scout car The term "scout car" first entered widespread use in the 1930s as an official
United States Army designation for any wheeled armored vehicle developed specifically for reconnaissance. The US Army abandoned the scout car concept after the war because the vehicles' armor tempted crews to emulate tank tactics. American scout car crews often directly engaged hostile positions rather than relying on their vehicles' low profile and stealth to reconnoiter them effectively. This resulted in heavy losses and interfered with a reconnaissance unit's ability to observe the battlefield. One solution proposed was to further reduce the armor on the lightly protected scout cars, which would compel crews to resist the temptation of using them as combat vehicles. The scout car's envisaged role in British doctrine was to probe forward and report on enemy dispositions before conducting a hasty withdrawal. Scout cars were gradually superseded by more heavily armed vehicles for light reconnaissance, such as the
FV721 Fox armored car. Some nations followed the US lead in abandoning the scout car concept in favor of unarmored vehicles; for example, the
Danish Army concurred with that trend because it found the jeep and an open-topped model of the
Mercedes-Benz G-Class more useful for allowing scouts to observe enemy movements without being detected. Armored vehicles were evaluated negatively because their hulls reduced situational awareness, and increased the temptation for the crew to remain mounted or engage in combat with the enemy, contrary to Danish reconnaissance doctrine. During the early 1940s,
Red Army doctrine did not recognize a unique niche for the scout car, and the Soviets were likelier to favor heavier, six-wheeled vehicles such as the
BA-20 for reconnaissance. However, the weight, high profile and poor mobility of these early Soviet armored cars limited their usefulness in the reconnaissance role. The scout cars were complemented in Soviet reconnaissance battalions by specialized variants of the
BMP-1 or
BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles, which were able to reconnoiter much more aggressively and engage hostile armor as needed. ==Examples==