Shorland armoured car

The Shorland is an armoured patrol car designed for the Royal Ulster Constabulary by Frederick Butler and built by Short Brothers and Harland of Belfast on the chassis of the Series IIA Land Rover. The first design meeting took place in November 1961, the third and final prototype was completed in 1964 and the first police Shorlands were delivered in 1966; they were reallocated to the Ulster Defence Regiment in 1970. It is a long wheelbase Land Rover with a turret similar in appearance to that of a Mk 2 Ferret scout car and upgraded suspension to carry the extra weight of armour. Marks 1 to 4 followed, the Mk 4 from 1980 with a 3.5 litre Rover V8 petrol engine, and the Series 5 on the Defender 110 chassis, with a fully enclosed welded body, grew into an armoured personnel carrier. Short Brothers sold the complete design to British Aerospace Australia in 1996, and the car was operated by many countries. In August 1969 police Shorlands fired their turret machine guns in Belfast, a deployment the later Scarman Tribunal criticised.