Britten-Norman Islander BN-2B Defender

The Defender grew from a simple observation: in civil hands the Islander already did nearly everything a small army needs from a light aircraft, and did it cheaply. First flown in May 1970, it added four underwing hardpoints able to carry tanks, bombs, 7.62 mm machine-gun pods, rocket pods, flares or sensors, plus a cabin fitted out for light troop transport and support work. The original's ruggedness, meant for unprepared strips, turned out to be exactly what operators in developing countries wanted.

Military and police purchases of the Defender have rarely been about light attack. The usual work is surveillance: maritime patrol, fishery protection, search and rescue, border control and counter-terrorism. The Maritime Defender is precisely the armed maritime reconnaissance and patrol version. The user list runs from the Armed Forces of Malta to the Royal Moroccan Gendarmerie, the Mauritius coast guard, the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency and the Philippine Navy, which in 2014 sent one of its Defenders to the multinational search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

It has also seen open conflict. The Mauritanian Air Force flew six BN-2A-21 Defenders against Polisario forces in the Western Sahara War in 1976 and lost two in action, and in 1996 the Royal Cambodian Air Force deployed its three Defenders in the dry-season offensive against Khmer Rouge insurgents, armed with machine guns and rockets and losing one. At the other end of the spectrum, Danish police turned to the National Guard's Defenders in 2017 to fly reconnaissance over a gang war in Copenhagen.