page_title: Panhard AML
section_title: Lebanon
hierarchical_section_title: Panhard AML / Service history / Middle East / Lebanon
caption_attribution_description: English: Cropped version of a previous Commons image. Panhard AML-90 armoured car. Cropped for an article on specific product depicted. Limited contextual relevance to original work.
context_page_description: The Panhard AML is a fast, long-ranged, and relatively cheap armoured car with excellent reconnaissance capability. Designed on a small, lightly armoured 4×4 chassis, it weighs an estimated 5.5 tonnes—much lighter than a tank—and is therefore more suited to rapid airborne deployments. Since 1959 AMLs have been marketed on up to five continents; several variants remained in continuous production for half a century. These have been operated by fifty-four national governments and other entities worldwide, seeing regular combat.
  The AML-245 was once regarded as one of the most heavily armed scout vehicles in service, fitted with a low velocity DEFA D921 90 mm rifled cannon firing conventional high explosive and high explosive anti-tank shells, or a 60 mm breech loading mortar with 53 rounds and dual 7.5mm MAS AA-52 NF-1 machine guns with 3,800 rounds, all mounted coaxially in the turret. An AML is capable of destroying targets at 1,500 meters with its D921 main gun. In this configuration it is considered a match for second-line and older main battle tanks.
  AMLs have appeared most prominently in Angola, Iraq, and Chad, as well as in the Lebanese Civil War between 1975 and 1990.
context_section_description: At least 74 AML-90s were delivered to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) between 1970 and 1975, and saw considerable action in the Lebanese Civil War. As their crews often left them unguarded outside army compounds, several may have been stolen by LAF deserters on their way to join regional militias. Others vanished during the disintegration of individual battalions, and by 1981 Lebanon's fleet had dwindled to 52. The surviving AML squadrons remained plagued by chronic shortages of personnel; some crews even fought in their turrets without a trained commander and depended on inexperienced spotters outside the vehicles to guide their fire. This resulted in phenomenal inaccuracy.
  Following the Battle of the Hotels, Lebanese Front troops in the Port District of Beirut brought their Panhards into action for the first time in the civil war, engaging Charioteer tanks crewed by Amal and Lebanese Arab Army (LAA) militants. Having lost nearly all their heavy armour and tanks to the militias, the predominantly Christian remnants of the Lebanese Army appropriated three AML-90s and nine obsolete T17 Staghounds to stave off repeated assaults by LAA forces from the hotel district. Due to the armoured cars' heightened vulnerability to RPG-7s, their crews began using debris as makeshift barricades. Muslim fighters failed in attempting to destroy the AMLs with RPGs, as well as B-10 and M40 recoilless rifles, since the projectiles lacked a clear trajectory in the rubble. The AML-90s' immense firepower at close quarters soon resulted in great structural damage to portside Beirut; a number of fortified buildings were wrecked by 90 mm HE shells, and those struck by multiple HEAT volleys demolished on their foundations. With truck-mounted ZU-23-2s covering their advance, the AMLs advanced on Allenby Street, flattening all resistance, and took the waterfront. Although both the LAA and the leftist Lebanese National Movement hastily brought up Charioteers and M41 Walker Bulldog tanks, so much wreckage was blocking the streets they could not manoeuvre. It was impossible to shoot accurately through the debris, and tanks could only manage speculative fire to discourage the AMLs.
  In 1983, LAF tanks with AML-90s in support were sent to eliminate Amal militants then threatening elements of Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF) at the Lebanese University. Following the Siege of Beirut, the LAF again mobilised its AMLs to occupy positions vacated by withdrawing Israeli troops. An undisclosed number were upgraded to AML-90 Lynx standard, including laser rangefinders, and continued to see service as late as 2014 against Syrian militants.
caption: AML-90 of the Lebanese Army in Beirut, 1982.
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