US Army orders next-gen robot mule to haul a literal ton of gear Soldiers bear a heavy burden while serving their homelands, which is why the US Army has awarded contracts this week to two companies for a new generation of equipment-hauling robots. The Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport Increment II (S-MET II) is set to be built by American Rheinmetall Vehicles and HDT Expeditionary …
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Of course, but for how long, and at what cost really? Enslaved humans have a tendency to rebel and become historical heroes in the process, like Nat Turner, and they might even succeed in ousting former slaveowners and forming a whole new independent republic. Through these processes, slaveowners lost their lives and France lost the "perle des antilles"!
I would thus argue that organic mules (asinus×caballus), and even advanced robotic mules, are better options than reinstating slavery for the task at hand. Granted that we have developed very effective new means of mass surveillance aimed at enforcing disciplinarian autocratic totalitarianism on the cheap, and pre-quell the potential emergence of nonconforming rebellious indocility. But this new tech is not 100% foolproof, and as history showed time and again, it can take just one highly determined Toussaint Louverture to mess with even the greatests of Napoleons! (and thank god for that!)
ALL experienced adventuring parties know better than to put ALL their gear on asses (or donkeys, burros, horses, &c.)! When wild beasts or sentient enemies attack you, your pack animals flee the battle zone, taking your survival-critical supplies and equipment with them.
From a practical standpoint, considering how big this thing is, why not just use one of those low-profile, (Swedish?) tracked amphibious WW II-era vehicles which could transport equipment and/or humans (no, those vehicles were not armored)? The Swedish thing had an ICE, but probably could be converted to electric drive for stealth and external electronic device charging/support.
Exactly! These wheeled Surface-Mount Equipment Technologies (S-MET) are so pre-obsolete late XIX-th century WWI Erector-Meccano set inspired that it's not even funny!
Meanwhile, China is hard at work perfecting XXII-nd century anti-gravity mules (wheel-less wheelbarrows) based on our own most advanced of XX-th century research ... Talk about a tectonic reversal of the situation!
Nostalgia keeps killing innovation IMHO (or not?).
I prefer the ZIL-2906
Enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afJ18eJeNgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvFKzgF5t94
It's basically the modern incarnation of a Universal/Bren gun/Bren Carrier without the easy ability for troops to ride it. And the big problem with putting all your gear in vehicle in a combat situation (and you may not know you're in a combat situation before your enemy decides so) is that a single (lucky or skillful) hit by your enemy can make the entire squad combat ineffective.
Slaves were never used by the US Military -- too unreliable, finicky and so on**. What the army does have a lot of experience with are mules. These are rugged, all terrain load bearing platforms that require little maintenance (they're largely self-maintaining) that can carry a surprising amount of weight for their size. They can be semi-autonomous -- something of a mixed blessing, its true, but then there's no software to get compromised.
But then the purpose of this platform isn't to carry materiel for the troops -- the platform pictured would only work on wide open spaces like steppes or desert where its operational life expectancy is likely to be measured in minutes. As a MIC boondoggle though its a gem -- ask these guys to make a wheelbarrow and they'd be unable to mass produce them at under a six figure unit cost.
(**Social issues, too -- yesterday's slave tends to be the ancestor of today's senior officer. The army was the first national organization to become fully integrated, and not just on paper.)
Like with a lot of things in life, "Its complicated".
The US military, like other parts of US society, had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards desegregation. Its not to our credit that this didn't happen formally until the mid 1940s, after WW2. You can find news clips and the like from the WW2 era that decry the intellect of "the Negro" as only fit for menial duties even as executive orders were being issued to force desegregation. The rest of American society took at least another generation to catch up (and even then its debatable whether large chunks of it have got the message still). (There were Negro soldiers proper dating back to the Civil War but they were like a native regiment in the British colonies -- only white officers.)
(BTW --The first attempt to free slaves was during the Revolutionary War. The British freed slaves partly as a military tactic but also -- believe it or not -- slavery had been long outlawed in Britain and on British ships. In fact an attempt by a Virginian to import and sell a slave in the early 1700s led to the ruling that anyone who set foot on British soil was automatically a free person.)
The myth, but a good myth. The truth is actually even better.
The case of James Somerset. Ruling handed down by Mr Justice Mansfield on 22nd June 1772. You probably saw the huge celebrations of the 250th anniversary of this, one of the most important legal judgements in history...though, actually, no, because for some reason they didn't happen.
Somerset was a slave of many years (20-ish? can't remember), who when his American (pre-revolution, so technically British) master came to England, promptly did a bunk.
Captured by men who hunted down escaped slaves, his fate was spotted and reported to the authorities as kidnap. The slave hunters retorted that as a slave, he was property, and so the crime was in fact of theft (effectively that Somerset had stolen himself), while they actually just intended to get Somerset onto a ship out of England, after which any legal rights would be irrelevant, since his name would be changed and there would be nothing that the law could do even if it wanted to.
At which point English Law showed how it should work - Habeas Corpus was invoked - the man must be brought to trial.
So he was.
And it didn't seem to be going well for Somerset...not well at all.
The trial appears to have been a panel of judges led by Mansfield, not by jury.
And (or so what I have read goes: I may be old, but I'm not that old to have first hand experience), when it came to the summing up, everyone that came to the court 'knew' that Somerset's fate was sealed, so wasn't paying much attention as Mansfield ran through the salient details of the case, all of which seemed to confirm that he would be returned to his owner.
Until.
Until Mansfield made a statement along the lines of that to cast a man into slavery is of such great impact, it would be impossible for any English court to do so without the express authorisation of an Act of Parliament stating that slavery and enslavement was legal in England and thus giving the Court that power. Since Parliament had not passed such a law, there was no basis for the Court to identify any man as a slave, and thus no legal power by which Somerset could be deemed a slave and 'returned' to his 'owner' by the Court, and thus accordingly he must be set free.
So he was.
So it's not so much that setting foot on British soil / breathing free air made a slave free, but rather if they did a runner, attempting to recapture them would be the crime of kidnapping - not something you want to be caught doing in the 18thC.
EvilDrSmith,
There's an earlier case than this. Hard to look it up as I originally got it from David Crowther's excellent podcast 'The History of England'. In my defence, the Tudors ain't my period guv...
The fruits of my Googling are this PDF
In 1587, a Portuguese doctor called Hector Nunes had bought a slave - someone who seems to have been brought over from the Carribbean, captured from the Spanish and sold to him in England - and the guy was freed. He seems to have taken his own slave to court to compel him to do as he was told, only to find out that you couldn't have a slave. Sadly, these sorts of interesting cases don't often have the most interesting bits of the information written down.
My grandfather (RAF sparks) who was posted with USAians during WWII had (disgusting) tales of African American Jeep drivers being handcuffed to their veichles to prevent them jumping out when having to drive along treacherous mountain roads.
Also see some of the films (available on YT) for American troops being stationed in the UK during WWII to brief them on cultural differences. E.g. https://youtu.be/SyYSBBE1DFw?si=NKF9tO2Y5LX1XlpG from the 26 minute mark.
There were also many tales of fights in Australia, where Australian soldiers beat the shit out of Americans who wouldnt allow black Australians or Americans to have a beer during their rec days...
Funny how there arent any movies about this from Hollywood...
martin: The British freed slaves partly as a military tactic but also -- believe it or not -- slavery had been long outlawed in Britain and on British ships.
cow: oh yes that ever so gracious American spirit where they cant accept that the British did the right thing for humanities sake and over 30 years earlier than those heroes of Freedom of America.
Sadly, more often than you'd think. At least one Union unit reported skirmishing with a black man having picked up massa's rifle. People love being complacent and miserable instead of risking it for something better. Nietzsche called it slave morality (a morality born only to define itself in opposition to the people who construct their own virtues).
"ask these guys to make a wheelbarrow and they'd be unable to mass produce them at under a six figure unit cost."
In their defense, the wheel barrow will be spec'd to 4 decimal places and require materials tracking back to the mine/forest where the raw material was sourced. Even the paint will be an odd formulation that's only made by one company in the world and protects the barrow half as well, but the color will be spot on from batch to batch.
make a wheelbarrow
I was also thinking this recalling seeing very old photographs of soldiers using wheelbarrows carrying artillary shells - might have been WW1 in Europe but I think probably the incursions of Imperial Japan into Manchuria and China or their 1905 war with Imperial Russia.
The chinese wheelbarrow with its central wheel placement has higher load capacity and superior handling.
The Imperial Japanese troops invading colonial Malaya (British) used bicycles which can carry respectable loads in panniers and in baskets over the front and rear wheels and can optionally take advantage of existing made roads for greater speed.
soldier-wallah, also useful take care of personal gadget hygene (power, updating status, photo-shoots, etc.), make your bed, greet you with a well-brewed cuppa. We could use those failed asylum seekers awaiting deportation, offer them a chance of residency after 40 years of unbroken service.
I doubt it needs to be silent. You're not supposed to take it into combat - unless you've been surprised. The idea is to carry your stuff on the march, and then it'll be near your base / staging area acting as a generator. You just don't want it to be so noisy that your troops can't hear themselves singing their marching song.
I dunno what I've been told!
I can't hear over this bloody noise!
This is really a basic jeep with no steering wheel/controls. Why not make a vehicle that can be driven by a human OR operated remotely OR has the ability to follow a programmed path OR can be slaved to a human driven vehicle in a convoy? Military equipment really needs to be kept very simple. Simple is robust, versatile and inexpensive (Not for the government, but the maker). In battle, it's a matter of duct tape and bailing wire. An autonomous or remotely controlled vehicle that's blow a cap in the power supply is dead. There no time or facilities to troubleshoot and make repairs. A half-busted ICEV has the possibility of limping along depending on what's broken.
Employing privates to drive the vehicles back and forwards from depots to units on the front is a pair of boots that can be occupied doing other tasks - or straight up a headcount reduction. Besides money printing for contractors, no other reasons really exist.
Actual Mules; of the kicking, hissing variety, are incredibly useful in the mountainous and/or forested terrain that wheeled and tracked vehicles would not be able to negotiate at all. They don't require petrol or diesel. Mules are relatively unlikely to lose all traction when it rains; and in the direst of emergencies, would also double up as a supply source for your forces when it's role as transport is compromised.
Traction in bad terrain is just about the only sensible reason to build a walking vehicle; of many sci-fi tropes but never really made it practically.
Vegan/vegetarian/moral concerns aside, the operational and strategic uses of animals on the battlefield has a very, very long history that is hard to beat.
"Employing privates to drive the vehicles back and forwards from depots to units on the front is a pair of boots that can be occupied doing other tasks"
Privates are cheap and easy to come by. If one is driving a jeep, having jeeps that can convoy by following the leader could mean one private driving 10 jeeps. Along the way, the private might spot something of interest and be able to report that intel back. A remote vehicle, not so much.
Picture doesn't give a good reference for actual size, it seems rather large for something limited to 1000 pounds, but then it's kind of Version 1.0-ish, too.
Might want some larger and smaller.
There is also the idea that making a soldier carry 100 pounds under exigent circumstances sounds like seriously bad planning to begin with.
Get a luggage cart, a shopping cart, a little red wagon, something.
Wheels, y'know.
Carry not much more than 20-30 pounds in a backpack.
And get better shoes, if that's a problem.
SMH
This thing seems much more useful:
https://www.army-technology.com/projects/human-universal-load-carrier-hulc/
Per an article I had read, it's useful even when the batteries run flat, as the exoskeleton supports the extra weight, vs the soldier's body doing it. (Though, in flat-battery mode, the soldier has to provide the muscle-power to move the load.)
Pickup trucks have a high center of gravity, their cargo area is restricted to the back and most don't even offer large truck beds anymore (the majority are 4 feet long, just barely enough to fit a dirt bike in if you leave the tailgate down), and when at full load capacity the suspension is so burdened that their off road capability is severely compromised. Not to mention that you only have to take out one wheel and/or damage the suspension to render a pickup immobile, which any roadside kerb can do quite easily let alone an actual weapon of some sort, where I presume that S-MET could lose two or three and keep moving fine.
It's got 8 wheels, so it's more mobile. Each wheel has lower ground pressure - so less likely to bog down in mud. Plus big chunky tyres. The stuff like this is usually at least somewhat amphibious - they usually float and the chunky tyres act like rubbish paddle wheels. Also lower centre of gravity. These are already commonly used military and farm vehicles. They also tend to have tank style steering - you control each side's wheels independently - and so can basically spin it within its own lenght by going forward with one side and backwards with the other.
Removing the driver should mean more load and fewer personnel required - assuming the autonomy works in difficult terrain. Which admittedly is a brave assumption.
But the choice of vehicle itself is entirely sensible.
If the device ran on diesel, it would probably be ok.
What if they made, like, a “general purpose” kind of vehicle, that could go almost anywhere while hauling some gear.
Even better if it had machine guns that popped out the taillights, and could emit a cloud of smoke, or puddle of oil, on command.
aka General Dynamics Land Systems (if I haven't dropped enough hints to that yet).
The original MUTT was NOT designed by us "normal" engineers. I don't know who worked on it; no one knew. Way back when, there was an R&D team in Muskegon -- maybe they created it. Muskegon got partially sold off, partially closed, and only a couple guys joined us at HQ near Detroit (the other side of "the mitten" of Lower Michigan). That's about the time our Stryker ECP project (now the A1) got started, which was probably my most important/impactful work there which led to my "other car" handle here -- I rode plenty of miles for testing around the parking lot. (No, I never drove it; only the union driver/mechanics got to do that.)
Years after that, there was a mass engineer buyout (paying the best to leave), more of our work started to get segregated into "special teams" -- with core HQ engineering functions like powerpack design and electric power generation (me & my closest peers) being outsourced to our suppliers -- and I knew it was time to bail before a chopping axe got swung my way. And that's why the Stryker is no longer my "other car".
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