MACGYVER’S SHOPPING LIST FOR G.I.S

In every American pla­toon, it seems, there’s a MacGyver or a B.A. Baracus — some­one who can make just about any­thing, out of just about noth­ing. How else can you explain U.S. sol­diers’ amaz­ing abil­ity to piece together scraps and left­overs, and turn ‘em into every­thing from gun tur­rets to armored Humvees?
With that in mind, non­pro­lif­er­a­tion expert Russell Seitz has put together a sol­diers’ shop­ping list of (mostly) off-​​the-​​shelf items that American troops could put to good use, in a hurry.

Hillbilly Electronic Countermeasures
The Islamists’ lat­est attempt to blow up Pakistan’s pres­i­dent with road­side explo­sives ran afoul of a handy gad­get called a VIP2 Road Ranger — an elec­tronic jam­mer that keeps radio con­trolled bombs from being trig­gered while their intended tar­get is within lethal range. The Pentagon may pay about ten grand for gold-​​plated Mil Spec [mil­i­tary spec­i­fi­ca­tion] mod­els, but the free mar­ket price of the same tech­nol­ogy is closer to a microwave oven — or a gray-​​market traf­fic radar jam­mer.
Used Tires
Not just any ones, and not the whole donut. What’s needed is a pro­gram to round up and skive off the Kevlar belts that rim the nation’s moun­tains of bald­ing air­craft radi­als. This would spare our land­fills while afford­ing inge­nious Gunnies a prime raw mate­r­ial for span­ning hard to fit gaps in impro­vised explo­sion shields…
Adhesives
Duct tape kills. If you want to save a lot of lives for a lit­tle money, fast, invest­ing it in seri­ously good epox­ies and elas­tomers with energy absorb­ing fillers like microbal­loons is a highly portable way to go. If I sent one thing to Iraq, it would be high tenac­ity ways and means of enhanc­ing the bond­ing of the catch as catch can vehi­cle armor peo­ple in the­ater improvise.

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