Originally Posted by marct
Russ, while we are obviously amusing ourselves (), there are some pretty serious points here. It strikes me that JAKE may be about as operable in the field as the first wave of tanks was. In and of itself, that's just normal in the development of a newish technology. Unfortunately, in the current political and perceptual climate, I have to wonder if that will work.
Marc
Marc,
You are onto the main point. There are some serious points and this has to come forward well thought out, particularly in the present climate. It seems much of our thinking in the equipment sector is in a defensive mode rather than offensive. Within this, with the MRAPs, our guys are further from their gear and support on patrols in many urban areas of ops. So our guys are tapped out at what they can carry. Yet some of the technologies they could use to do some pretty freaky stuff, is back on the truck.
Going forward, lets look at what we can do in basic format today. It must be compact, rugged, man operable, and must move like our soldier moves (every 12 yr old who takes a battlebot into the cage knows it has to be able to spin) And they must be able to team and cover each other just like foot maneuvers...this is defense and deterrence. You want a higher view from units, since you may be in amongst other vehicles and it has to be big enough to take the hits of vehicles. It needs to give a great visual (situational awareness) which goes a long ways to reading the game around you and IEDs and suspect IED scenarios. It has to be easy to get on and off (fast, in a fight, as another commented above). And, we haven't gone into the deception tactics that Special Ops guys came up with to make the enemy look silly. And it has to be done in a program where costs stay realistic...commercial equipment level of costs so units can be used as expendable, at times on purpose.
From this, we have to be doing something. Making something, but as a whole in being a working system, not testing it as a singular vehicle, where it is easy to shoot down the concept before it is understood (one wasp circling your head and you laugh and smack at it. Fifty wasps circling and you are running, flailing and cursing like a bandit).
Then it needs to be able to get it into the hands of a bunch of young warfighters in a MOUT facility and see what they expand from there (and not a group told to make this go away). In talking, we can blow up just about anything, at which point as taxpayers we should be pretty darn critical of the billions being spent on today and tomorrow's BIG targets, grouping our guys we present to our enemy (and all of these can be stopped with Laser Guided Energy just as easily as a Jake.)
The Jeep did a ton of work in WWII and on. The question I am posing is: How do we take an idea that is in that direction and get this generation's version of that?
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