11 ms·

As a military officer, I pray these never make it past Test and Evaluation. They took essentially one part and turned it into 1000 parts. Anyone who has seen wh

As a military officer, I pray these never make it past Test and Evaluation. They took essentially one part and turned it into 1000 parts. Anyone who has seen what 20 year old Marines do with these machines, let alone what happens in war, will appreciate that this is a fantastically horrible idea in a war zone. I need high reliability, not high zoot. Let NASA have high zoot.

haloux 8y ago
20 year olds vary. As a 20 year old in the military, I was elbows deep in the B-61 Mod 10 replacing radioisotopic thermoelectric generators. Concession: id be damned if I told you that we didn’t goose the new guy bending over the explosives from time to time.
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  Nothing against 20-year-olds, I was one. I know what I did and what my friends did. I'm no angel. But if was running the engineering team on this, I'd make sure everyone had in their mind "the driver is maximally amped-up, young, and male.
  - asfdsfggtfd 8y ago
    What does them being male have to do with anything? Are you implying that being male means that they must be reckless? Or that if they were female they would automatically be careful and gentle? Careful throwing around those negative stereotypes. EDIT: The driver is likely to be getting shot at. This is going to be an order of magnitude more important than slight gender differences.
    - psergeant 8y ago
      > What does them being male have to do with anything? Being young and male correlates strongly with high testosterone, the effects of which you can Google for. Being young and male also correlates with higher incidences of road traffic accidents than most other demographics.
      - asfdsfggtfd 8y ago
        But there are millions of young males in the US alone who are more careful than millions of young females. The effects of testosterone are far from as simple as you suggest. It tends to lead to higher competitiveness. This is not quite the same as recklessness. Meanwhile during normal usage the driver (of whatever gender) is likely to be getting shot at. This will tend to have a larger affect than their gender.
        psergeant 8y ago
        > there are millions of young males in the US alone who are more careful than millions of young females Yes, and millions of young men in the US who are shorter than millions of young women. What’s your point? Young men are still disproportionately more likely to be in road traffic accidents. Re testosterone, the keywords you should be searching for are “risk taking behaviour”. I’m curious also what percentage of time you think the average military driver is being shot at is.
        Cthulhu_ 8y ago
        > Young men are still disproportionately more likely to be in road traffic accidents. And in the military, given how e.g. the draft has never applied to women. Times are changing, but very, very slowly, and there will always be a gender disparity due to physical differences (e.g. strength, see also: almost every sport)
        belorn 8y ago
        Looking at a few studies, the data is much more complex. For example, higher levels of circulating testosterone were associated with lower risk aversion among women (r = −0.1793; P = 0.01), but not among men (P = 0.11). However at comparably low concentrations of testosterone the gender difference in risk aversion disappeared, suggesting that testosterone has nonlinear effects on risk aversion regardless of gender. Or to make a summery of the summery of the study: there is an association of risk aversion when going from low levels of testosterone to very low levels, but "male with high testosterone" is not supported in that study as increased risk taking behavior vs males with normal levels of testosterone. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741240/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741240/)
    - jbjorge 8y ago
      Weeeeell, we do have statistics for how civilians drive based on gender.
    - kbutler 8y ago
      https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/810853 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... "Motor vehicle crash fatalities were higher for males than females in all age groups, while the male population is equal to or less than the female population in all age groups." Particularly in the 21-30 age group, males had 3x the fatalities of females.
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        That has little bearing on the cost of fielding/maintaining a vehicle. Fatalities are so rare they won't have an impact maintenance costs unless a sizeable chunk of your fleet is getting driven off a cliff. In my experience men and women tend to be about equally hard on things. The male outliers tend to create more maintenance work by being hard on chassis/suspension ("hold my beer and watch this"). The female outliers tend to create more maintenance work by keeping quiet about problems (usually having to do with fluids not in their proper places) for far too long. The most expensive driver is the kind that blindly follows directions/orders into a dumb situation. Source: Did fleet maintenance in high-school. edit: The words "in my experience" and "outliers" were used for a reason. I'm not claiming that all men will get a mini-bus airborne if given the opportunity or that all women will ignore an obvious puddle in a parking spot. I am stating what patterns I observed in the noteworthy cases of neglect. There's a million uncontrolled variables, maybe we were just a really scary maintenance department and none of the women wanted to talk to us or something. I'm not claiming that a bunch high school teachers a decade ago is a sample that accurately represents the rest of the population. Maybe the way buses were assigned to teams (pseudorandom) resulted in the observed failure pattern.
        kbutler 8y ago
        I looked for statistics on maintenance cost of equipment for male vs female operators but didn't find any, just the un-documented assertions in https://www.equipmentworld.com/men-vs-women-who-are-the-better-heavy-equipment-operators/ https://www.equipmentworld.com/men-vs-women-who-are-the-bett... that basically say women are easier on equipment and specifically Attention to detail “I’ve always been impressed by how women take care of their machines” Smith says. “They keep them clean and don’t leave trash in the cabs. If there was a drop of oil coming out of a wheel or something small like that they let you know about it.” I'd be happy to look at any statistics you can provide that show "equally hard on things".
    - mcguire 8y ago
      Note: the driver is unlikely to get shot at. Combat is actually rare.
      - asfdsfggtfd 8y ago
        Being shot is the most important time. This is when the wheel is going to be put under the most stress and it is most important that it performs...
- godelmachine 8y ago
  I Googled for "B-61 Mod 10 replacing radioisotopic thermoelectric generators" and I got this → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb and upon further searching, this → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator I need to ask if thermoelectric generator was a part of the B61 nuclear bomb? Please explain.
  - ygra 8y ago
    If so, I guess it'd be a valid way of ensuring the warhead still has power after a decade or two.
    - kogepathic 8y ago
      Command and Control (by Eric Schlosser) is a great book if you're interested in the history of US nuclear weapons. According to the author, most warheads in the US arsenal are (or were) equipped with single-use thermal batteries that are activated during the firing sequence. Thermal batteries were originally developed by German scientists, but the concept was taken further in the 1950s when the US armed forces were looking for a more reliable and less maintenance intensive power source for their nuclear weapons once fired. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=H0-CJckES44C&lpg=PT133&ots=gnciRBIpvi&dq=command%20and%20control%20thermal%20battery&pg=PT133#v=onepage&q=command%20and%20control%20thermal%20battery&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=H0-CJckES44C&lpg=PT133&ots...
  - msravi 8y ago
    You forgot "radioisotopic": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
    - basicplus2 8y ago
      i wonder if this would be a good use of nuclear waste..
Nition 8y ago
Same principle applies even to non-military things like home appliances, yet we always seem to end up with less reliability and more zoot.
- philliphaydon 8y ago
  Reminds me of the book. The inmates are running the asylum.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - rimliu 8y ago
    I still can understand the dislike HN has for this wonderful book. But given generally anti-user stance maybe I do understand it a little. Edit: "anti-user" may be to harsh. Let's say "developers first, users second".
    - smsm42 8y ago
      That's pretty much the diametrical opposite of the book's message, at least in my reading of it. Most of the book has been spent, as I remember it, decrying features that look cool for developers but useless for the users, such as overly-complex configuration panels, or interfaces that emphasize "cool" features at the expense of reliable basic function, etc.
      - rimliu 8y ago
        Yes, you are absolutely right about the book's message. That was not what I was talking about. I was talking about HN attitude toward that book and HN attitude in general regarding the position wrt users/developers. Crowd here are happy to cry about user hostility because of the walled gardens, closed source, whatever, but given a choice many will go the path of the least resistance and choose the technologies and approaches that make it easier to have some kind of result without much consideration about UX or accessibility of said result. Fast and cheep to develop is winning agains enjoyable to use. Sure, it is not 100% true, but the trend is quite obvious, imho. In case anyone here thinks I was not long enough on HN to criticise it: I've been here for the 9 years now.
johan_larson 8y ago
Bring back the original Jeeps?
- tsomctl 8y ago
  Some militaries use 70 series Land Cruisers, which are basically a direct descendant of the original jeep.
  - mulmen 8y ago
    I’ve never heard this. What is the connection between the Willys Jeep and the Land Cruiser? Superficially they look similar but do they have any actual mechanical or design connections?
    - ygra 8y ago
      James May had a part about this in his six-episode Top Gear spin-off James May's Cars of the People. Episodes can be found online.
    - dotancohen 8y ago
      There is not direct lineage. In WW2 the Japanese sent a captured American Jeep to Toyota for them to copy. This was the Toyota J. The J was redesigned into the 40. The 40 was redesigned into the 70. Other than the overall 4WD front engine body-on-frame design, I do not believe that there are any carryover components nor unique design features of the Willeys in the 70.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  Maybe not the original unchanged... https://jalopnik.com/the-legendary-world-war-ii-jeep-had-a-dangerous-enginee-1797186236 https://jalopnik.com/the-legendary-world-war-ii-jeep-had-a-d...
cwyers 8y ago
I've seen 20-year-old Marines maintain EA-6B Prowlers, I'm sure they can figure out DARPA's fancy new wheels.
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  Nothing against 20-year-old Marines. I was 20 once too and recall some choice decisions I made, friends made, others made. It's not their ability I'm worried about. It's their judgement.
  - what-the-grump 8y ago
    To a point, looking at the political landscape today I’d say I trust the 20 year olds over the 65 year olds. Even if you can’t get the 20 year olds to pay attention.
ENGNR 8y ago
What if the failure mode was it just being a regular wheel again? I suppose it's competing against letting the air out of the tyre so it might still be worse
- arka2147483647 8y ago
  You cant guarantee such a failure mode. That thing has to be full of little gears, actuators and electronics to make it work. Any of those break; and it freeses, stays as is or falls apart.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
craftyguy 8y ago
Yay more PMCS!!!
- dvdhnt 8y ago
  > PMCS Yep, haven't heard that acronym since I ETS'd ~6 years ago.
RangerScience 8y ago
I have never heard this use of the word "zoot" and would like know more.
- wingerlang 8y ago
  Might be related to 'zoot suits'? (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief-history-zoot-suit-180958507/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief-history-zo...)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- kchr 8y ago
  Fanciness, probably derived from Zoot suits as commented elsewhere in the thread.
donquichotte 8y ago
As a guy who rode a motorcycle from Central Europe through Central Asia to Mongolia, the last part largely off-road, I wholeheartedly agree. Simplicity is key. As a traveler, if your "wheel 4.0" has a software bug or breaks down in the middle of the desert, it is inconvenient enough. I can only imagine the consequences this would have in a war scenario.
- mac01021 8y ago
  I'm interested in your motorcycle trip! - How did you choose this route/destination out of the thousands of possibilities? - Was there any specific goal beyond spending a bunch of time on a bike and seeing a big chunk of the world? - Was your time almost entirely spend riding, or did you spend a lot of time in the places where you stopped? - Camping? Hotels? Staying at friends' houses?
  - donquichotte 8y ago
    Hi, if you're interested, I have a blog at [1]! - more or less at random, it is IMO one of the more interesting routes you can start in Europe, opposed to e.g. the Panamericana or BAM. - not really, I just wanted to explore the world (and still do, haha) - Maybe 2/3 of the time was spent riding, the rest of the time I spent exploring places and waiting for visa. - all three of them! [1] https://goolge.io/motorcycletours/ https://goolge.io/motorcycletours/
- teekert 8y ago
  It's also pretty annoying if your are stuck in the middle of the desert because you opted not to use wheel 4.0. In the end it's all about statistics. What is more likely to happen? A wheel 4.0 fail, or getting stuck with wheel 1.0 (where 4.0 would have helped)... The first likelyness is constantly decreasing with wheel 4.1, 4.2, 4.9 etc whereas the first one stays constant. At least at some point in time wheel 4.0 should be preferred.
  - donquichotte 8y ago
    In reliability engineering, the failure rate for a complex system is the sum of the individual failure rates of its components [1]. I will let you do the math. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_rate#Additivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_rate#Additivity
webbrahmin 8y ago
These were my thoughts also. During WW II German tanks were technologically superior to Russian tanks. However Russian tanks were easy to repair in the field and that was one of the reasons why Russian armour prevailed over German armour.
- binarray2000 8y ago
  Due to simplicity Russian tanks were also cheaper and easier ti build. Which is why they outnumbered the Germans.
  - contingencies 8y ago
    I can get another if I break it, so a clay cup trumps a grail. - Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, classical Urdu and Persian poet from the Mughal Empire ... from http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
  - masklinn 8y ago
    OTOH Germany didn't have the resources (raw materials or crews) to field that many tanks, so focusing on fewer but better tanks made sense. Not that it panned out, but it made sense.
- Marazan 8y ago
  Define technically superior? The German tanks had massive reliability problems, not just ease of repair they broke down under non-striker's situations. They were technical nightmares.
  - Pica_soO 8y ago
    You can be a technological nightmare if you get to shoot a kilometer before the enemy.
- Theodores 8y ago
  No, no, no, the comedy tank of the era was the Sherman Tank. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-m-4-sherman-tank-was-hell-on-wheels-and-a-death-trap-502b0d99e744 https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-m-4-sherman-tank-was-he... Favourite quote: Hence, the Sherman’s grim nickname—Ronson, like the cigarette lighter, because “it lights up the first time, every time.” Everything was wrong about it and the Russians that got given these on Lend Lease knew that they had been given a death sentence. Aforementioned article just touches the surface, the barrel was too short, the 'tech' for being able to shoot on the move did not work and you needed five of the things to take out one German tank, four as cannon fodder (complete with the guys inside) and one to sneak around the back to get that German tank whilst it was busy taking out the other four. The 5 Shermans vs 1 Panzer myth is much disputed however where there is smoke there is fire and I would not want to be in one. Plus, by the time that the Americans rocked up to fight WW2 - which was late to the party - the Germans had run out of oil so their tanks were running on recycled coal dust extract rather than the diesel fuel required. The shoddy design of the Sherman Tank was no matter though, the 'allies' were expected to pay for these useless behemoths after the war so this was the military-industrial-complex and built-in-obsolescence at its finest. Meanwhile the Soviets had a much more serious war on their hands so their hardware wasn't about making a quick buck. It had to be fit for purpose. The same thinking happens today hence we have toy planes like the F-35 where everyone and his pet congressman is getting a backhander vs. the fit for purpose planes of Russia, as advertised over the skies of Syria and doing much better in the global arms trade.
avip 8y ago
That concept was historically referred in IDF as "The best part in a machine is the one that does not exist". It's also extremely applicable to SW.
- antpls 8y ago
  "IDF"? "SW"?
mhandley 8y ago
You could of course just carry a regular spare wheel or two. If your fancy trackwheel fails, unbolt it, and fit the regular spare wheel. You're still mobile, just without the ability to switch to track mode.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  Never mind those folks with the rifles pointed at us! They’d never shoot someone whose busy changing a wheel!
  - stult 8y ago
    We'll just make another machine that changes the wheel. Surely that will fix the problem.
  - laumars 8y ago
    Wouldn't you still have that same problem if an ordinary wheel gets damaged?
    - mulletbum 8y ago
      I think the probability of damage is higher is what they are thinking. I would say that the complexity is far higher in this case, so it is easier to pop 5 bolts and swap a tire then swap.....bolts, then unhook whatever is controlling them.
      - laumars 8y ago
        We're now just guessing how easy or hard it is to swap these wheels. It might be that the replacement mechanism was reinvented as well so it's easier to swap than a standard wheel. But equally you might be right that there are more parts to unhook. Either way it is just guesswork.
  - mhandley 8y ago
    I suppose it depends on whether you're more likely to get shot at while changing a broken track wheel, or digging out the vehicle when regular wheels get stuck in the mud/sand.
lstodd 8y ago
Yeah, just imagine frozen mud inside this contraption... and a blowtorch will just ruin it more throrougly.
edem 8y ago
What does zoot mean in this context? I'm not a native speaker.
- anchpop 8y ago
  I'm a native speaker and I've never heard it. I assume it means something like "cool fancy flashy tech"
  - loco5niner 8y ago
    Another native speaker (Northwest USA). Never heard of it either. I assume the same.
Angostura 8y ago
> Let NASA have high zoot. NASA does really rather well with high reliabilty. The Martian rovers have managed without a service.
- JulianMorrison 8y ago
  To be fair, nobody has been shooting at them.
  - baruch 8y ago
    Nobody also peed on their wheels either. But they do need to handle quite a bit of dust and there is no one around to grease them. The APCs I had to use wouldn't survive that long without service.
  - Jacq5 8y ago
    Trump knows something tho.
  - mcguire 8y ago
    And yet, they've had wheel problems.
    - Faaak 8y ago
      They didn't during the original mission duration.
pasta 8y ago
But what if test and evaluation prove they are more reliable than tires filled with air? I understand what you are trying to say but maybe the same discussion happened when they started using air tires instead of solid wheels: "What if your drive over a rock and all air floats out!? I pray they never start using air tires!".
- owlmirror 8y ago
  >But what if test and evaluation prove they are more reliable than tires filled with air? That won't happen. Just the fact that there are so many moving parts, controlled by microcontrolelrs, all with multiple independent fail points makes the idea that these are more reliably just absurd. The only question is, is the trade off of less reliability worth the advantage they provide. I don't see it, but maybe there are some applications which I'm not aware of were you really really need these abilities.
  - pasta 8y ago
    Today's cars are so much more complex than old cars. Yet almost all of them are much more reliable than old cars. I don't think simple == reliable. A wheel made of solid wood is very simple. But the choice of material is poor. So there are a lot more factors involved to make something reliable. Getting stuck in the dirt might be more dangerous than a wheel with 1000 parts that gets you out of a nasty situation. Also: people assume that these new tires are going to replace all tires. But I think this is just a extra tool in a big toolkit.
    - owlmirror 8y ago
      >Today's cars are so much more complex than old cars. Yet almost all of them are much more reliable than old cars. That's debatable. Evey person who owns a vintage car, pre electronics area will tell you that. I'm sure there are improvement in new cars which made them more reliable but not because of increased complexity. Maintainability of modern cars is a mess.
      - 8y ago
Radle 8y ago
I agree, but not when it comes to self driving vehicles. For those better than normal wheels is enough. There's no way to change a brocken wheel anyway.
pweissbrod 8y ago
Yeah this is cool looking but isnt it just as effective and simpler to just have big knobby tires with adjustable pressure?
- mkesper 8y ago
  Boring, exists for decades already.
  - pweissbrod 8y ago
    That's a good point. There's got to be a way I can replace these wheels with some sort of modern javascript framework.
    - Crespyl 8y ago
      Internet of Things means that we can enable new synergies with Web Scale techniques, like making each tread run its own software package with logging, analytics, self-maintenance, and the normal operational features, each implemented as a reliable, portable Electron app.
      - samat 8y ago
        On blockchain, right?
mcguire 8y ago
NASA doesn't want high zoot. (Love the word.) It doesn't fly if it hasn't flown before.
LinuxBender 8y ago
As former military, I also concur. There is no time to read a manual or tinker. It must be simple so that anyone in the field can adapt, improvise and overcome. Or at least, quickly limp away from harm. Also, the H1 already breaks enough without adding more crud. I had the H1 wagon and replaced damn near everything on it. I can't even fathom taking that nightmare apart in the mud. CTS and runflats were enough fun.

haloux 8y ago

20 year olds vary. As a 20 year old in the military, I was elbows deep in the B-61 Mod 10 replacing radioisotopic thermoelectric generators. Concession: id be damned if I told you that we didn’t goose the new guy bending over the explosives from time to time.

killjoywashere 8y ago
Nothing against 20-year-olds, I was one. I know what I did and what my friends did. I'm no angel. But if was running the engineering team on this, I'd make sure everyone had in their mind "the driver is maximally amped-up, young, and male.
- asfdsfggtfd 8y ago
  What does them being male have to do with anything? Are you implying that being male means that they must be reckless? Or that if they were female they would automatically be careful and gentle? Careful throwing around those negative stereotypes. EDIT: The driver is likely to be getting shot at. This is going to be an order of magnitude more important than slight gender differences.
  - psergeant 8y ago
    > What does them being male have to do with anything? Being young and male correlates strongly with high testosterone, the effects of which you can Google for. Being young and male also correlates with higher incidences of road traffic accidents than most other demographics.
    - asfdsfggtfd 8y ago
      But there are millions of young males in the US alone who are more careful than millions of young females. The effects of testosterone are far from as simple as you suggest. It tends to lead to higher competitiveness. This is not quite the same as recklessness. Meanwhile during normal usage the driver (of whatever gender) is likely to be getting shot at. This will tend to have a larger affect than their gender.
      - psergeant 8y ago
        > there are millions of young males in the US alone who are more careful than millions of young females Yes, and millions of young men in the US who are shorter than millions of young women. What’s your point? Young men are still disproportionately more likely to be in road traffic accidents. Re testosterone, the keywords you should be searching for are “risk taking behaviour”. I’m curious also what percentage of time you think the average military driver is being shot at is.
        Cthulhu_ 8y ago
        > Young men are still disproportionately more likely to be in road traffic accidents. And in the military, given how e.g. the draft has never applied to women. Times are changing, but very, very slowly, and there will always be a gender disparity due to physical differences (e.g. strength, see also: almost every sport)
        belorn 8y ago
        Looking at a few studies, the data is much more complex. For example, higher levels of circulating testosterone were associated with lower risk aversion among women (r = −0.1793; P = 0.01), but not among men (P = 0.11). However at comparably low concentrations of testosterone the gender difference in risk aversion disappeared, suggesting that testosterone has nonlinear effects on risk aversion regardless of gender. Or to make a summery of the summery of the study: there is an association of risk aversion when going from low levels of testosterone to very low levels, but "male with high testosterone" is not supported in that study as increased risk taking behavior vs males with normal levels of testosterone. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741240/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741240/)
  - jbjorge 8y ago
    Weeeeell, we do have statistics for how civilians drive based on gender.
  - kbutler 8y ago
    https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/810853 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... "Motor vehicle crash fatalities were higher for males than females in all age groups, while the male population is equal to or less than the female population in all age groups." Particularly in the 21-30 age group, males had 3x the fatalities of females.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      That has little bearing on the cost of fielding/maintaining a vehicle. Fatalities are so rare they won't have an impact maintenance costs unless a sizeable chunk of your fleet is getting driven off a cliff. In my experience men and women tend to be about equally hard on things. The male outliers tend to create more maintenance work by being hard on chassis/suspension ("hold my beer and watch this"). The female outliers tend to create more maintenance work by keeping quiet about problems (usually having to do with fluids not in their proper places) for far too long. The most expensive driver is the kind that blindly follows directions/orders into a dumb situation. Source: Did fleet maintenance in high-school. edit: The words "in my experience" and "outliers" were used for a reason. I'm not claiming that all men will get a mini-bus airborne if given the opportunity or that all women will ignore an obvious puddle in a parking spot. I am stating what patterns I observed in the noteworthy cases of neglect. There's a million uncontrolled variables, maybe we were just a really scary maintenance department and none of the women wanted to talk to us or something. I'm not claiming that a bunch high school teachers a decade ago is a sample that accurately represents the rest of the population. Maybe the way buses were assigned to teams (pseudorandom) resulted in the observed failure pattern.
      - kbutler 8y ago
        I looked for statistics on maintenance cost of equipment for male vs female operators but didn't find any, just the un-documented assertions in https://www.equipmentworld.com/men-vs-women-who-are-the-better-heavy-equipment-operators/ https://www.equipmentworld.com/men-vs-women-who-are-the-bett... that basically say women are easier on equipment and specifically Attention to detail “I’ve always been impressed by how women take care of their machines” Smith says. “They keep them clean and don’t leave trash in the cabs. If there was a drop of oil coming out of a wheel or something small like that they let you know about it.” I'd be happy to look at any statistics you can provide that show "equally hard on things".
  - mcguire 8y ago
    Note: the driver is unlikely to get shot at. Combat is actually rare.
    - asfdsfggtfd 8y ago
      Being shot is the most important time. This is when the wheel is going to be put under the most stress and it is most important that it performs...
godelmachine 8y ago
I Googled for "B-61 Mod 10 replacing radioisotopic thermoelectric generators" and I got this → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb and upon further searching, this → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator I need to ask if thermoelectric generator was a part of the B61 nuclear bomb? Please explain.
- ygra 8y ago
  If so, I guess it'd be a valid way of ensuring the warhead still has power after a decade or two.
  - kogepathic 8y ago
    Command and Control (by Eric Schlosser) is a great book if you're interested in the history of US nuclear weapons. According to the author, most warheads in the US arsenal are (or were) equipped with single-use thermal batteries that are activated during the firing sequence. Thermal batteries were originally developed by German scientists, but the concept was taken further in the 1950s when the US armed forces were looking for a more reliable and less maintenance intensive power source for their nuclear weapons once fired. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=H0-CJckES44C&lpg=PT133&ots=gnciRBIpvi&dq=command%20and%20control%20thermal%20battery&pg=PT133#v=onepage&q=command%20and%20control%20thermal%20battery&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=H0-CJckES44C&lpg=PT133&ots...
- msravi 8y ago
  You forgot "radioisotopic": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
  - basicplus2 8y ago
    i wonder if this would be a good use of nuclear waste..

Nition 8y ago

Same principle applies even to non-military things like home appliances, yet we always seem to end up with less reliability and more zoot.

philliphaydon 8y ago
Reminds me of the book. The inmates are running the asylum.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- rimliu 8y ago
  I still can understand the dislike HN has for this wonderful book. But given generally anti-user stance maybe I do understand it a little. Edit: "anti-user" may be to harsh. Let's say "developers first, users second".
  - smsm42 8y ago
    That's pretty much the diametrical opposite of the book's message, at least in my reading of it. Most of the book has been spent, as I remember it, decrying features that look cool for developers but useless for the users, such as overly-complex configuration panels, or interfaces that emphasize "cool" features at the expense of reliable basic function, etc.
    - rimliu 8y ago
      Yes, you are absolutely right about the book's message. That was not what I was talking about. I was talking about HN attitude toward that book and HN attitude in general regarding the position wrt users/developers. Crowd here are happy to cry about user hostility because of the walled gardens, closed source, whatever, but given a choice many will go the path of the least resistance and choose the technologies and approaches that make it easier to have some kind of result without much consideration about UX or accessibility of said result. Fast and cheep to develop is winning agains enjoyable to use. Sure, it is not 100% true, but the trend is quite obvious, imho. In case anyone here thinks I was not long enough on HN to criticise it: I've been here for the 9 years now.

johan_larson 8y ago

Bring back the original Jeeps?

tsomctl 8y ago
Some militaries use 70 series Land Cruisers, which are basically a direct descendant of the original jeep.
- mulmen 8y ago
  I’ve never heard this. What is the connection between the Willys Jeep and the Land Cruiser? Superficially they look similar but do they have any actual mechanical or design connections?
  - ygra 8y ago
    James May had a part about this in his six-episode Top Gear spin-off James May's Cars of the People. Episodes can be found online.
  - dotancohen 8y ago
    There is not direct lineage. In WW2 the Japanese sent a captured American Jeep to Toyota for them to copy. This was the Toyota J. The J was redesigned into the 40. The 40 was redesigned into the 70. Other than the overall 4WD front engine body-on-frame design, I do not believe that there are any carryover components nor unique design features of the Willeys in the 70.
rtkwe 8y ago
Maybe not the original unchanged... https://jalopnik.com/the-legendary-world-war-ii-jeep-had-a-dangerous-enginee-1797186236 https://jalopnik.com/the-legendary-world-war-ii-jeep-had-a-d...

cwyers 8y ago

I've seen 20-year-old Marines maintain EA-6B Prowlers, I'm sure they can figure out DARPA's fancy new wheels.

killjoywashere 8y ago
Nothing against 20-year-old Marines. I was 20 once too and recall some choice decisions I made, friends made, others made. It's not their ability I'm worried about. It's their judgement.
- what-the-grump 8y ago
  To a point, looking at the political landscape today I’d say I trust the 20 year olds over the 65 year olds. Even if you can’t get the 20 year olds to pay attention.

ENGNR 8y ago

What if the failure mode was it just being a regular wheel again? I suppose it's competing against letting the air out of the tyre so it might still be worse

arka2147483647 8y ago
You cant guarantee such a failure mode. That thing has to be full of little gears, actuators and electronics to make it work. Any of those break; and it freeses, stays as is or falls apart.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

craftyguy 8y ago

Yay more PMCS!!!

dvdhnt 8y ago
> PMCS Yep, haven't heard that acronym since I ETS'd ~6 years ago.

RangerScience 8y ago

I have never heard this use of the word "zoot" and would like know more.

wingerlang 8y ago
Might be related to 'zoot suits'? (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief-history-zoot-suit-180958507/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief-history-zo...)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
kchr 8y ago
Fanciness, probably derived from Zoot suits as commented elsewhere in the thread.

donquichotte 8y ago

As a guy who rode a motorcycle from Central Europe through Central Asia to Mongolia, the last part largely off-road, I wholeheartedly agree. Simplicity is key. As a traveler, if your "wheel 4.0" has a software bug or breaks down in the middle of the desert, it is inconvenient enough. I can only imagine the consequences this would have in a war scenario.

mac01021 8y ago
I'm interested in your motorcycle trip! - How did you choose this route/destination out of the thousands of possibilities? - Was there any specific goal beyond spending a bunch of time on a bike and seeing a big chunk of the world? - Was your time almost entirely spend riding, or did you spend a lot of time in the places where you stopped? - Camping? Hotels? Staying at friends' houses?
- donquichotte 8y ago
  Hi, if you're interested, I have a blog at [1]! - more or less at random, it is IMO one of the more interesting routes you can start in Europe, opposed to e.g. the Panamericana or BAM. - not really, I just wanted to explore the world (and still do, haha) - Maybe 2/3 of the time was spent riding, the rest of the time I spent exploring places and waiting for visa. - all three of them! [1] https://goolge.io/motorcycletours/ https://goolge.io/motorcycletours/
teekert 8y ago
It's also pretty annoying if your are stuck in the middle of the desert because you opted not to use wheel 4.0. In the end it's all about statistics. What is more likely to happen? A wheel 4.0 fail, or getting stuck with wheel 1.0 (where 4.0 would have helped)... The first likelyness is constantly decreasing with wheel 4.1, 4.2, 4.9 etc whereas the first one stays constant. At least at some point in time wheel 4.0 should be preferred.
- donquichotte 8y ago
  In reliability engineering, the failure rate for a complex system is the sum of the individual failure rates of its components [1]. I will let you do the math. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_rate#Additivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_rate#Additivity

webbrahmin 8y ago

These were my thoughts also. During WW II German tanks were technologically superior to Russian tanks. However Russian tanks were easy to repair in the field and that was one of the reasons why Russian armour prevailed over German armour.

binarray2000 8y ago
Due to simplicity Russian tanks were also cheaper and easier ti build. Which is why they outnumbered the Germans.
- contingencies 8y ago
  I can get another if I break it, so a clay cup trumps a grail. - Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, classical Urdu and Persian poet from the Mughal Empire ... from http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
- masklinn 8y ago
  OTOH Germany didn't have the resources (raw materials or crews) to field that many tanks, so focusing on fewer but better tanks made sense. Not that it panned out, but it made sense.
Marazan 8y ago
Define technically superior? The German tanks had massive reliability problems, not just ease of repair they broke down under non-striker's situations. They were technical nightmares.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  You can be a technological nightmare if you get to shoot a kilometer before the enemy.
Theodores 8y ago
No, no, no, the comedy tank of the era was the Sherman Tank. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-m-4-sherman-tank-was-hell-on-wheels-and-a-death-trap-502b0d99e744 https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-m-4-sherman-tank-was-he... Favourite quote: Hence, the Sherman’s grim nickname—Ronson, like the cigarette lighter, because “it lights up the first time, every time.” Everything was wrong about it and the Russians that got given these on Lend Lease knew that they had been given a death sentence. Aforementioned article just touches the surface, the barrel was too short, the 'tech' for being able to shoot on the move did not work and you needed five of the things to take out one German tank, four as cannon fodder (complete with the guys inside) and one to sneak around the back to get that German tank whilst it was busy taking out the other four. The 5 Shermans vs 1 Panzer myth is much disputed however where there is smoke there is fire and I would not want to be in one. Plus, by the time that the Americans rocked up to fight WW2 - which was late to the party - the Germans had run out of oil so their tanks were running on recycled coal dust extract rather than the diesel fuel required. The shoddy design of the Sherman Tank was no matter though, the 'allies' were expected to pay for these useless behemoths after the war so this was the military-industrial-complex and built-in-obsolescence at its finest. Meanwhile the Soviets had a much more serious war on their hands so their hardware wasn't about making a quick buck. It had to be fit for purpose. The same thinking happens today hence we have toy planes like the F-35 where everyone and his pet congressman is getting a backhander vs. the fit for purpose planes of Russia, as advertised over the skies of Syria and doing much better in the global arms trade.

avip 8y ago

That concept was historically referred in IDF as "The best part in a machine is the one that does not exist". It's also extremely applicable to SW.

antpls 8y ago
"IDF"? "SW"?

mhandley 8y ago

You could of course just carry a regular spare wheel or two. If your fancy trackwheel fails, unbolt it, and fit the regular spare wheel. You're still mobile, just without the ability to switch to track mode.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
Never mind those folks with the rifles pointed at us! They’d never shoot someone whose busy changing a wheel!
- stult 8y ago
  We'll just make another machine that changes the wheel. Surely that will fix the problem.
- laumars 8y ago
  Wouldn't you still have that same problem if an ordinary wheel gets damaged?
  - mulletbum 8y ago
    I think the probability of damage is higher is what they are thinking. I would say that the complexity is far higher in this case, so it is easier to pop 5 bolts and swap a tire then swap.....bolts, then unhook whatever is controlling them.
    - laumars 8y ago
      We're now just guessing how easy or hard it is to swap these wheels. It might be that the replacement mechanism was reinvented as well so it's easier to swap than a standard wheel. But equally you might be right that there are more parts to unhook. Either way it is just guesswork.
- mhandley 8y ago
  I suppose it depends on whether you're more likely to get shot at while changing a broken track wheel, or digging out the vehicle when regular wheels get stuck in the mud/sand.

lstodd 8y ago

Yeah, just imagine frozen mud inside this contraption... and a blowtorch will just ruin it more throrougly.

edem 8y ago

What does zoot mean in this context? I'm not a native speaker.

anchpop 8y ago
I'm a native speaker and I've never heard it. I assume it means something like "cool fancy flashy tech"
- loco5niner 8y ago
  Another native speaker (Northwest USA). Never heard of it either. I assume the same.

Angostura 8y ago

> Let NASA have high zoot. NASA does really rather well with high reliabilty. The Martian rovers have managed without a service.

JulianMorrison 8y ago
To be fair, nobody has been shooting at them.
- baruch 8y ago
  Nobody also peed on their wheels either. But they do need to handle quite a bit of dust and there is no one around to grease them. The APCs I had to use wouldn't survive that long without service.
- Jacq5 8y ago
  Trump knows something tho.
- mcguire 8y ago
  And yet, they've had wheel problems.
  - Faaak 8y ago
    They didn't during the original mission duration.

pasta 8y ago

But what if test and evaluation prove they are more reliable than tires filled with air? I understand what you are trying to say but maybe the same discussion happened when they started using air tires instead of solid wheels: "What if your drive over a rock and all air floats out!? I pray they never start using air tires!".

owlmirror 8y ago
>But what if test and evaluation prove they are more reliable than tires filled with air? That won't happen. Just the fact that there are so many moving parts, controlled by microcontrolelrs, all with multiple independent fail points makes the idea that these are more reliably just absurd. The only question is, is the trade off of less reliability worth the advantage they provide. I don't see it, but maybe there are some applications which I'm not aware of were you really really need these abilities.
- pasta 8y ago
  Today's cars are so much more complex than old cars. Yet almost all of them are much more reliable than old cars. I don't think simple == reliable. A wheel made of solid wood is very simple. But the choice of material is poor. So there are a lot more factors involved to make something reliable. Getting stuck in the dirt might be more dangerous than a wheel with 1000 parts that gets you out of a nasty situation. Also: people assume that these new tires are going to replace all tires. But I think this is just a extra tool in a big toolkit.
  - owlmirror 8y ago
    >Today's cars are so much more complex than old cars. Yet almost all of them are much more reliable than old cars. That's debatable. Evey person who owns a vintage car, pre electronics area will tell you that. I'm sure there are improvement in new cars which made them more reliable but not because of increased complexity. Maintainability of modern cars is a mess.
    - 8y ago

Radle 8y ago

I agree, but not when it comes to self driving vehicles. For those better than normal wheels is enough. There's no way to change a brocken wheel anyway.

pweissbrod 8y ago

Yeah this is cool looking but isnt it just as effective and simpler to just have big knobby tires with adjustable pressure?

mkesper 8y ago
Boring, exists for decades already.
- pweissbrod 8y ago
  That's a good point. There's got to be a way I can replace these wheels with some sort of modern javascript framework.
  - Crespyl 8y ago
    Internet of Things means that we can enable new synergies with Web Scale techniques, like making each tread run its own software package with logging, analytics, self-maintenance, and the normal operational features, each implemented as a reliable, portable Electron app.
    - samat 8y ago
      On blockchain, right?

mcguire 8y ago

NASA doesn't want high zoot. (Love the word.) It doesn't fly if it hasn't flown before.

LinuxBender 8y ago

As former military, I also concur. There is no time to read a manual or tinker. It must be simple so that anyone in the field can adapt, improvise and overcome. Or at least, quickly limp away from harm. Also, the H1 already breaks enough without adding more crud. I had the H1 wagon and replaced damn near everything on it. I can't even fathom taking that nightmare apart in the mud. CTS and runflats were enough fun.