Rooikat

The Rooikat is a South African eight-wheeled armoured reconnaissance vehicle, whose Afrikaans name means caracal or red cat, built around a stabilised 76 mm high velocity gun for anti-tank and fire support work. It was designed to replace the Eland-90 armoured car and to improve on the interim Ratel-90, after the 1984 fighting against Angolan tank formations showed that those vehicles were outranged and could not fire on the move. Prototypes built in 1982 with German technical help led to the Cheetah Mk2, which the South African Army accepted and which was renamed Rooikat. Sandock-Austral built the first examples from September 1987, mass production began around mid-1990, and later work passed to Land Systems OMC. Variants include the 105 mm Rooikat 105, the ZA-35 anti-aircraft version and several technology demonstrators.