British military introduces 80 mph Mad Max mobile

[Donster]

The 80mph 'Mad Max' monster targeting the Taliban

Speed instead of armor? I'd be a wee bit nervous on one.

[The Dude]

Yeah, it's sure is cool looking, and I'm sure it'd be fun to tool around in; as for them calling it a "lightly armored" vehicle, I'd say "hardly armored" is more apt a description.

I wonder what troops think of it? Maybe they want to trade armor for speed?

[Red]

The only thing id run around is a Abrams Battle Tank ,

[No105_Archie]

Remember the TV show 'The Rat Patrol".....those guys took on half tracks and tanks with a Jeep mounted with a 50cal. I guess the designers of this think figured that the show was really a documentary.

[Schatten]

I bet that's fun as hell to drive!

...but as a military vehicle, that's just effin' dumb as all get out.

[Whizkid]

I bet that's fun as hell to drive!

...but as a military vehicle, that's just effin' dumb as all get out.

Hey, Schatt, be fair! You're talking about the end result of hundreds of man-hours of under-worked, over-paid Civil Servants here, who's main interest is if the tea-trolley will arrive before lunch time! And all within a severely cut budget approved by a gaggle of Politicians who've never fired a shot in anger in their lives, but must remember that Election time will be arriving all too soon!

[No105_Archie]

I'm willing to say one thing for pretty much certain....it should be better than the Land Rover as a combat vehicle. Don't get me wrong...LRs are great rigs and will go where a mountain goat fears to tread while running on a mixture of watered gas and local moonshine...but I can't imagine that they are not much of a weapons platform. The only way to get my old LR to do 80mph was to push it out of an airplane with the back full of scrap iron !

[Stag]

Remember the TV show 'The Rat Patrol".....those guys took on half tracks and tanks with a Jeep mounted with a 50cal. I guess the designers of this think figured that the show was really a documentary.

http://www.geocities.com/sascentre/equipweap.html

This beastie is a replacement for the Landy as used by the SAS, and theyv'e been quite happy with the basic concept since about 1943 through every war up to now. Now, compare this to an open-top HUMMV...

BTW, the Land-Rover for the same mission would have smoke, one twin GPMG, plus one Single, or one .50, or a MILAN or...

Wonder is there a hard-top?

[Schatten]

This is the part that got me:

Infantry soldiers have complained existing Land Rovers provide insufficient protection from the bombers.

Okay, I can undertstand that, so now how is putting them in a completely open vehicle going to solve that problem? A sniper or machinegunner with half a clue would have a field day with that thing, let alone an RPG gunner or IED planter. Or is it one of those situations where the body of the vehicle is armored pretty well so they can just hose what's left of the infantry out, gas it back up, put in 4 new schmucks and call it a win?

The people the defense departments in both the US and UK need to talk to are the Israelis, they have experience in making bombproof urban combat vehicles and light desert recon ones...whom they don't need to be talking to are Dune Buggy manufacturers, which seems to be where the mindset is right now. I mean for urban combat the IDF use an APC made out of friggin' T-54/55 tank chasis that've been up-armored, they have ambulance and APC versions of Merkava tanks and their combat dozers could probably withstand a near miss from a MOAB.

What do the US and the Brits want to field? Matchbox armored dunebuggies. Instead of scrapping all those M48/M60s (and I'm sure the Brits have some Chieftains waiting to be disposed of still) we have lying around they should be engineering them into heavy urban APCs, but no that would mean they wouldn't be wasting shittons of money on "cool" vehicles that are about as useful for urban counterinsurgency combat as tits on a bull.

I never thought I'd say this, but even instead of making more M1s we'd be better off with a modern take on the Sheridan concept. Yes I am officially going to hell now.

[Gunny]

Looks like a further developement of the idea behind our FAVs. And quite frankly, I thought those sucked mightily. Don't care much for this as a weapons platform.

[Stans]

Well, it's got passive solar heating and naturally air conditioned, does that make it a green vehicle?

I wouldn't want to ride into a fight in that thing, I'm not in the military and I can see it being an easily destroyed target.

[No105_Ogdens]

I dunno, I can't see it being any more vunerable than anything else being used over there. At least it'll be quicker to get out of when it gets turned into a fireball.

Got to admire the Brits!!

[Stag]

This is the part that got me:

Okay, I can undertstand that, so now how is putting them in a completely open vehicle going to solve that problem? A sniper or machinegunner with half a clue would have a field day with that thing, let alone an RPG gunner or IED planter. Or is it one of those situations where the body of the vehicle is armored pretty well so they can just hose what's left of the infantry out, gas it back up, put in 4 new schmucks and call it a win?

The people the defense departments in both the US and UK need to talk to are the Israelis, they have experience in making bombproof urban combat vehicles and light desert recon ones...whom they don't need to be talking to are Dune Buggy manufacturers, which seems to be where the mindset is right now. I mean for urban combat the IDF use an APC made out of friggin' T-54/55 tank chasis that've been up-armored, they have ambulance and APC versions of Merkava tanks and their combat dozers could probably withstand a near miss from a MOAB.

What do the US and the Brits want to field? Matchbox armored dunebuggies. Instead of scrapping all those M48/M60s (and I'm sure the Brits have some Chieftains waiting to be disposed of still) we have lying around they should be engineering them into heavy urban APCs, but no that would mean they wouldn't be wasting shittons of money on "cool" vehicles that are about as useful for urban counterinsurgency combat as tits on a bull.

I never thought I'd say this, but even instead of making more M1s we'd be better off with a modern take on the Sheridan concept. Yes I am officially going to hell now.

Bear in mind that this thing won't be deployed in an urban environment.

Senior defence sources say the Supacats will particularly come into their own against the Taliban in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, which has no roads.

It will be used for Long-range reconnaisance where the ability to see clearly in all directions will be more of a life-saver than all the armour that you could pile onto a four-wheeled tin-can. for Urban, look up:

http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/ar...raq11009342.php

I guess we've concluded that wheeled APCs just make fine group coffins.

[Gunny]

Stag, I understand where you're coming from. I understand about the LRRGs with their jeeps, LRs and a beauty of a 1 ton chevy flatbed in WWII (which I still want to build in 1/35 scale if Tamiya would ever re-issue the damned thing). However, let's take one look at one specific aspect, terrain. The Sahara is pretty much flat, with rolling dunes which can restrict vision but not so much so. Move twenty feet in either one of two directions, you're seeing around it. Afghanistan on the other hand, where there is some nice flat rocky terrain, is mostly mountainous cliffs. It would be akin to being IN an urban/built up enviroment. I'm not saying the vehicle doesn't warrant merit and a chance maybe, but I do not see this vehicle being successful in the Eastern part of Afghanistan. And let's face it Bro, that is where a majority of the Taliban/Al Quida are hiding.

[Stag]

Remember this:

http://combatsim.invisionzone.com/forums/i...is+how+we+do+it

These guys were using the predecessor. Seemed to do okay.

[Schatten]

Shawn pretty much nailed my thoughts about Afghanistan being pretty much akin to an urban environment anyhow, there are roads and mountains, you won't be running at 80 mph on a mountain or hill, you could on a road, but roads are where they tend to stick IEDs, which comes back to...you need more armor than speed.

If you want to look at something very, very quickly, you send a helo not a dunebuggy. At least that's how I see it. If you want to look at it better, you send an armored vehicle that can take the punishment it could find on its way to the look around point. I guess I wasn't very specific with my gripes, instead of just saying urban I should have said built-up, since that also includes close terrain, of which there is tons of in Afghanistan; but I still don't really see how this is a very useful vehicle, it's too lightly armored to take an IED on a road, it's too open to take sniper/machinegun fire from either an urban (just because it wasn't in the design plans for it doesn't mean it won't be used for it) or canyon-y environment. I really don't see how it'd be all that great an idea. Sure the troops may think it's the best thing since sliced bread, that's all well and good and I'm glad they like it, but when it rolls into an ambush in a Afghani box canyon then I wonder what they'll be thinking about it.

Very light vehicles don't have the survivability to fight a counterinsurgency type war in a recon role. The Jihadi have plenty of explosives and are willing to put them anywhere, and they pass out RPGs like candy to their groupies. Any attack on coalition forces in either Iraq or Afghanistan is going to open with a big bang, either roadside or RPG and these things just can't stand up to that. Land Rovers and Humvees can't either. So I'd say instead of looking for "better but the same" they should go for something that can take the abuse and leave the soft vehicles back in the rear, not out on recon runs.

The US already has vehicles that can do higher speed, lighter than tank, recon runs: LAVs. LAVs in the Marine Corps do what these things will do for the Brits, and the LAV has proven itself able to do the job really well. They have just enough armor and enough speed to get out of a "Holy crap we shouldn't be in this tight" situation out in the badlands. Where the Army screwed up was taking an LAV, putting some anti-RPG bedframes on it, calling it the Stryker and expecting it to do sustained urban recon because it was "heavilly armored." Heavilly armored compared to a Humvee yeah, but not heavilly armored enough to take sustained punishment in a built up environment I don't feel.

For cities go superheavy armor, for the "badlands" use something like an LAV that can get out of trouble quicker than it got into it and can survive long enough to get back out, but the soft (and/or open) recon vehicles are just a bad idea to me. Hell for some parts of Afghanistan a horse would trump everything, yeah they're open and unarmored but they're good for transport up to the dismount point, and they can go just about anywhere. This thing could possibly work that way too, speed to the general scout area and then dismount to do the actual recon, but when you start strapping a shitton of weapons on a vehicle, no matter how unsuited it is for a straight up fight, the guys using it figure they're expected to use them. That's where you'd get into big trouble with this thing unless you happened to be chasing a bunch of guys across Southwest Asia's version of the Murloc Dry Lake.

[Stag]

Time will tell.