[youtube ZY0apW2ow6g]
A lot of interestingness here. Early on are some artists concepts of “weapons of the future” including a true “hover tank.” It looks vaguely realistic, as such things go… the bulk of the vehicle is consumed by the lift system, and the weapons load is pathetically small for the overall size of the vehicle.
The video as a whole discusses the U.S. Army Combat Development Experimentation Center, which ran simulations to determine the proper uses of and tactics for “weapons of the future.” What makes this interesting is that the “simulation” is not some computer analysis, but actual field “battles” between Friendlies and Aggressors, using actual hardware. But since the Army didn’t want their soldiers blowing each other to flinders, the simulated weapons were often… interesting. Compare the technologies used then to those used today.
And given the date (a bit vague… early 1960’s it seems), it is suprisingly racially diverse. it’s liek a black and white Bennetton ad with weaponry. Apparently this video was intended to be broadcast on TV.
11 Responses to “The Army Of Tomorrow”
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Were those Avrocar variants being used as APC’s?
Seems like these simulations were very manpower intensive, but very interesting mix of simple technologies to observe and record the data collected
Just a feeling, but that ‘hover tank’ might have been intended as a scout vehicle instead.
They look like the Lindberg Flying Saucer model from the way the engines are mounted on top of the disc:
http://www.nwwone.org/world-war/Lindberg-517-Flying-Saucer-Model-Kit-Gaedke-Art-1950s_190504863735.html
In fact the resemblance is so great that the military art could have been the inspiration for the kit or vice-versa. (that was the first plastic “science fiction” model kit BTW.)
“The Big Picture” was the Army’s ground-breaking television series. The half-hour weekly program featured famous or before-they-were-famous actors and actresses in top quality productions, filmed on the Astoria stages. In the 1950s the series was shot on 35mm black-and-white negative, but by the end of the 1960s, it was using 16mm color negative.
There are a ton of episodes of The Big Picture (and other Army Pictorial films) at the Department of Defense FedFlix archive at http://www.archive.gov where they can be downloaded for free by anyone.”
The USN weren’t slouches at PR either. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lis2TrMm8bI&feature=player_embedded
The Navy TV program I always remembered as a kid was “Silent Service”, which also had very catchy theme music and was a well produced series recreating interesting combat incidents of the US Navy submarine service during WW II.
“The Big Picture” was a great show with very catchy theme music.
They used to run it as filler television around here when I was a kid when things happened like baseball games getting rained out.
One of the most interesting episodes was related to the Pershing missile and had footage of a practice missile coming down and hitting the ground in the target area.
Forgot to mention, source is the Naval History Blog, who in turn got it from the Naval History and Heritage Command, Photographic Section UMO-3.
I’ve got all of “Victory At Sea” on DVD, which was really top-notch series, although for no reason I could ever understand I heard the music from it used as ambiant music down at a local grocery store in the 1980’s…maybe it was to encourage seafood sales.
Strangest ambient music the same store ever ran was “She-Bop” by Cyndi Lauper, which concerns female masturbation.
God knows what that was supposed to encourage sales of.
Bananas? 😀
BTW, if you go to this YouTube video and advance to the 3:40 mark, you will actually see a Soviet “hover tank” under test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrNkV6kVPos
The ones with rocket boosters or turbojets in the back are lot of fun also.
The first tank shown had a rather unique form of composite armor on it…with a layer of compressed dried seaweed in it.
The drilling mole tank is worthy of a Japanese sci-fi epic. 😀