title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: By the end of World War II, most modern armies had vehicles to carry infantry, artillery and anti-aircraft weaponry. Most modern AFVs are superficially similar in design to their World War II counterparts, but with significantly better armour, weapons, engines, electronics, and suspension. The increase in the capacity of transport aircraft makes possible and practicable the transport of AFVs by air. Many armies are replacing some or all of their traditional heavy vehicles with lighter airmobile versions, often with wheels instead of tracks.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The level of armour protection between AFVs varies greatly – a main battle tank will normally be designed to take hits from other tank guns and anti-tank missiles, whilst light reconnaissance vehicles are often only armoured "just in case". Whilst heavier armour provides better protection, it makes vehicles less mobile (for a given engine power), limits its air-transportability, increases cost, uses more fuel and may limit the places it can go – for example, many bridges may be unable to support the weight of a main battle tank. A trend toward composite armour is taking the place of steel – composites are stronger for a given weight, allowing the tank to be lighter for the same protection as steel armour, or better protected for the same weight. Armour is being supplemented with active protection systems on a number of vehicles, allowing the AFV to protect itself from incoming projectiles.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The level of protection also usually varies considerably throughout the individual vehicle too, depending on the role of the vehicle and the likely direction of attack. For example, a main battle tank will usually have the heaviest armour on the hull front and the turret, lighter armour on the sides of the hull and the thinnest armour on the top and bottom of the tank. Other vehicles – such as the MRAP family – may be primarily armoured against the threat from IEDs and so will have heavy, sloped armour on the bottom of the hull.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Weaponry varies by a very wide degree between AFVs – lighter vehicles for infantry carrying, reconnaissance or specialist roles may have only a autocannon or machine gun (or no armament at all), whereas heavy self-propelled artillery will carry large guns, mortars or rocket launchers. These weapons may be mounted on a pintle, affixed directly to the vehicle or placed in a turret or cupola.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The greater the recoil of the weapon on an AFV, the larger the turret ring needs to be. A larger turret ring necessitates a larger vehicle. To avoid listing to the side, turrets on amphibious vehicles are usually located at the centre of the vehicle.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Grenade launchers provide a versatile launch platform for a plethora of munitions including, smoke, phosphorus, tear gas, illumination, anti-personnel, infrared and radar-jamming rounds.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Turret stabilization is an important capability because it enables firing on the move and prevents crew fatigue.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Modern AFVs have primarily used either petrol (gasoline) or diesel piston engines. More recently, gas turbines have been used. Most early AFVs used petrol engines, as they offer a good power-to-weight ratio. However, they fell out of favour during World War II due to the flammability of the fuel.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Most current AFVs are powered by a diesel engine; modern technology, including the use of turbo-charging, helps to overcome the lower power-to-weight ratio of diesel engines compared to petrol.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Gas turbine (turboshaft) engines offer a very high power-to-weight ratio and were starting to find favour in the late 20th century – however, they offer very poor fuel consumption and as such some armies are switching from gas turbines back to diesel engines (i.e. the Russian T-80 used a gas turbine engine, whereas the later T-90 does not). The US M1 Abrams is a notable example of a gas turbine powered tank.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The tank is an all terrain AFV incorporating artillery which is designed to fill almost all battlefield roles and to engage enemy forces by the use of direct fire in the frontal assault role. Though several configurations have been tried, particularly in the early experimental "golden days" of tank development, a standard, mature design configuration has since emerged to a generally accepted pattern. This features a main tank gun or artillery gun, mounted in a fully rotating turret atop a tracked automotive hull, with various additional secondary weapon systems throughout.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Philosophically, the tank is, by its very nature, an offensive weapon. Being a protective encasement with at least one gun position, it is essentially a pillbox or small fortress (though these are static fortifications of a purely defensive nature) that can move toward the enemy – hence its offensive utility. Psychologically, the tank is a force multiplier that has a positive morale effect on the infantry it accompanies. It also instills fear in the opposing force who can often hear and even feel their arrival.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Over time, tanks tended to be designed with heavier armour and weapons, increasing the weight of all tanks, so these classifications are relative to the average for the nation's tanks for any given period. An older tank design might be reclassified over time, such as a tank being first deployed as a medium tank, but in later years relegated to light tank roles.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Tanks were also classified by roles that were independent of size, such as cavalry tank, cruiser tank, fast tank, infantry tank, "assault" tank, or "breakthrough" tank. Military theorists initially tended to assign tanks to traditional military infantry, cavalry, and artillery roles, but later developed more specialized roles unique to tanks.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: In modern use, the heavy tank has fallen out of favour, being supplanted by more heavily armed and armoured descendant of the medium tanks – the universal main battle tank. The light tank has, in many armies, lost favour to cheaper, faster, lighter armoured cars; however, light tanks (or similar vehicles with other names) are still in service with a number of forces as reconnaissance vehicles, most notably the Russian Marines with the PT-76, the British Army with the Scimitar, and the Chinese Army with the Type 63.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Modern main battle tanks or "universal tanks" incorporate recent advances in automotive, artillery, armour, and electronic technology to combine the best characteristics of the historic medium and heavy tanks into a single, all around type. They are also the most expensive to mass-produce. A main battle tank is distinguished by its high level of firepower, mobility and armour protection relative to other vehicles of its era. It can cross comparatively rough terrain at high speeds, but its heavy-dependency on fuel, maintenance, and ammunition makes it logistically demanding. It has the heaviest armour of any AFVs on the battlefield, and carries a powerful precision-guided munition weapon systems that may be able to engage a wide variety of both ground targets and air targets. Despite significant advances in anti-tank warfare, it still remains the most versatile and fearsome land-based weapon-systems of the 21st-century, valued for its shock action and high survivability.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A tankette is a tracked armed and armoured vehicle resembling a small "ultra-light tank" or "super-light tank" roughly the size of a car, mainly intended for light infantry support or scouting. They were one or two-man vehicles armed with a machine gun. Colloquially it may also simply mean a "small tank".


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Tankettes were designed and built by several nations between the 1920s and 1940s following the British Carden Loyd tankette which was a successful implementation of "one man tank" ideas from Giffard Le Quesne Martel. They were very popular with smaller countries. Some saw some combat (with limited success) in World War II. However, the vulnerability of their light armour eventually caused the concept to be abandoned.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: However, the German Army uses a modern design of air-transportable armoured weapons carriers, the Wiesel AWC, which resembles the concept of a tankette.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The term "super-heavy tank" has been used to describe armoured fighting vehicles of extreme size, generally over 75 tonnes. Programs have been initiated on several occasions with the aim of creating an invincible siegeworks/breakthrough vehicle for penetrating enemy formations and fortifications without fear of being destroyed in combat. Examples were designed in World War I and World War II (such as the Panzer VIII Maus), along with a few in the Cold War. However, few working prototypes were built and there are no clear evidence any of these vehicles saw combat, as their immense size would have made most designs impractical.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A missile tank is a tank fulfilling the role of a main battle tank, but using only anti-tank surface-to-surface missiles for main armament. Several nations have experimented with prototypes, notably the Soviet Union during the tenure of Nikita Khrushchev (projects Object 167, Object 137Ml, Object 155Ml, Object 287, Object 775),


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A flame tank is an otherwise-standard tank equipped with a flamethrower, most commonly used to supplement combined arms attacks against fortifications, confined spaces, or other obstacles. The type only reached significant use in the Second World War, during which the United States, Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom (including members of the British Commonwealth) all produced flamethrower-equipped tanks. Usually, the flame projector replaced one of the tank's machineguns, however, some flame projectors replaced the tank's main gun. Fuel for the flame weapon was generally carried inside the tank, although a few designs mounted the fuel externally, such as the armoured trailer used on the Churchill Crocodile.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The idea for this tank was developed during World War I by British and French. The infantry tank was designed to work in concert with infantry in the assault, moving mostly at a walking pace, and carrying heavy armour to survive defensive fire. Its main purpose was to suppress enemy fire, crush obstacles such as barbed-wire entanglements, and protect the infantry on their advance into and through enemy lines by giving mobile overwatch and cover. The French Renault FT was the first iteration of this concept.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The British and French retained the concept between the wars and into the Second World War era. Because infantry tanks did not need to be fast, they could carry heavy armour. One of the best-known infantry tanks was the Matilda II of World War II. Other examples include the French R-35, the British Valentine, and the British Churchill.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A cruiser tank, or cavalry tank, was designed to move fast and exploit penetrations of the enemy front. The idea originated in "Plan 1919", a British plan to break the trench deadlock of World War I in part via the use of high-speed tanks. The first cruiser tank was the British Whippet.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Between the wars, this concept was implemented in the "fast tanks" pioneered by J. Walter Christie. These led to the Soviet BT tank series and the British cruiser tank series.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: During World War II, British cruiser tanks were designed to complement infantry tanks, exploiting gains made by the latter to attack and disrupt the enemy rear areas. In order to give them the required speed, cruiser designs sacrificed armour and armament compared to the infantry tanks. Pure British cruisers were generally replaced by more capable medium tanks such as the US Sherman and, to a lesser extent, the Cromwell by 1943.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The Soviet fast tank ("bistrokhodniy tank", or BT tank) classification also came out of the infantry/cavalry concept of armoured warfare and formed the basis for the British cruisers after 1936. The T-34 was a development of this line of tanks as well, though their armament, armour, and all-round capability places them firmly in the medium tank category.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The armoured car is a wheeled, often lightly armoured, vehicle adapted as a fighting machine. Its earliest form consisted of a motorised ironside chassis fitted with firing ports. By World War I, this had evolved into a mobile fortress equipped with command equipment, searchlights, and machine guns for self-defence. It was soon proposed that the requirements for the armament and layout of armoured cars be somewhat similar to those on naval craft, resulting in turreted vehicles. The first example carried a single revolving cupola with a Vickers gun; modern armoured cars may boast heavier armament – ranging from twin machine guns to large calibre cannon.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Some multi-axled wheeled fighting vehicles can be quite heavy, and superior to older or smaller tanks in terms of armour and armament. Others are often used in military marches and processions, or for the escorting of important figures. Under peacetime conditions, they form an essential part of most standing armies. Armoured car units can move without the assistance of transporters and cover great distances with fewer logistical problems than tracked vehicles.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: During World War II, armoured cars were used for reconnaissance alongside scout cars. Their guns were suitable for some defence if they encountered enemy armoured fighting vehicles, but they were not intended to engage enemy tanks. Armoured cars have since been used in the offensive role against tanks with varying degrees of success, most notably during the South African Border War, Toyota War, the Invasion of Kuwait, and other lower-intensity conflicts.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An "aerosani" (, literally 'aerosled') is a type of propeller-driven snowmobile, running on skis, used for communications, mail deliveries, medical aid, emergency recovery and border patrolling in northern Russia, as well as for recreation. "Aerosanis" were used by the Soviet Red Army during the Winter War and World War II.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The first "aerosanis" may have been built by young Igor Sikorsky in 1909–10, before he built multi-engine airplanes and helicopters. They were very light plywood vehicles on skis, propelled by old airplane engines and propellers.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A "scout car" is a military armoured reconnaissance vehicle, capable of off-road mobility and often carrying mounted weapons such as machine guns for offensive capabilities and crew protection. They often only carry an operational crew aboard, which differentiates them from wheeled armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and infantry mobility vehicles (IMVs), but early scout cars, such as the open-topped US M3 scout car could carry a crew of seven. The term is often used synonymously with the more general term armoured car, which also includes armoured civilian vehicles. They are also differentiated by being designed and built for purpose, as opposed to improvised "technicals" which might serve in the same role.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A "reconnaissance vehicle", also known as a "scout vehicle", is a military vehicle used for forward reconnaissance. Both tracked and wheeled reconnaissance vehicles are in service. In some nations, light tanks such as the M551 Sheridan and AMX-13 are also used by scout platoons. Reconnaissance vehicles are usually designed with a low profile or small size and are lightly armoured, relying on speed and cover to escape detection. Their armament ranges from a medium machine gun to an autocannon. Modern examples are often fitted with ATGMs and a wide range of sensors.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Some armoured personnel carriers and infantry mobility vehicle, such as the M113, TPz Fuchs, and Cadillac Gage Commando double in the reconnaissance role.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An internal security vehicle (ISV), also known as an armoured security vehicle (ASV), is a combat vehicle used for suppressing civilian unrest. Security vehicles are typically armed with a turreted heavy machine gun and auxiliary medium machine gun. The vehicle is designed to minimize firepower dead space and the vehicles weapons can be depressed to a maximum of 12°. Non-lethal water cannons and tear gas cannons can provide suppressive fire in lieu of unnecessary deadly fire.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The vehicle must be protected against weapons typical of riots. Protection from improvised incendiary devices is achieved though coverage of the air intake and exhaust ports as well as a strong locking mechanism on the fuel opening. Turret and door locks prevent access to the interior of the vehicle by rioters. Vision blocks, ballistic glass and window shutters and outside surveillance cameras allow protected observation from within the vehicle. Wheeled 4x4 and 6x6 configurations are typical of security vehicles. Tracked security vehicles are often cumbersome and leave negative political connotations for being perceived as an imperial invading force.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An improvised fighting vehicle is a combat vehicle resulting from modifications to a civilian or military non-combat vehicle in order to give it a fighting capability. Such modifications usually consist of the grafting of armour plating and weapon systems. Various militaries have procured such vehicles, ever since the introduction of the first automobiles into military service.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: During the early days, the absence of a doctrine for the military use of automobiles or of an industry dedicated to producing them, lead to much improvisation in the creation of early armoured cars, and other such vehicles. Later, despite the advent of arms industries in many countries, several armies still resorted to using ad hoc contraptions, often in response to unexpected military situations, or as a result of the development of new tactics for which no available vehicle was suitable. The construction of improvised fighting vehicles may also reflect a lack of means for the force that uses them. This is especially true in underdeveloped countries and even in developing countries, where various armies and guerrilla forces have used them, as they are more affordable than military-grade combat vehicles.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Modern examples include military gun truck used by units of regular armies or other official government armed forces, based on a conventional military cargo truck, that is able to carry a large weight of weapons and armour. They have mainly been used by regular armies to escort military convoys in regions subject to ambush by guerrilla forces. "Narco tanks", used by Mexican drug cartels in the Mexican Drug War, are built from such trucks, which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Troop-carrying AFVs are divided into three main types – armoured personnel carriers (APCs), infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and infantry mobility vehicles (IMV). The main difference between the three is their intended role – the APC is designed purely to transport troops and is armed for self-defence only – whereas the IFV is designed to provide close-quarters and anti-armour fire support to the infantry it carries. IMV is a wheeled armoured personnel carrier serving as a military patrol, reconnaissance or security vehicle.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Armoured personnel carriers (APCs) are intended to carry infantry quickly and relatively safely to the point where they are deployed. In the Battle of Amiens, 8 August 1918, the British Mk V* tank (a lengthened Mark V) carried a small number of machine gunners as an experiment, but the men were debilitated by the conditions inside the vehicle. Later that year the first purpose-built APC, the British Mk IX tank (Mark Nine), appeared. In 1944, the Canadian general Guy Simonds ordered the conversion of redundant armoured vehicles to carry troops (generically named "Kangaroos"). This proved highly successful, even without training, and the concept was widely used in the 21st Army Group. Post-war, specialised designs were built, such as the Soviet BTR-60 and US M113.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An "infantry fighting vehicle" ("IFV"), also known as a "mechanized infantry combat vehicle" ("MICV"), is a type of armoured fighting vehicle used to carry infantry into battle and provide direct fire support. The first example of an IFV was the West German Schützenpanzer Lang HS.30 which served in the Bundeswehr from 1958 until the early 1980s.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: IFVs are similar to armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and infantry carrier vehicles (ICVs), designed to transport a section or squad of infantry (generally between five and ten men) and their equipment. They are differentiated from APCswhich are purely "troop-transport" vehicles armed only for self-defencebecause they are designed to give direct fire support to the dismounted infantry and so usually have significantly enhanced armament. IFVs also often have improved armour and some have firing ports (allowing the infantry to fire personal weapons while mounted).


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: They are typically armed with an autocannon of 20 to 57 mm calibre, 7.62mm machine guns, anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) and/or surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). IFVs are usually tracked, but some wheeled vehicles fall into this category. IFVs are generally less heavily armed and armoured than main battle tanks. They sometimes carry anti-tank missiles to protect and support infantry against armoured threats, such as the NATO TOW missile and Soviet Bastion, which offer a significant threat to tanks. Specially equipped IFVs have taken on some of the roles of light tanks; they are used by reconnaissance organizations, and light IFVs are used by airborne units which must be able to fight without the heavy firepower of tanks.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An "infantry mobility vehicle" ("IMV") or "protected patrol vehicle" ("PPV") is a wheeled armoured personnel carrier (APC) serving as a military patrol, reconnaissance or security vehicle. Examples include the ATF Dingo, AMZ Dzik, AMZ Tur, Mungo ESK, and Bushmaster IMV. This term also applies to the vehicles currently being fielded as part of the MRAP program.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: IMVs were developed in response to the threats of modern counterinsurgency warfare, with an emphasis on Ambush Protection and Mine-Resistance. Similar vehicles existed long before the term IMV was coined, such as the French VAB and South African Buffel. The term is coming more into use to differentiate light 4x4 wheeled APCs from the traditional 8x8 wheeled APCs. It is a neologism for what might have been classified in the past as an armoured scout car, such as the BRDM, but the IMV is distinguished by having a requirement to carry dismountable infantry. The up-armoured M1114 Humvee variant can be seen as an adaptation of the unarmoured Humvee to serve in the IMV role.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Many modern military vehicles, ranging from light wheeled command and reconnaissance, through armoured personnel carriers and tanks, are manufactured with amphibious capabilities. Contemporary wheeled armoured amphibians include the French Véhicule de l'Avant Blindé and Véhicule Blindé Léger. The latter is a small, lightly armoured 4×4 all-terrain vehicle that is fully amphibious and can swim at 5.4 km/h. The VAB ("Véhicule de l'Avant Blindé" – 'armoured vanguard vehicle') is a fully amphibious armoured personnel carrier powered in the water by two water jets, that entered service in 1976 and produced in numerous configurations, ranging from basic personnel carrier, anti-tank missile platform.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: During the Cold War the Soviet bloc states developed a number of amphibious APCs, fighting vehicles and tanks, both wheeled and tracked. Most of the vehicles the Soviets designed were amphibious, or could ford deep water. Wheeled examples are the BRDM-1 and BRDM-2 4x4 armoured scout cars, as well as the BTR-60, BTR-70, BTR-80 and BTR-94 8x8 armoured personnel carriers and the BTR-90 infantry fighting vehicle.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The United States started developing a long line of Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT) designs from ca. 1940. The US Marine Corps currently uses the AAV7-A1 Assault Amphibious Vehicle, which was to be succeeded by the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which was capable of planing on water and can achieve water speeds of 37–46 km/h. The EFV project has been cancelled.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A significant number of tracked armoured vehicles that are primarily intended for land-use, have some amphibious capability, tactically useful inland, reducing dependence on bridges. They use their tracks, sometimes with added propeller or water jets for propulsion. As long as the banks have a shallow enough slopes to enter or leave the water they can cross rivers and water obstacles.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Some heavy tanks can operate amphibiously with a fabric skirt to add buoyancy. The Sherman DD tank used in the Normandy landings had this setup. When in water the waterproof float screen was raised and propellers deployed. Some modern vehicles use a similar skirt.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Lightweight armoured fighting vehicles designed or modified to be carried by aircraft and delivered by air drop, helicopter lift, glider, or air landing with infantry to provide heavier tactical firepower and mobility. The air-equivalent to amphibious vehicles, the main advantage of airborne forces is their ability to be deployed into combat zones without land passage, as long as the airspace is accessible. Airborne vehicles are limited only by the tonnage capacity of their transport aircraft. Airborne vehicles typically lack the armour and supplies necessary for prolonged combat, so they are utilized for establishing an airhead to bring in larger forces before carrying out other combat objectives. One modern example is the German Wiesel AWC. The USA also created the M22 Locust as a way to aid paratroopers/ being paradropped in as it was very lightly armored and very small.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Modern engineering AFV's utilize chassis based on main battle tank platforms: these vehicles are as well armoured and protected as tanks, designed to keep up with tanks, breach obstacles to help tanks get to wherever it needs to be, perform utility functions necessary to expedite mission objectives of tanks, and to conduct other earth-moving and engineering work on the battlefield. These vehicles go by different names depending upon the country of use or manufacture. In the United States the term "combat engineer vehicle (CEV)" is used, in the United Kingdom the term "Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE)" is used, while in Canada and other commonwealth nations the term "armoured engineer vehicle (AEV)" is used. There is no set template for what such a vehicle will look like, yet likely features include a large dozer blade or mine ploughs, a large calibre demolition cannon, augers, winches, excavator arms and cranes, or lifting booms.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Although the term "armoured engineer vehicle" is used specifically to describe these multi-purpose tank-based engineering vehicles, that term is also used more generically in British and Commonwealth militaries to describe all heavy tank-based engineering vehicles used in the support of mechanized forces. Thus, "armoured engineer vehicle" used generically would refer to AEV, AVLB, Assault Breachers, and so on. Good examples of this type of vehicle include the UK Trojan AVRE, the Russian IMR, and the US M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A breaching vehicle is especially designed to clear pathways for troops and other vehicles through minefields and along roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices. These vehicles are equipped with mechanical or other means for the breaching of man made obstacles. Common types of breaching vehicles include mechanical flails, mine plough vehicles, and mine roller vehicles.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The armoured bulldozer is a basic tool of combat engineering. These combat engineering vehicles combine the earth moving capabilities of the bulldozer with armour which protects the vehicle and its operator in or near combat. Most are civilian bulldozers modified by addition of vehicle armour/military equipment, but some are tanks stripped of armament and fitted with a dozer blade. Some tanks have bulldozer blades while retaining their armament, but this does not make them armoured bulldozers as such, because combat remains the primary role – earth moving is a secondary task.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An "armoured recovery vehicle" ("ARV") is a type of vehicle recovery armoured fighting vehicle used to repair battle- or mine-damaged as well as broken-down armoured vehicles during combat, or to tow them out of the danger zone for more extensive repairs. To this end the term "armoured repair and recovery vehicle" ("ARRV") is also used.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: ARVs are normally built on the chassis of a main battle tank (MBT), but some are also constructed on the basis of other armoured fighting vehicles, mostly armoured personnel carriers (APCs). ARVs are usually built on the basis of a vehicle in the same class as they are supposed to recover; a tank-based ARV is used to recover tanks, while an APC-based one recovers APCs, but does not have the power to tow a much heavier tank.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An "armoured vehicle-launched bridge" ("AVLB") is a combat support vehicle, sometimes regarded as a subtype of combat engineering vehicle, designed to assist militaries in rapidly deploying tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles across rivers. The AVLB is usually a tracked vehicle converted from a tank chassis to carry a folding metal bridge instead of weapons. The AVLB's job is to allow armoured or infantry units to cross water, when a river too deep for vehicles to wade through is reached, and no bridge is conveniently located (or sufficiently sturdy, a substantial concern when moving 60-ton tanks).


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The bridge layer unfolds and launches its cargo, providing a ready-made bridge across the obstacle in only minutes. Once the span has been put in place, the AVLB vehicle detaches from the bridge, and moves aside to allow traffic to pass. Once all of the vehicles have crossed, it crosses the bridge itself and reattaches to the bridge on the other side. It then retracts the span ready to move off again. A similar procedure can be employed to allow crossings of small chasms or similar obstructions. AVLBs can carry bridges of or greater in length. By using a tank chassis, the bridge layer is able to cover the same terrain as main battle tanks, and the provision of armour allows them to operate even in the face of enemy fire. However, this is not a universal attribute: some exceptionally sturdy 6x6 or 8x8 truck chassis have lent themselves to bridge-layer applications.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: "Combat engineer section carriers" are used to transport sappers (combat engineers) and can be fitted with bulldozers' blades and other mine-breaching devices. They are often used as APCs because of their carrying ability and heavy protection. They are usually armed with machine guns and grenade launchers and usually tracked to provide enough tractive force to push blades and rakes. Some examples are the U.S. M113 APC, IDF Puma, Nagmachon, Husky, and U.S. M1132 ESV (a Stryker variant).


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An anti-aircraft vehicle, also known as a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG) or self-propelled air defense system (SPAD), is a mobile vehicle with a dedicated anti-aircraft capability.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Specific weapon systems used include machine guns, anti-aircraft autocannons, larger anti-air guns, or surface-to-air-missiles, and some mount both guns and longer-ranged missiles (e.g. the Pantsir-S1). Platforms used include both trucks and heavier combat vehicles such as armored personnel carriers and tanks, which add protection from aircraft, artillery, and small arms fire for front line deployment.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Anti-aircraft guns are usually mounted in a quickly-traversing turret with a high rate of elevation, for tracking fast-moving aircraft. They are often in dual or quadruple mounts, allowing a high rate of fire. In addition, most anti-aircraft guns can be used in a direct-fire role against surface targets to great effect. Today, missiles (generally mounted on similar turrets) have largely supplanted anti-aircraft guns.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An artillery tractor, also referred to as a gun tractor, is a specialized heavy-duty form of tractor unit used to tow artillery pieces of varying weights and calibres. It may be wheeled, tracked, or half-tracked.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: There are two main types of artillery tractors, depending on the type of traction: wheeled and tracked.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Tracked tractors run on continuous track; in some cases are built on a modified tank chassis with the superstructure replaced with a compartment for the gun crew or ammunition.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: In addition, half-track tractors were used in the interwar period and in World War II, especially by the Wehrmacht. This type of tractor was mostly discontinued postwar.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Self-propelled artillery vehicles give mobility to artillery. Within the term are covered self-propelled guns (or howitzers) and rocket artillery. They are highly mobile, usually based on tracked chassis carrying either a large howitzer or other field gun or alternatively a mortar or some form of rocket or missile launcher. They are usually used for long-range indirect bombardment support on the battlefield.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: In the past, self-propelled artillery has included direct-fire "Gun Motor Carriage" vehicles, such as assault guns and tank destroyers (also known as self-propelled anti-tank guns). These have been heavily armoured vehicles, the former providing danger-close fire-support for infantry and the latter acting as specialized anti-tank vehicles.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Modern self-propelled artillery vehicles may superficially resemble tanks, but they are generally lightly armoured, too lightly to survive in direct-fire combat. However, they protect their crews against shrapnel and small arms and are therefore usually included as armoured fighting vehicles. Many are equipped with machine guns for defence against enemy infantry.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The key advantage of self-propelled over towed artillery is that it can be brought into action much faster. Before towed artillery can be used, it has to stop, unlimber and the guns set up. To move position, the guns must be limbered up again and brought – usually towed – to the new location. By comparison, self-propelled artillery in combination with modern communications, can stop at a chosen location and begin firing almost immediately, then quickly move on to a new position. This ability is very useful in a mobile conflict and particularly on the advance.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Conversely, towed artillery was and remains cheaper to build and maintain. It is also lighter and can be taken to places that self-propelled guns cannot reach, so despite the advantages of the self-propelled artillery, towed guns remain in the arsenals of many modern armies.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An assault gun is a gun or howitzer mounted on a motor vehicle or armoured chassis, designed for use in the direct fire role in support of infantry when attacking other infantry or fortified positions.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Historically, the custom-built fully armoured assault guns usually mounted the gun or howitzer in a fully enclosed casemate on a tank chassis. The use of a casemate instead of a gun turret limited these weapons' field of fire, but allowed a larger gun to be fitted relative to the chassis, more armour to be fitted for the same weight, and provided a cheaper construction. In most cases, these turretless vehicles also presented a lower profile as a target for the enemy.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A Siege mortar is a form of self-propelled gun that holds a siege mortar. The only siege mortar ever built was the Karl-Gerät. It could be argued that these could be classified as a Mortar carrier .


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A mortar carrier is a self-propelled artillery vehicle carrying a mortar as its primary weapon. Mortar carriers cannot be fired while on the move and some must be dismounted to fire. In U.S. Army doctrine, mortar carriers provide close and immediate indirect fire support for maneuver units while allowing for rapid displacement and quick reaction to the tactical situation. The ability to relocate not only allows fire support to be provided where it is needed faster, but also allows these units to avoid counter-battery fire. Mortar carriers have traditionally avoided direct contact with the enemy. Many units report never using secondary weapons in combat.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Prior to the Iraq War, American 120 mm mortar platoons reorganized from six M1064 mortar carriers and two M577 fire direction centres (FDC) to four M1064 and one FDC. The urban environment of Iraq made it difficult to utilize mortars. New technologies such as mortar ballistic computers and communication equipment and are being integrated. Modern era combat is becoming more reliant on direct fire support from mortar carrier machine guns.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: A multiple rocket launcher is a type of unguided rocket artillery system. Like other rocket artillery, multiple rocket launchers are less accurate and have a much lower (sustained) rate of fire than batteries of traditional artillery guns. However, they have the capability of simultaneously dropping many hundreds of kilograms of explosive, with devastating effect.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The Korean Hwacha is an example of an early weapon system with a resemblance to the modern-day multiple rocket launcher. The first self-propelled multiple rocket launchers – and arguably the most famous – were the Soviet BM-13 Katyushas, first used during World War II and exported to Soviet allies afterwards. They were simple systems in which a rack of launch rails was mounted on the back of a truck. This set the template for modern multiple rocket launchers. The first modern multiple rocket launcher was the German "15 cm Nebelwerfer 41" of the 1930s, a small towed artillery piece. Only later in World War II did the British deploy similar weapons in the form of the Land Mattress.The Americans mounted tubular launchers atop M4 Sherman tanks to create the T34 Calliope rocket launching tank, only used in small numbers, as their closest equivalent to the Katyusha.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Missile vehicles are trucks or tractor units designed to carry rockets or missiles. The missile vehicle may be a self-propelled unit or the missile holder/launcher may be on a trailer towed by a prime mover. They are used in the military forces of a number of countries in the world. Long missiles are commonly transported parallel to the ground on these vehicles, but elevated into an inclined or vertical position for launching.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Tank destroyers and tank hunters are armed with an anti-tank gun or anti tank missile launcher, and are designed specifically to engage enemy armoured vehicles. Many have been based on a tracked tank chassis, while others are wheeled. Since World War II, main battle tanks have largely replaced gun-armed tank destroyers; although lightly armoured anti tank guided missile (ATGM) carriers are commonly used for supplementary long-range anti-tank engagements.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: In post-Cold War conflict, the resurgence of expeditionary warfare has seen the emergence of gun-armed wheeled vehicles, sometimes called "protected gun systems", which may bear a superficial resemblance to tank destroyers, but are employed as direct fire support units typically providing support in low intensity operations such as Iraq and Afghanistan. These have the advantage of easier deployment, as only the largest air transports can carry a main battle tank, and their smaller size makes them more effective in urban combat.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Many forces' IFVs carry anti-tank missiles in every infantry platoon, and attack helicopters have also added anti-tank capability to the modern battlefield. But there are still dedicated anti-tank vehicles with very heavy long-range missiles, or intended for airborne use. There have also been dedicated anti-tank vehicles built on ordinary armoured personnel carrier or armoured car chassis. Examples include the U.S. M901 ITV (Improved TOW Vehicle) and the Norwegian NM142, both on an M113 chassis, several Soviet ATGM launchers based on the BRDM scout car, the British FV438 Swingfire and FV102 Striker and the German "Raketenjagdpanzer" series built on the chassis of the HS 30 and Mardar IFVs.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: An "armoured train" is a railway train protected with armour. They are usually equipped with rail cars armed with artillery, autocannons, machine guns, tank turrets and anti-aircraft guns. They were mostly used during the late 19th to mid-20th century, when they offered an innovative way to quickly move large amounts of firepower. Their use was discontinued in most countries when road vehicles became much more powerful and offered more flexibility, and because armoured trains were too vulnerable to track sabotage and attacks from the air. However, the Russian Federation used improvised armoured trains in the Second Chechen War in the late 1990s and 2000s. Armoured trains carrying ballistic missiles have also been used.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: The rail cars on an armoured train were designed for many tasks, such as carrying artillery and machine guns, infantry units, anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. During World War II, the Germans would sometimes put a "Fremdgerät" (captured AFVs such as the French Somua S-35 or Czech PzKpfw 38(t)), or obsolescent Panzer II light tanks on a flatbed rail car, which could quickly be offloaded by means of a ramp and used away from the railway line to chase down enemy partisans.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Different types of armour were used to protect armoured trains from attack. In addition to various metal plates, concrete and sandbags were used in some cases on armoured trains.


title: Armoured fighting vehicle

text: Armoured trains were sometimes escorted by a kind of rail-tank called a draisine. One such example was the Italian 'Littorina' armoured trolley, which had a cab in the front and rear, each with a control set so it could be driven down the tracks in either direction. Littorina mounted two dual 7.92mm MG13 machine gun turrets from Panzer I light tanks.


title: Mohit Raina

text: Mohit Raina (born 14 August 1982) is an Indian actor who appears in Hindi films and television. He started his acting career with a science fiction show "Antariksh" (2004) and later went on to play a role in "Don Muthu Swami" (2008). He is best known for the lead role of the Hindu god Shiva in the television series "Devon Ke Dev – Mahadev" and "Mahabharat", prior to which he had acted in television soap operas including "Chehra" (2009) and "Ganga Kii Dheej" (2010).


title: Mohit Raina

text: Mohit Raina was born into a Kashmiri Brahmin family on 14 August 1982 to P.L. Raina and Sushma Kumara and raised in Jammu. He was educated at Kendriya Vidyalaya School, Jammu and earned a bachelor of Commerce degree from University of Jammu. He moved to Mumbai to begin a career in modelling. He hoped that modelling would provide him with a route into acting work and lost from his teenage weight of so that he could participate in the 2005 Grasim Mister India modelling contest. He was placed among the top five contestants in that competition.


title: Mohit Raina

text: Mohit's acting career began in 2004 with a science fiction TV show called "Antariksh". In 2008, he starred as Jai Kishan in the comedy film "Don Muthu Swami", which was not a success at the box office and caused him to return to television work. In 2009 he appeared in the "Chehra" TV series, a suspense drama revolving around a disabled girl. Mohit played her husband Garv, a young business tycoon. He was also part of "Bandini".


title: Mohit Raina

text: In 2011, he was cast as the lead in Nikhil Sinha's "Devon Ke Dev – Mahadev". The series focused on the god Shiva and portrays his journey from a hermit to a householder through his marriage to Sati and later to Parvati. Mohit worked on improving his physique for the role, and started learning the Indian classical dance form Kathak, which is integral part of his role as Shiva. "The Times of India" said the role created fans due to his "fab abs, groovy smile and acting chops" He played over 30 different characters in the series, which ran for three years, ending in December 2014, by which time Mohit had become a celebrity.


title: Mohit Raina

text: Mohit has played the adult emperor Ashoka, in the historical serial "Chakravartin Ashoka Samrat" on Colors TV. The series started broadcasting from 2 May 2016.


title: Mohit Raina

text: After Ashoka, Mohit also played the lead role as Havildar Ishar Singh in "21 Sarfarosh - Saragarhi 1897" which is based on the Battle of Saragarhi.


title: Mohit Raina

text: Mohit Raina is playing the character of Dr. Kaushik Oberoi the series "Mumbai Diaries 26/11". The show is created by Nikkhil Advani and produced by Emmay Entertainment. It also stars Konkana Sen Sharma, Tina Desai, and Shreya Dhanwanthary.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: Nakata began his professional career in 1995 and won the Asian Football Confederation Player of the Year award in 1997 and 1998, the Scudetto with Roma in 2001, played for Japan in three World Cup tournaments (1998, 2002 and 2006) and competed in the Olympics twice (1996 and 2000). In 2005, he was made the Knight of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity, one of Italy's highest honors, for improving the country's image overseas. Nakata has also been involved in fashion, regularly attending runway shows and wearing designer clothing.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: Nakata announced his retirement at age 29 on 3 July 2006, after a ten-year career that included seven seasons in the Italian Serie A and a season in the English Premier League. In March 2004, Pelé named Nakata in his FIFA 100, a list of the top living footballers at the time. Nakata was the only Japanese, and one of only two Asian footballers to be named on the list. In 2018, Nakata was added as an icon to the Ultimate Team on the "FIFA" video game "FIFA 18".


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: Nakata began his professional career at age 18 in 1995, with J1 League side Bellmare Hiratsuka (now Shonan Bellmare). He played many matches as offensive midfielder from first season and the club won the champions in 1995 Asian Cup Winners' Cup first Asian title in club history. At the final against Al-Talaba, he scored a winning goal in the 81st minute. From 1996, he became a regular player and he was selected J.League Best XI in 1997. After the 1998 World Cup in France, Nakata was signed by Perugia in Italy's Serie A for 4 million U.S. dollars, becoming the second Japanese player ever to appear in the Italian top league after Kazuyoshi Miura had done it for Genoa four years earlier. In his first season in Italy, Nakata scored 10 goals, his single-season highest total.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: In January 2000, after one and a half seasons at Perugia, Nakata moved to Roma for 42 billion lire, helping the team win the scudetto. The highlight of Nakata's career at Roma came on 6 May 2001 in the Serie A match against Juventus at Stadio Delle Alpi. After replacing Francesco Totti in the second half with Roma trailing 0–2, Nakata netted with a 30-yard goal beyond Juventus goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar's reach, with 11 minutes left in the match. He then helped Roma score the equalizer when his fierce drive from outside the box was parried by Van der Sar into the path of Vincenzo Montella, who scored for Roma in the last minute. The match ended with a 2–2 draw and Roma maintained a six-point margin at top of the league table.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: In the summer of 2001, Nakata penned a four-year deal with Parma for a transfer fee of 55 billion lire, a world record payment for an Asian player which would not be broken for 14 years. He made his club debut on 8 August 2001 in their 0–2 defeat at Stadio Ennio Tardini against Lille in the first leg of the third round of the Champions League. More than one month later, on 23 September, Nakata scored his first goal for Parma in Serie A at home over Brescia, which also proved to be the winning goal of the match. Nakata played there for two and a half seasons, where he scored a crucial goal after coming on as a substitute in the first leg of the 2002 Coppa Italia Final against Juventus, which Parma eventually won.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: In January 2004, Nakata plays Bologna where he played the remainder of the 2003–04 season before moving to Fiorentina, where he played the following season. In August 2005, Nakata moved to Premiership side Bolton Wanderers on loan. During his season at Bolton, which would be the last of his professional career, he scored once in the league, in a 2-0 win over West Bromwich Albion.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: After having represented U-17 Japan at the 1993 U-17 World Championship (where he scored a goal) and U-20 Japan at the 1995 U-20 World Championship (where he scored twice), Nakata was part of the U-23 Japan squads at the 1996 Olympics, where Japan upset Brazil, and at the 2000 Olympics. His senior national team debut came in May 1997 against South Korea.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: He was a key member of the Japanese side that qualified for the 1998 World Cup, scoring five goals in qualification matches and setting up all three Japanese goals in the qualification play-off against Iran. He helped Japan reach the final of the 2001 Confederations Cup but left the national team before the final to join Roma for their final league matches. Nakata played in all four of Japan's matches at the 2002 World Cup, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, scoring the second goal of a 2–0 first round win against Tunisia.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: At the 2006 World Cup, Nakata played in all three matches for Japan, losing to Australia and Brazil, and drawing with Croatia. His performance against Croatia earned him a Man of the Match award. After the 2006 FIFA World Cup, on 3 July 2006, Nakata announced his retirement from professional football and the Japanese national team on his personal website "I decided half a year ago that I would retire from the world of professional football ... after the World Cup in Germany." Nakata wrote, "I will never again stand on the pitch as a professional player. But I will never give up football." In a 2014 interview in "TMW Magazine", Nakata confirmed that he had retired at such a young age because he was no longer enjoying football, and wanted instead to see what was going on in the world.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: Despite Nakata playing every match in Japan's first three World Cup appearances, he was not selected for the country's Asian Cup-winning squads in 2000 and 2004. In total, he was capped 77 times for Japan, scoring 11 goals, 9 of which came in official FIFA competitions.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: A quick, creative, hard-working, and offensive-minded central midfielder, with an eye for goal, Nakata was known for his technical ability, agility, vision, passing, and his ability to make attacking runs into the penalty area and score goals; he also possessed a powerful shot from outside the box.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: Outside football, Nakata has shown interest in fashion, attending runway shows, wearing designer clothing and sporting colorful haircuts. He dyed his hair blond for the 1998 World Cup, hoping to attract the attention of European scouts. Japanese hairstylist Aki Watanabe credits him as a trendsetter. Andrea Tenerani, photographer for "GQ" in Italy said of Nakata, "He's perfect; he's like a model. And he's totally obsessed with fashion." Calvin Klein designer Italo Zucchelli said, "(Nakata) plays with fashion like all of them now, but in a cooler, more sophisticated way than many others." He is one of the models featuring the Calvin Klein underwear campaign 2010. He was featured in the July 2007 US version of "GQ" with a 12-page spread on fall fashion. He was featured in "GQ" in his home country in December 2011.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: Often regarded as a Japanese David Beckham, Nakata is an editor-at-large at "Monocle" magazine at the invitation of his friend Tyler Brûlé, who serves as the magazine's editor-in-chief. Nakata has cited the popular manga and anime series, "Captain Tsubasa", as his primary inspiration in choosing football as a career. In recent years, he has also been an active supporter of Special Olympics football and participated in the 2010 Special Olympics Unity Cup in South Africa during the World Cup. Nakata was named a Global Ambassador for Special Olympics in 2014.


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: Towards the end of 2015, Nakata entered into a partnership with Kee Club in Hong Kong to open Koko, a Hong Kong-based restaurant that serves sakes created by Nakata himself. He has developed his own line of sake as well as creating his own mobile educational app, "Sakenomy". Expressing interest in educating the public about sake, Nakata stated, "People recognise brands of wine but not usually brands of sake. There is a lack of information and branding when it comes to sake. That’s why I thought I needed to create a brand that people can recognise and understand. My purpose is to expand the market for all sake not just my own. You can pair any type of cuisine with sake. It can go with French, Italian, even Chinese food, not just Japanese cuisine."


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: Having been signed to sportswear company Nike, Nakata featured in Nike's "Secret Tournament" advertisement (branded "Scorpion KO") directed by Terry Gilliam, in the buildup to the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan. He appeared alongside other star football players from around the world, including Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Luís Figo, Thierry Henry, Roberto Carlos and Francesco Totti, with former player Eric Cantona the tournament "referee". Nakata featured on the front cover of various Japanese editions of EA Sports’ "FIFA" video game series, including "FIFA Football 2002". In 2018, Nakata was added as an icon to the Ultimate Team in "FIFA 19".


title: Hidetoshi Nakata

text: In the 2012 video game "Inazuma Eleven 2: Firestorm / Blizzard" Nakata was added as a hidden playable player. He then served an important story role in "Inazuma Eleven 3" and its respective anime series, where Nakata would serve as the captain of the Italian team Orpheus.


title: Matthew Garber

text: Matthew Adam Garber (25 March 1956 – 13 June 1977) was a British child actor who most notably played Michael Banks in the 1964 film "Mary Poppins". He appeared in only two other films, "The Three Lives of Thomasina" and "The Gnome-Mobile", all three times appearing alongside actress Karen Dotrice. All three appearances were in movies by Walt Disney Pictures.


title: Matthew Garber

text: Born in Stepney, London, to parents who had both performed on stage, Garber attended St Paul's Primary School in Winchmore Hill and Highgate School in Highgate, North London, from September 1968 until July 1972. He had a younger brother, Fergus Garber, who was born in 1964, the year Matthew played Michael Banks. His father's name was recorded by the school he had attended as Louis Leonard Garber. Matthew Garber was considered a spirited and bright boy in a 1967 Disney press release that noted his enjoyment of pulling practical jokes on his friends, playing sports, and reading adventure, mythology and poetry books.


title: Matthew Garber

text: As a friend of the Garber family, Karen Dotrice's father, Shakespearean actor Roy Dotrice, called Garber to the attention of Disney Casting, where his use of "artful dodges, like squinting, screwing up his nose, and brushing his hair back with one hand" led to his screen debut at age seven in Disney's "The Three Lives of Thomasina" (1963).


title: Matthew Garber

text: That same year, both Garber and "Thomasina" co-star Dotrice were hired to play Jane and Michael, the children of Mr. George Banks (David Tomlinson) and Mrs. Winifred Banks (Glynis Johns), who get more than they bargained for when they hire a nanny named Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews). Disney's live-action animated film adaptation of the "Mary Poppins" book series by P. L. Travers won five Academy Awards and made its stars world-famous.


title: Matthew Garber

text: He appeared in only two other films, "The Three Lives of Thomasina" and "The Gnome-Mobile", all three times appearing alongside actress Karen Dotrice. All three appearances were in movies by Walt Disney Pictures.


title: Matthew Garber

text: Garber and Dotrice teamed up again in 1967 in "The Gnome-Mobile", as the grandchildren of a rich lumber mogul (Walter Brennan) who stumble across a gnome forest and are asked to help keep the gnomes from dying off.


title: Matthew Garber

text: Dotrice recalled, "He was how he looked—an imp, and I loved being his shadow. I can't imagine making movies would have been half as much fun without him. He loved being naughty, finding and jumping off of small buildings on the back lot. While I was Victorian proper and wouldn't let myself get dirty or muddy, Matthew had a great sense of fun and danger. He was a daredevil and could have been a race car driver. And he did live a full life over his 21 years."


title: Matthew Garber

text: In 1976, Garber caught hepatitis while in India. However, by the time he was repatriated to the UK, the disease had spread.


title: Matthew Garber

text: On 13 June 1977, he died at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London, of haemorrhagic necrotising pancreatitis, aged 21. His body was cremated at St. Marylebone Crematorium (East Finchley, London) on 16 June.


title: Matthew Garber

text: Garber was posthumously named a Disney Legend in 2004, with his brother Fergus accepting the award on his behalf. On the "Mary Poppins" 40th anniversary DVD, Karen Dotrice said she regretted not having kept in touch with Garber before his death.


title: Magnetic moment

text: In electromagnetism, the magnetic moment is the magnetic strength and orientation of a magnet or other object that produces a magnetic field. Examples of objects that have magnetic moments include loops of electric current (such as electromagnets), permanent magnets, elementary particles (such as electrons), various molecules, and many astronomical objects (such as many planets, some moons, stars, etc).


title: Magnetic moment

text: More precisely, the term "magnetic moment" normally refers to a system's magnetic dipole moment, the component of the magnetic moment that can be represented by an equivalent magnetic dipole: a magnetic north and south pole separated by a very small distance. The magnetic dipole component is sufficient for small enough magnets or for large enough distances. Higher-order terms (such as the magnetic quadrupole moment) may be needed in addition to the dipole moment for extended objects.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The magnetic dipole moment of an object is readily defined in terms of the torque that the object experiences in a given magnetic field. The same applied magnetic field creates larger torques on objects with larger magnetic moments. The strength (and direction) of this torque depends not only on the magnitude of the magnetic moment but also on its orientation relative to the direction of the magnetic field. The magnetic moment may be considered, therefore, to be a vector. The direction of the magnetic moment points from the south to north pole of the magnet (inside the magnet).


title: Magnetic moment

text: The magnetic field of a magnetic dipole is proportional to its magnetic dipole moment. The dipole component of an object's magnetic field is symmetric about the direction of its magnetic dipole moment, and decreases as the inverse cube of the distance from the object.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The magnetic moment can be defined as a vector relating the aligning torque on the object from an externally applied magnetic field to the field vector itself. The relationship is given by:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where is the torque acting on the dipole, is the external magnetic field, and is the magnetic moment.


title: Magnetic moment

text: This definition is based on how one could, in principle, measure the magnetic moment of an unknown sample. For a current loop, this definition leads to the magnitude of the magnetic dipole moment equaling the product of the current times the area of the loop. Further, this definition allows the calculation of the expected magnetic moment for any known macroscopic current distribution.


title: Magnetic moment

text: An alternative definition is useful for thermodynamics calculations of the magnetic moment. In this definition, the magnetic dipole moment of a system is the negative gradient of its intrinsic energy, , with respect to external magnetic field:


title: Magnetic moment

text: Generically, the intrinsic energy includes the self-field energy of the system plus the energy of the internal workings of the system. For example, for a hydrogen atom in a 2p state in an external field, the self-field energy is negligible, so the internal energy is essentially the eigenenergy of the 2p state, which includes Coulomb potential energy and the kinetic energy of the electron. The interaction-field energy between the internal dipoles and external fields is not part of this internal energy.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The unit for magnetic moment in International System of Units (SI) base units is A⋅m, where A is ampere (SI base unit of current) and m is meter (SI base unit of distance). This unit has equivalents in other SI derived units including:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where N is newton (SI derived unit of force), T is tesla (SI derived unit of magnetic flux density), and J is joule (SI derived unit of energy). Although torque (N·m) and energy (J) are dimensionally equivalent, torques are never expressed in units of energy.


title: Magnetic moment

text: In the CGS system, there are several different sets of electromagnetism units, of which the main ones are ESU, Gaussian, and EMU. Among these, there are two alternative (non-equivalent) units of magnetic dipole moment:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where statA is statamperes, cm is centimeters, erg is ergs, and G is gauss. The ratio of these two non-equivalent CGS units (EMU/ESU) is equal to the speed of light in free space, expressed in cm⋅s.


title: Magnetic moment

text: All formulae in this article are correct in SI units; they may need to be changed for use in other unit systems. For example, in SI units, a loop of current with current and area has magnetic moment (see below), but in Gaussian units the magnetic moment is .


title: Magnetic moment

text: Other units for measuring the magnetic dipole moment include the Bohr magneton and the nuclear magneton.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The magnetic moments of objects are typically measured with devices called magnetometers, though not all magnetometers measure magnetic moment: Some are configured to measure magnetic field instead. If the magnetic field surrounding an object is known well enough, though, then the magnetic moment can be calculated from that magnetic field.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The magnetic moment is a quantity that describes the magnetic strength of an entire object. Sometimes, though, it is useful or necessary to know how much of the net magnetic moment of the object is produced by a particular portion of that magnet. Therefore, it is useful to define the magnetization field as:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where and are the magnetic dipole moment and volume of a sufficiently small portion of the magnet This equation is often represented using derivative notation such that


title: Magnetic moment

text: where is the elementary magnetic moment and is the volume element. The net magnetic moment of the magnet therefore is


title: Magnetic moment

text: where the triple integral denotes integration over the volume of the magnet. For uniform magnetization (where both the magnitude and the direction of is the same for the entire magnet (such as a straight bar magnet) the last equation simplifies to:


title: Magnetic moment

text: The magnetization is often not listed as a material parameter for commercially available ferromagnetic materials, though. Instead the parameter that is listed is residual flux density (or remanence), denoted The formula needed in this case to calculate in (units of A⋅m) is:


title: Magnetic moment

text: The preferred classical explanation of a magnetic moment has changed over time. Before the 1930s, textbooks explained the moment using hypothetical magnetic point charges. Since then, most have defined it in terms of Ampèrian currents. In magnetic materials, the cause of the magnetic moment are the spin and orbital angular momentum states of the electrons, and varies depending on whether atoms in one region are aligned with atoms in another.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The sources of magnetic moments in materials can be represented by poles in analogy to electrostatics. This is sometimes known as the Gilbert model. In this model, a small magnet is modeled by a pair of "fictitious" magnetic monopoles of equal magnitude but opposite polarity. Each pole is the source of magnetic force which weakens with distance. Since always come in pairs, their forces partially cancel each other because while one pole pulls, the other repels. This cancellation is greatest when the poles are close to each other i.e. when the bar magnet is short. The magnetic force produced by a bar magnet, at a given point in space, therefore depends on two factors: the strength of its poles ("magnetic pole strength"), and the vector formula_11 separating them. The magnetic dipole moment is related to the fictitious poles as


title: Magnetic moment

text: It points in the direction from South to North pole. The analogy with electric dipoles should not be taken too far because magnetic dipoles are associated with angular momentum (see Relation to angular momentum). Nevertheless, magnetic poles are very useful for magnetostatic calculations, particularly in applications to ferromagnets. Practitioners using the magnetic pole approach generally represent the magnetic field by the irrotational field , in analogy to the electric field .


title: Magnetic moment

text: After Hans Christian Ørsted discovered that electric currents produce a magnetic field and André-Marie Ampère discovered that electric currents attract and repel each other similar to magnets, it was natural to hypothesize that all magnetic fields are due to electric current loops. In this model developed by Ampère, the elementary magnetic dipole that makes up all magnets is a sufficiently small amperian loop of current "I". The dipole moment of this loop is


title: Magnetic moment

text: where is the area of the loop. The direction of the magnetic moment is in a direction normal to the area enclosed by the current consistent with the direction of the current using the right hand rule.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The magnetic dipole moment can be calculated for a localized (does not extend to infinity) current distribution assuming that we know all of the currents involved. Conventionally, the derivation starts from a multipole expansion of the vector potential. This leads to the definition of the magnetic dipole moment as:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where × is the vector cross product, is the position vector, and is the electric current density and the integral is a volume integral. When the current density in the integral is replaced by a loop of current I in a plane enclosing an area S then the volume integral becomes a line integral and the resulting dipole moment becomes


title: Magnetic moment

text: Practitioners using the current loop model generally represent the magnetic field by the solenoidal field , analogous to the electrostatic field .


title: Magnetic moment

text: A generalization of the above current loop is a coil, or solenoid. Its moment is the vector sum of the moments of individual turns. If the solenoid has identical turns (single-layer winding) and vector area ,


title: Magnetic moment

text: When calculating the magnetic moments of materials or molecules on the microscopic level it is often convenient to use a third model for the magnetic moment that exploits the linear relationship between the angular momentum and the magnetic moment of a particle. While this relation is straight forward to develop for macroscopic currents using the amperian loop model (see below), neither the magnetic pole model nor the amperian loop model truly represents what is occurring at the atomic and molecular levels. At that level quantum mechanics must be used. Fortunately, the linear relationship between the magnetic dipole moment of a particle and its angular momentum still holds, although it is different for each particle. Further, care must be used to distinguish between the intrinsic angular momentum (or spin) of the particle and the particle's orbital angular momentum. See below for more details.


title: Magnetic moment

text: This is valid for the moment due to any localized current distribution provided that the magnetic field is uniform. For non-uniform B the equation is also valid for the torque about the center of the magnetic dipole provided that the magnetic dipole is small enough.


title: Magnetic moment

text: An electron, nucleus, or atom placed in a uniform magnetic field will precess with a frequency known as the Larmor frequency. See Resonance.


title: Magnetic moment

text: force, proportional to the magnetic field gradient, acting on the magnetic moment itself. There are two expressions for the force acting on a magnetic dipole, depending on whether the model used for the dipole is a current loop or two monopoles (analogous to the electric dipole). The force obtained in the case of a current loop model is


title: Magnetic moment

text: In all these expressions is the dipole and is the magnetic field at its position. Note that if there are no currents or time-varying electrical fields or magnetic charge, , and the two expressions agree.


title: Magnetic moment

text: One can relate the magnetic moment of a system to the free energy of that system. In a uniform magnetic field , the free energy can be related to the magnetic moment of the system as


title: Magnetic moment

text: where is the entropy of the system and is the temperature. Therefore, the magnetic moment can also be defined in terms of the free energy of a system as


title: Magnetic moment

text: In addition, an applied magnetic field can change the magnetic moment of the object itself; for example by magnetizing it. This phenomenon is known as magnetism. An applied magnetic field can flip the magnetic dipoles that make up the material causing both paramagnetism and ferromagnetism. Additionally, the magnetic field can affect the currents that create the magnetic fields (such as the atomic orbits) which causes diamagnetism.


title: Magnetic moment

text: Any system possessing a net magnetic dipole moment will produce a dipolar magnetic field (described below) in the space surrounding the system. While the net magnetic field produced by the system can also have higher-order multipole components, those will drop off with distance more rapidly, so that only the dipole component will dominate the magnetic field of the system at distances far away from it.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The magnetic field of a magnetic dipole depends on the strength and direction of a magnet's magnetic moment formula_25 but drops off as the cube of the distance such that:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where formula_27 is the current density in the amperian loop model, formula_28 is the magnetic pole strength density in analogy to the electric charge density that leads to the electric potential, and the integrals are the volume (triple) integrals over the coordinates that make up formula_29. The denominators of these equation can be expanded using the multipole expansion to give a series of terms that have larger of power of distances in the denominator. The first nonzero term, therefore, will dominate for large distances. The first non-zero term for the vector potential is:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where × is the vector cross product, is the position vector, and is the electric current density and the integral is a volume integral.


title: Magnetic moment

text: Here formula_25 may be represented in terms of the magnetic pole strength density but is more usefully expressed in terms of the magnetization field as:


title: Magnetic moment

text: The same symbol formula_25 is used for both equations since they produce equivalent results outside of the magnet.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The two models for a dipole (magnetic poles or current loop) give the same predictions for the magnetic field far from the source. However, inside the source region, they give different predictions. The magnetic field between poles (see the figure for Magnetic pole model) is in the opposite direction to the magnetic moment (which points from the negative charge to the positive charge), while inside a current loop it is in the same direction (see the figure to the right). The limits of these fields must also be different as the sources shrink to zero size. This distinction only matters if the dipole limit is used to calculate fields inside a magnetic material.


title: Magnetic moment

text: If a magnetic dipole is formed by taking a "north pole" and a "south pole", bringing them closer and closer together but keeping the product of magnetic pole charge and distance constant, the limiting field is


title: Magnetic moment

text: If a magnetic dipole is formed by making a current loop smaller and smaller, but keeping the product of current and area constant, the limiting field is


title: Magnetic moment

text: Unlike the expressions in the previous section, this limit is correct for the internal field of the dipole.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The magnetic moment has a close connection with angular momentum called the "gyromagnetic effect". This effect is expressed on a macroscopic scale in the Einstein–de Haas effect, or "rotation by magnetization," and its inverse, the Barnett effect, or "magnetization by rotation." Further, a torque applied to a relatively isolated magnetic dipole such as an atomic nucleus can cause it to precess (rotate about the axis of the applied field). This phenomenon is used in nuclear magnetic resonance.


title: Magnetic moment

text: Viewing a magnetic dipole as current loop brings out the close connection between magnetic moment and angular momentum. Since the particles creating the current (by rotating around the loop) have charge and mass, both the magnetic moment and the angular momentum increase with the rate of rotation. The ratio of the two is called the gyromagnetic ratio or formula_42 so that:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where formula_44 is the angular momentum of the particle or particles that are creating the magnetic moment.


title: Magnetic moment

text: In the amperian loop model, which applies for macroscopic currents, the gyromagnetic ratio is one half of the charge-to-mass ratio. This can be shown as follows. The angular momentum of a moving charged particle is defined as:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where is the mass of the particle and is the particle's velocity. The angular momentum of the very large number of charged particles that make up a current therefore is:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where is the mass density of the moving particles. By convention the direction of the cross product is given by the right-hand rule.


title: Magnetic moment

text: This is similar to the magnetic moment created by the very large number of charged particles that make up that current:


title: Magnetic moment

text: Even though atomic particles cannot be accurately described as orbiting (and spinning) charge distributions of uniform charge-to-mass ratio, this general trend can be observed in the atomic world so that:


title: Magnetic moment

text: where the -factor depends on the particle and configuration. For example the -factor for the magnetic moment due to an electron orbiting a nucleus is one while the -factor for the magnetic moment of electron due to its intrinsic angular momentum (spin) is a little larger than 2. The -factor of atoms and molecules must account for the orbital and intrinsic moments of its electrons and possibly the intrinsic moment of its nuclei as well.


title: Magnetic moment

text: In the atomic world the angular momentum (spin) of a particle is an integer (or half-integer in the case of spin) multiple of the reduced Planck constant . This is the basis for defining the magnetic moment units of Bohr magneton (assuming charge-to-mass ratio of the electron) and nuclear magneton (assuming charge-to-mass ratio of the proton). See electron magnetic moment and Bohr magneton for more details.


title: Magnetic moment

text: Fundamentally, contributions to any system's magnetic moment may come from sources of two kinds: motion of electric charges, such as electric currents; and the intrinsic magnetism of elementary particles, such as the electron.


title: Magnetic moment

text: Contributions due to the sources of the first kind can be calculated from knowing the distribution of all the electric currents (or, alternatively, of all the electric charges and their velocities) inside the system, by using the formulas below. On the other hand, the magnitude of each elementary particle's intrinsic magnetic moment is a fixed number, often measured experimentally to a great precision. For example, any electron's magnetic moment is measured to be . The direction of the magnetic moment of any elementary particle is entirely determined by the direction of its spin, with the negative value indicating that any electron's magnetic moment is antiparallel to its spin.


title: Magnetic moment

text: The net magnetic moment of any system is a vector sum of contributions from one or both types of sources.


title: Magnetic moment

text: For example, the magnetic moment of an atom of hydrogen-1 (the lightest hydrogen isotope, consisting of a proton and an electron) is a vector sum of the following contributions:


title: Magnetic moment

text: Similarly, the magnetic moment of a bar magnet is the sum of the contributing magnetic moments, which include the intrinsic and orbital magnetic moments of the unpaired electrons of the magnet's material and the nuclear magnetic moments.


title: Magnetic moment

text: For an atom, individual electron spins are added to get a total spin, and individual orbital angular momenta are added to get a total orbital angular momentum. These two then are added using angular momentum coupling to get a total angular momentum. For an atom with no nuclear magnetic moment, the magnitude of the atomic dipole moment, formula_54, is then


title: Magnetic moment

text: where is the total angular momentum quantum number, is the Landé -factor, and is the Bohr magneton. The component of this magnetic moment along the direction of the magnetic field is then


title: Magnetic moment

text: The integer (not to be confused with the moment, formula_57) is called the magnetic quantum number or the "equatorial" quantum number, which can take on any of values:


title: Magnetic moment

text: Due to the angular momentum, the dynamics of a magnetic dipole in a magnetic field differs from that of an electric dipole in an electric field. The field does exert a torque on the magnetic dipole tending to align it with the field. However, torque is proportional to rate of change of angular momentum, so precession occurs: the direction of spin changes. This behavior is described by the Landau–Lifshitz–Gilbert equation:


title: Louise, Princess Royal

text: Louise, Princess Royal and Duchess of Fife (Louise Victoria Alexandra Dagmar; 20 February 1867 – 4 January 1931) was the third child and eldest daughter of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom; she was a younger sister of King George V. Louise was given the title of Princess Royal in 1905. Known for her shy and quiet personality, Louise remained a low-key member of the royal family throughout her life.


title: Louise, Princess Royal

text: Louise was born on 20 February 1867 at Marlborough House, the London residence of her parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales. Louise's father was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Her mother was the eldest daughter of Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. From birth, as the granddaughter of the British monarch, she had the title "Her Royal Highness Princess Louise of Wales". She spent much of her childhood at Sandringham House in Norfolk. She was baptised at Marlborough House on 10 May 1867 by Charles Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury. Like her sisters Victoria and Maud, she was educated under the supervision of tutors. She occasionally spent the summer in Denmark, her mother's homeland. In her youth, Louise was described as a very withdrawn girl.


title: Louise, Princess Royal

text: Louise and her sisters, Victoria and Maud, were bridesmaids at the wedding of their paternal aunt Princess Beatrice to Prince Henry of Battenberg in 1885.


title: Louise, Princess Royal

text: Despite her mother's attempts to keep her daughters unmarried and by her side, on Saturday 27 July 1889, Louise married Alexander Duff, 6th Earl Fife, who was eighteen years her senior, at the Private Chapel in Buckingham Palace with the Archbishop of Canterbury officiating at the service. Her bridesmaids were Princesses Maud and Victoria of Wales, Victoria Mary of Teck, Marie Louise and Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein and the Countesses Feodora, Helena and Valda Gleichen. Two days after the wedding, Queen Victoria created him Duke of Fife and Marquess of Macduff in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The letters patent creating this dukedom contained the standard remainder to heirs male of the body lawfully begotten. After the birth of their two daughters, on 24 April 1900, Queen Victoria signed letters patent creating a second Dukedom of Fife, along with the Earldom of Macduff in the Peerage of the United Kingdom with a special remainder: in default of a male heir, these peerages would pass to the daughters of the 1st Duke, and then to their male descendants.


title: Louise, Princess Royal

text: The couple made their home at Mar Lodge, a sporting lodge built for them by Alexander Marshall Mackenzie.


title: Louise, Princess Royal

text: On 9 November 1905, Edward VII created Louise the Princess Royal, the highest honour bestowed on a female member of the royal family. At the same time, the King declared that the two daughters of the Princess Royal would be styled as princesses, with the style and attribute of "Highness" and with precedence immediately after all members of the royal family bearing the style of "Royal Highness".


title: Louise, Princess Royal

text: In December 1911, while sailing aboard SS "Delhi" to Egypt, the Princess Royal and her family were shipwrecked off the coast of Morocco. Although they were otherwise unharmed, the Duke of Fife fell ill with pleurisy, probably contracted as a result of the shipwreck. He died at Assuan, Egypt, in January 1912, and Princess Alexandra succeeded to his dukedom, becoming Duchess of Fife in her own right.


title: Louise, Princess Royal

text: After the death of her husband, Louise led a reclusive life. Sometimes she accompanied her mother and her sister Victoria to public events. In the years leading up to her death Louise suffered from heart disease. In October 1929 at Mar Lodge she was taken ill with gastric haemorrhage and was brought back to London. Louise died in her sleep 15 months later on the afternoon on 4 January 1931, a month before her 64th birthday, at her home at 15 Portman Square London, with her two daughters Alexandra and Maud at her bedside. She was buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Her remains were later removed to the Private Chapel, Mar Lodge, Braemar, Aberdeenshire. Her will was sealed and her estate was valued at £46,383 (or £2.2 million in 2022 when adjusted for inflation).


title: Louise, Princess Royal

text: Upon her marriage, Louise was granted a coat of arms, being the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom with an inescutcheon for Saxony, all differenced with a label argent of five points, the outer pair and centre bearing crosses gules, and the inner pair bearing thistles proper. The inescutcheon was dropped by royal warrant in 1917.


title: Linux kernel version history

text: This article documents the version history of the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was conceived and created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds.


title: Linux kernel version history

text: Linux kernels have different support levels depending on the version. The oldest currently-supported version, 4.9, released in December 2016, was declared to have six years of Long-Term Support (LTS), followed by Super-Long-Term Support (SLTS), i.e. Civil Infrastructure Platform will provide support (for 32-bit ARM and x86-64 only) until at least 2026, possibly until 2036.


title: Linux kernel version history

text: The jump from 2.6.x to 3.x wasn't because of a breaking update, but rather the first release of a new versioning scheme introduced as a more convenient system.


title: Linux kernel version history

text: Versions 2.6.16 and 2.6.27 of the Linux kernel were unofficially supported in a long-term support (LTS) fashion, before a 2011 working group in the Linux Foundation started a formal long-term support initiative.


title: Samadhi

text: Samadhi (Pali and ), in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and yogic schools, is a state of meditative consciousness. In Buddhism, it is the last of the eight elements of the Noble Eightfold Path. In the Ashtanga Yoga tradition, it is the eighth and final limb identified in the "Yoga Sutras" of Patanjali.


title: Samadhi

text: In the oldest Buddhist suttas, on which several contemporary western Theravada teachers rely, it refers to the development of an investigative and luminous mind which is equanimous and mindful. In the yogic traditions, and the Buddhist commentarial tradition on which the Burmese Vipassana movement and the Thai Forest tradition rely, it is interpreted as a meditative absorption or trance, attained by the practice of "dhyāna".


title: Samadhi

text: "Samadhi" may refer to a broad range of states. A common understanding regards "samadhi" as meditative absorption:


title: Samadhi

text: In a Buddhist context, a more nuanced understanding sees "samadhi" as a state of intensified awareness and investigation of bodily and mental objects or experiences:


title: Samadhi

text: Various interpretations for the term's etymology are possible, either with the root "sam" ("to bring together") or "sama" ("the same, equalized, the convergence of two distinct things"). According to Dan Lusthaus, "samadhi" refers to either bringing to consciousness the "samskaras" ("buried latencies"), or meditative concentration on a meditation object:


title: Samadhi

text: Common Chinese terms for "samādhi" include the transliterations "sanmei" (三昧) and "sanmodi" (三摩地 or 三摩提), as well as the translation of the term literally as "ding" (定 "fixity"). Kumarajiva's translations typically use "sanmei" (三昧), while the translations of Xuanzang tend to use "ding" (定 "fixity"). The Chinese Buddhist canon includes these, as well as other translations and transliterations of the term.


title: Samadhi

text: "Samma-samadhi", "right "samadhi"," is the last of the eight elements of the Noble Eightfold Path. When "samadhi" is developed, things are understood as they really are.


title: Samadhi

text: "Samma-samadhi" is explicated as "dhyana", which is traditionally interpreted as one-pointed concentration. Yet, in the stock formula of "dhyāna" "samādhi" is only mentioned in the second "dhyana", to give way to a state of equanimity and mindfulness, in which one keeps access to the senses in a mindful way, avoiding primary responses to the sense-impressions.


title: Samadhi

text: The origins of the practice of "dhyāna" are a matter of dispute. According to Crangle, the development of meditative practices in ancient India was a complex interplay between Vedic and non-Vedic traditions. According to Bronkhorst, the four "rūpa jhāna" may be an original contribution of the Buddha to the religious landscape of India, which formed an alternative to the painful ascetic practices of the Jains, while the "arūpa jhāna" were incorporated from non-Buddhist ascetic traditions. Alexander Wynne argues that dhyāna was incorporated from Brahmanical practices, in the Nikayas ascribed to Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta. These practices were paired to mindfulness and insight, and given a new interpretation. Kalupahana also argues that the Buddha "reverted to the meditational practices" he had learned from Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta.


title: Samadhi

text: Appended to the "jhana"-scheme are four meditative states, referred to in the early texts as "arupas" or as "āyatana". They are sometimes mentioned in sequence after the first four "jhānas" and thus came to be treated by later exegetes as jhānas. The immaterial are related to, or derived from, yogic meditation, and aim more specific at concentration, while the "jhanas" proper are related to the cultivation of the mind. The state of complete dwelling in emptiness is reached when the eighth "jhāna" is transcended. The four "arupas" are:


title: Samadhi

text: Although the "Dimension of Nothingness" and the "Dimension of Neither Perception nor Non-Perception" are included in the list of nine jhanas attributed to the Buddha, they are not included in the Noble Eightfold Path. Noble Path number eight is "Samma Samadhi" (Right Concentration), and only the first four Jhanas are considered "Right Concentration". When all the jhanas are mentioned, the emphasis is on the "Cessation of Feelings and Perceptions" rather than stopping short at the "Dimension of Neither Perception nor Non-Perception".


title: Samadhi

text: According to Gunaratana, the term ‘"samādhi"’ derives from the roots ‘"sam-ā-dhā"’, which means 'to collect' or 'bring together', and thus it is generally translated as "concentration." In the early Buddhist texts, "samādhi" is also associated with the term "samatha" (calm abiding). In the commentarial tradition, "samādhi" is defined as "ekaggata", one-pointedness of mind ("Cittass'ekaggatā").


title: Samadhi

text: Buddhagosa defines "samādhi" as "the centering of consciousness and consciousness concomitants evenly and rightly on a single object [...] the state in virtue of which consciousness and its concomitants remain evenly and rightly on a single object, undistracted and unscattered". According to Buddhaghosa, the Theravada Pali texts mention four attainments of "samādhi":


title: Samadhi

text: According to Buddhaghosa, in his influential standard-work Visuddhimagga, "samādhi" is the "proximate cause" to the obtainment of wisdom. The Visuddhimagga describes 40 different objects for meditation, which are mentioned throughout the Pali canon, but explicitly enumerated in the Visuddhimagga, such as mindfulness of breathing ("ānāpānasati") and loving kindness ("mettā").


title: Samadhi

text: While the Theravada-tradition interprets "dhyana" as one-pointed concentration, this interpretation has become a matter of debate. According to Richard Gombrich, the sequence of the four "rupa-jhanas" describes two different cognitive states: "I know this is controversial, but it seems to me that the third and fourth jhanas are thus quite unlike the second."


title: Samadhi

text: Alexander Wynne states that the "dhyana"-scheme is poorly understood. According to Wynne, words expressing the inculcation of awareness, such as "sati", "sampajāno", and "upekkhā", are mistranslated or understood as particular factors of meditative states, whereas they refer to a particular way of perceiving the sense objects.


title: Samadhi

text: Several western teachers (Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Leigh Brazington, Richard Shankman) make a distinction between 'sutta-oriented' "jhana" and "Visuddhimagga"-oriented' "jhāna". Thanissaro Bhikkhu has repeatedly argued that the Pali Canon and the "Visuddhimagga" give different descriptions of the jhanas, regarding the "Visuddhimagga"-description to be incorrect. Keren Arbel has conducted extensive research on the "jhānas" and the contemporary criticisms of the commentarial interpretation. Based on this research, and her own experience as a senior meditation-teacher, she gives a reconstructed account of the original meaning of the "dhyanas". She argues that the four jhānas are the outcome of both


title: Samadhi

text: calming the mind and developing insight into the nature of experience and cannot not be seen in the suttas as two distinct and separated meditation techniques, but as integral dimensions of a single process that


title: Samadhi

text: leads to awakening. She concludes that "the fourth jhāna is the optimal experiential event for the utter de-conditioning of unwholesome tendencies of mind and for the transformation of deep epistemological structures. This is because one embodies and actualizes an awakened awareness of experience."


title: Samadhi

text: The earliest extant Indian Mahāyāna texts emphasize ascetic practices, forest-dwelling, and states of meditative oneness, i.e. "samādhi". These practices seem to have occupied a central place in early Mahāyāna, also because they "may have given access to fresh revelations and inspiration".


title: Samadhi

text: Indian Mahāyāna traditions refer to numerous forms of "samādhi", for example, Section 21 of the "Mahavyutpatti" records 118 distinct forms of "samādhi" and the Samadhiraja Sutra has as its main theme a "samādhi" called 'the "samādhi" that is manifested as the sameness of the essential nature of all "dharma"s' ("sarva-dharma-svabhavā-samatā-vipañcita-samādhi").


title: Samadhi

text: Buddhist Pali texts describe three kinds of "samādhi" which the commentarial tradition identify as the ‘gates of liberation’ ("vimokṣamukha"):


title: Samadhi

text: According to Polak, these are alternative descriptions of the four dhyanas, describing the cognitive aspects instead of the bodily aspects. According to Polak, in the final stages of dhyana no ideation of experience takes place, and no signs are grasped ("animitta samādhi"), which means that the concentrated attention cannot be directed ("appaṇihita samādhi") towards those signs, and only the perception of the six senses remains, without a notion of "self" ("suññata samādhi").


title: Samadhi

text: In the Chinese Buddhist tradition these are called the ‘three doors of liberation’ (, ): These three are not always cited in the same order. Nagarjuna, a Madhyamaka Buddhist scholar, in his "Maha-prajnaparamita-sastra", listed "apraṇihita" before "ānimitta" in his first explanation on these "three "samādhi"", but in later listings and explanations in the same work reverted to the more common order. Others, such as Thích Nhất Hạnh, a Thien Buddhist teacher, list "apraṇihita" as the third after "śūnyatā" and "ānimitta". Nagarjuna lists these three kinds of "samādhi" among the qualities of the truly enlightened ("bodhisattva").


title: Samadhi

text: According to Nagarjuna, signlessness-samadhi is the "samādhi" in which one recognises all dharmas are free of signs ("ānimitta"). According to Thích Nhất Hạnh, "signs" refer to appearances or form, likening signlessness samadhi to not being fooled by appearances, such as the dichotomy of being and non-being.


title: Samadhi

text: 'Aimlessness', also translated as 'uncommittedness' or 'wishlessness' (Chinese , , or , ), literally means 'placing nothing in front'. According to Dan Lusthaus, aimlessness-samadhi is characterised by a lack of aims or plans for the future and no desire for the objects of perception. According to Nagarjuna, aimlessness-samadhi is the "samādhi" in which one does not search for any kind of existence ("bhāva"), letting go of aims or wishes ("praṇidhāna") regarding conditioned phenomena and not producing the three poisons (namely, passion, aggression, and ignorance) towards them in the future.


title: Samadhi

text: According to Nagarjuna, emptiness-samadhi is the "samādhi" in which one recognises that the true natures of all dharmas are absolutely empty ("atyantaśūnya"), and that the five aggregates are not the self ("anātman"), do not belong to the self ("anātmya"), and are empty ("śūnya") without self-nature.