Monday, January 25, 2016

What was old is new again. Contractor Working to put Jeeps Back on Battlefield

A North Carolina defense contractor’s project could land Jeeps back on the battlefield as the U.S. Army looks for inexpensive, lightweight, unarmored vehicles that can be flown into remote locations. The Army wants to find vehicles that can ferry troops and cargo over rough terrain in situations that don’t call for heavily armored vehicles, and workers at Charlotte-based Hendrick Dynamics have developed a specifically modified Jeep Wrangler they believe can fill that void, according to The Blade.

9 comments:

Witold Pilecki said...

I loved my little M151A1 "jeep" when I was in the Army. That little sucker could go just about anywhere, and do just about anything.

Anonymous said...

NASA developed an ball-point pen to work in weightless environments at a reported $8,000 each. Russian cosmonauts used plain old pencils.

Anonymous said...

A Wrangler? Forget that, just admit that completely replacing the jeep with the HMMWV was a mistake and start producing M151A2's again.....those things can go places a HMMWV cannot.

KBCraig said...

That’s easy. The Army has discarded dozens of vehicles that serve that role. The M151A2 Jeep was light and mobile and small enough to tackle goat trails.

It was replaced by the HMMWV, which was twice as big and twice as heavy (even before they added armor), and carried no more people than the Jeep.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! …when a light wheeled vehicle can’t survive anti-tank munitions, the Pentagon’s solution is to start bolting on armor. Making it an even bigger, heavier, slower, pig of a vehicle makes it an even easier target.

Reminds me of how the M2/M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, originally faster and more heavily armed and armored than the M113, was transformed into a slow slug of a target.

Chiu ChunLing said...

A step in the right direction, if they take it.

Anonymous said...

I knew the "Hummer" was a mistake the first time I laid eyes on it and it has proven itself to be just that. I can't believe it has remained in inventory as long as it has.
There is nothing that it can do that can't be done cheaper, easier and more effectively.
Some might say it can be armored up.....well my answer to that is, if you need to be in armor you planned wrong and you should be in a tank not an aluminum can.

One only has to look at our own military history and also the simplicity and utility of the "Land Rover" used all over Africa and other remote areas of the world to know that the jeep type vehicle should always be part of any fighting force.

ExGeeEye said...

Way to reinvevent the wheel, guys. Twice.

We HAD Jeeps on the battlefield. They were called Jeeps.

Then we had lightweight mobile transports with a bit mor capacity, reconfigurable into other varieties such as ambulances. They were called HMMWVs. Then somebody decided they needed to be fitted with armor, or replaced with MRAPs.

So now they want something like the Jeep. I bet they're going to start with a blank sheet of paper and come up with something brand new.

Here's a tip, guys, and I'll take 1/1000th of your R&D budget and retire to Florida:

Jeep. Diesel it if ya wanna.

Or, original-concept HMMWV.

But you're not smart enough to pick one of those, are you.

(Praying for you, Mike. Get that book out.)

Ed said...

Pictures would have been nice, so I found this:

http://www.commandousa.com/

California Midwesterner said...

"Not Me" has it wrong.
NASA didn't spend a dime on Space Pen development. Fisher, the company behind the product, did the R&D on their own. NASA and the Russians both bought the product. Both also used mechanical pencils occasionally, but loose graphite powder in a microgravity environment that's full of electricity is a recipe for disaster.

The "NASA spent big money developing a fancy pen and the Soviets just used pencils! Lolol, wasteful spending!" is complete BS.