Armour is, alongside aircraft, the busiest corner of plastic modelling, and this is where that whole branch begins. Tanks, armoured carriers, soft-skin lorries, towed artillery and modern missile systems sit here side by side, covering everything from the First World War to armies in service today. The kits are backed by detail parts, crew figures and the groundwork materials a diorama needs. The sections below point you towards the right scale and the workshop supplies that make a first tank an enjoyable build rather than a shelf of unfinished sprues.
A plastic military kit arrives as parts moulded on sprues: you clean them up, glue them together, paint the vehicle and finish it with decals. Subjects run from interwar light tanks through the Shermans, Tigers and T-34s of the Second World War to machines such as Leopard 2 and Abrams. Tracked vehicles are only part of the picture — self-propelled guns, half-tracks, staff cars, lorries and anti-aircraft systems let you build a complete unit with its supply train behind it.
Most new releases and almost all detail parts land in 1:35 military model kits, where a medium tank finishes around 20 cm long. If shelf space matters more than size, 1:72 military model kits and the fractionally smaller, British-born 1:76 military model kits let you line up a troop instead of a single machine.
Aircraft modeller? 1:48 military model kits share the shelf with quarter-scale aeroplanes and bring airfield tugs and bomb trolleys with them. For a display centrepiece measured in tens of centimetres, see 1:16 and 1:18 military model kits. Every remaining size, from 1:350 deck vehicles up to 1:6 weapons, has its own listing in this section.
Expect styrene sprues, a decal sheet and instructions. Better-equipped editions add photo-etched frets, a turned metal barrel or individual track links; on simpler boxings you buy those separately and lift the model a class higher.
Lorries, buses and plant machinery in civilian service belong to civilian vehicle model kits; this branch stays with machines in uniform.
