Based on a Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 platform with 90% commercial off-the-shelf parts…

Someone - probably OP actually lol - posted an article saying these things cost like $300k a piece and that using off the shelf parts did nothing to improve spare parts availability.

Yeah I also noticed it gives lots of visibility and seating positions to shoot at drones

It would certainly allow faster dismounts (although the idea with this practice in Ukraine isn’t so much to get clear, but to be able to actually shoot the drone down, since shooting from a moving vehicle is pretty hard - getting yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere without a vehicle, with a drone team knowing that and itching to finish you off isn’t exactly an optimal outcome). Although in practice, I feel like the dismounts aren’t actually going to be that much quicker - for one thing, in an open-sided vehicle like this soldiers are probably going to want to be strapped in (see the first few seconds of this video and how much they’re bouncing around), so you’re still having to undo a seatbelt. You also don’t actually have all your equipment on you - you’re obviously not going to be taking all those rucks out when you dismount in a hurry, and so if the vehicle gets blown up the “stranded in the middle of nowhere” situation is even worse).

The problem is that this leaves you exposed to… everything else. The media focus on drones in Ukraine has kind of made a lot of people forget that artillery still exists, and actually remains the primary killer - Ukraine causes most of its casualties with drones, but that’s not because of how much more effective they are, but just because they don’t have enough artillery capability (neither shells nor actual cannons to fire them out of), and drones lend themselves well to highly dispersed manufacture in lots of small workshops (also often hidden in civilian areas…) which are difficult to fully bomb out. One of the main reasons why APCs were adopted in the first place (instead of everyone just continuing to do tank desant, the most “dudes rock” method of transportation) was precisely to provide infantry protection against shrapnel. Even during WW2 itself, we already see a shift from early open-sided half-tracks to the better-armored examples that people usually associate with the term.

And since the Cold War, the risk of troops being struck while on the move, and the depth behind the front at which this can happen, have only massively increased. In fact, already in the late Cold War the US specifically adopted a doctrine built around doing deep strikes on Soviet troops moving to the front (which is what makes it all the more baffling that they’re adopting something incredibly vulnerable to a capability they pioneered - you’d think the Americans of all people would be most sensitive to getting taken out like this given they intended to do it to the Soviets).

The technology to do that has only gotten more advanced, and has also proliferated to a point where even much poorer countries can have this capacity to some extent. In a completely open vehicle like this, an artillery shell or bomb doesn’t even need to be all that accurate - it can detonate a hundred meters away from you and still shred you with fragments. Cluster munitions make this even worse, and as the Ukraine war has showed the US has no qualms about their use - which opens up the escalation ladder for them being used against the US too. Drones carrying lighter munitions won’t have anywhere near as large of a kill radius, but they can still detonate from somewhat further away and thus shorten the interval the troops have to actually dismount. Additionally, one very important aspect of drones people also forget about because of the focus on specifically FPVs is observation - drones actually make artillery even more effective, since they allow enemy troops to be spotted from farther away and to coordinate strikes on them - and since, as mentioned above, these vehicles provide no shrapnel protection, your opponent doesn’t even need to use any particularly fancy precision-guided munitions, they could just shoot a bunch of regular old dumb shells in your general area and still shred you.

And finally, there’s good old-fashioned ambushes, with guns, which Russian special forces have executed on numerous occasions.

the answer is going to be that video where that guy took a mop and tied a bunch of shit to it and used it to smack drones down at 10ft except the military won’t issue the mops and will forget to have people watch the video

The AA-12 sees widespread adoption, and squads now have designated skeet shooters like they have designated marksmen

Saw some Ukrainians had put together an AI targeting bot on top of an M2 50cal and just let it rip on approaching drones. Feel like we might be getting dumbed down active protection systems off of tanks fit to everything that can move. Soon we won’t even need anyone to be left alive for the machines to keep the war going :D

I need a ride!

No can do. (runs you over in the dune buggy from battlefield 2)

It seems like one of the primary reasons for this being so open is visibility, so at least one person could see a drone approaching from any direction and immediate take shots at it.

Will that work? Depends on how quickly they can get a bead on it while strapped into a moving vehicle with what appears to be minimal suspension.

Light infantry certainly has its uses, I’m just questioning the proportions here - having 14/31 BCTs being light infantry (and 34/58 if we’re counting the National Guard). The US, as global hegemon, certainly does need much greater capabilities to quickly deploy troops overseas compared to most countries, and so it makes sense to have a greater proportion of airborne and light infantry, but 45%? (and nearly 60% if we’re counting the National Guard)

Also, I’m pretty sure that Soviet soldiers in BTR regiments hardly spent 90% of their time in maintenance. There’s a lot of space between this essentially stretched-out dune buggy and chonky 35-40-ton IFVs that can be explored.

Pretty confident that these, by purpose, are just fancier jeeps. They exist to get a squad within a few miles of where they are supposed to be and then they walk the rest of the way

Yes, that is indeed the idea. The problem is that with the proliferation of deep strike assets and now drones, this concept is a lot less applicable - the distinction between the front and the operational rear is becoming more and more muddled. There is simply no longer a convenient demarcation line behind which you can act as if nothing can hit you.

There’s also the added problem that these things aren’t actually even all that cheap:

However, while 2025 civilian ZR2s typically cost $49,000–$60,000, M1301 contracts average well over $330,000 to $370,000 per vehicle delivered. By comparison, recent contracts show costs of $225,000 to $275,000 per Humvee, and $330,000–$400,000 per JLTV.

So they’re apparently of comparable price to a JLTV, a substantially better-armored vehicle (although one that has its own disadvantages).