Why spend loads of time and effort up-armouring only to produce a vehicle with poor driveability? Some companies do this better than others, so it’s important that the operator has a clear understanding of the positive and negative effects that the up-armouring process produces.
Take the spare wheel, for example, where the whole body has been modified. If the company has changed the mounting system due to the armouring, it may mean that the spare tyre now hangs lower than originally designed. This lowers the departure angle and possibly affects extracting a vehicle from a situation.
We’ve had vehicles fail to pass a mild off-road training obstacle due to this. When the spare is removed, generally with some difficulty, as that chain mechanism is bad enough at the best of times, away it goes.
General advice: take the tyre out from where it is and secure it (strap it down) in the back. Or fit a rear bumper with a swing-away spare-tyre mounting. I always find it funny that the rear of the vehicle gets little or no thought.