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Marines Test Machine Gun Armed Robotic Vehicles


Charlie Flick
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Charlie Flick

The Marine Corps continues to look for better ways to kill America's enemies. Here are three.

 

I ran across this one in today's issue of the Wall Street Journal. The Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun was a brilliant design that has proven so durable that it is now closing in on 100 years since its original development. How many other weapons systems still in use today can say that?

 

This image is begging for a better caption. The official caption states " Cpl. Brian Bekkala photographed an unmanned, weaponized vehicle at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in Southern California earlier this year."

 

USMC drone vehicle test 50 BMG.jpg

 

This one looks pretty slick, too. It is the Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System. It sports an M240 7.62MM machine gun and grenade launchers. I'd hate to run into that thing in a dark alley.

 

MAARS vehicle with M240B.jpg

 

And this one is just plain fiendish. It is the RVM CART (Robotic Vehicle Modular/Combat Area Robotic Targeting). That M134 Minigun is a nice touch with rates of fire from 2000 to 6000 rounds per minute.

 

RVM CART USMC drone with minigun.jpg

 

I am sure that these won't be replacing machine gunners in Marine Corps infantry outfits anytime soon, but one can see how these robotic machine guns could be very effective in certain scenarios.

 

Regards,

Charlie

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Hi Charlie. Good pic of MAARS. I know a bit about it; I worked for the Unmanned Systems department of the company that makes it, for years. USMC has had them for some time.

 

I used to have some photoshop images of a proposed sticker that we were going to give to the Marines, re: MAARS. I made them. I have my copies someplace, electronic only as the images were "too scary" according to somebody. Funny thing was it was what the USMC asked us for. The images are mine since my firm passed on them, unhappily I cannot locate them at the moment. I'll hunt around. I used to have the PS template on disk, too...

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Charlie Flick

That's pretty cool, Chris. I'd like to see those stickers if you can find them.

 

Charlie

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Well they never got made into stickers. My firm declined to use them. Instead, we gave USMC nothing of the sort which is too bad, especially since I did this for free and even gave them an alternative.

 

But I did find the images.

 

Here's the sketch that showed what they were looking for. "They" being USMC. Fairly common imagery type I think:

post-3065-0-64586500-1509479169_thumb.jpg

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Next, here is the one I submitted to my company for the sticker that we would give to USMC.

They declined; this image is my property not theirs (for well, legal reasons I want to make that clear).

The sticker could be made square or round depending on what they wanted so I never cropped it.

post-3065-0-74915500-1509479339.jpg

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So OK, that above image is even Halloweeny.

 

Here's the fun part. My firm declined to use that as it was quote "a scary image". OK, well, USMC asked for that...and it's a armed robotic system.

I mean, I won't give my opinion on their decision, but I will say that the thing carries a quad 40mm launcher and an M240. It shoots like, grenades and bullets at things marines don't like.

 

So when they told me "no, thanks awfully much", I said, well, maybe you'd like me to change that. They said what do you mean?

 

So then I gave them this. I didn't even merit a reply back that time. I sorta like this one better actually, kinda 'armed robotics is FUN!"

post-3065-0-90952100-1509479658.jpg

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Charlie Flick

Hey Chris:

 

That is great stuff. It must have been a lot of fun and very interesting to be part of a team developing these weapon systems for our Marines.

 

I like image number 2 and, given what I know about the attitude of some Marine pals of mine, it would have been a big hit had it been adopted.

 

Regards,

Charlie

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