DARPA Open-Sources Military Vehicle Design 105
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by
samzenpus
from the bigger-fins-and-a-hood-scoop dept.
from the bigger-fins-and-a-hood-scoop dept.
Velcroman1 writes "The army's secretive technology division has been collecting dozens of ideas for the design of its in-the-works rescue vehicle via a social-media contest — relying solely on the power of the crowd to get the next big thing built. Local Motors of Chandler, Ariz., is running the competition, officially known as the Experimental Crowd-derived Combat-support Vehicle (XC2V) Design Challenge, through March 10. It's not so different from when multiple users edit a page on Wikipedia, Local Motors CEO John Rogers said. 'Effectively, we want to co-create all aspects of a vehicle,' Rogers explained. 'The Wikipedia method of co-creation is really not far off from the way we talk about it.'"
Re:Overly constrained design space (Score:4, Informative)
There are plenty of reasons to dictate certain thing, wheels location for stability and transportability (bridge widths, RORO lash points) and be recoverable [wikipedia.org] with current equipment., frames for strength, and driver position for consistency in convoys if nothing else. Engines as well, because somebody has to have training and spare parts and interchangeability is a good thing.
Right now is a pretty good time to be designing this sort of thing because we have a lot of guys with in-theater experience, and we JUST finished making what was a Jeep replacement into an armored vehicle at great expense in terms of money and lives. We've got guys in combat zones with widely differing terrain.
If we can guard against making the perfect vehicle for desert environments, (and thereby building an army perfectly suited to fighting the LAST war) we should be ok.
Pimp My Humvee was a 2004 *reality* show ... (Score:4, Informative)
... Pimp My Humvee.
Pimp My Humvee was a 2004'ish *reality* show in Iraq.
... Wilson asked Rumsfeld: "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?""
"And Rocco's Humvee is, today, equipped--with "Gypsy racks"--steel-plated cages around the gunner--and other add-on, improvised hardware, known as "hillbilly armor." "It's Mel Gibson 'Road Warrior' stuff," says Capt. John Pinter, the battalion's maintenance officer. "We're not shooting for pretty over here." This is the ugly reality that National Guard Spc. Thomas Wilson was apparently trying to convey to Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait last week
http://www.newsweek.com/2004/12/19/hillbilly-armor.html [newsweek.com]