If it protects our sons and husbands against an IED or grenade launcher, and lasts another 20 years, is it worth the investment?
YOU BETCHA! Right Military families?
If it protects our sons and husbands against an IED or grenade launcher, and lasts another 20 years, is it worth the investment?
it won’t. even an ABRAMS can be destroyed by an IED. there is always a tradeoff. the MERKAVA and ABRAMS were designed with crew survivabilty the number 1 priority and they are the best tanks in the world (maybe LEOPARD 2A6 is there too). if this isn’t a technological leap forward, the money can be better used on more troops and more training.
there is an ubholy obession with hardware in the pentagon.
Probably just better not to get into foreign wars where it’s needed.
Vehicles like this have much shorter lifespans than your average tactical truck. The unarmored HMMWV had a great lifespan, but all the armor takes its toll on the frame, suspension, engine, and trannie.
Even if you overbuild these things, they’re going to be a maintenance NIGHTMARE. Might as well get a tank.
“If it protects our sons and husbands against an IED or grenade launcher, and lasts another 20 years, is it worth the investment?”
So does bringing the troops home.
Absolutely not! Fighting wars is a dangerous business, and those of us who volunteered for the job knew what we were getting into when we joined. Of course it's good to do all we can within reason can to protect our troops - but within reason. There is no amount of money which can elminate all the risks of combat, but there most certainly is a level of overspending which will drag us down to the point of insolvency.
I don't believe our nation any longer has the guts to fight an all-out, sustained war of attrition. The small but interminable nature of our current conflicts has exhausted our strength and will to the point that Americans just don't have the stomach for the casualties that full-scale warfare would produce. So instead of focusing primarily upon weapons and tactics that will overwhelm and destroy our enemies in the shortest time possible, we have become obsessed with making it safer for our armed forces to occupy and police hostile territories in perpetuity. We have devolved to the point that most Americans now regard our soldiers more as pitiable victims rather than warriors, and pray more for safety than for victory.
Better helmets? Absolutely! Superior body armor? Of course! But paying $250,000 per truck is not only unreasonable - it is criminal! $250,000 multiplied by how many? That level of spending on the scale that our armed forces require is not sustainable, and is just more evidence that - like all other vultures - defense contractors are picking their share of flesh off of a dying corpse. This orgy of deficit spending will ultimately end in collapse.
It’s a trade-off. At a quarter-mil per copy the Pentagon won’t be able to buy enough of them to protect the infantry. So many troops will continue to ride in Humvees or other thin-skinned troop carriers. Those troops won’t be beneficiaries of that higher level of protection.