Military APV Airport Runner

History

Airport anti-hijack car that gave the discontinued S51 body a second life: armoured glass panels let into the hull and the turret for all-round vision, a sniper's rifle mount in the turret front, and a brilliant white finish deliberately broken by a black patch around the rifle aperture so a watching hijacker cannot see the weapon being laid on him.

The conversion is about vision and the sniper. Armoured glass panels were let into the body to give the crew all-round observation, which a conventional Radford, with its narrow visors and vision blocks, cannot offer; a negotiator or an incident commander watching an aircraft or a terminal needs to see, not merely to be protected. The turret received armoured glass panels of its own and retained the mount in its front face for a sniper's rifle, the same fitting used on the earlier anti-hijack Shorlands. The result is a vehicle that can sit on an apron in plain view while an armed marksman inside keeps a covered aim. The paint scheme is the S54's cleverest detail and the easiest way to identify one. The car is finished in brilliant white, the standard non-threatening livery for airport policing, but the area of the turret around the sniper's rifle aperture is painted black. Against the glare of the white body the dark patch swallows the outline of the rifle, so an observer cannot tell whether or where the weapon is being lined up — a low-technology answer to a problem that later vehicles solve with one-way glass. Documentation of S54 customers is thin. The Netherlands operated white armoured Shorlands on airport-security duty at Amsterdam Schiphol: a white Rijkspolitie armoured Radford of the pre-Series 5 generation was photographed there during the security clampdown of January 1986, and a Series 5-bodied white Rijkspolitie car with blue beacons, a glazed cupola and a dark front aperture was photographed on the apron in May 1991 — a configuration and livery that match the published S54 description closely, although neither photograph is captioned with the S54 designation. The hobby reference Tank-AFV lists roughly fifty Shorlands of all marks for the Netherlands and around three hundred Series 5 vehicles in total, but these are aggregated unofficial figures rather than manufacturer or Jane's data, and no S54-specific contract, delivery total or production date has been found. This record is therefore left as a draft.