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Gadget-Heavy Trucks For Fun And Mayhem
"The Bluetooth PAN will be created using BlueDrekar and Bluetooth Ethernet Emulator. You will be able to inter-connect PDA, cellphones, and a laptops to play games, exchange data, and control things like the doors, lights of the car, and stereo. TSpaces will be the backbone communication middleware for accessing and controlling the electrical functions of the car. They are going to use Blue Eyes, a user interface that detects a person's eyeballs and responds to blinking commands to turn on/off the lights and doors of the car. ViaVoice will perform voice recognition email management, voice-activated control of air conditioning in the car, as well as voice-enabled access to MP3 files through the car stereo system. The car will debut at a conference in San Francisco."
Quote from CNN:
Warren, Michigan-based NAC, which is part of the Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, designed the SmarTruck with urban warfare in mind -- against enemies such as terrorists, mobsters or urban warlords.
"The reason we were thinking about urban warfare is because the Army increasingly is being pulled into policing duties," Fuller said.
The SmarTruck might be used to ferry important dignitaries or explore enemy territory. It won't however, be used as an offensive weapon.
"We're not trying to kill anybody," she said. "What we want to do is immobilize."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I'd rather have one with a Duramax 6600.
300 HP and 520 ft/lbs stock with a turbocharger.
Now the Dodges are going to loose thier Cummins Turbodiesels in favor of a DC diesel, not too sure about that, Cummins makes a really good engine.
I don't think the Unimog I used ever made it above 45 though. It was sweet off the road though.
Used one to haul around beehives in Northern Israel in '94.
I see it used in the place of "War Wagons", Suburbans and Excursions with armor plate and armored glass used for VIP operations, prisoner transport.
It could also be used in a patrol mode similar to what the Hummers do in urban areas.
These vehicles would be used in low intensity areas or the rear. Places like Kosovo now, or Somolia in the early 90s.
>them is some kind of new technological
>invention.
Yeah, but they must be feeling foolish about buying out Jaguar now that the government has paid them to develop a simlar technology . . .
Acdtually, a friend of mine solved that oil leak problem on an XJ12. Amazing what you can do with a Chevy 400 . . .
hawk, still missing his Impala 400
But it's not a Bond Car. Real Bond cars are handmade by Aston Marton.
Due to "unspecified" distractions, the results of the first test drive left a bit to be desired.
Because they suck compared to guns
Any decent-sized industrial CO2 laser could be used as a weapon, if you cart around a generator to run it with.
Advantage:
Disadvantages:
Lasers will almost certainly be useful for niche applications, but for damaging most small-ish targets, it's hard to beat kinetic slugs.
Guess it'll only be deployed in areas that have gas stations every 30 miles.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
...the SmarTruck (wtf kinda name is that, anyway?)...
Maybe that's where they bought it: "Shop Smart. Shop S-Mart."
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Will the civilian models come with Gold Cross?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They mention they have all-wheel steering, which I'm pretty sure means all four wheels are capable or turning independantly.
That instantly brought to mind the coolest steering feature you could ever have - strafing! You just glide back and forth while pointed straight ahead the whole time.
Second most useful feature - the emergency "snowplow" ski stop as all wheels turn inward at once.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The vehicle also comes equipped with a black box, like the ones that record mechanical functions and pilot conversations on airplanes.
"The auto companies are very interested in this feature," Wend said. "They are looking at adapting those black boxes for consumer use any day now. They could reduce warranty costs and speed up service by diagnosing and even fixing problems remotely."
I wonder if the reason they're interested is "reduce warranty costs" == "deny warranty claims"
I've heard that there may be tracking/monitoring equipment in rental cars nowadays. Anybody heard anything?
...as if those oversized SUV drivers weren't getting annoying enough... now they're gonna slick me if I try and pass and plug my ass if I push my grocery cart in their path!?
No, I think the idea of sicking military contractors on creating a bond car counts, though... ;-)
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
If you've seen anything about Project Land Warrior, you'd know that in addition to the generals watching Bond flicks, the read Robert Anson Heinlein and watch Aliens...
www.eFax.com are spammers
Well, sometimes you don't want a tank or a Jeep, say. A tank can give the wrong impression if you're trying to be low-key -- either for PR reasons, where a tank could be interpreted as a show of power, or because an American tank in certain places would be an obvious target. And they're not designed for transporting more people, so if you want to do a civillian rescue, they're very suboptimal.
Jeeps can go more places than tanks, and probably don't piss off the locals quite as much if they're not yet seething, but they're incredibly vulnerable to small-arms fire since they're so open. Might have been helpful in, say, Mogadishu (sp?) or Sarajevo.
So this may make a good compromise between light protection and lower profile. Good, say, for rescues, for covert ops, light escort missions and so forth. But you clearly wouldn't put it up against T-72s on an open field...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Yeah, as if Linux would solve anything here: "Major Emciessi! It's Colonel Panic on the phone! He demands ..."
And I'm not talking about the CD-ROM. You can't fight wars or put down riots without your caffeine.
How come this thing reminds me of the EM-50 from Stripes?? I keep hearing Bill Murray saying razzle dazzle or seeing him doing the Aunt Jemima thing with that hot MP. It's still cool though.
Gorkman
When we lived in S.C. We would see sometimes Semi-trucks going down I95 at 90 miles per hour. Just happened to have a full sized subruban with very dark windows, in the front and rear.
One bright afternoon, one of these caravans went zooming past us, and you could see a guy setting at a machine gun in the back. So I am willing to say these are escort truck's for munitions, or nuclear fuel transport.
http://www.ford-trucks.com/news/news88.html
Apparently there were going to run it off of propane.
But an even larger one is the Chrysler Unimog, snippet here:
http://www.climateark.org/articles/2001/1st/dachve hi.htm
which is somewhat imprssive:
DaimlerChrysler's decision to market its nine-foot-tall Unimog truck as a luxurious off-road vehicle has environmentalists fuming about the necessity for this oversized "dinosaur" on US roads. The 12,500-pound behemoth--bigger than General Motors' Hummer and Ford's Excursion--gets about 10 miles to the gallon. SUVs, driven by many urban and suburban residents who never go off-road, have come under fire for a number of reasons, including poor gas mileage and safety issues when involved in two-car collisions.
I have this picture of this being driven by a short little old lady who only visists the grandkids, and plays doom on the weekends.
(I really did know a silver haired lady who used to go into one store to get the latest doom expansion packs. It was funny as heck to hear her talk!)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I don't want to know what the government plans to do with that.
;)
Give the Bush twins a place to drink where no one will check ID?
I do not have a signature
After reading the article I am not sure what use this would be in a military to military confrontation. It does seem like it would be usefull to attack the public when they do things like excercise thier right to protest.
Personally, I could do with a localized EMP device, which kills the ignition in a road-rager vehicle. Nothing like cooling his heels at the roadside for a while to reflect on his need to be "there" 0.1 second sooner than having to wait behind one more vehicle.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, hope they take it easy on the road, ot they'll have more mayhem than they bargained for...
Rumor has it the self destruct button adds a couple PSI to the Wilderness AT tires.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's interesting that the US military has decided to take cues from Ian Flemming. You'd think it would be more useful to seek guidance from someone like Peter Wright who was one of the real life developers of the spy gadgets attributed to Q in the Bond movies. You'd think they would have sought out the real thing rather than intentionally imitating art. Somehow, I'd expect the systems to work better if the source material wasn't hollywood fantesy. Oh, well. These are your tax $$$ at work...
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
I have an 88' Lincoln Continental.
I get 12 miles to the gallon,
It has all kinds of gadgets, like a do-hicky that turns on my lights when it gets dark for me.
And it drives like a tank, and leaks oil behind it!
And I'm sure the doors are thick enough to stop small arms fire!
And, I am putting a mp3 system in the trunk, and possibly a cross over cable attached in the back seat so that friends can sync laptops.
I am actually thinking of running Viavoice, so that I could have voice control, but right now I am only running dos on the computer, and its only 120mhz, so Windows would kinda kill it.
How long until the local police officers decide they need a similar vehicle to keep us in check?
seeing a trend with my brother? Yes, he has good taste :)
I had a 1991 Eagle Talon Tsi AWD (built by Mitsu), and now I drive a rally blue WRX. People ask about it every time I stop to re-fuel.
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Or Lotus. They should use the Esprit V-8 twin turbo in the next movie. With submarine conversion option, of course.
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
I saw a picture of this truck (the Army's version) in Popular Mechanics. There was a $40 Logitech joystick sitting on the back seat - incidentally, the same joystick a friend of mine owns. I'd like to know exactly what the hell a Logitech joystick is doing in there? Is it so the vehicle's occupants can play Quake Tournament on the seat mounted displays over a satellite link to the Internet? If you tell me it's actually part of the truck's command & control systems, I'm going to be ROTFLMAO.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Yes. Say our government buys a bunch of these "SmarTrucks". Since we are being hypothetical here, say a situation develops in which we depend on one of these SUV-on-steroids to rescue a diplomat. We get the diplomat inside the vehicle, and in the interest of our hypothesis, a wild-eyed terrorist grabs the door handle and is immobilized by the shock. Another terrorist, wild-eyed as the first, opens fire with his submachine gun, only to see his bullets richochet. A small cadre of wild-eyed terrorists sitting behind a barricade are blown away by the grenade launcher. As the SmarTruck speeds away, the wild-eyed terrorists in pursuit are foiled by an oil slick.
Meanwhile, another wild-eyed terrorist taps away on a keyboard...
Inside the SmarTruck, the driver's eyes light up in horror as these dreaded words scroll across his heads-up display: How are you gentlemen !!
Sure, this "SmarTruck" is gonna impress the hell out of a lot of people (just read all the previous posts). But what good will that be when someone remotely overflows a buffer and disables the vehicle's systems? I'm a U.S. citizen--may I have my money back?
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
DaimlerChrysler isn't building and marketing the Unimog in the US for an SUV, it's a medium duty truck to compete with the Isuzu/General Motors medium duty truck.
a ul t.htm
I used an Unimog in Israel, one with a flat bed and a crane, nice work truck...but it's not SUV. They've been built since the early 50s and are really stout trucks. But the MB diesel in the Unimog, which will be the diesel in the new Dodge Ram trucks isn't near as nice as the Isuzu diesel that GM is putting in the new HD series Chevy and GM 2500/3500 trucks.
http://www.mercedes-benz.com/e/ecars/unimog/def
In the US it's going to be sold through Freightliner...not the usual stop for the Soccer Mom looking for a truck.
"We've got to think out of the box"
In other words, original thinking requires copying Sci-fi...
You're not the first person to say this, and I'm still confused by it. Since when did "think outside of the box" mean "think only original thoughts"?
Whatever your local value of "the box" is, thinking outside of the box is getting a different perspective and thinking in ways that those who still have the provincial perspective cannot.
Granted, one of the benefits of this process is often original ideas, but another is the fusion of external ideas with your own. Clearly, this car is not an exact replica of a bond car, but something that seeks to apply modern military technology to the idea (ala Bond) of an offensive and defensive-capable super-car.
Vanity, vanity... all the world is vanity, and there is nothing new under the sun. But that doesn't mean that you can't blend the old in interesting ways!
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
"Canyonero! Canyonero!"
props to all dead homiez
I can't believe your troll comment got moderated insightful. Any new point of conflict will prove itself a testing ground for new weaponry, technology and fighting tactics. Unlike Nazi Germany in the Spanish civil war, the US does not enter into wars merely to check out its newfangled armaments. And lack of popular support is no reason not to do the right thing, especially when 51% (read: "popular") of the population is eradicating the other 49.
(See: Somalia - Oil, Grenada - Get eyes off of Reagan's illicit activities, bombing Kosovo - Get eyes of Clinton's illicit activities.)
Get real. There's no oil in Somalia. The Grenada invasion took place because the US didn't want another Communist nation 200 miles off its shores. And the Kosovo conflict only came about after two years of fruitless and half-hearted peace attempts by the European neighbors.
Among the other "selfish" conflicts we've fought in include Korea (my, that was egotistical of us), Vietnam (gee, we only lost 50,000 troops for our own, selfish reasons) and Kuwait, because of our original maritime partnership. (Although you could make a strong case there that if they had no oil we might not have been as quick to rescue them--or have created the partnership at all.) The only selfish interests that I see are of those that would rather malign their own country instead of serve it.
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Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
I think you mistake who these weapons are REALLY aimed at: "the domestic enemy".
Like the soon-to-be-mounted-on-your-nearest-HUMVEE microwave weapon (which will pleasantly fry your skin to 160 degrees), the Less Lethal weapons are to curb disturbances such as those seen in Seattle in 1999 or perhaps Paris in 1968.
Those far-away lands you mentioned are the dumping ground for depleted-uranium weapons and similar toxic toys that Raytheon and the boys cook up in their labs. We get the good stuff, here...
Your central thesis is certainly correct, though: the US is the Country of Carpetbaggers.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
It seems more likely they watched "Stripes", with Bill Murray. This is more like the Urban Assault Vehicle from that movie than anything that Bond or his villians have had.
They just needed to go to South Africa and take a look at the "theft deterrent devices" many clever motorists have installed, like the flamethrowers along the bottom of both sides of the car activated with a foot pedal.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
will be shut down.
It's called the 'Excursion.' It's really the ultimate battle vehicle:
- It is HUGE. This strikes fear into the hearts of your bravest enemies
- Because of the size, it can ram anything off the road, even Suburbans
- It has bars that pop down from underneath it when you try to run something over, just in case your enemy saw Speed and wants to go under you
- The ultimate Gas Embargo: rather than helping you cut off a nation's supply of gas, it simply uses it up before they can
- Built for modern war, this is a real suburban assault vehicle
- Large enough to smuggle small european nations in the back
Thes things are going fast! Buy now!
And for the ultimate in biological warfare, check out the Aztek: Ugly enough to cause enemies to vomit upon seeing it.
Remind me, just when did they discover oil in Somalia? I must have missed it. So did the CIA, for that matter:
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Quality of my life has defenetely risen since I was able to buy one of the new Tracks equiped with the best army stuff they stole from Bond movies. Now, when I take the track to the shop, they don't just check oil levels and wipe the windshield. They also check the levels of plutonium for my laser turret with 360degree of freedom. I load cannons with enough ammo for a two way grocery trip. Every time I take highway on my way home from work, I push the button to dump enough nails and sharp edged pieces of coil behind me, so that no one would try to cut me of, I even added an extra powered air pump to the sprayer. This way the nails cover all four lanes. My night vision cameras and heat seaking missiles are very convenient for an evening tour of the city. Did I mention that the track can also float in the water? That's a super. Once I tried using the laser to blast a car barrier in the shopping mall when someone double parked me, I got a ticket that time. Damn. In any case, I sure am glad that the army decided to start selling these babies to general public, they are to die for!
You can't handle the truth.
Here is another article about the new US army's truck
I sure hope this works better than the Navy's "Smart Ship"...
("Major Emciessi! It's General Protectionfault on the phone! He demands to know why our SmarTrucks' laser keep spontaneously activating themselves and burning '1 0wn J00!' into nearby objects!...)
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Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
In case you haven't read the article, this very first paragraph stopped me in my tracks:
;-)
It was a direct order from the high command: Before designers at the Army's National Automotive Center in Warren began creating their first-ever concept truck, they had to watch four James Bond movies.
Wow. Generals *can* be geeks!
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Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Only the Bush administration would be able to approve this and pull it off. The next SmarTruck after this will feature high-pressure hoses blasting oil for hundreds of feet to knock down walls, launching "hot-oil ballons" over hills to burst on enemy's heads, and creating an even bigger demand for more oil drilling.
This isn't meant for use as a weapon. It's meant to ensure Bush stays rich even after we have orbiting solar power sats sending us terawatts of free power via microwave beams.
:-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Yes, the US does have destructive lasers. On June 7 of last year, the US Army shot down a missile using a laser. Here's a SpaceDaily.com story on the test. Here's a Slashdot story on equipping a 747 with a laser to shoot down missiles.
One of SmarTruck's advanced features, all-wheel steering, is due out on some 2002 GM vehicles.
All wheel steering really isn't that new. Honda Preludes had this feature in the late 80's to early 90's IIRC. Looks like GM uses Microsoft's definition of innovation. Still, the SmarTruck (wtf kinda name is that, anyway?) looks like the ultimate road-rage vehicle. Just the thing for those crowded L.A. freeways.
I take drugs seriously.
I could have just given them my 1986 Oldsmobile Delta 88, and saved them a few million dollars.
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Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
We are ABOVE a third-world city street. Directly below us, the SmarTruck is zooming along at 75mph. Most of the traffic (animals, bikes, cars) is pulled over, but the SmarTruck is being pursued by four cop cars, and a helicopter. All are firing at the SmarTruck.
We SWITCH views to INSIDE the SmarTruck, our perspective is that of the proverbial bug on the windshield looking into the car. We see the Driver, a US Army enlisted man. In the passenger seat, but edging almost into the driver's seat is a Scantily-Clad Bond-Type Woman. Blonde, sexy, etc.
Woman: They're firing at us! We're going to die!
Army guy: (laughes) That'll be the day...
We see the Army Guy manipulating controls on the dash. After each button is pressed, we switch views to SEE: An oil slick and tacks spilling out of the rear bumper, and the cop cars skidding out of control. The laser turret pops out, and shoots down the helicopter. An approaching squad of evil-looking soldiers is exposed to tear gas and grenade volleys. We SWITCH back to the car.
Woman: Oh John, you saved out lives!
Army Guy: I never go out without protection.
The Woman starts to remove her shirt as we fade out to a montage of scenes of the SmarTruck in action.
Narrator: Be an army of one. Join today.
(end of ad)
Please note, it was not my intention to give offense. This is a simple spoof of US Army ads and James Bond movies. If I have given offense, I sincerely apologize.
I'm the stranger...posting to