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Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

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Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

#81

Post by UncleEntity »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #79
UncleEntity wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder why nobody checked their work, parachute failures get investigated pretty thoroughly so it's not like you're going to get away with burning in a few hummers. Though "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Back in '90 or so I was on the ground crew for a jump they were doing to impress some Soviet generals and they jumped with too high winds which resulted in two ar…

DZSO was either begging them to stop or should’ve been relieved for cause.

I think the wind died down temporarily just in time for the go/no go call...was on a jump where that happened and it was nowhere near a fun landing.

Thinking further on the heavy drop thing, from what I remember the crew who's vehicle it was were the ones doing most of the rigging with the riggers mostly just checking their work. Too many eyes for it to be an accident methinks.

Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

#82

Post by killjoywashere »

As a military officer, I pray these never make it past Test and Evaluation. They took essentially one part and turned it into 1000 parts. Anyone who has seen what 20 year old Marines do with these machines, let alone what happens in war, will appreciate that this is a fantastically horrible idea in a war zone. I need high reliability, not high zoot. Let NASA have high zoot.

Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

#83

Post by toomanybeersies »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #26

There’s something deeply poetic to this that DARPA didn’t understand the wisdom in what the “reinvent the wheel” phrase means. This seems to embody every bit of its meaning. Replace rubber tires which are brain dead simple and work very well with zero maintenance with this complicated monstrosity that I have many doubts about even being an improvement.

It's literally DARPA's job to fund pie in the sky projects, in the hope that maybe some of them might be practical.

The internet was born of a DARPA project, Siri was made with technology spun off from another. Project MAC was filled with groundbreaking research and development of AI and operating systems. All modern operating systems can trace their lineage back to Project MAC. The origins of GPS are also from an earlier DARPA project.

Most DARPA projects will never be used in an operational environment, but the technology discovered and lessons learned inevitably find their way into other projects and technologies.

Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

#84

Post by Nition »

killjoywashere wrote: post #82

As a military officer, I pray these never make it past Test and Evaluation. They took essentially one part and turned it into 1000 parts. Anyone who has seen what 20 year old Marines do with these machines, let alone what happens in war, will appreciate that this is a fantastically horrible idea in a war zone. I need high reliability, not high zoot. Let NASA have high zoot.

Same principle applies even to non-military things like home appliances, yet we always seem to end up with less reliability and more zoot.

Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

#85

Post by johan_larson »

killjoywashere wrote: post #82

As a military officer, I pray these never make it past Test and Evaluation. They took essentially one part and turned it into 1000 parts. Anyone who has seen what 20 year old Marines do with these machines, let alone what happens in war, will appreciate that this is a fantastically horrible idea in a war zone. I need high reliability, not high zoot. Let NASA have high zoot.

Bring back the original Jeeps?

Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

#86

Post by philliphaydon »

Nition wrote: post #84
killjoywashere wrote: post #82

As a military officer, I pray these never make it past Test and Evaluation. They took essentially one part and turned it into 1000 parts. Anyone who has seen what 20 year old Marines do with these machines, let alone what happens in war, will appreciate that this is a fantastically horrible idea in a war zone. I need high reliability, not high zoot. Let NASA have high zoot.

Same principle applies even to non-military things like home appliances, yet we always seem to end up with less reliability and more zoot.

Reminds me of the book. The inmates are running the asylum.

Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

#87

Post by peterwwillis »

They could support tracks on existing vehicles by making new hubs/shafts. You remove the hub, add a shaft extension, replace the hub, then get spare rims and tracks out of the boot and do an Indy 500-style fast wheel change. If you hustled my bet is you could do this in 2 minutes with four people. Would add significant unsprung weight but would support existing vehicles.

If you modify the vehicle you can support this without changing the hub and shaft/extension, just change the wheels and add tracks. But I'm assuming they wanted to work with a mostly stock vehicle.

Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

#89

Post by rtkwe »

johan_larson wrote: post #85
killjoywashere wrote: post #82

As a military officer, I pray these never make it past Test and Evaluation. They took essentially one part and turned it into 1000 parts. Anyone who has seen what 20 year old Marines do with these machines, let alone what happens in war, will appreciate that this is a fantastically horrible idea in a war zone. I need high reliability, not high zoot. Let NASA have high zoot.

Bring back the original Jeeps?

Maybe not the original unchanged...

https://jalopnik.com/the-legendary-world-war-ii-jeep-had-a-d...

Re: Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles

#90

Post by gnarbarian »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #78
gnarbarian wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't symmetrical it would be far more difficult to balance properly for when it's rotating in "wheel mode"

Yah the real trick is seeing that thing spin perfectly at highway speed.

and then smashing into a pothole. That is A LOT of heavy complicated unsprung mass.
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