The record
Greater Manchester Police is one of the few British mainland forces to have operated purpose-armoured Land Rovers. A small batch of Defender 110s registered on 2010 '10' plates — BV10 RYM, BV10 RYP and BV10 SDZ are the registrations that have been photographed — was taken into service and based at Manchester Airport, the busiest UK airport outside London and a standing counter-terrorism commitment for the force. Vehicle documentation site UK Emergency Vehicles describes them simply as "heavily armoured and minimally marked"; photographs of BV10 RYP identify it as an Armoured Tactical Firearms Vehicle carrying the callsign XG52, and BV10 SDZ is likewise captioned as a Tactical Firearms Unit vehicle.
The conversion is unusually thorough for a mainland police Land Rover. The standard Defender body is replaced from the bulkhead back by a fabricated armoured pod with an armoured roof, small square vision ports rather than side windows, armoured door skins and a heavy front bar; the windscreen is armoured glass behind a hinged screen cover, and there is a full-length roof platform with grab hoops for officers working from the roof. Unlike the Northern Ireland Tangi or Pangolin, which wear force markings, these vehicles are finished overall in a flat dark blue-grey with the pattern picked out only in a self-coloured chequer, so they read as anonymous at a distance — hence the description as minimally marked. Registration on a 2010 plate makes them 2.4-litre Puma-engined Defenders.
Catalogue notes describe the vehicle as an armoured public-order vehicle; the published photographic evidence instead ties it to armed policing and airport protection, and both roles are plausible for a vehicle of this specification. The armouring contractor, the exact number built and the vehicles' current disposal are not established by any source found — Greater Manchester Police has not published a fleet breakdown for them, and this record should be treated as documented by enthusiast photography rather than by the force itself.
