Marines Choose Death Over Proper Equipment...

Over at Wired.com there is an article talking about the USMC deciding to stick with Humvees even thought they've proven to be inadequate in modern combat situations.  Does that mean the Marines choose lighter, cheaper Humvees because they choose not to fight anymore?  Or do they just don't care if Marine Units are less then fully combat capable or do they just not care if Marines are maimed and killed? 

The irony is that the Marines don't want to spend the money to replace all their armored Humvees with better vehicles, but they have the stupid, expensive idea of building Flying Humvees.  I'm starting to think that HQMC if full of hashish-heads. 

Then again, maybe they really don't care if Marines live or die.  At NDM there is an article about the robotic rover the Marines are building to support light infantry troops. 

As for the Marine Corps, it has been lagging behind its peers in the use of robotics because until recently it hadn’t figured out what it wanted to do with the technology. Marines are flying unmanned aircraft as surveillance tools. Now officials want to employ ground robots as a means to reduce casualties from roadside bombs and to lighten the loads on troops.

So basically the Marines are developing this because they need something 'robotic'.  And how is some very small, complete unprotected vehicle going to protect them from roadside bombs?  Oh yeah, so the Marines have a small rover to carry equipment so they can walk slowly around the battlefield because if you just move slow enough maybe the enemy will be able to get away instead of fight.  And thus you can avoid any PR-problem casualties. 

Every minute that a marine has to spend operating the robot is a minute that he is not an active member of the 13-marine squad. Andrew Culhane, director of business development at TORC, said the company is working to upgrade vehicle autonomy and navigation capabilities to allow GUSS to operate more like the 14th member of the squad.

Johns reported that the MAARS tracked vehicle was utilized for security and surveillance purposes because it had better sensors for looking at distant objects and because it was quieter than GUSS.

Vince Goulding, director of the experiments division at the warfighting lab, said that autonomous ground vehicles are coming, whether they’re carrying a machine gun or an injured marine, or whether they take the form of a 7-ton truck moving supplies. “We’re looking to do all those things,” he said. “We just want to keep minds open to develop the [tactics, techniques and procedures] we need to have down before we put these things out into the operating forces. And that’s what experimentation is all about.”

Unfortunately a single squad on a patrol will find itself less effective because someone has to stay with the rover.  You can't just leave you're gear behind to be stolen, vandalized or booby trapped.  What is the point of carrying a heavy weapon on a vehicle that you can't fire it from?  And who goes with the wounded Marine?  Are you just going to send one of your buddies back to the BAS with nothing more then an unarmored Rover as his escort? 

So why not a dedicated vehicle properly armed to support the dismounted Marines?  Because Marines are a renewable resource.  The more that get maimed and killed the more seem to rush to enlist.  No reason for the Marines to properly equip itself to fight in current and future conflicts.  Basically the Marines have learned nothing from the failure of the armored Humvees.  Not only that but those running the Marine Corps are so simpleminded and so forgetful they don't remember that their unarmored Humvees were EVEN A BIGGER failure.  And they are willing to repeat it in the name of 'robotics'.