Tesla’s Cybertruck Goes, Inevitably, to War
- by Wired
- Sep 27, 2024
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The Greeks had their chariots. Patton had his tanks. Now, a handful of soldiers are riding into combat in one of the most unusual-looking vehicles in the history of warfare: an armed Cybertruck.
In a video posted to messaging platform Telegram last week, Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russiaâs Chechnya region, showed off a pair of Teslaâs distinctive boxy electric pickup trucks painted forest green and armed with what appear to be Soviet-era DShK 12.7 x 108 mm heavy machine gunsâvehicles he claimed had been sent to fight alongside Russian forces taking part in the countryâs ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The footage shows the vehicles patrolling down a dirt road as part of a four-vehicle platoon, with several soldiers manning their weapons mounted on their truck beds and blasting airborne targets out of the sky.
âMobility, convenience, maneuverability: such qualities of an electric vehicle are in great demand here,â Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.
The new footage came just over a month after Kadyrov published an initial video to Telegram showing off a Cybertruck armed with a Russian Kord 12.7 x 108 mm heavy machine gun. That Cybertruck, Kadyrov claimed in a separate Telegram post made the day before unveiling the fresh pair of vehicles, had recently been disabled âremotelyâ by Tesla chief Elon Musk, who had previously denied gifting the notorious warlord the vehicle in the first place, likely because itâs prohibited under US sanctions on Russia.
âThis is not manly,â Kadyrov seethed on Telegram over the remote shutoff. (Tesla did not immediately respond to WIREDâs request for comment.)
It was only a matter of time before some enterprising combatant somewhere slapped a machine gun on a Cybertruck. Both regular militaries and irregular forces around the world have been whipping up âtechnicalsââor ânonstandard tactical vehiclesâ improvised from civilian ridesâfor more than a century. While the general concept of armored cars outfitted with firearms presaged the outbreak of World War I by at least a decade, the conflict accelerated their production and fieldingâand, in moments of necessity, innovation. In one of the earliest documented manifestations of the technical, French navy lieutenant Maxime François Ãmile Destremau prepared a defense of the strategically important coaling station in the city of Papeete in Tahiti against a pair of German cruisers in September 1914 by tearing six 37 mm cannons off the warship under his command and mounting them on six Ford trucks to repel potential landing parties, according to the 2004 book On Armor. As long as the automobile has existed, so has the technical.
The technical as most defense observers know it, built on commercial flatbed pickup trucks like the rugged and reliable Toyota Hilux and Land Cruiser, became a fixture of modern irregular warfare during the so-called âToyota Warâ of the 1980s that saw militia forces from Chad achieve a decisive victory over the Libyan military thanks to the superior mobility and maneuverability afforded by their lightweight vehicles. (Chadian forces discovered that, at an appropriately high speed, technicals could traverse open areas mined with Soviet-era munitions without risk of setting them off.)
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âThey are cool because they look like something out of a video game and portray Kadyrov as a sort of futuristic warlord,â Cancian tells WIRED in an email. âThey are useless because they don't provide a new capability, except perhaps a bit of stealth.â
Indeed, the Cybertruck is not totally suited for hostile and chaotic environments like the front lines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. First, the EVâs exoskeleton actually consists of steel panels attached to a standard âunibodyâ frame thatâs more akin to the chassis of a conventional car rather than the âbody-on-frameâ design of most pickup trucks like the Hilux. This design, according to Motor Trend, makes the former a weaker and less resilient vehicle. Second, while the Cybertruck is certainly off-road capable, itâs still significantly heavier than Hilux, which can make maneuverability and traction on rough terrain a challenge. Third, while its armor portends to offer at least some additional coverage compared to the conventional pickup truck-based technical, the vehicleâs bulletproofing only appears to work with subsonic rounds like the .45 ACP ammo used in Teslaâs tests and not the ubiquitous NATO-standard 5.56 mm round or, say, a shot from a .50 caliber rifle. (Though, to be fair, aftermarket armor packages for the vehicle do exist.)
Beyond design and engineering challenges, thereâs also the critical matter of maintenance and logistics, the lifeblood of any motorized conflict. As Tracy points out, the Cybertruckâs unique complexity and software-forward design (like the lack of a physical connection between steering wheel and wheels) means a distinct lack of spare parts and higher potential for catastrophic system failures, challenges that all but guarantee that the vehicle is unable to operate reliably and ensure consistent uptimeânot necessarily ideal for troops whose lives may depend on them.
âSimplicity is everything; simplicity and parts availability,â Tracy says. âIf youâre driving a complex vehicle and thereâs a failure of some sort and you need someone to flash it with a computer, youâre hosed if youâre in the middle of nowhere. The beauty of the Hilux is that theyâre very tough, for one, but they can be repaired with simple tools and fairly ubiquitous parts. The Cybertruck does not really make a whole lot of sense in that regard.â
âItâs great that it is safe in a crash and can take a bullet,â he adds. âBut if you break a control arm and canât get the part, itâs pretty useless.â
Plus, the Cybertruckâs reliance on charging stations would make a fleet of armed vehicles âlikely impossible to supportâ in any sort of protracted conflict like that taking place in Ukraine, according to CSISâs Cancian.
âI doubt there are garages or mechanics near the front lines who can fix these complex devices, which are so unlike the fossil fuel vehicles that the region is accustomed to,â he says. âFurther, I doubt there are many recharging stations in the battle area. Unlike with fossil fuel vehicles, where the fuel can be brought to the vehicle if necessary, the Cybertrucks must go to the recharging point.â
How the Cybertruck will actually perform in a combat situation remains to be seen. But if the Kadyrov video is any indication, itâs only a matter of time before an armed Cybertrucks makes the transition from YouTube sensation to tried-and-true, battle-tested technical.
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