The Belgian Loyd CATI 90 was a unique and resourceful example of post-World War II military engineering. This Loyd CATI 90 was on display at the Musée royal de l’armée et de l’histoire militaire or Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels.
Faced with a large surplus of British-built Loyd Carriers and the need for a cheap and effective anti-tank weapon, the Belgian Army, in collaboration with the company MECAR, developed the Canon Antitank d’Infanterie 90 mm (CATI 90). This light tank destroyer was created by mounting a low-pressure, semi-automatic 90 mm gun onto the chassis of the Loyd Carrier. The gun was specifically designed by MECAR to have low recoil, allowing it to be mounted on such a lightweight vehicle. The resulting vehicle, though only lightly armored and open-topped, provided infantry battalions with a potent, albeit short-ranged, anti-tank capability. Serving from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, the CATI 90 demonstrated a clever and cost-effective way to modernize a military force using existing assets before being replaced by more advanced platforms like the AMX-VCI armed with ENTAC anti-tank missiles.