's Land Raider and Land Raider Redeemer as well as the Necron's Monolith (which act as a gate for Necron Flayed Ones) as these examples are essentially battle tanks but are also troop transports.
• In Emperor: Battle for Dune, the Atredies and Ordos use APCs. The Atredies one can use an Invisibility Cloak while not moving, and the Ordos one is a very nimble Hover Tank with a rocket turret for anti-vehicle defense and anti-aircraft defense.
• Empire at War: The Forces of Corruption expansion introduces structures and vehicles that can garrison units; naturally, each faction gets their own APC . The Rebellion gets the HTT-26 (capable of flying over the battlefield), the Empire gets the HAVt B5 Juggernaut (equipped with a point-defense system for destroying incoming missiles), and the Consortium gets the F9-TZ (equipped with a Cloaking Device). Garm Bel Iblis's Gargantuan tank takes it a step further, being a massive, heavily-armed and -shielded weapons platform that also has the ability to carry a few units of troops.
• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce has the Jaeger 2, the Base on Wheels for the SPICA mercenary group and, later, for the player characters as well. It has a comfortably large command center, space for research and medicine, and its plating makes it a powerful presence on the battlefield. It can even transport troops.
• The APC in Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel is one of the few vehicles that can carry your entire squad. While it has no weapons itself, your entire squad can shoot out.
• In the second main story arc of Fate/Grand Order, known as Cosmos in the Lostbelt, Chaldea has the Shadow Border. At first, they use it as a makeshift mobile base, but they continue using it as their main form of transportation after setting up a more permanent base within the Wandering Sea. It establishes its awesome credentials early on by first escaping from their original base (which, mind you, is in Antarctica), then by initiating a Zero Sail, a process that allows them to travel through Imaginary Numbers space. Later on, they upgrade to the Storm Border, but the Shadow Border is still used for deploying personnel on foot or for situations where the Storm Border is simply too large to function.
• The APC in which the player and his squad ride around in the second First Encounter Assault Recon game.
• The Armadillo and its technical version, the Junker, from Gears of War. Admittedly, driving it isn't quite so awesome.
• Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter has the Stryker and Bradley on the player's side, and the Mowag and Panhard on the enemy's side.
• Ground Control has an APC that can fire at ground or air targets and heal/repair other units, all while carrying a squad of soldiers in Powered Armor. The sequel's APCs are considerably less cool but do come with fun tools like flamethrowers and smoke screens. They also have a separate repair vehicle that can carry four soldiers.
• The "AC-HMV" Gun Trucks of Bit Monster's Gunner Z are basically customizable IFV that have a crane on a turret for mounting guns that range from a Browning .50 to the 30mm Gau Avenger, a lightning gun and a weapon that shoots razor-sharp discs the size of truck tires. However, given that it's too dangerous for your driver and you to exit out of the AC-HMV, your gun truck acts more like a tank.
• The Combine APC◊ from Half-Life 2 looks pretty cool. Its design features room for several fully equipped soldiers, a siren, bulletproof armour, a good speed, and the ability to be plugged in and provide external power for other applications when it's not in use. Its armaments include a mortar-esque laser-guided missile launcher, forward-mounted and fast-firing dummy missiles, and a pulse machine gun.
• Halo:
  • Halo Wars has the M312 Elephant, which also serves as a mobile infantry barracks. The M313 version has cameos in Halo 3 and ODST, but it isn't usable except on the multiplayer map "Sandtrap"; it's big enough to transport light vehicles in addition to people.
  • The Mammoth, introduced in Halo 4, is basically an upgraded and even bigger version of the Elephant that also has a giant MAC cannon.
  • Halo Infinite introduces the Razorback, a new vehicle that resembles an up-armoured Troop Transport Warthog and serves a similar role, though with the added benefit of a rear-mounted rack from which Support or certain Power Weapons can be stored onto, with two additional slots for fusion coils. The turret is removed and replaced with seating for four additional passengers. Especially if they are properly armed, having five allies with rocket launchers easily outstrips the firepower of a turret gunner and one passenger.
• Mass Effect:
  • The first Mass Effect has the player travel around between important points on planets in the Mako which can be dropped in from high atmosphere (kind of like a Drop Ship, but with less emphasis on the ship part and more on the drop) and has significant armaments to justify its own battle sequences (though you can always get out and try killing them all with your firearms if you feel so inclined, especially since riding the Mako instills an Experience Penalty) in the form of a powerful railgun that hits with the power of a tank's main gun and a mass accelerator machine gun. As with all weapons in the Mass Effect universe, these have effectively unlimited ammo. On top of that, it's very durable, complete with absurdly resilient shields and thick armor, letting it shrug off a dozen anti-tank rockets without even losing the shields.
  • DLC for Mass Effect 2 gives us the Hammerhead, which is part APC, part hover vehicle, and part ground-effect aircraft, now with a guided main weapon. There's also the UT-47A Kodiak Shuttle. Not only is it a heavily armored aircraft that can fly faster than a jet, hover, and carry twelve passengers, but it also has an FTL drive for space travel, Deflector Shields, anti-tank cannons on either side, and two side door-mounted autocannons.
  • As Mass Effect: Andromeda returns to the planetary exploration idea, it has the Nomad. While it may not have any guns, it is a durable and speedy thing, with a top cruising speed of 161 KPH (and handles far better than the Mako ever did).
• The M113s play an important role in several missions of Men of Valor, which is not surprising for a game set during the Vietnam War. You even get a chance to see the APC's troop compartment from inside while being transported to the battlefield.
• As many of the vehicles in Mercenaries and its sequel are just a case of A.K.A.-47, they still apply. Especially the Hind, which is basically going to be your air-evac vehicle of choice; it is basically the toughest chopper available and, like the real thing, is more than capable of clearing out its own LZ, being armed with an autocannon, rocket pods, four to eight anti-tank missiles and possibly even up to four anti-air missiles if you're lucky. The SK and AN Bradley-clones are also a pretty good ground alternative given their powerful autocannons and anti-tank missiles.
• The Stryker used by Drebin and the PMCs in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots; you also get to ride on top of Drebin's during the epic chase scene in chapter 2. It's even been upgraded to have the same octo-camoflage system that Snake has in his sneaking suit.
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption features the flying space version, the Space Pirate ATC (Armoured Tactical Carriers), and their upgraded counterpart, the Assault Skiff. Both will drop off Space Pirates and continue to provide aerial support via laser fire. They have a weakness in the front-facing heat vents, subverting the 'armoured' aspect.
• The "Transporter" enemy from Mini Robot Wars appears as a regular, mook-spawning APC... until it gets a helicopter upgrade in the second playthrough. Then it becomes a flying APC.
• The BTR, BMP, M2 Bradley and Humvee in the Modern Warfare series take their Real Life counterparts and thrust them into a fictional war with each other. The Seaknight is an airborne version equipped with a machine gun and a Mark-19 auto grenade launcher. Ditto for the helicopters that enemies fast-rope in from, which have mounted machine guns that can kill you almost instantly on Veteran.
• Being a mil-sim, Operation Flashpoint is loaded with these. The BMP-1 is ubiquitous throughout most of the campaigns, either as a friend or as a foe. Particularly nasty are the BMP-2 and the Bradley, as both mount powerful autocannons that can rip apart enemy squads and light vehicles from kilometers away.
• One of the villains in Perfect Dark Zero has a jet VTOL combination gunship/personnel transport.
• PlanetSide has several: the amphibious 5-seat Deliverers (which look like beefed-up futuristic Hummers) and their faction variants, with their own unique weapons. The Sunderer or "Bang Bus" is an absolutely massive bus covered in guns with the capability of carrying players in MAX armor and seating 11 users. The Sunder was later removed from the game and replaced with a uniquely armed variant for each faction, though all variants have a cattle catcher, an EMP blast ability, and ball turrets on the sides. PlanetSide 2 only has the Sunderer, but it functions much better as an APC due to far better handling, ability to run over smaller vehicles, a metric crapton of weapons, and an array of support abilities like deploying to turn into a spawn point and being able to phase through anti-vehicle barriers for a limited time.
• In Pokémon Snap you drive the "Zero-One", an all-terrain vehicle that can withstand going inside a volcano or outer space, withstand flamethrower attacks, fly and travel over water. With it, you must carry out the awesome task of... taking wildlife photos.
• Project Reality gives us the BMP-3, which packs more firepower than most tanks in the game, is amphibious, and still has room for a full infantry squad.
• Red Faction: Guerrilla has drivable IFVs, mounted with machine guns, railguns, and other futuristic weaponry, forming an integral part of the enemy EDF's presence on Mars. They are notable for the loving detail of their models and are undoubtedly cool.
• An update to Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad introduced the German Sd Kfz 251 Ausf. C and Lend-Lease Universal Carrier for the Wehrmacht and Red Army. Both can be driven by just about any regular soldier, can carry up to a half dozen men, and have usable machine-guns.
• The Bear APC from Saints Row 2. It features an independent driver-controlled MG turret, six wheels, heavy armour, seating for 4 or 5 passengers, and can keep up with most four-wheeled vehicles. You can even install a Nitro Boost in it!
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey's Lightning, Blue Jet, Elve, Gigantic and Red Sprite straddle the line between IFV, APC and Cool Ship, as they share attributes of all three: they are insanely well equipped with plasma armor, limited VTOL capabilities and attack turrets, but they are unsuited for entering each of the Schwartzwelt's sectors for direct combat due to terrain issues, though the Red Sprite does a wonderful job of directly engaging Horkos. Each carries a massive contingent of armed soldiers and support units, and have enough supplies and technology to count as independent bases by themselves.
• Soldiers of Anarchy has several options in this regard, all of them real-life models.
  • Humvees are the weakest (a single mine or RPG is enough; snipers can kill the crew without damaging the vehicle) and can only carry two passengers plus crew, yet they are fast and have variable weaponry (M60, TOW missile or grenade launcher). They can also carry combat gear, unlike the others.
  • BTR-60s have the second highest capacity (10 passengers plus crew) of all ground vehicles. They use a turret-mounted machine gun and smoke grenade launcher, perfect for hot drops.
  • The BMP-1 is a rather fearsome opponent, armed with a machine gun, a cannon and AT-2 anti-tank missiles. It can't carry as many passengers but it more than makes up for that with its significant firepower.
  • Finally, there is an M163 around mid-game that can carry as much people as the BMP even though it's technically a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun. An APC with a minigun, how cool is that?
• Spellcross: The Last Battle from Cauldron Interactive has an interesting aversion with its Transporter choices. Whether it's the Marder, M113 or Piranha, none of these vehicles can transport any troops. Instead they serve as a fast-moving, extra-light tanks or exotic weapon platforms. Of the conventional APC, the Piranha is the best as its something of a Master of All. Your scientists will eventually research new weapons such as lasers, rail guns and flamethrowers and then mount them on various APC chassis to create the new vehicles: Laser-Strahler, Elmag I and Elmag II as well as the M132. The reason why APCs are used instead of tanks is that the APCs can easily swap out the old space for housing soldiers for an extra power plant, tanks were simply too cramp and had nothing more to remove.
• A rather unconventional example as it's actually a sentient being, but Nydus Worms from StarCraft II work as the only ground-based transport in the game. They are burrowing transports that can unburrow anywhere in the map and can transport a huge amount of units through it. Even if they have a weakness in that their unburrowing is very noticeable is compensated come Legacy of the Void, in which they become invulnerable while unburrowing.
• Syphon Filter 2 has a highway tunnel where you run up against a pair of APCs with machine gun turrets, and you must kill the lights to advance.
• Terminator Dark Fate - Defiance: You have numerous options for transporting men in the field. The Founders, being The Remnant of the United States Army, take the M113 and the Stryker APC as well as the Bradley IFV. The Movement have the perhaps even cooler option of taking up-armoured and armed civilian rigs towing trailers. Honk honk, wireheads. Even their modified war vans can be useful in a pinch and they're very cheap too.
• Valkyria Chronicles II: Class G's vehicle can be configured as an APC, which only requires one command point to activate, while most tank chassis require at least two. The Utility APC frame has an exceptionally high capacity for equipment, allowing it to adapt to almost any situation. It can build bridges and ladders to bypass enemy fortifications, negate Geo Effects for nearby allies, break rocks to create paths, and more. While it is less durable than a tank and can't equip any of the anti-tank turrets, the flamethrower is very good for taking out bunkers or clusters of enemy soldiers (especially before you can upgrade your shocktroopers to commandos) and its carrying capability lets you stock a lancer or mauler to deal with any tanks it encounters. The tank/APC debate essentially boils down to "One CP light tank vs. Utility APC", with many preferring the APC because of the flexibility it provides. This functionality was carried over to and improved on in Valkyria Chronicles III.
• Vanquish's seventh level has you aided by an APC armed with a railgun that can take out Romanovs in one shot.
• Wargame: European Escalation is played on such large maps that infantry moving on foot would never be able to get to where they're needed, so every infantry squad comes with a transport vehicle. Most of them are listed under Real Life, below.
• APCs are units available for both NORAD and WOPR in WarGames Defcon 1, being used to transport drones, personnel, scientists and the like across enemy territories. One notable mission in Hong Kong has an objective where players must direct an amphibious APC across the harbour to retrieve a drone on an infiltration mission in order to scan the drone's memory banks.
• War Wind has the Incinerator used by the Marines. The vehicle has decent armour, can carry up to four units, and is armed with a double-mounted flamethrower. However, it is vulnerable to enemy units with Deconstructor ability, and can easily massacre your own troops (if the friendly fire option is activated in the options menu).
• In Xenonauts, the later troop transports (Shrike and especially Valkyrie) definitely count, but the good old Chinook is pretty awesome too in its own class.
• In Z an APC can be fitted with any kind of robots, including Toughs, which transforms the APC to a light, fast missile launcher, or with Pyros.

Webcomics

• Rank Amateur includes the HSD's all-terrain six-wheel Venturer vehicles — they're the size of dump trucks and can carry their own artillery banks.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent features something of a cross between an APC and a Winnebago, designed to spend days at a time in the Silent World with a reasonable degree of safety and comfort. However, it's quite a bit less awesome than some of the others in that garage, and a bit used to boot.
• The Whiteboard:
  • In a 2003 strip, Doc fits a regular M2A3 Bradley IFV with a hot tub, complete with girls and probably an entertainment system, as a gift for the Army after the Real Life capture of Saddam Hussein.
  • The 2010 Zombie Apocalypse story arc features an apparently up-armed version of the APC from Aliens, its firepower consisting in part of an ungodly amount of guided missiles as well as several machine gun turrets.

Western Animation

• Providence's assault vehicles in Generator Rex are built to withstand attacks from E.V.O.s, carry squads of soldiers, and have a machine gun and missile launcher fitted on each side.
• G.I. Joe has examples on both sides of the battle.
  • The Joes have the classic APC, the Monster Blaster APC, and the Rhino, which has a helicopter which docks in the middle.
  • Cobra has the Parasite and the B.A.T. APC (a repaint of the Monster Blaster, but it's a cool design).
• The police in The Legend of Korra have The Roaring '20s-style armored trucks◊ for carrying officers into dangerous situations.
• In Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, the Mighty Ducks travel on the ground in the Migrator, which has various weapons and features built in. In one episode, it's damaged, and they try using a new model — it doesn't end well.
• The Transformers: Ultra Magnus is a big bot who transforms into a car carrier truck that can transport a few of his Autobot comrades into battle.
• Transformers: Animated has Grandus and his repaint Dug Base, who turn into Cybertronian Personal Carriers. They're naturally on the big side in both size and girth.

Real Life

• The BMP series of vehicles radically altered the conventional wisdom of APC warfare from just a "Battlefield Taxi" to a vehicle that could actually defend itself against tanks and support the infantry. The BMP was so cool with its 73mm cannon, anti-tank missiles and 360º firing ports it was re-christened as the first Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle.
  • BMP-1 technically is a light tank (namely, PT-76 amphibious tank) with somewhat reduced armament and other non-essential stuff thrown out to free enough space for a squad of infantry. However it turned out to be less awesome in practice - the 73 mm gun was infamously slow and inaccurate.
  • The BMD series are their respective BMPs with even more stuff thrown out to allow them to be parachute-dropped at the cost of paper-thin armour. The Reds With Rockets were, and the Russians with Rusting Rockets are, the only military with fully mechanized paratroops.
  • The BMP-2 is very similar to the BMP-1, but trades the 73mm cannon for a much more useful a rapid firing 30mm with an improved turret, at the cost of being able to carry one less passenger.
  • The BMP-3 is the most heavily armed of the lot, retaining the 30mm and adding a 100mm gun/missile launcher. That's right: this MICV is more heavily armed than some tanks. Also while the BMP-1 and BMP-2 have nigh-identical armor,^note ~36-46 mm of RHA steel equivalent on the front, 17-26 mm RHA equivalent on the sides and rear. the BMP-3 got a notable upgrade in this department to make it resistant to 30 mm AP rounds from the front and close-range 12.7 mm (.50 caliber) AP rounds from the sides and rear. However, with the sheer amount of ammo inside, between the shells for both the 100 and the 30 and the missiles, it is a Glass Cannon that has a nasty tendency to explode to a pile of scrap when something big enough looks at it the wrong way.
  • The BTR series of APCs were more or less lame, being light, wheeled boxes, with thin 7-10 mm armor only viable against ball rifle ammunition and the smallest shell splinters, and armed with a 14.5mm machine gun and a 7.62mm machinegun - true to the APC standard of "battle taxi". The most recent variant, the BTR-90, fixes all that, having much heavier armour (12.7 mm AP resistance along the frontal arc), better speed, full NBC protection, and a BMP-2's 30mm automatic cannon in place of the 14.5mm. It has proven rather popular with crews.
• The American M2 Bradley and the British Warrior were developed to counter the BMP, what ensued became infantry carrying, tank busting, all around cool machines. The Bradley blew its contemporary, the BMP-2, out of the water in pretty much every regard - it had better missiles, much better armor, better optics, and its gun was effectively far more powerful despite the smaller caliber due to its advanced ammunition. Even the BMP-3 is arguably below the basic M2A2 much less all the upgraded versions that have come out since then.
  • In fact, in Desert Storm the Bradley IFV's accounted for more Iraqi vehicles destroyed than the M1 Abrams battle tanks they accompanied. They took greater losses though, but to be fair, most of the losses (17 of 20) were friendly-fire incidents.
  • The Yanks were pretty bad about this: something like 3/4 of all American vehicles lost during the war were destroyed by friendly fire.
    • That the Bradleys were mostly assigned to cavalry scout units accounts for the high attrition; recon troops have been notoriously susceptible to friendly fire since dirt was invented. Even friendly fire from their accompanying tanks. The fact that the vast majority of combat missions were flown by US aircraft is also a contributing factor, as was the fact that being hit from above or behind was about the only thing that could knock them out.
    • It has been stated that the Bradley is a jack of all trades but master of none, since it's a track-laying, 30 ton, gun-and missile-toting thing that makes anybody who looks at it think "TANK!", carries only half a squad of infantry, and doesn't carry enough gun to be considered a full tank. It even got its own movie mocking it. As the disgusted engineers put it, "It's a troop carrier that can't carry troops, a recon vehicle that's too conspicuous to do reconnaissance, a psuedo-tank with less armor than a snowblower, but carries enough ammo to take out half of DC."^note The Pentagon Wars movie misrepresents the development of the Bradley as a Master of None vehicle that was originally intended to be a Battle Taxi that was feature crept to it's current form, which is not particularly accurate as it was always intended to have a large autocannon in order to support troops rather than simply dropping them off and the complaints about low troop capacity and the like were a Necessary Drawback to keep everything at a reasonable size The Bradley's performance in actual combat so far has been excellent; at the battle of 73 Easting two troops of US Cavalry mounted mostly on Bradleys rolled up an entire Republican Guards armored division like a cheap rug while suffering almost no casualties, with each Bradley accounting for several Iraqi tanks and literally dozens of Iraqi BMPs.
  • The British Warrior has had a very understated career, just persistently being there in the background and doing the job modestly, reliably and stomping out 30mm RARDEN nightmares to anyone unfortunate enough to cross its path. It's soon to gain one heck of a popularity boost though, with the CT40 Turret upgrade happening soon giving it an auto-stabilised 40mm cannon and a new sensor package. Yup, the British make their upgrades very simple and true to the word of More Dakka. Unlike the Bradley, the Warrior lacks anti-tank missiles, the British thinking being that if you're using an APC to fight tanks you're doing it wrong.
  • Less well known are the British FV103 Spartan (basically a CVRT Light Tank without the Turret and with space for a Section) and FV432 Bulldog. Both of which have been quietly taxiing squaddies around battlefields for nearly fifty years now.
  • The British will soon be adding the Ajax to their list, the turreted version of which will have the same 40mm cannon as the Warrior.
• The U.S Marines were planning on upgrading their own Awesome Personnel Carrier with the amphibious Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), due to enter full service in 2015. Not only can it carry seventeen Marines, but also packs a 30mm autocannon, more powerful than the Bradley's 25mm gun, and has a whopping 2700 hp engine and amphibious capability, making it one of the most mobile armored fighting vehicles around. Compare this kind of power to most tanks, which have ~1500 hp, and other APCs, which have 1000 hp or less. Of course, it only uses its full power when traveling on water, and uses only 850 hp on land. It also essentially transforms into a boat mode, sealing up various panels and extending the front into a prow. Unfortunately, the program has since been cancelled due to the budget costing a projected 15 billion American dollars.
  • Their current AAV7 is more of a very high-capacity (25 troopers) APC. Its nature as a Military Mashup Machine is made quite obvious by its boat-shaped front.
• The Canadian LAV-III and all its derivatives, also having 8 wheels rather than tracks it - can move a lot faster then most other IFV's, and is amphibious.
  • The Aussie version, the ASLAV, is even more awesome by having something most military vehicles lack, air conditioning.
  • The American version would be the Stryker, which, like all American vehicles deployed in support of OIF, has at least nominal air conditioning. A variant trades troop capacity for a tank gun, becoming a Glass Cannon.
  • The LAV-25 is itself a derivative of the MOWAG Piranha I, while the Stryker is a derivative of the Piranha III, both produced by Switzerland.
• During World War II, the US fielded a simple vehicle known as the Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT). In essence, this was a landing craft with tracks on it, capable of hitting the beach and rolling inland from there. It was originally intended to haul cargo ashore without forcing troops to drag heavy crates up the beach, but it didn't take long for it to be equipped with ever increasing amounts of armor protection and firepower. The Marines loved it, but lacking much in the way of mechanics, they were unable to maintain them. Typiaclly a Marine unit would roll ashore with a complement of LVTs, using them to provide mobile cover and fire support until they would break down and be abandoned where they stopped, and hope to get a replacement later. The LVT(8) was essentially an amphibious tank: in addition to the two HMG positions it carried the turret of an M5 Stuart tank in a fully enclosed superstructure. it was still also capable of carrying troops or cargo.
• Recently, due to the battlefield saturation with IFVs and antitank weapons, a new class of APCs started to appear — namely, a heavy IFV: essentially a full-on main battle tank with all attendant protection, but carrying not a large caliber gun, but a common IFV kit — an autocannon or grenade launcher and a squad of infantry. Many are, in fact, conversions of an older MBTs too obsolete for their original role, but still too solid and functional to be worth scrapping.
  • Israeli Azcharit and Russian BTR-T are both conversions of the venerable, but sadly outdated T-55. On a similar theme, the Israeli Puma is one of a number of conversions of the Centurion MBT used by IDF Engineers. The most awesome of the Centurion conversions would be the Nagmachon, which instead of simply plating over the former turret location has a heavily armored mini-tower for machine guns, looking more than anything like a miniaturized version of a battleship's superstructure. This structure makes the Nagmachon an incredibly effective urban combat vehicle.
  • The Merkava ("Chariot") is often affectionately referred to as "heavy APC" as well, despite being a full-on MBT. It has the capacity to carry a squad. but only by ditching most of its main cannon's ammunition. Those big rear doors are intended for rapid reloading, not infantry, but in a pinch the Merkava can carry most anything. In some cases, a Merkava will even be used as a "tankbulance", discarding most of the ammo to evacuate wounded troops.
    • As of 2008, Israel started to produce an actual APC based on the Merkava chassis called Namer^note Hebrew for "leopard", but also an acronym of "Nagmash" (Hebrew for APC) and "Merkava"., making it a truly Awesome Personnel Carrier. It's easily the best-protected APC in the world. The original plan was a conversion of obsolete Merkava Mark I tanks, along the lines of the above-mentioned T-55 and Centurion conversions. But ultimately, only the prototypes were built in this manner and production models instead used newly-built hulls based on the current, even better-armored Merkava Mark IV design. While the basic Namer is armed only with a machine gun, an IFV version with a 30mm autocannon and anti-tank guided missiles has also been prototyped. Increased automation has allowed for the turret containing these weapons to be completely external instead of needing to pierce the hull, meaning that with unlike past IFVs there's no loss in troop-carrying capacity to add the firepower.
    • There's another variant, the Nemmerah ("leopardess") which can not only tow the Merkava, but also swap an extra power system with it, recharging it in under two hours.
    • As has been talked about with the Mi-24 "Hind", and it's limitations with carrying troops while laden with ordinance: Getting rid of ammunition to make room to load infantry into your pseudo IFV when under fire is a self-solving problem.
• The M113 has to rate pretty well. Despite being an ugly, under-armoured box-on-tracks, it has seen more roles, and been used my more countries than probably any other armoured vehicle. It also remains in use in the country of its production, despite being over 60 years old. It's also the third most numerous armoured vehicle of any time-period, being outdone only by the T-54/55 tank and the Bren Carrier (roughly 100K both).
• And lets not forget the granddaddy of them all, the British Mark IX from the late stages of World War I...
  • Unfortunately these proved to be (as with all the WW1 tanks) less than successful. The main problems being that WWI tanks struggled to go faster than a brisk walking pace and conditions inside the early tanks being so bad that even if the troops managed to remain conscious they disembarked in no condition to fight. Not to mention they had abysmal mechanical reliability. Rather more successful was the series of Kangaroos that appeared late in WW2.
  • The German Sdkfz 251 shows the difficulty in dividing APC from IFV. The basic model had a couple of machine guns but variants had flamethrowers, triple mounted 15mm HMGs, a light PaK gun and the turret from an armoured car.
  • The good old British Universal Carrier from WW2, also known as the Bren Carrier. It was, however, the most famous personal carrier, rather than the most awesome one.
    • Also the single most produced armoured vehicle in history, with over 100,000 made. Its not exactly fast, well-armoured, nor even particularly attractive, but it got the job done. It's a stellar example of Boring, but Practical.
    • More explaination of above: The Universal Carrier wasn't about fighting tanks. It was about ferrying infantry and their support weapons around. The machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank weapons of an infantry unit are mounted in a small tracked vehicle, where they are much more mobile and likely to be in a place to acutally help their assigned infantry. Much is made of the German machine guns, et al., but the standard British response was to call up the U Cs with the unit and use the mortar one of them was carrying to shell the enemy.
• In an unusual example, the Russian combat-transport helicopter Mi-24 Hind can carry a squad of eight men while being a full-power assault bird with gun turret and full array of air-to-air and air-to-surface guided and unguided missiles, literally intended to be the flying BMP. Apparently, the concept is successful enough to stay in frontline service from '71, as well as being adopted by countless countries, including basically the whole former Warsaw pact and India.
  • It should be noted, however, that it can't transport personnel while carrying a full armament. In fact, personnel transport is mostly seen as a distant secondary task to infantry support and strike missions.
    • It's still seen as useful enough (especially in extraction, medevac and other SAR missions) that Russian AAF recently ordered a batch of a newly-built Mi-35 (an upgraded and mostly export versions of Hind) in addition to the dedicated gunships like Mi-28 and Ka-50/52. In certain situations Hind's ability to clear up its own LZ and generally look for itself is invaluable.
    • Having too much ammo to perform a pickup in contact with the enemy is a self-solving problem.
    • Still the Russians in Afghanistan usually used Mi-8 Hip helicopters for transport and the Hinds only for for fire support. While still having an extra crew member in the troop bay, with a machine gun or two.
• The German Puma IFV is among the heaviest and best armored APCs out there, with a maximum weight of 43 tons, still maintaining a high power-to-weight ratio. Using four A-400M transport aircrafts, you could quickly transport three Pumas into the theatre - one of the planes would transport the additional armor (which can be flexibly mounted). The Puma's unmanned turret houses a 30 mm autocannon with airburst ammo, Spike anti-tank missiles with a range of 4,000 meters and a coaxial machine gun. Of course, air conditioning, full NBC protection a very smooth and low-profile hull and an active defense system capable of defeating modern ATGMs can also be found aboard it.
  • The West German Marder was the second MICV ever developed, and predated the Puma's design. It is still in service in many places.
  • Before the Puma the Marder 2 was conceived in the 1980s to replace the Marder 1 to accompany the Leopard 2 tank into battle. Unfortunately it was canceled in 1992 as it was too large, too heavy and too expensive for the post-Cold War era.
• Newer Russian models ofthe tank-based T-15 includes both the heavier armed^note The current version is armed with the ubiquitous 30-mm autocannon, though in the future a 57-mm or a telescoping 45-mm upgrades are projected IFV version, and the lighter armed APC variant (their armor being pretty much the same). The lighter "Kurganets-25" platform mounts pretty much the same turrets, but the IFV version is also better armored as well, while the wheeled "Boomerang" platform is primarily an APC, but also features the more heavily armed version, with some designers even proposing fitting it with the 125-mm turret from a "Sprut" light tank.
• In most cultures chariots were a predecessor to the Horse Archer. Among Celts and pre-classical age Greeks (according to possible interpretations of The Iliad) they were an Awesome Personnel Carrier. Making this Older Than Feudalism.
  • Also the War wagons used by the Hussite rebels in 15th century Bohemia.
• Honorary mention goes to the Schützenpanzer lang Hs. 30 also known as the Schützenpanzer 12-3, the fisrt German APC/IFV after the Wiederbewaffnung. At a time were other APC only sported an .50 machinegun or equivalent it was armed with a 20 mm autocannon that could, under the right circumstances, even threaten (certain) tanks of the era.
• Singapore employs several versions of the Bionix AFV that are intended to replace the SAF's ageing collection of M113s. Some of the variants developed include a bridge-layer and a mine-clearing variant.
• The Swedish CV90 IFV family is a well-regarded IFV that's been highly popular in Northern Europe due to its emphasis on reliability in even the harshest winter conditions. The Swedish Army's version (the CV9040) is armed with a 40 mm autocannon (at the time of its introduction the largest autocannon on any IFV), while export customers have all preferred the CV9030 or CV9035 (with 30 or 35 mm autocannons), accepting less destructive shells in exchange for larger ammunition capacity. Aside from the armament options, they're also divided into Mark I through IV, with the later versions having enhanced armor and electronics. The latest CV90 Mark IV has a new version of the 35 mm autocannon that can be easily converted by swapping the barrel into a 50 mm cannon. Another version offered is the turretless "CV90 Armadillo", which rather than using the removal of the turret to increase troop capacity, instead becomes a "heavy APC" with armor comparable to a tank. Like the Israeli Namer, an IFV version of the Armadillo has been proposed via an unmanned external turret but has yet to be tested as of 2022.

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