[7] France had initially favoured the deployment of swift, lightly armoured cars against the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), including the M8 Greyhound and Panhard EBR.

[8] However, these vehicles had been designed for conventional combat on European battlefields and proved poorly suited to Algerian conditions; their heavy anti-tank armament also risked collateral damage and was of limited usefulness in fighting off guerrilla raids.

The French Army wanted a much lighter, more efficient vehicle that was easier to maintain and initially adopted the Daimler Ferret for this purpose.

A number of French defence contractors took up the challenge of creating yet another new vehicle of similar dimensions to the Ferret but carrying a mortar, which was regarded as more effective than a large gun system at breaking up ambushes and suppressing dispersed FLN positions.

[6] Its turret mount gave it continuous traverse and, unlike muzzle-loading infantry mortars, it could engage targets of opportunity at close range that could not otherwise be suppressed with indirect fire.

[13] Brandt's Mle CM60A1 design proved to be an immediate export success, as South Africa placed an order for 350 AML-60s in 1961, over half of which were to be assembled locally with French technical assistance.

[14] A South African military delegation visited France between November 22 and 28 that year to discuss the manufacture of the HE-60-7 turrets and armament under licence.

[15] By 1965, South Africa had purchased 450 CM60A1s for the future production of its modified Eland-60 armoured cars, along with a licence for both the mortar and its associated ammunition, which was granted by the French government's Direction technique des armements terrestres (DTAT).

[17] Throughout the 1960s, CM60A1s were exported with the AML-60 to Algeria, Burundi, Cambodia, Côte d'Ivoire, Iraq, Ireland, Morocco, Nigeria, Portugal, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, and Spain.

[2] A much larger, long-ranged variant of the CM60A1 and CS 60, with a barrel extension incorporated onto the existing armament, was known as the Brandt LR Gun-mortar.

[24] In 1975 Zaire donated some of its AML-60s to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), where they saw action as part of the Angolan Civil War, often manned by French or Portuguese mercenaries.