Look at this monster of a motor vehicle. Impressive.
Here’s the story behind the “rhino trucks,” the first of which was found after a skirmish between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel (who first employed the Zetas as a paramilitary wing before the Zetas realized they could out-gun and out-mayhem their bosses):
Built on three-axle truck beds, they had room for 20 armed men, one official said. They were covered with inch-thick steel, which could withstand 50-caliber fire, and each had been equipped with insulation.
Sanho Tree, a drug policy expert at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington-based research group, said the vehicles reminded him of the Monitor and the Merrimack, two American warships that fought the first naval battle between ironclad ships during the Civil War.
“This is first-generation technology, like the Monitor and Merrimack,” he said. And because the drug business is so Darwinian, he added, with submarines replacing smuggling boats, and light, quiet aircraft replacing heavy, loud ones, the trucks will quite likely mutate to include “shielding for tires, their Achilles’ heel, blast pads in the flooring, up-armoring, et cetera.”
Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention.
Who’s got the cross-border depleted uranium franchise?
More like “The Road Warrior.”
Looks like something B.A. Baracus would have made in a 30 second montage using a golf cart, some tin cans and a LOT of gratuitous welding torch porn.
i take it these people don’t care about their activities destroying the tourist trade, then.
Nothing the A-Team couldn’t build in a 5 minute montage.
Hijos de la anarquía.
@2 My thought, too. With a little more steampunk, it could be straight out of Mad Max.
So, it is impressive, but what does one actually DO with it??? Does it lead multi ton cocaine convoys? Does it attack the federales barracks? I think this is not very practical, impressive or intimidating to anyone, except maybe the rural people who look up to the narcos….
the tires are very vulnerable. fail.
Time to outfit the police with AT rifles.
And since it lacks any sort of integrated heavy firepower, it’s more like a DIY APC than a tank. Still a lot tougher than a technical, though.
Look at this monster of a motor vehicle. Impressive.
It’s hip to be snide and condescending about everything in the world. Except, in this case you are being snide and condescending about a civil war caused by us that causes real death, torture, and misery all over mexico every year. Impressive, indeed. If you can’t show some respect, at least acknowledge the fact that this isn’t a video game.
PS
Way to milk something from June. Only six months old!