Posted on 10/17/2004 2:40:08 PM PDT by freepatriot32
The papers are beating this story ro death
Thats a new one on me. They didnt have uparmored trucks when I was in Eyerackee Land, and I drove the M931A2, we put sandbags on the hood and our jack plates in the door frames, we called it adapting and overcoming.
Well, if so, this explains things a bit more. Get the dern trucks reinforced with armor! Let the military hammer this out. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to commit suicide, but calling home to Mommy may not be very soldier-like. I guess this is just part of having ladies serving in war zones.
That's a new one because the general didn't say that. I watched it this AM and what he said was that the trucks come without armor and are outfitted when they arrive.
can sandbags stop ak 47 bullets what about mortor shrapnel ?I never heard of anyone doing that before but if it is effective they should all do it and save a ton of money armor plating the trucks with reenforced steel and kevlar.
FUBAR
We need remotely operated heavy transport trucks to handle this sort of thing.
Put the soldiers operating them in relative safety aboard tanks near the convoys or in copters escorting the convoys.
If we can create remotely piloted aircraft that fly from the US all the way to Iraq and back on their own then why not heavy trucks without soldiers in them performing transport duties?
It seems like a relatively simple technical accomplishment to me.... amateur radio operators build remotely piloted model aircraft that they can fly by joystick while sitting in front of a computer screen looking at the view from a small camera mounted on the model... how much harder could operating a truck be?
"It seems like a relatively simple technical accomplishment to me...."
How do you propose the gears be shifted on those big rigs? There are not enough Yoda-like Jedi knights to go around.
Ping!
Good idea. Then we wouldn't have to use highly trained combat soldiers for that job.
We could contract it out and keep our warriors safe.
:^O
the new army
I saw a news report about 2 months ago where the army was offering a million dollar prize for the first person that could come up ith a remote control full size truck that could run a 100 mile course in the desert.There were 20 teams i think but no one was able to pull it off the sand and dust shorted them out and obscured the lenses I think
democrat = security risk.... potential or actual..
One good machinist plus one good pic microcontroller expert and a month or so would give you smooth shifting :-)
It's just easy to do such things these days..
Thanks for your service
I dont really know if the sandbags would be all that effective against bullets, against shrapnel sure. The jack plates are a 1/4 inch steel plate they would be very effective.
We were told that there is no uparmor kits for the M931, either get the welder to weld scrap metal re-enforcement or improvise for safety, we chose improvise. This was in March of 03 at the beginning of the war so some things I am sure changed.
That the DARPA challenge? Not even remote control but fully autonomous ground vehicles. They will run it again next year.
That sounds like a real amateur effort..
I'm suggesting a contract with someone like Raytheon..
If they can whip up terrain guided cruise missiles they can pull this off.
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