LAV-25
reconnaissance vehicle
The LAV-25 (Light Armored Vehicle) is a member of the LAV II family. It is an eight-wheeled amphibious armored reconnaissance vehicle built by General Dynamics Land Systems and used by the United States Marine Corps and the United States Army.
History
During the 1980s, the U.S. Marine Corps began looking for a light armored vehicle (LAV) to give its divisions greater mobility.
In April 1981, the United States Department of Defense opened submissions to the LAV program. Three contractors were downselected.
Alvis – A Scorpion 90 and three Scorpion APCs.
Cadillac Gage – A V-150S (a stretched V-150 Cadillac Gage Commando) and a V-300.
General Motors of Canada (General Motors Diesel) – an 8X8 developed from a license-built copy of the Mowag Piranha 6X6
The Marine Corps evaluated the three LAV submissions. In September 1982, the General Motors submission was selected. GM was awarded initial production contract for 969 LAVs.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “LAV-25” is reconnaissance vehicle. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through LAV-25, reconnaissance and vehicle, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “reconnaissance vehicle” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q906668. The Library of Congress control number is sh2011005850. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981 and 1982.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “LAV-25” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.