Re: Move over Hummer


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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [50.52.24.75] on Wednesday, September 02, 2015 at 15:51:51 :

In Reply to: Re: Move over Hummer posted by Pieter (in Hawaii) [76.173.171.62] on Tuesday, September 01, 2015 at 23:13:39 :

As long as there has been war, military planners have kept trying to hang more gear on the soldiers, and then the horses, and now the vehicles. Soldiers, in the heat of battle, tend to want to ditch most of that stuff in favor of mobility and visibility. Some of it's logical: "Vehicles get attacked so we need more armor on them", and some of it is just gimmickry in search of a use -- the the manufacturer of it is in some important congresscritter's district.

We've been through many repetitions of the exercise of turning a light truck into an armored personnel carrier of some sort. The half-track was pretty much a failure. The Stryker was supposed to be a great thing, but you don't hear much about them any more. The Bradley wasn't sure if it was a truck with a big gun or a light-duty tank. The Army's giving away its stateside MRAPs via reutilization and paying $25K apiece to destroy the ones that are overseas. I'm not really seeing what this new armored car does that the old ones didn't, or how it can really replace the HMMWV, which is mostly used for non-combat operations anyway. I'm sure it does a fine job of protecting the solders inside of it, but so does keeping them on their base. If the thing gets any more tank-like it will need close infantry support like a tank. My prediction is if they really do phase out the HMMWV, they're going to have to come up with a replacement unarmored light truck soon.

But it is cute that they still equipped it with blackout convoy lights and a blackout headlight, as if they still had to worry about being strafed by enemy fighters while in a convoy at night.



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