Weaponology (2007–…): Season 1, Episode 12 - Armoured Personnel Carriers - full transcript

You're watching the Military Channel.

Go behind the lines.

When you walk into a combat zone, you walk into hell.

Bullets tearing up the ground.

Shrapnel ripping through the air.

Landmines, booby traps, bayonets, tanks, helicopters, snipers, grenades.

That's why soldiers love APCs.

Armoured personnel carriers that keep them safe, cut down on the legwork and
dish out punishment.

APCs started out being a way to get around the battlefield under a bit of
protection,

but turned into a big complex weapon system.

Get locked, loaded and jump on board as we go back through generations of
technology



to reveal how wheels, tracks, armour, guns and grunt combined and evolved into
the soldier's best friend.

It's time to go ballistic.

In the 21st century, armoured personnel carriers come in all kinds of flavours.

Heavily armed tracked vehicles, lightweight carriers and multi-functional all-
terrain systems.

This functionality extends to their mission sets.

Rapid deployment, reconnaissance, medevac provision and fire support.

Each of these roles is vital, but equally each of these roles puts the crew and
infantry at risk.

A tank's best doesn't have the same amount of armour that a tank does.

And if it gets hit, you're going to kill a whole lot of folks.

The logical solution?

Don't risk the lives of men when there's a robot that can do the job instead.

Need to send supplies to soldiers under fire?

Attack an enemy position?

Carry out surveillance?



Send in the Crusher.

A state-of-the-art future weapon, the Crusher is controlled using a bank of
cameras feeding images back to a support team.

There's no crew.

No crew means no loss of life.

It also allows the vehicle to carry 8,000 pounds of payload and attack the enemy
without exposing soldiers.

Now weaponology will unlock its family tree, going back through generations of
technology

to reveal how wheels, tracks, armour, guns and half-tracks resulted in an
armoured personnel carrier that doesn't carry people.

The awesome Crusher.

Before the age of the armoured personnel carrier, soldiers went into battle on
foot.

They were expected to march hundreds of miles through hostile terrain, wearing
primitive footwear and clothing.

Up until the First World War, soldiers always had to move across the battlefield
on the old black Cadillacs, on their feet.

There had to be a better way of getting soldiers into battle.

Wheels were the answer.

In 2000 BC, chariots were used like modern APCs, rapidly deploying and
extracting warriors on the battlefield.

There are some chariots that made excellent fighting platforms and that gave a
certain amount of mobility on the battlefield, but not a lot of protection.

It really wasn't until the 20th century that an infantry soldier could expect to
move rapidly across the battlefield with some kind of assistance and be
protected.

Fast forward to World War I and horsepower had evolved into engine power.

It led to the creation of the first APCs.

The British were among a number of nations that took ordinary civilian chassis
and modified them for military use.

Light armour was welded on and in some cases, turrets and machine guns were
added.

Most armies were forced to use ordinary commercial cars.

And the problem with the ordinary commercial cars is they're not designed to be
used cross-country.

In many cases, they were two-wheel drive.

And of course, they really weren't designed for the type of durability that an
army requires.

Two-wheel drive cars didn't have the necessary grip for off-road deployment.

The unpowered wheels can't exert the necessary traction.

Traction is the contact made between the wheel and the ground.

More traction means more grip.

The solution lay in four by fours.

When all four wheels are powered, traction can be maintained both front and
rear.

This technology had been available since the turn of the century.

Some World War I trucks had four by four drive.

But it wasn't until World War II that it was utilised in dedicated military
vehicles.

American forces were fighting a highly mobile all-terrain war.

Their solution?

A four-wheel go-anywhere legend.

The Jeep is a military icon.

Small and tough, it paid its dues in three major conflicts.

And left its tracks on five continents.

Fast-moving, hard-hitting, mechanised units speeding into action.

Patrolling the 8,000 square mile outpost over jungle trails and mountain
streams.

In 1940, the US military invited 135 companies to come up with a design for a
general purpose

light utility vehicle.

The specifications demanded four-wheel drive, a minimum speed of at least 50
miles per hour,

a payload of 600 pounds and to be a lightweight vehicle.

American Phantom, a small automobile firm, came up with a working prototype in
less than

49 days.

The Jeep was very, very lightweight.

When the designers came up with the Jeep, they tried to keep it very, very light
so

that if it did get stuck in the mud, the crew could actually move it.

When it was properly driven at proper speeds, it could go over pretty much any
kind of terrain.

It could go through all kinds of dirt, mud and everything else, come out on the
other

side and keep on operating.

The Army liked what the Phantom guys were cooking.

The only thing was, they didn't think a small company like Phantom would be able
to rustle

up the volume of Jeeps they'd be needing.

They were completely shafted out of getting any of the contracts.

The designs were turned over to Willys and Ford, who got huge contracts out of
this.

And Phantom, after making maybe a couple of thousand Jeeps, they were out of
business.

Hundreds of thousands of Jeeps rolled off the production line.

Officially, it could carry four men.

In practice, they could carry a whole load more.

Men jumped on, jumped off.

Vital supplies got loaded on.

VIPs got the chauffer treatment.

And badly wounded men were rushed to first aid stations.

It really was the first true battle taxi.

But like all wheeled vehicles, the Jeep was vulnerable.

Riding through tough terrain and hails of lead, it was prone to punctures.

Overloading the suspension and driving too fast could result in it rolling over.

Its low profile and lack of roof could also be a killer.

The German troops retreating through France in 1944 took to stretching lines of
piano

wire across the road.

The results were horrific.

You drive down a road in Germany in 1944 and the Germans know you're coming.

So they've stretched a bit of piano wire across the road.

When your neck encounters the piano wire, the piano wire slices right through
your neck.

That's going to take your head right off.

The next evolution in wheeled personnel carriers would see them get bigger and
batter.

Four by four became eight by eight.

Twice the number of wheels, twice the traction.

Even more awesome all terrain performance.

In the 1970s, Swiss manufacturer Moag got radical with the rubber and engineered
a multi-wheeled

APC, the Piranha.

Fully armored and capable of mounting large caliber weapons, the Piranha had
plenty of

fight.

Its multi-wheeled system allows it to enter the toughest terrain.

The US Army Striker vehicle is derived from the Piranha and retains a lot of its
primary

features.

As a family of vehicles, they're light enough to be transported anytime,
anywhere, anyhow.

Wonderful platform, but the main thing about it is it's light.

It's a light wheeled chassis that can go around the world in the back of a C-17
or even a

C-130.

The Striker entered service with the US Army in 2002 and it's never looked back.

Almost 23 feet long, it can travel at speeds of up to 62 miles per hour.

The Striker is very mobile.

It's got speed that gets us to the objective very quickly.

It carries up to a squad, which is typically about nine combat equipped
soldiers.

It has enough room for them to all sit in there and to be able to rapidly
withdraw out

of the vehicle.

From the driver's compartment, he can adjust the tire pressure to the terrain
the vehicle

is driving on for maximum speed and or traction.

The Striker can deal with a multitude of situations because it's got eight
wheels.

It can operate with a few of them down.

It's got a central tire inflation system, which can correct tire inflation.

If a bullet hits one and it deflates, it can bring it up to speed until you can
pull it

over and get it fixed.

The Striker's wheels have a final ace up their sleeve.

You'll never hear them coming.

This has been called silent death by those who had to face them in the Middle
East because

as the Striker approaches, instead of having that clank, clank, clank of the
tracks or

treads, instead what you have is the silent wheels as it approaches on rubber
instead

of steel tracks.

From chariots to jeeps to the Striker, wheeled APCs have given armies the
ability to navigate

tough terrain at speed with stealth.

But there's a whole other family of battle taxis that don't use wheels.

These monsters go for tracks.

If you want to keep up with tanks cross country, you'd better have tracks.

Armored fighting vehicles, APCs, battle taxis, lots of different names, one
single purpose

to get soldiers in and out of battle fast and safe.

Most of this family are wheeled, burning rubber, battling it out.

But there's a whole branch on their family tree that puts the pedal to the
metal.

First invented in 1901, Caterpillar tracks have many advantages over wheels.

They can't get punctures and they can go places that wheels can't.

A tracked vehicle is a lot better across country and if you want to keep up with
tanks cross

country, you'd better have tracks.

The tracks spreads or distributes the weight of the vehicle across the ground so
it can

go through mud and snow and slush and this type of thing, places where a wheeled
vehicle

would get bogged down.

Tracked military vehicles appeared in World War I when the British unleashed the
first

tanks.

Their ability to safely cross the nightmare landscape of no man's land and
penetrate enemy

lines was a revelation.

Surrounded by metal, the crews were safe, unlike the soldiers who were following
behind.

In World War I, tanks were successful in crossing through the machine guns,
through shell fire,

through the enemy's barbed wire into their trenches.

But they still had to be followed by the poor bloody infantry as they came
forward on foot

exposed to machine gun and rifle fire and artillery fragments.

Positions gained at very great cost would then be lost again due to a lack of
supporting

infantry.

Something had to be done.

In the summer of 1917, the British started designing an armored vehicle
specifically

for troop transport.

They took their Mark V tank and heavily modified it as a personnel carrier.

The hull was lengthened to 32 feet.

The engine was moved to the front, the gearbox to the back, and the suspension
girders left

out entirely, creating an inner space 13 feet long and 8 feet wide.

It was redesignated the Mark IX.

With the Mark IX tank of the British, the idea was to put troops inside, 20 or
30 at

a time, and carry them forward, protected under armor, into the enemy's
trenches.

Crawling along at four miles per hour, this metal beast represented a whole new
concept

in armored warfare, mechanized infantry.

Unfortunately, it was a concept way ahead of the available technology.

The original one was this thing.

They actually tried in World War I to pile some infantry in here.

It was big enough to carry some infantry, and it was a total flop because the
infantry

arrived nauseated, sickened, and weakened by the fumes and the heat and the
horrible

circumstances in here.

So they didn't do that much anymore.

That was obviously useless.

Luckily for troops, the Mark IX never saw serious action.

But one thing was certain.

Tracks had massively advanced the ability of military vehicles to go cross
country,

and had also given military tacticians an insight to the potential of mechanized
infantry.

Now weaponologists needed to create a fully tracked APC that would be smaller,
faster,

and less claustrophobic for soldiers.

In World War II, British engineers John Carden and Vivian Lloyd came up with a
winning proposal,

the Universal Carrier.

Better known as the Bren Gun Carrier, it was used by the British, Canadians, and
Americans.

Its inspiration came from Tankettes, small two and three man tanks designed by
Carden

and Lloyd in the 1920s.

Ten years later, they conceived a similar vehicle, but without a hull and enough
space

to load supplies and men.

The vehicle known as the Bren Gun Carrier was designed to bridge the gap between
armored

fighting vehicles and a means of getting your infantry around the battlefield.

The Bren Gun Carrier got its moniker from its primary armament, the.303 caliber
Bren Gun.

A top speed of 30 miles per hour made it fast enough to get out of trouble, and
its ability

to conquer insane terrain was impressive.

It was designed really to take three or four men quickly over some ground, and
the idea

of having armored recce units in a vehicle with cross country ability was well
ahead

of its time.

But what made the Bren Gun Carrier an infantry legend was its bloody minded go
anywhere attitude.

Small, yes.

Gutsy, hell yes.

In the Pacific theater during World War II, the British army went up against the
Japanese

in Burma.

Hundreds of Bren Gun Carriers went into action.

The British found themselves fighting a brutal, close quarters battle, and the
Bren was in

the thick of it.

Lives were lost, lives were saved, and medals were won.

Havildar Parchash Singh was a non commissioned officer in the Indian army, and
in Burma during

the Second World War, when fighting against the Japanese, he found that some of
the Indian

army wounded were in an exposed position.

So he got into his little universal carrier, and he drove up, and he chucked the
wounded

into the back of his universal carrier, and got the wounded off to safety.

But what distinguishes Havildar Parchash Singh is that he turns his universal
carrier around,

goes back into fire, and finds himself more wounded.

Parchash was driving straight into a tsunami of Japanese lead.

With anti-tank shells landing too close for comfort, he maneuvered the carrier
close enough

for his wounded comrades to jump on board.

For his courageous actions, Parchash Singh was awarded Britain's highest medal,
the Victoria

Cross.

The Victoria Cross is given for acts of extraordinary valor.

And Havildar Parchash Singh was saving his comrades in the face of hard enemy
fire in

Burma.

Over 100,000 Bren gun carriers were manufactured, making it the most familiar
tracked APC of

World War II.

But it wasn't the only tracked vehicle taking soldiers into battle.

It's time to unravel a whole new branch on the APC family tree.

Half Tracks.

In the 1930s, a number of nations experimented with a hybrid vehicle.

In the rear, it would have light tracks.

It was a truck and a tank combined called a half track.

The idea was to get a vehicle that was sufficiently mobile to go cross country
and get carrier

equipment in the back.

The inventor of the half track was French engineer Adolphe Cagresse.

In 1911, he converted a number of cars from the personal car park of the Tsar of
Russia.

His design will become the basis for vehicles like the American M3.

Conventional front wheels and steering were used.

An articulated bogey was fitted to the rear of the vehicle with a large drive
wheel at

one end, a large unpowered idler wheel at the other, and several small guide
wheels

in between.

Unlike a tank, the belt that surrounds these wheels isn't normally formed of
interlocking

metal segments.

Instead, a flexible belt is used.

The end result was a vehicle that had two distinct advantages over tanks.

First, if a track broke, it was easy to replace the flexible band.

Second, their driving mechanism was the same as cars.

A steering wheel, brakes, and gears.

A cinch to drive.

Caterpillar tracks are hard to steer, and the training required to be a good
tracked

vehicle driver takes a long time.

The advantage of a half track is anybody who can drive a truck can sit in and
drive a half

track.

The Germans and Americans both adopted the half track.

Many early models focused on logistical support.

The idea was to provide a prime mover, rather than using horses or even a truck,
to pull

these heavy guns across country to help follow the armored forces.

Well, when you start doing that, you can put some of the shells in the back, and
then perhaps

put the crew in the back so they could ride along with the gun.

And somebody said, well, let's leave the gun behind and put some infantry in
there and

make Panzer Grenadier of them, or armored infantry.

So the half track became a battlefield taxi of many kinds.

The Hanomag 251 became a vital cog in Germany's World War II Blitzkrieg tactics.

Capable of carrying 10 men, it stormed into battle behind the Panzer tank
brigades.

The German way of war in the Second World War is based on rapid maneuver.

And in order for the infantry to keep up with the armor, 10% are put into half
tracks, which

gives them the same cross-country mobility as a tank, but with the easy
deployment of

just jumping off the back of a truck.

Infantry could become just as much a part of combat power and maneuverability as
a tank.

The success of this highly mobile infantry didn't go unnoticed.

Infantry doctrine rapidly shifted toward the idea that soldiers should keep up
with their

armor.

Half tracks had shown the way, but they weren't the future.

By the end of World War II, most armies had decided that what was really needed
was a

fully tracked vehicle or a fully wheeled vehicle.

If they're going to operate in soft ground conditions, they go for a tracked
vehicle.

If they're going to operate in conditions where they need speed and long
endurance and

ease of maintainability, they go for a wheeled vehicle.

Vehicles are tracks.

APCs are a diverse family of weapons.

Different countries, different features, different uses.

The only universal truth?

When it comes to transporting large volumes of troops, armies around the world
turn to

one vehicle.

The truck.

Armored personnel carriers are prime movers on the battlefield.

This family of vehicles transports thousands of men, carries out a diverse range
of missions

and ferries vital supplies.

The largest of these vehicles is the truck.

A regular feature in all armies, it's a war winning workhorse.

America's legendary World War II GMC CCKW truck operated in every theater.

Nicknamed the Deuce and a Half, it could carry 5,000 pounds of supplies for 25
fully equipped

men.

Over half a million were built, saving millions of soldiers a long walk.

As a rule, they weren't armored and they didn't carry weapons.

But rules were made to be broken.

During the Vietnam conflict, Deuce and the Havs went mad max, strapping on
ballistic

armor and heavy duty machine guns to become two and a half tons of rolling
thunder.

During the Vietnam conflict, one of the ways to protect convoys was to put a
regular five

ton or two and a half ton truck on the road, but armored up and then put a lot
of 50 caliber

machine guns on it so that if you got ambushed, you had a counter ambush weapon
readily in

hand.

As far as the gun truck crews were concerned, you could never have enough
weapons.

As well as the 50 cows, they packed some serious metal.

You have M60 machine guns, shotguns, M16s, pistols, hand grenades, M79 grenade
launcher.

It's a traveling arsenal.

It's designed to react to about any kind of situation.

In the late 60s, one gun truck crew found itself needing a new gunner.

David Rollins was the right man in the right place with the right stuff.

It needed somebody that didn't have too much fear, not much brains, and somebody
that was

sort of gung ho.

So that sort of fit me.

David Rollins and his crew were driving a six wheeled apocalypse and they loved
it.

If we were coming through with a convoy, say 15, 20, 30 trucks, and they decided
to lob

a rocket at us and we saw where it came from, they would lob another one.

I loved the gun.

That 50 cow was nice.

The gun trucks were dealing out a whole world of hurt, but they were also taking
hits.

They had to find a way to armor up their exposed calves and truck beds.

Initially, they started building armor out of wood and sandbags, but the
conditions of

the road will actually jar these sandbags to the point that it falls apart.

A ward officer by the name of Nichols had suggested the idea of putting steel
plating

on the side of trucks back in the summer of 1967, so they began armoring the
truck.

But even with the armor, it was still a dangerous job.

The gun truck is a high risk job.

These are the guys who are supposed to go into the kill zone when everybody else
is

driving out of the kill zone.

There were no roofs on the vehicles, no bulletproof windshields.

Crews relied on their buddies to watch their backs.

It was tighter than family.

Sort of like peas in a pod.

One encounter shows just how tight that bond was.

On the 23rd of September, 1971, a gun truck crew came under heavy fire.

What happened next, one 21-year-old Larry Dahl, a Congressional Medal of Honor.

An NDA soldier standing on the hillside stood up and threw a grenade into the
box of the

Brutus.

The only gunner who was alert was Larry Dahl.

He heard the hand grenade bouncing around, and he immediately threw himself on
it to

save his buddies.

The reason Larry Dahl jumped on that hand grenade is essentially he saw it
first.

That the gun truck crews were just so tight, so cohesive, that the first thought
would

have gone through the mind is that that's going to injure my buddy.

I've got to do something to prevent that from happening.

I've had a number of gun truckers tell me that they would have done the same
thing under

those circumstances.

Truck drivers can be heroes too.

Gun trucks have provided the U.S. Army with an improvised solution to a complex
problem.

How much armor, how much weaponry do your vehicles need before troops begin to
feel

safe?

The answer lies in infantry fighting vehicles, a new branch on the APC family
tree that packs

troops and a punch.

This weapon caught the rest of the world by surprise.

Armor personnel carriers get a whole load of nicknames.

The most popular, battle taxis.

Like taxis, you can flak them down.

They know all the shortcuts, and they always get you home.

These vehicles used to live in the shadow of tanks.

For years, their better armored, heavier gunned big brothers got all the glory.

Today, armored personnel carriers take on tanks and slap them down.

In World War I, APCs mounted machine guns.

Fast forward to World War II, and they were mounting a whole lot more.

Soldiers realized that troops leaving their vehicle needed to be protected by
covering

fire.

What you've got to be able to do is to suppress the enemy.

If you simply try and jump out of the back and then get into position to fight,
you're

incredibly vulnerable.

So one of the features of half tracks would in fact be to have a.30 caliber or
7.92 machine

gun or pairs of them on the top to keep the enemy's heads down.

Soldiers also mounted bigger, more extreme weapons on their APCs.

Everything from flame throwing Bren gun carriers to anti-aircraft systems.

So you see this proliferation of all sorts of weapons and all sorts of devices
onto the

backs of armored vehicles by the end of World War II, and it became even more
common afterwards.

This evolution in heavily armed APCs resulted in the creation of the first
infantry fighting

vehicle.

The Bronovaia Machina Pichota.

To the west, the BMP won.

First seen in public in November 1967, the BMP was significantly smaller than
Western

APCs and had considerably greater firepower.

Here was a vehicle that was tracked.

It had a crew compartment in the back that could carry a squad of infantry under
armor,

but also had a low squat turret on the top of it like a tank that could turn in
all directions.

This weapon caught the rest of the world by surprise.

And what happened, the United States and other powers looked at this and the
arms race for

an armored fighting vehicle began.

Unlike previous APCs that had slowly added more and more firepower to the frame,
the

BMP was designed from the outset to carry heavy weaponry.

The BMP-1 was the first of a new generation of infantry vehicles called infantry
fighting

vehicles, IFVs.

Now the infantry was expected to fight from the vehicle, not to dismount and
fight, but

actually to fight from the vehicle.

When the Americans set about developing their next generation APC, the Bradley,
they took

note.

It used to be that APCs were what you needed to get soldiers around the
battlefield safely,

but once the Soviets have got an APC with a big gun on it, the Americans want to
put

a big gun on their APC.

Development of the M2 Bradley began in 1972.

Designed to support America's main battle tank, the Abrams, it can carry six
infantry

and three crew.

Its turret mounts an M242 25 millimeter chain gun capable of firing 200 rounds
per minute.

When the Bradley hit the battlefield, it was without question the toughest
personnel carrier

ever built.

You had a weapon system here that was incomparable.

You had a 25 millimeter chain gun, a very large auto cannon that could fire a
variety

of high explosives or armor piercing rounds.

You could fire two anti-tank missiles from the Bradley to knock out enemy tanks
at long

range.

And you also had machine guns.

In the Gulf War, M2 and M3 Bradleys destroyed more Iraqi armored vehicles than
America's

main battle tank, the Abrams.

The great advantage of the Bradley is it's not just reliant upon a cannon for
its own

defense.

It also has the tow system, which is an anti-tank system, which is built in,
which means it

can take out the best of the enemy's main battle tank.

Since 1981, thousands of Bradleys have been fielded, making it a common feature
of 21st

century warfare.

But as a fighting vehicle, it does have flaws.

The 25 millimeter gun and turret, while impressive, takes up almost half the
space meant for troop

transport.

Where previous American APCs had always carried a minimum squad of eight, the
Bradley could

only carry six.

You can bolt all kinds of things onto an APC to turn it into an infantry
fighting vehicle.

But the thing you've got to keep in mind is when you put a gun onto it, you've
got to

take soldiers out of it.

Some military analysts argue that the true purpose of an APC should be to
transport troops

in and out of battle, not taking on enemy tanks.

With less armor and armament than a dedicated tank, infantry fighting vehicles
are exposing

their crews to cheap shots.

This is like an astonishingly wrong-headedly stupid idea.

The moment that turret starts to fire, it becomes the target for all kinds of
hostile

fire.

So the fact that the turret or the turret crew is now engaging some target out
there,

not only are they at risk, but now all these poor bastards who are locked up in
this box

are at risk too.

IFVs with serious weaponry or APCs that focus on transporting troops.

For soldiers on the ground, it's immaterial.

More than anything, what they want is protection.

And that's why for over 100 years, weaponologists have tried to evolve, adapt,
and improve the

armor on APCs.

It's no use being in the back of an armored personnel carrier if the enemy can
still kill

you.

Soldiers live in fear that the next bullet could be the last bullet.

On the battlefield, they're exposed.

That's why for almost a century, weaponologists have been designing armored
personnel carriers

with more and more armor.

For soldiers, the quality of that armor can prove the difference between life
and death.

Rewind to World War II, and APCs didn't have all-over protection.

The US Army's M3 Half-Track that fought its way through France, Poland, and
Germany, and

some of the toughest fighting the world has ever seen, didn't have a roof.

Its shoulder-high armor gave some protection, but heads were vulnerable to
shrapnel bursts,

snipers, and grenades.

In the 1950s, the growing threat of nuclear warfare changed everything,
including the

design of APCs.

Weaponologists believed that their infantry would need to be shielded from
radiation.

The result was a fully enclosed personnel vehicle.

Suddenly there was a radiation threat.

The first answer to the radiation threat was make the APC enclosed, and with an
air filtering

system you can keep most of the radiation out.

That's why the APC got a roof.

In 1962, the US Army sent its first fully enclosed APC to Vietnam, the M113.

Nuclear weapons were never a threat.

Mines and rocket-propelled grenades were.

With all that lead flying around, the M113's roof seemed to make sense.

But very quickly, troops were refusing to ride inside the vehicles.

Any time that 113 ran over a mine, and Vietnam were littered with mines, every
infantryman's

brains would be bashed out against the roof inside.

So you saw all over Vietnam, you saw 113's running down the road with troops
sitting

on top.

Now think about the incredible stupidity of that.

Here we have this big five-ton plus armored box, expensive, tracked, using up
gas and

everything in order for people to ride on the roof.

Riding outside allowed troops to see where potential threats were coming from,
and also

meant they arrived at their destination not feeling sick, hot, and nauseated
from being

thrown about inside the box.

But being on the roof also left them exposed to enemy fire and shrapnel.

A solution was needed, and it was the troops on the ground who came up with one.

Hillbilly armor.

They added sandbags, metal, and plywood, anything to absorb the blast from mines
and RPGs.

Troops began to place several thousand pounds of sandbags and ration boxes and
other things

on the bottom and the floor of the armored personnel carrier, and they'd ride on
top.

They'd surround the top like a parapet of a castle with sandbags and place
machine guns

in all directions.

Forty years later, in Iraq and Afghanistan, American troops are still adding
Hillbilly

armor to their APCs.

The Humvee was designed primarily for personnel and light cargo transport behind
front lines.

Like the Jeep it replaced, it was never designed to offer extensive protection
against intense

small arms fire, much less machine guns and anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades.

Its lightweight armor soon ran into trouble.

A couple of kids driving around in a Toyota Land Cruiser with a bunch of RPGs in
the back

can cause just as much damage to the infantry as artillery could in the old
days.

No use being in the back of an armored personnel carrier if the enemy can still
kill you.

Once again, American troops began improvising their own armor.

Toward the end of 03 and into 04, our maintenance sections within our own
companies were fabricating

their own armor, cutting them out, bolting them onto the doors.

So you get the first iteration of armor, which really wasn't the best armor,
really didn't

protect home much.

It was kind of like a revisit to Vietnam type armor.

But this kind of improvisation does have some serious drawbacks.

The strength of wheeled APCs rests on their speed and mobility, and all the
extra armor

was weighing it down.

You had all the supplies and you throw all the armor and the guns on, you put
the turrets

on top with the ring mounts, if you will, with all their gear.

You know, a lot of those vehicles started to break down.

The suspension started to drop out and you saw the wheels starting to bow.

In response to the vulnerability of Humvees operating in Iraq, the U.S.
Department of

Defense also contracted A.M. General to build the M1114 up armored Humvee.

This design boasts a fully armored passenger area protected by hardened steel
and a ballistic

windshield capable of withstanding AK-47 and machine gun rounds.

Pretty much every vehicle that's patrolling in those theaters are up armored
now.

Over the last three to four years, the Army has made a very aggressive campaign
to get

what we call soft skin vehicles off the roads.

In just a few years, the M1114 has proven itself far more capable of
withstanding insurgent

attacks.

This is a right rear wheel of a M1114 up armored Humvee.

This particular vehicle here struck a 15-pound anti-tank mine designed to take
out armored

personnel vehicles or tanks.

The force of this explosion propelled this vehicle nine feet in the air and 21
feet down

the road before it came to rest back on its three remaining wheels.

The up armored part of this vehicle did its job.

Not a single part of this explosion penetrated the cockpit of the vehicle where
the crew

were positioned.

The explosion had ruptured their eardrums.

They had some scrapes and bruises, but otherwise they were unhurt from the
explosion.

Humvee safety has also been improved by removing the exposed gunner to inside
the vehicle.

This can be achieved by using the crow's system, which slaves the machine gun to
controls

in the back seat to allow remote operation.

Despite these improvements to the Humvee, many analysts in serving infantry feel
that

a tougher, harder, dedicated system is needed.

It just doesn't have the same amount of armor that a tank does.

And if it gets hit, you're going to kill a whole lot of folks real quick.

Much numbers of Marines killed in Iraq were killed in Humvees.

As a result, the U.S. Army is now increasing production of the M1117 Guardian
ASV.

Built by Cadillac Cage, it has armor designed to defeat 50 caliber armor
piercing ammunition,

anti-tank mines, and rocket propelled grenades.

Tommy Thompson's got hit by a roadside device in 2005.

His M1117 probably saved his life.

We had spotted an IED.

It turned out to be about four 155 millimeter shells wired together.

I spun my gunner around so we could try to spot the trigger man, but it was
detonated.

It rocked the vehicle pretty good.

We felt the blast.

But when I was in that vehicle, I just did not feel like anything serious was
going to

happen to me.

You almost felt like you were bulletproof in that thing.

And so it proved its worth that day.

The experiences of APCs and infantry fighting vehicles in Iraq has revealed the
unresolved

challenge of transporting troops on the battlefield.

If you put enough armor on it to protect the crew on the inside from missiles,
rockets,

or bullets, then you have a very heavy vehicle.

And it's not very deployable.

So here's the chicken and egg contest.

Are you going to make something that's going to completely defend the troops
inside and

the crew?

Or are you going to have a light enough vehicle that can be easily deployed?

Do you want an infantry carrying fighting vehicle with a turret and major
armament

on it?

Or do you want a vehicle that can carry infantry simply safely through fire
swept zones fairly

far forward in combat?

The only certainty is that lightly armored APCs packed with troops are prime
targets.

Very few vehicles can withstand large mines and roadside bombs.

That's why the future of APCs could well be a vehicle that doesn't carry
personnel.

The remotely operated Crusher can carry out many of the missions APCs get sent
to tackle.

Want to check out a suspicious car?

Send in a Crusher.

Want to do some forward reconnaissance?

Flip some switches back at base.

A life-saving vision for APC development?

Perhaps.

Drawn together, the branches on its family tree reflect the Crusher's unique
genesis.

Chariots evolved into fast, agile four-wheelers.

A World War I tank became the first armored personnel carrier.

Russian engineers built a track terror.

And advances in remote control technology evolved into an APC that doesn't put
soldiers'

lives on the line.

The Crusher.

And epilogically, it's top of the tree.