08-04-2011, 21:21
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#1
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Area Commander
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Cochise Co., AZ
Posts: 6,200
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Boys and their toys...
God bless them!
Quote:
Afghanistan War: Hobbyists' Toy Truck Saves 6 Soldiers' Lives
Staff Sgt. Christopher Fessenden is on duty in Afghanistan now after tours with the Army in Iraq. He has traveled with standard-issue equipment -- weapons, helmet, uniform, boots and so forth -- plus a radio-controlled model truck his brother Ernie sent.
The truck is not a toy to him. He says it just saved six soldiers' lives.
"We cannot thank you enough," said Sgt. Fessenden in an email from the front that Ernie, a software engineer in Rochester, Minn., shared with ABC News.
The little truck was used by the troops to run ahead of them on patrols and look for roadside bombs. Fessenden has had it since 2007, when Ernie and Kevin Guy, the owner of the Everything Hobby shop in Rochester, rigged it with a wireless video camera and shipped it to him.
Last week, it paid off. Chris Fessenden said he had loaned the truck to a group of fellow soldiers, who used it to check the road ahead of them on a patrol. It got tangled in a trip wire connected to what Fessenden guesses could have been 500 lbs. of explosives. The bomb went off. The six soldiers controlling the truck from their Humvee were unhurt.
Full story here.
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Pat
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"Hector Lives!"
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass
"The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen." -- Dennis Prager
"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it." --H.L. Mencken
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PSM is offline
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08-04-2011, 22:32
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#2
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Guerrilla Chief
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: NYC Area
Posts: 828
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Good stuff  I know there are several companies that have been working the DoD for years now to contract specialized(read $$$$$) EOD bots for IED work, though this is better in a way as R/C vehicles and wireless cameras are commodity items which can be sourced quickly and easily, as opposed to waiting for DoD contracts to finalize. Combine some "hillbilly" armor with a stronger motor and you might have something that can take a few hits and keep rolling. 
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"Crime is an extension of business through illegal means, politics is an extension of crime through *legal* means."
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BOfH is offline
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08-05-2011, 09:30
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#3
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Guerrilla
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Pacific North Wet
Posts: 402
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BOfH
Good stuff I know there are several companies that have been working the DoD for years now to contract specialized(read $$$$$) EOD bots for IED work, though this is better in a way as R/C vehicles and wireless cameras are commodity items which can be sourced quickly and easily, as opposed to waiting for DoD contracts to finalize. Combine some "hillbilly" armor with a stronger motor and you might have something that can take a few hits and keep rolling. |
Who cares if it keeps rolling. Bring the price point down by scale so long as it saves lives and limbs. R/C vehicle vs prosthetic - which is cheaper?
LL
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Only librarians like to search, everyone else likes to find. Roy Tenant
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LibraryLady is offline
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08-05-2011, 17:23
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#4
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Quiet Professional
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Free Pineland
Posts: 24,813
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LibraryLady
Who cares if it keeps rolling. Bring the price point down by scale so long as it saves lives and limbs. R/C vehicle vs prosthetic - which is cheaper?
LL
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Regret to inform you that by the time the government finishes redesigning and manufacturing these lifesavers, they will be ten times the size, ten times slower, do half the work, and cost ten times as much.
TR
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
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The Reaper is offline
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08-05-2011, 17:28
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#5
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Quiet Professional
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Wilson,NC
Posts: 1,506
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Good soldier level ingenuity. Adapt, improvise and overcome!
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"Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines."
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R.D. Winters
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rdret1 is offline
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08-05-2011, 19:44
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#6
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Area Commander
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: OK. Thanking Our Brave Soldiers
Posts: 3,614
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Hope they leave as is, and kick the shit out of the IED's!!!
This thread title though, had my mind in alterior places...lol 
Holly
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echoes is offline
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08-05-2011, 20:10
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#7
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Quiet Professional
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: DFW Texas Area
Posts: 4,741
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This ranks up there with "Silly String"!!
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Martin sends.
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Ambush Master is offline
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08-05-2011, 20:20
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#8
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Area Commander
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: OK. Thanking Our Brave Soldiers
Posts: 3,614
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ambush Master
This ranks up there with "Silly String"!!
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Agreed Am Sir!
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echoes is offline
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08-05-2011, 20:23
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#9
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Quiet Professional
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: DFW Texas Area
Posts: 4,741
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Quote:
Originally Posted by echoes
Agreed Am Sir!
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I don't think you understand what I mean.
Later.
Martin
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Martin sends.
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Ambush Master is offline
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08-05-2011, 20:39
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#10
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Quiet Professional
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Occupied Pineland
Posts: 4,701
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Reaper
Regret to inform you that by the time the government finishes redesigning and manufacturing these lifesavers, they will be ten times the size, ten times slower, do half the work, and cost ten times as much.
TR
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Don't forget the unobtainium , unaffordium batteries that can't be used for anything else. Maybe we can require the operators to get flight physicals too. (Just like the USAF requires for some UAV pilots - course they're also getting flight pay and PTSD.)
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A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (42B.C)
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Peregrino is offline
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08-06-2011, 12:16
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#11
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Area Commander
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Midwest
Posts: 7,134
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ambush Master
This ranks up there with "Silly String"!!
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First thing I thought of. I sent a lot of cans to several Marines way back when.
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My Heroes wear camouflage.
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Gypsy is offline
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08-06-2011, 12:42
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#12
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Area Commander
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: JBLM
Posts: 1,246
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ambush Master
I don't think you understand what I mean.
Later.
Martin
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Used it two years ago for those monofiliment, eye level ones you can't see too well.
Crafty bastards don't like it when you destroy their work.
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"Let the blood of the infantry flow through your veins,or the blood of the infantry will be on your hands."
- GEN John A. Wickham, Jr. speaking on the responsibilities of MI soldiers.
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jbour13 is offline
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08-06-2011, 20:20
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#13
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Guerrilla Chief
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: NYC Area
Posts: 828
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LibraryLady
Who cares if it keeps rolling. Bring the price point down by scale so long as it saves lives and limbs. R/C vehicle vs prosthetic - which is cheaper?
LL
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The suggestion was intended to be a field modification done by the soldiers themselves, not by some beltway bandit(read DoD contractor). A motor mod and some "hillbilly" (read junkyard) armor won't cost very much(if anything) and can help the R/C vehicle take a few rounds. I wasn't arguing with the basic premise, it was just an idea for those who are reading and needing to use this in the AO.
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"Crime is an extension of business through illegal means, politics is an extension of crime through *legal* means."
Last edited by BOfH; 08-06-2011 at 20:21.
Reason: Clarify
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