Wheel reinvented to allow combat vehicles to easily traverse streets, corpses

It is @beschizza posting. This is guy that Rickrolled the blog. Ahh good times.

5 Likes

It’s a Helluva lot of fun. (See what I did there?) It used to play in regular rotation on our local TV station’s afternoon movie when I was a kid, so I became obsessed with the Landmaster. (And if you like the giant scorpions, you’re gonna LOVE the killer cockroaches!)

3 Likes

Man, it just keeps getting worse.

1 Like

https://twitter.com/ourhiddenhistry/status/1011100226168516608?s=21

.

“To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

–Justice Robert Jackson, Nuremberg, 1945

5 Likes

Or, how to make a wheel cost more then the vehicle it mounts on.

3 Likes

I think it’s really made for intense urban deployment. You know, like against seceding states, perhaps.

2 Likes
  1. Personally accusing individual soldiers of responsibility for child killing;

  2. A bit of passing snark referencing the actual brutality of war.

No, those aren’t on the same rhetorical level at all. Not even close.

The degree of militarism in US culture is severely abnormal, pervasive and destructive. The hypersensitivity to any possible criticism is a part of that, and functions to strongly suppress any resistance to the globally murderous status quo.

4 Likes

For the moment, people are still allowed to criticize war and militarism around here.

[ @orenwolf deleted the rest of this comment ]

2 Likes

It, The Landmaster, also delivered papers in 1990.

Get A Life: Paper Boy 2000

TLDW. I wasn’t going to watch Darpa propaganda based on shit gif.

Relatedly- the British Royal Marines use the BvS10 Viking armoured vehicle:

Their ground pressure is low enough that there have been cases of Marines being driven over by them in the confusion of a firefight and being unharmed except for cuts and bruises.

(the particular example in the photo is owned by the Dutch Marine Corps, hence the Dutch license plate)

2 Likes

Yugoslavia doesn’t exist any more so I would be surprised if there were still US troops there.

And I suppose you would have been just fine with allowing the genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo to continue as long as the US, that shining city on a hill, kept its hands clean.

3 Likes

I just want to remark that this wheel hybrid actually seems more sensible for larger construction sites, not armoured combat. I can see this on forklifts and on delivery trucks, though the tread would have to be more asphalt-friendly than the profile in the video. There are cases where on the site the treads would be used, but converted to wheels when commuting between the depot and the site. Except I suspect the cost and complexity would scare off most construction companies, especially if they tend to suffer breakdowns.

All inspired by the fact that there is a huge apartment complex project being built near my home, and I see all the vehicles shuffling stuff around whilst digging out the foundations.

1 Like

As an engineer I say this is neat and clever.
As an ex-conscript I say nope. Keep it simple and robust. Stuff like this will fail exactly when you really need it. It will also add maintenance time which will come out of the drivers’ sleepytime budget and it will add another buttload of spare parts your logistics train will have to cope with. And the logistics train is for food, dammit.

2 Likes

Aha! What more evidence is needed? Ban all military R&D immediately!

1 Like

:smiley: haha i knew someone would bite on that comment. I mostly threw it in there for lulz, but really instant coffee actually came out of early R&D to make soldiers more aggressive and alert in combat. So an early form of drug research for combat purposes in ye olde days.

2 Likes

So - instant coffee for aggression and alertness… bromide in the tea to keep them calm in barracks.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/06/29/2611115.htm

Makes sense I suppose…:grin:

3 Likes

See also

1 Like

Gosh, maybe you shouldn’t assume you know what was in it, then.

1 Like

I wonder how many of these Trump has ordered?