D.I.Y. GUN TRUCK

U.S. con­voys have become juicy tar­gets for insur­gents. The vehi­cles roll around the desert with about as much armor as a Chevy pick-​​up. And the gun trucks meant to pro­tect the sup­ply trains aren’t mus­cu­lar enough to shove gueril­las aside.
So one Army Staff Sergeant, James King, decided to take mat­ters into his own hands, The State (via Jeff Quinton) reports. SSG King has designed a new gun truck for con­voy pro­tec­tion.

The truck cur­rently is under­go­ing a seven-​​day road test in Iraq and ini­tial reports are good, Maj. Ricky Smith, the 175th [Maintenance Company’s] com­man­der, reported Wednesday.
So far, no one has shot at it and that is the effect we wanted to scare the h— out of the bad guys, Smith wrote in an e-​​mail to The State…
Kings design adds an armored box, bristling with guns, that can be bolted onto the back of a heavy trans­port truck in a con­voy. It is much dif­fer­ent than the gun trucks the Army has used for decades. Those are quick, agile gun trucks designed to race up and down the length of a con­voy to meet attack­ers.
Kings gun truck recently unveiled at Camp Arifjan, where the 175th is sta­tioned in Kuwait weighs more than 20 tons. The vehi­cle orig­i­nally was designed to haul a bat­tle tank…
The walls of the box are pro­tected on the side by sev­eral lay­ers of Kevlar. There are a few inches between the Kevlar and the sides of the truck to absorb most of the impact and shrap­nel if it is hit by a rocket-​​propelled grenade, King said.
That part of the design has not been tested, King said. We wont know until an RPG hits it.
The box is made of three-​​eighths-​​inch-​​thick steel plat­ing, which can stop most small-​​arms fire. The floor is rein­forced with two lay­ers of the steel plat­ing to pro­tect against bombs.
The box is armed with one 40-​​mm and one .50-​​caliber machine gun. It has room for two other gun­ners.
If the truck makes it past its first real-​​world road test in Iraq this week, King and the oth­ers who worked on the project will con­struct seven more boxes for the 7th Transportation Group.

December 21st, 2004 | Ground Vehicles | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.