From: Ron (rojoha@attbi.com)
Date: Wed May 29 2002 - 06:17:13 PDT
C'mon guys and especially you Doc.... before ya tell a whopper, shouldn't ya
at least check if your gonna get shot in the shorts?
You're on the internet, just a key stroke away from days worth of
reading on any subject you care to research. Now the FMTV may be a political
boon dogle and a real piece of crap, but the company was not 'created
specifically' to bid the contract, nor is the statement "The FMTV family has
been a disaster since it's inception. A product of a company that never
built any vehicles before the Army contract, your tax
dollars have been used to bail them out so that they could repair them
enough so that units could convoy them down the highway at speeds greater
than 40 MPH."
Wander over to http://www.ssss.com/flash/100history.html to get the
company's spin. Yes, it's like taking Pravda's word on why the Berlin Wall
went up, but the truth lies somewhere in between. They may never have built
a vehicle completely in house, but then again there are not a whole lot of
companies that build a 'complete' vehicle themselves anyway. "They buy lots
of parts from lots of suppliers." What company doesn't?
The M880 was a low budget turd built to bail out Chrysler after the M715
series failed to bail out Kaiser. The CUCV was a bone to GM and surprise,
suprise the next CUCV series will come from Ford. Any bets on who will build
the CUCV XXIV.... KIA, HONDA?
Any weapons system is committee built and have problems. The FB111 was a
turd only the Air Force could operate due to add ons that resulted in an
EMPTY gross weight that ruled out ever operating off a carrier. The M44
series went through 2 other engines before they settled on the 465. The
'new' parking brake handle on the M44 series that unlocks when you get out
because of it's poor placement, the master cylinder that never gets checked
cause it's such a pain to get to and then keep the dirt out. The M35A3 mods
that were done to improve cross country performance, only to kill troops on
the highway as they negotiate turns. (Seemed like a good idea at the
time...) The solution, take off the CTIS and singles and put duals on them.
Just like the M35A2 it replaced.
A number of years ago, tracks were the wave of the future. Now the hot
set up is the Stryker, an M8/M20 on steroids. The Abrahms is too big, gotta
find a replacement. C141 too small , who cares, the C17 WAS gonna replace it
until the committees drove the price out of sight. The C5 was a bust, unable
to meet few of it's design criteria, even after major rebuilds of the
aircraft to allow it to operate at rated loads on concrete runways, let
alone unimproved 'theatre' unimproved fields.
It's all about big business buying smaller companies and then using
their financial might to buy off the politicians and ignore common sense. Ya
gotta replace it, because we need the jobs, and the workers vote, and if you
want to be reelected, you'd better bring home the bacon. So don't blame
Stewart Stevenson. They are just doing what everyone else does. And maybe 40
years from now, Skylee list members will be bitching about plans to replace
the 'venerable' FMTV which still works just fine......
Ronzo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Doc Scheffler" <roughdoc@earthlink.net>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 6:53 AM
Subject: Re: [MV] saw interesting MV
> S&S was created specifically to bid on this contract. When the "won" it,
> they had to create assembly facilities, etc. They buy lots of parts from
> lots of suppliers.
>
> The C-141 issue is dead. There are almost no 141's left in the inventory.
>
> The C-130 issue is bizarre. The entire family is such crap, that they
made
> a version specifically for the airdrop mission. The LMTV (2 1/2 ton
> version) has one model that is toughened up to withstand the airdrop
> process.
>
> Doc
>
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Aug 16 2002 - 11:21:36 PDT