90 km/h beats armour: how a 1976 carrier escapes Russian drones

90 km/h beats armour: how a 1976 carrier escapes Russian drones In 1976 the French army took delivery of a 13-ton wheeled troop carrier called the VAB. Its floor was shaped into a V so a mine blast would spread outward instead of driving up through the crew compartment, and that single line on a specification sheet was never meant to matter much. Fifty years later it did. This film follows the VAB from Beirut, Chad and the 1991 Gulf war to the Uzbin valley ambush of 18 August 2008, where 12 VAB escorted a patrol into fire from 3 sides and 10 French soldiers were killed. It follows the Scorpion programme that condemned the whole generation, the 2,257 VAB still in French service in 2021, and the announcement of 27 June 2022 that sent vehicles already marked for scrapping to Ukraine. On the Kherson axis those vehicles carried assault infantry, ammunition and wounded men. Their armour stopped fragments and 7.62 mm rounds and nothing heavier. Against quadcopters dropping charges from above, what kept crews alive was a top speed near 90 km/h and a suspension built for broken ground. Oryx counted at least 42 VAB destroyed, damaged or captured, and the deliveries widened anyway. In late January 2025 Arquus handed Ukraine 6 vehicles that had never served in any French unit: the Mark 3, on 6 driven wheels, level 4 protection, a countermeasure against tandem warheads, range down to about 890 km. By 31 December 2023 the French army had already accepted 575 of the new carriers meant to replace the type. Thirteen months later the old line was running again, for an army other than the one that built it. Photographs and footage: archive.org, publicly available material. 0:00 Kherson 2022 and a V-shaped floor 5:05 Beirut to Uzbin: 10 dead 9:57 Scorpion retires 2,257, Kyiv gets them 14:48 90 km/h against drones, 42 losses 20:16 Arquus reopens the line, 575 Griffon