High Speed Battle Buggies

Dangerroom has this report that the Marines and SpecOps troops are looking for a high speed off road vehicle more like an armed dune buggy. This is a good idea considering the terrain of our current theaters of war in Iraq and Afghanistan bringing back memories of that old TV show "Rat Patrol" and jeeps running around the African desert with a mounted .50 cal machineguns that were the dream of all boys at the time. I think the designers should spend some time with the Toyota Racing Developement team and their design of the super-trucks they field for the Baja 1000, some seriously badass trucks as any offroad enthuseist can tell you. We now have so much armor on the Hummer that it is no longer the capable off road machine that it once was and even then its large size limited it and it never caught on with jeepers or the race crowd because of that. We need a smaller lightweight lightning strike vehicle that can be inserted easily by chopper and capable of traversing terrain that heavily armored vehicles never could while maintaining a low profile.

The Marines’ vision for the new vehicles will likely be shaped by their experience with the Internally Transportable Vehicle (ITV), a 4,000-pound, 65-mph, four-wheel­drive open-cockpit vehicle. In development since 2004, it passed tests last year at Twentynine Palms, Calif.; Camp Lejeune, N.C.; and Fort Greely, Alaska. Made by American Growler and General Dynamics, the $120,000 ITVs can carry a 2,000-pound pay­load and fire the Mk 19 grenade launcher, .50-caliber and M240 ma­chine guns...

The Corps, which will begin fielding the ITV this summer, envi­sions buying 699 through 2015. But that could change, especially if the joint effort with the Army bears fruit.


The Army and Special Operations Command will soon look at Black­water USA’s 100 mph Light Strike Vehicle. Still in the prototype stage, the 3,000-pound vehicle will have a 500-horsepower engine, 41-inch tires and a 2,500-pound payload.

“A vehicle with outstanding off­road capability and high axle articu­lation requires a compliant and loose suspension with maximum travel,” said Marty Strong, Blackwa­ter USA vice president of communi­cations. “These are the opposite characteristics required of a high­speed platform. Our suspension de­sign spans both worlds by offering high articulation and extreme off­road performance, while still main­taining great manners when travel­ing at speeds approaching 100 mph.”

Another potential candidate for the program is the Tactical Au­tonomous Chassis-Combat (TAC-C) vehicle, which is being designed to be driven by a soldier or pro­grammed to operate autonomously. Emerging from the Army Re­search Lab in 2005, the 85 mph TAC-C has four-wheel independent suspension, can make tight turns and can drive diagonally.

“It was designed with a lot of the know-how that is typically incorpo­rated in the off-road racing circuit in order to handle high, rocky terrain,” said Kevin Bonner, lead engineer at General Dynamics Robotic Systems. SOCOM [Special Operations Command] wants a vehicle to handle weapons, reconnaissance and med­ical missions. They envision a 2,000 ­to 3,000-pound four-wheel-drive ve­hicle that can fly on a CH-47 [Chinook helicopter].

Sounds like they are going in the right direction if you ask me.