Kunduz or AZMİM (short for tr, Amfibik Zırhlı Muharebe İstihkam İş Makinesi), is a Turkish tracked amphibious

combat engineering A combat engineer (also called pioneer or sapper) is a type of soldier who performs military engineering tasks in support of land forces combat operations. Combat engineers perform a variety of military engineering, tunnel and mine warfare task ...

History

The Kunduz was developed and produced in less than four-years work for the

Turkish Armed Forces The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF; tr, Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri, TSK) are the military forces of the Republic of Turkey. Turkish Armed Forces consist of the General Staff, the Land Forces, the Naval Forces and the Air Forces. The current Chi ...

(TSK) by the Turkish company

FNSS Defence Systems FNSS Savunma Sistemleri A.Ş. ( en, FNSS Defence Systems A.Ş.) is a Turkish defense manufacturer founded in 1988. It is owned 51% by Nurol Holding of Turkey and 49% by British–American firm BAE Systems Inc., and operates facilities located i ...

. The prototype was delivered to the TSK on January 11, 2013 in

Ankara Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, maki ...

. AZMİM will be operated to move earth, clear terrain obstacles, cut steep slopes and stabilize stream banks for easy river crossing of combat vehicles during

Turkish Army The Turkish Land Forces ( tr, Türk Kara Kuvvetleri), or Turkish Army (Turkish: ), is the main branch of the Turkish Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. The army was formed on November 8, 1920, after the collapse of the ...

amphibious warfare Amphibious warfare is a type of offensive military operation that today uses naval ships to project ground and air power onto a hostile or potentially hostile shore at a designated landing beach. Through history the operations were conducte ...

. The contract to develop the armoured amphibious bulldozer was signed on March 10, 2009 between the

Ministry of National Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...

and the FNSS. The project, which began to develop on June 15, 2009, foresees the production of twelve units until the end of 2013. The first was delivered on January 11, 2013.

Specifications

AZMİM has two crew, one operator and one attendant. It is capable of shoveling, smoothing, hauling and excavating. Tests showed that it is resistant to

land mine A land mine is an explosive device concealed under or on the ground and designed to destroy or disable enemy targets, ranging from combatants to vehicles and tanks, as they pass over or near it. Such a device is typically detonated automati ...

s and

armour-piercing shot and shell Armour-piercing ammunition (AP) is a type of projectile designed to penetrate either body armour or vehicle armour. From the 1860s to 1950s, a major application of armour-piercing projectiles was to defeat the thick armour carried on many wars ...

. AZMİM is equipped with daylight camera system,

night vision device A night-vision device (NVD), also known as a night optical/observation device (NOD), night-vision goggle (NVG), is an optoelectronic device that allows visualization of images in low levels of light, improving the user's night vision. The dev ...

, multi-purpose

LED display A LED display is a flat panel display that uses an array of light-emitting diodes as pixels for a video display. Their brightness allows them to be used outdoors where they are visible in the sun for store signs and billboards. In recent ...

and air conditioner. The tracked vehicle can accompany other military combat vehicles without the need of a carrier thanks to its max. speed of . Two installed

pump-jet A pump-jet, hydrojet, or water jet is a marine system that produces a jet of water for propulsion. The mechanical arrangement may be a ducted propeller (axial-flow pump), a centrifugal pump, or a mixed flow pump which is a combination of both ...

s enable the amphibious bulldozer to conduct a 360 degrees turning movement in rip current waters.

Operators

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References

Bulldozers Amphibious military vehicles Military engineering vehicles Tracked armoured fighting vehicles Armoured fighting vehicles of Turkey Post–Cold War military equipment of Turkey Military vehicles of Turkey

Kunduz , native_name_lang = prs , other_name = , settlement_type = City , image_skyline = Kunduz River valley.jpg , imagesize = 300 , image_alt = , image_caption = , image_ ...

Military vehicles introduced in the 2010s {{Turkey-mil-stub