Slashdot Mirror
New and Improved - SmarTruck II
jmoriarty writes "The Army's next generation SmarTruck is on display in Detroit. The original version of the SmarTruck was covered back in May, but the Army now admits that version was 'hardly ready for the real world'. Apparently the real world version needed interchangable nodules, and the absolute must-have for every Slashdotter's vehicle - a 'hacker in a box'."
...or is the military run by 7-year-old boys? In third grade, I too would have been very excited about a truck with missile launchers and a huge artillery system termed "Crusader".
Don't even get me started on the names of operations. "Infinite Justice", anybody? It sounds like something out of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
This is deceptively like taking a standard flatbed truck, with no fancy cab interior, providing an easy way to link the cab to the bed (oh, like say a data and power cable or 2), then tossing on/in any old modular box for the mission...
Humm, didn't we do this with the HEMTT series? The MTV series, hell even the old 2.5 ton series (complete with "modular" 5 ton wrecker for mobility to/from the motorpool), the list goes on.
Oh, just noticed from the article, they cost more. Wow, some innovation.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Look, it's got some nice bells and whistles, but hand me an RPG or drive this over a mine and all it'll be good for in the future is roasting marshmallows. Wouldn't it make a hell of a lot more sense to mount this sort of electronic warfare gear onto Humvees or (better yet) APCs? Which vehicle would you rather have when even the Somali militia opens up on you, much less anyone with training?
The general quoted in the interview acknowledged that there was no mission in mind for the first generation SmarTruck. Well, that's the mission for this thing? A next-gen friendly casualty generator?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The prototype vehicle cost between $500,000 and $1 million, Fuller said, although she said it is tough to estimate precisely because it involved partnerships with several firms.
The military said it has no plans to produce the truck any time soon, although Bran Ferren, a designer of SmarTruck II, said that if an order came through it could be put in production in a year.
As I read it, after Sept. 11 some military command folks said--wow, that changes a lot.
They concluded the military might need some new ideas for lightweight vehicles and told some researches to play around with what they could come up with.
This isn't going to the battlefield--it's a prototype of a number of new ideas. And if one of those ideas can save an American soldiers life it's well worth it in U.S. Military (as well as Political) economics.
Soldiers are expensive to train (and thus lose) and its even more expensive to explain their death to the public.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number