The 'Cheap' Brazilian APC That Made Iran And Iraq Both Pay To Fight Each Other

The EE-11 Urutu. Brazil built it. Twenty nations bought it. Five wars consumed it. And the company that made it went bankrupt before the fighting stopped. Built by Engesa, a Brazilian engineering firm that started with eight employees repairing trucks, the Urutu was a six-wheeled amphibious armored personnel carrier named after a venomous South American pit viper. It entered production in 1974 and proved itself one of the most reliable wheeled carriers of the Cold War era. Engesa built 1,719 of them before the company collapsed into bankruptcy in 1993, leaving its vehicles to fight on without support, spare parts, or a manufacturer to call. It served both sides of the Iran-Iraq War simultaneously. It fought in the Chadian desert. Iraqi crews drove it into Kuwait. American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne captured one during Operation Desert Storm. That vehicle sits at Fort Campbell, Kentucky today. Libyan militias pulled rusting hulls from storage in 2011 and bolted rocket launchers to the roof. Kurdish Peshmerga drove it against ISIS. The same machine. Three continents. Five wars. One bankrupt maker. This is the story of the EE-11 Urutu.