25 ms·

They look incredible but what are their downsides? Are they exceedingly expensive? High Ground pressure is what destroys roads - road maintenance will be much

• frankus 6y ago
  I’d imagine the biggest downside is scrubbing while cornering on a high-traction surface. The difference in distance covered by the inside and outside edges would be significant.
• jcrawfordor 6y ago
  Few manufacturers mean that they are very expensive (generally custom made today, in one case I've seen by a shipbuilder), which limits commercial usage. Besides that simple issue though I think it mostly comes down to poor maneuvering on hard surfaces which somewhat limits them to snow/sand/mud, and the drivetrain is probably more delicate and difficult to maintain than tracks which discourages military use. One of the big advantages of tracked vehicles in a military context, for example, is that they do not get flat tires. A rolligon could easily lose an entire bag. I'd imagine they probably carry spares and tools to swap them but no one would want to do that on a battlefield. From what I have read, they are, in general, not really designed for survivability like most off-road vehicles we think of, but rather for payload. So operators send them in groups of two or three because they do get stuck or require repairs en route from time to time.