Today's Fresh Blogs...

• Blastproof Truck-Makers Get Litigious

  Published: August 23, 2007, 9:01 pm

  Tags: The Industry, Gearheads

  A year ago the U.S. market for specialized blast-resistant military trucks was worth just a few hundred million dollars annually. Then in May Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared the so-called Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected trucks his number one weapons-buying priority and promised to order as many as 22,000 in the next four years. The

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• MRAPs = “Symbolic Targets”

  Published: August 24, 2007, 2:55 pm

  Tags: Reporters Terrorists, Gearheads

  The Marine Corps general in charge of buying “Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected” trucks for the U.S. military had some harsh words for the media who gathered to observe MRAP testing at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland this morning. “All troops in theater are happy to see these vehicles,” said Brigadier General Mike Brogan

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• Military Scoops Itself

  Published: September 4, 2007, 3:04 pm

  Tags: Reporters Terrorists, Gearheads

  A couple weeks ago I attended a demonstration of the military’s new blast-resistant trucks at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. It was the same event where Marine General Mike Brogan famously blamed the media for turning the trucks into “symbolic targets” for insurgents. Photographers at the demo were welcome to shoot the

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• World Politics Review: Iraq Boasts Counter-Insurgency Capabilities the U.S. Lacks. Part One

  Published: September 19, 2007, 4:08 pm

  Tags: Iraq Sucks, The Industry, Gearheads

  The Iraqi armed forces are struggling to become self-sufficient in the face of constant insurgent attacks, a dearth of experienced leaders and in a divisive political environment. Several years after the establishment of Baghdad’s new army and air force, U.S. and British forces still take the lead in most combat operations in Iraq. But in

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• The MRAP that Got Away

  Published: October 5, 2007, 5:34 am

  Tags: The Industry, Gearheads

  The urgency surrounding the multi-billion-dollar purchase of blast-resistant vehicles for the U.S. military is new, but the vehicles themselves are anything but. They all hail back to southern African designs, says Doug Coffey, spokesman for BAE., which builds the RG-33 armored truck. The roughly dozen Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected

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• MRAP Mysteries Vex Contractors

  Published: October 8, 2007, 1:23 pm

  Tags: Gearheads

  15,000 trucks. $20 billion. And a Hell of a lot of urgency, at least by government bureaucracy standards. Tumble all that together and you get the Pentagon’s crash program to replace every combat-roled Humvee in Iraq. The goal? To protect troops against increasingly powerful Improvised Explosive Devices and Explosively Formed Penetrators

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• Army Future Vs. Insurgent Super-Bombs

  Published: October 9, 2007, 3:42 am

  Tags: Cannon Fodder, Reality Check, Gearheads

  The Army’s $120-billion Future Combat Systems – a light, networked family of vehicles intended to replace a third of the active tank and Bradley fleet — was conceived in the 1990s before Improvised Explosive Devices and Explosively Formed Penetrators started demolishing U.S. forces in Iraq. So does the FCS concept still hold

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• How to Delay MRAP

  Published: October 10, 2007, 12:08 am

  Tags: The Industry, Gearheads, Logistricks

  The rush $20-billion “Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected” vehicle program to provide bomb-resistant trucks to the U.S. military in Iraq faces a lot of potential bottlenecks. Factory capacity is one, shipping overseas is another — as is the distribution process overseas. Another is the installation of radios, machine guns, network

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• Blast-Resistant Trucks: “An Emotional Debate”

  Published: October 17, 2007, 7:15 pm

  Tags: Reality Check, Gearheads

  An emotional debate,” is how Dakota Wood, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, describes the back-and-forth over Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored trucks for the U.S. military in Iraq: Moves toward a surge production of MRAPs [15,000 trucks in three years at a cost of around $20 billion — ed.] have

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• Robot Race: Oshkosh Cracks Up

  Published: November 3, 2007, 1:36 pm

  Tags: Robots, Test Day, Gearheads

  With hundreds of spectators watching from the stands, a four-man Marine Corps honor guard mounted on tawny, blonde-haired mustangs marched in formation, bearing the U.S. colors, to open up the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Urban Challenge robot race in Victorville, California. Things were going great until one of the horses got

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• Robot Race: Everyone’s a Winner (Updated)

  Published: November 3, 2007, 4:40 pm

  Tags: Robots, Test Day, Gearheads

  Oops. I jumped the gun in reporting that Virginia Tech had possibly won Urban Challenge. Tech was actually third to roll past that checkered flag, after Stanford and Carnegie Mellon. In coming minutes all six remaining vehicles are expected to finish the race. But speed isn’t the only criterion. Virginia’s Victor Tango was pretty

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• Robot Race: Pit Stop!

  Published: November 3, 2007, 4:24 pm

  Tags: Robots, Test Day, Gearheads

  Urban Challenge comprises three missions in which each bot must hit certain waypoints and accomplish tasks like parking and negotiating intersections. Just six vehicles made it to the third mission, leaving five defeated bots parked in impound. Between each mission, teams get a five-minute pit stop. While one crewman loads mission parameters into

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• Robot Race: Carnegie Mellon Takes the Prize

  Published: November 4, 2007, 3:09 pm

  Tags: Robots, Test Day, Gearheads

  Darpa: Tartan Racing's “Boss” of Pittsburgh, Penn., turned in the top performance in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge and won the $2 million cash prize as the competition's first-place winner, DARPA announced today. Stanford Racing's “Junior” of Stanford, Calif., won the $1 million

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• New MRAPs to Resist Insurgent Super-bombs

  Published: November 7, 2007, 1:04 pm

  Tags: Iraq Sucks, The Industry, Gearheads

  The second round of purchases of V-shaped, blast-resistant trucks for the U.S. military in Iraq is focused on defeating what is perhaps the most dangerous weapon to emerge in the five-year-old war: explosively formed penetrators (EFP) that can punch through even the thick armor of a main battle tank. EFPs account for no more than five percent of

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• Robots, Ho!

  Published: November 13, 2007, 4:05 pm

  Tags: Robots, Gearheads, Logistricks

  The Army is working hard to take the people out of vulnerable supply convoys. The service took a baby step towards robotic convoys this month when it tested the so-called Convoy Active Safety Technologies at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia. This robotic autopilot — steered by a combination of radar, laser scanners and GPS — might one day

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