When people talk about Spanish military armor, the reference almost always goes to Santa Bárbara Sistemas. But before that brand there was Pegaso. The BMR and the VEC were born from the same factory that built trucks—and the legendary Pegaso Z-102s. These two vehicles have been for more than four decades the backbone of Spain’s mechanized infantry and light cavalry.
ENASA, the National Truck Company, had been selling Pegaso trucks to the Army for years when, at the end of the sixties, Spain evaluated the Dutch YP-408 by DAF as a potential wheeled armored vehicle. The result did not convince, but made the need clear and served as a warning to industry peers. Being a national factory was no longer a decisive argument.
The Army’s Longest-Serving Armored Vehicles
In 1972 a mixed commission between the Ministry of the Army and ENASA was formed to design an indigenous vehicle, capable of serving as the base for an entire family of variants. The prototype, initially dubbed VERCAA and later BMR-600, was tested for four years in locations such as Sierra Nevada or the Almería desert, and with amphibious trials at the Buendía reservoir. In 1979 serial production began in Valladolid.
The BMR-600 (Medium Wheel Armoured) was an amphibious aluminum 6×6, with a Pegaso six-cylinder diesel engine delivering 306 hp, capable of carrying eight to eleven soldiers. From the outset its vocation was modularity, with command variants, mortar carrier, ambulance or electronic warfare variants that eventually surpassed fifteen configurations on the same chassis.
From that family, at the beginning of the eighties the BMR-625 VEC, Cavalry Reconnaissance Vehicle, emerged. It shares mechanics with the BMR but completely changes its role and its hull, with the driver’s seat at the front left, a central two-seat turret and two recon positions beside the engine. While the BMR transports and protects, the VEC scouts, explores and fights in support of the Cavalry.
The first units mounted a Hispano-Suiza H90 turret with a 90 mm D-921A gun, inherited from the French Panhard AML autocannons, although the bulk of the fleet favored a 25 mm Bushmaster M-242 autocannon with a coaxial 7.62 mm machine gun.
The real test by fire arrived with international missions. The BMR fought with Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War of 1991, but for Spain the turning point was Bosnia-Herzegovina, the first major deployment of the Army outside its borders since the Transition to democracy.
BMR and VEC formed the spine of the Spanish contingents in the Balkans during the nineties, and repeated their role in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, escorting convoys and carrying out reconnaissance in low- and medium-intensity conflicts.
That prolonged exposure to asymmetric scenarios revealed their limits. The aluminum hull, designed for light weapons and shrapnel, proved insufficient against improvisational explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan.
From 2004 the Army undertook a modernization of the BMR, already as the M1 version: the Pegaso engine was replaced with a lighter Scania, the hull was reinforced with steel plates, and belly protection against mines was improved.
The VEC followed a parallel process from 1994, with reinforced armor able to withstand 14.5 mm hits and a lower thermal signature. The upgrades extended its service life, but did not solve the fundamental problem; they were seventies designs facing threats unknown at that time.
The withdrawal process is now a reality, though slow. The program intended to replace them, the 8×8 Dragon VCR, was launched in 2007 and has suffered delays that have forced the Army to continue investing in the veteran fleet, with spare-parts and transmission contracts worth several millions of euros.
By the end of 2025 about 40 Dragon units had been delivered, with the aim of reaching around a hundred in 2026, under a Tess Defence consortium contract that foresees replacing both the transport BMR and the VEC in its cavalry reconnaissance role.
Until that replacement is completed, the last BMRs and VECs will keep rolling out, increasingly resembling museum pieces in active service rather than frontline vehicles.
Images | SRA Marvence D. Braswell (U.S. Air Force), Davric
