Time to Return to WWII Vehicle Specialization

The new military replacement for the Humvee – the MRAP, was optimized and designed for use in flat desert and urban environments, and apparently while protecting the troops, it not optimized for more rugged terrain like that in Afghanistan.  None of this surprises me, and really should not surprise those who study military technology history, which is why I think it may be time to revisit technology and approaches from WWII.

In WWII you had several types of vehicles for particular roles.  Fast armored cars with just machine guns for scout roles in rough terrain, slower armored cars with medium sized guns for infantry support / light anti-tank roles, light tanks for rough terrain, medium/heavy tanks for slugging it out with heavy armor/emplacements/flat fields, mobile artillery, and so on.   If you look at what is available now you still have some things like this, but for the most part it tends to be one-size-fits-all.  This is partly due to the costs of these weapon systems in that it may not always be cost effective to have so many different weapon systems, but I think the military is going to have to reach back to WWII and borrow vehicle designs for particular environments/battle types rather than one size fits all.  Specifically – more armored cars (LAVs, Strykers) with different types of weapon systems for desert / jungle / rocky terrain, and very light tracked vehicles (a significant update to something like the M24 Chaffee or M48 Walker Bulldog) for infantry support and urban warfare in a wide range of terrains.

Of course – all this is easier said than done since we don’t have economies of scale to make these cheaply (we’re not making WWII scales of vehicles – nor do we have enough factories to do so) and, weapon lethality has significantly changed such that the technology and engineering that go into said new vehicles won’t be cheap either.  Basing things off of a central chassis like Future Combat System (FCS) is now dead, but I think some of the older validated designs could be modified and updated for these new roles rather than just letting the DoD prime contractors push out designs to be shoehorned into a new role.  I’d rather have the military build the design, test it in the field (extensively) and then go to industry and say “Make this, and cheaply.” rather than how it’s done now where the Military says what it wants and the contractors push back a vehicle that is designed to earn them profit.  Let the Military build it and put it through its paces and do all the engineering.

So again I’ll suggest that some vehicle specialization is needed, not generalization.  This is why throughout all of military history you have specific tools, weapons, and defenses for specific tasks, terrains, and enemies.  Very rarely do you find something that is optimal for all situations so I think that it is long since past for a revision of ground vehicle technology in the US military today.  Until we get tanks with anti-grav drives or each soldier can be in fully enclosed powered assault armor, you will have to specialize.