Op GRANBY MAOT One Ten

A Mobile Air Operations Team is the RAF's presence at an army headquarters — the officers and signallers who coordinate helicopter and transport support for the formation they are attached to — and a MAOT goes where the headquarters goes, which in January 1991 meant the Saudi desert. This One Ten hard top was photographed with 4th Armoured Brigade's forward headquarters during Operation GRANBY, the British contribution to the Gulf War, in the weeks before the ground offensive.

The vehicle is a standard military One Ten hard top of the mid-1980s, the coil-sprung Land Rover that preceded the Defender name and the Wolf, and like the rest of the British pre-Wolf fleet it ran the naturally aspirated 2.5-litre diesel. The Granby fit is what makes it: a sand and grey camouflage over the original green, the spare wheel carried on the bonnet, the radio aerials of a signals-heavy role and stores strapped to the roof. Quantities of MAOT vehicles deployed are not published.