The Army’s new Infantry Squad Vehicle, successor to the Humvee, is built by GM Defense, based on the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 midsize truck, using 90% Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) parts — including Chevrolet Performance off-road racing components:
It’s basically a stretched-out, stripped-down all-terrain vehicle without doors or a roof with seating for as many as nine soldiers.
[…]
Thousands of pounds lighter and $80,000 cheaper than the Humvee, the Infantry Squad Vehicle is based on the Chevrolet Colorado truck built in Missouri.
“You can repair it anywhere on earth as long as you have access to commercial parts rather than a special military vehicle with special military parts,” said Miller, the Army’s top technical adviser.
[…]
The vehicle isn’t meant to withstand an attack, the official said. It’s designed to whisk soldiers within a few miles of the frontline and allow them to walk a short distance to the fight.
[…]
Its lighter weight, relative to a Humvee, means the Infantry Squad Vehicle can be carried by a Black Hawk helicopter for a short distance with a sling. A twin-rotor Chinook helicopter can carry two of the trucks inside its cargo bay for a greater distance. A Humvee’s weight requires a Chinook, and then just one can be carried in a sling.
How many $2000 scooters could they fit in a Chinook? You could buy 75 scooters for the cost of 1 one these.
Drone protection by not letting it within 6 (or 20?) miles of the front line. Brilliant design.
It’s a great design. The troops like it. They don’t like being out in the weather, of course.
Nothing survives drone attacks now, and you always need more trucks. It’s better to use something relatively cheap ($153K?), light, and fast. The Toyota Hilux would be better still, of course.
Kentucky Headhunter, NASA spent millions developing a pen that would work in space. The Russians used a pencil. Anyway I thought that the Pentagon said that the biggest threat to national security was climate change. The Infantry Squad Vehicle will have to be electric.
“said Miller, the Army’s top technical adviser.”
Heh.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44778730
Discusses military logistics. It is semi-relevant.
Michael, the Russians used pencils, whose shavings got into absolutely everything. Then there’s the problem of the highly conductive graphite dust randomly shorting out equipment.
In Skylab, the Russians routinely stole our astronauts’ pens.
Just where is this a viable option for troop transport, Ft. Benning?
Of course the best solution is not to be in a combat zone. The US should learn from the Europeans, and give up its empire.
McChuck, the mechanical pencil has been around for over two centuries. No shavings. The dangers of graphite dust may be overstated. There’s no record of aerosols from astronauts sneezing shorting out equipment, or from droplets of their ball sweat. The Russians (if indeed this anecdote is true) would have stolen the million dollar pens not for use but as status-enhancing souvenirs.
According to a Russian sources:
Both USA and USSR used crayons. Because, um, nothing else reliably worked in microgravity. Since graphite fragments and splinters from sharpening would indeed be dangerous, those were wax crayons. Again, duh.
Fisher presented his pressurized “space pens” in 1965, then NASA ran tests, approved the product in 1967, used from 1968.
USSR simply purchased a small box of pens and cartridges in 1969, used from the same year and to mid-1990s. As to what was used after, information is contradictory, but presumably if the new types were tried, no reason not to try several.
“$2000 scooters”
The German, French, Belgian, and Dutch militaries made extensive use of bicycles during WWI. Bicycles could move ground troops twice as fast as walking and they were less tired on arrival. It was a significant advance in military transport, though usually overlooked by historians focusing on motorized vehicles.
The German tank corps also made extensive use of motorcycle outriders to scout conditions ahead. Tuchman details their use in “The Guns of August.”
Germany also made use of motorcycles in WWI. Infamously, Corporal Adolf Hitler was a dispatch rider.
The use of motorcycles went in and out of favor, but the United States began using a few for special ops stuff. First Husqvarnas, now Kawasakis.
The US still maintains a small stable of horses, though they’re used only for ceremonial purposes. However, the Army used locally-obtained horses in Afghanistan in the early ‘oughts.
The Army also used “Rat Patrol” type dune buggies in Desert Storm, made by an old-school dune buggy maker named Chenowth. Chenowth still provides buggies to the US and other armies; they have gotten larger over the years, and the default armament now includes a .30 caliber machine gun as well as the .50, plus a mortar.
Back to WWI, the British Army used French-made airboats in the Mespotamian Campaign, patrolling the Tigris River. The airboat, now most familiar as an inhabitant of the Everglades, had been invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1905.
The Palestinians used hang gliders in an attack on Israel in 1987, and again in 2024.
Let’s remember that ridiculous recoilless rifle Vespa too if we’re at this.
But motorcycle mounted infantry is used right now, too.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/growing-focus-on-russian-tactical
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-111124-ukraine-scrambles-for
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-9624-the-grind-continues-as
As long as front density is pretty low and scout drones see no MG/AGL nests in the area, why not, indeed?
I mean, a single biker squad advances, obviously in very sparse formation. The other guys noticed, what they are going to do, call for mortar fire? Personal weapons without a bipod or something are not very good against fast targets at long range and mostly will just give away the positions. With cautious spacing mines (even hopping) are very unlikely to get more than one rider, the rest would just stop and drop immediately. Slow drones won’t easily catch a bike, fast drones are bigger (thus more noticeable) and more expensive (thus less common), and there was nothing loitering over the place right now, so only ambushes and stop-gap launches.