Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!amdcad!military
From: carlson@gateway.mitre.org (Bruce Carlson)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Dune Buggies
Message-ID: <27206@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 12 Sep 89 07:46:45 GMT
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From: carlson@gateway.mitre.org (Bruce Carlson)
>From: ssc-vax!wanttaja@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Ronald J Wanttaja)
>
>If I remember right, reliability was poor.  This was especially true of the
>Dodge trucks... they may be all right for civilian use, but civilians don't
>play "Rat Patrol" for weeks on end.  The trucks and the VWs were
>eventually replaced by Humvees.

The Dodge trucks didn't really get replaced by Humvees.  The Army bought Dodges for several years (about 76- early 80's), and then in about 1984 they
switched to buying GM products. 

For light tactical vehicles I think the evolution is something like:

Jeep       - to Humvee or 4WD Blazer (as in Chevy Blazer)
Dodge 4WD  - to GM 4WD pickup or to Humvee
Gamma Goat - to Humvee

The GM trucks are all diesels, so they use the same fuel as the 2 1/2 and 5
ton trucks.  This simplifies fuel resupply.  There are still a lot
of gas powered generators left over, but I think there is a plan to
switch to all diesel power at some time.  

The GM trucks are a major improvement over the Dodge 4WD (318, 2 bbl, full
time 4WD, auto trans).  The GMs have the big diesel V8 (around 7 liter, I
think), 4WD with manual lock-out hubs, auto trans, built in black-out lights
(they had to be added to the Dodges), grill mounted connector for
jumper cables (this is supposed to be a NATO standard connector), and some other
improvements based on lessons learned from the Dodges.
The general nomenclature for these trucks is the the CUCV, which means
something like Commercial Utility Combat Vehicle.

The main problem I found was that all of the new vehicles are much larger than
the jeep.  There are places a jeep can go that these new vehicles can't make
it, because they are too wide, too high, or too heavy.

Bruce Carlson