Delta Force’s quest for armor-protected mobility platforms

Evolution dictated that Delta Force needed to improve its mobility to keep up with technological improvements in the transportation realm.

The factors that make a mobile platform successful include its power output, footprint, and survivability.

Power output dictates the vehicle’s speed, weight limit – essentially, the number of personnel and amount of equipment it can carry – and its range. Footprint is how the vehicle’s size and weight translate into silhouette, profile, and radar cross section. Finally, survivability has to do with the vehicle’s armor protection as well as its defensive weapons.

But it seems that good things come in threes, and that’s where the “thirds rule” applies, whereby you can only have two out of three of desired elements of a product.

The mobility platform used by Delta for many years was the Austrian Steyr Pinzgauer 718M 6×6 Utility Vehicle. While a good match for the Unit in key areas, it was lacking almost entirely in armor protection, i.e. it had none! Furthermore, while it had formidable range and power, Delta nullified these characteristics by grossly over-loading it on every occasion.

To remedy the lack of armor protection and, therefore, survivability, we tried the up-armor concept, whereby we added armor plates and other protective materials. But this tremendously increased the vehicle’s weight, thus drastically reducing its speed and range.

A conceptual design illustration of the Styre Pinzgauer in an up-armor configuration. (Photo courtesy of author)

Ultimately, applying the up-armor philosophy to the already over burdened Pinzgauer was an exercise in futility: form, function, and capabilities were sacrificed for plates of armor protection in the name of survivability.

The prototype that came out of the attempt was a monstrous behemoth scarcely able to sustain its own shadow on a sunny day. It wasn’t the give-and-take, rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul analogy, it was more “beat the crap out of Peter, take all his money, and get the hell out of Dodge before Pete could recover.”

All this evolution came to bear into the final subject of tactical modernization: the most versatile and controversial Apple Cart.

This Apple Cart was made by Mercedes Benz. It looked like an ordinary low-box transport lorry but was capable of assuming innumerable internal configurations from an offensive gun platform to a Trojan Horse holding an assault team housed in an innocuous mobile shell.

The Apple Cart, however, like all other Delta vehicles, suffered from a lack of any protective measures, armor or otherwise. The issue eventually became an official action item that was assigned to our own A squadron 1-Troop Commander, Major J. C.

Related: The highjacked aircraft hoax that alerted Delta Force

The legendary Mercedez Benz Apple Cart truck. (Photo courtesy of author)

His task was to evaluate and – if deemed feasible – pursue methods to give armor protection to the infamous Apple Carts. Nobody wanted that task, including J.C… but he got it.

After many months of harrowing research, interviews with key Unit personnel, spitballing, and countless straw-manning… there was still a lot of wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth between the faction of those for and those against the application of an after-market, up-armor solution.

In the end, when all the dust had finally settled, everybody – including the Delta Commander – wanted to hear what J.C. had to say regarding the fate of the venerable Apple Carts.

So, in his final summary statement to the Commander regarding the vehicle, phrased in the way that only Major J.C.’s brand of wit could conjure… he likened the application of armor to Apple Carts to mounting television theme show Bonanza character Hoss Cartwright onto legendary racehorse Secretariat!

For that statement to the Commander of the elite Delta Force, Major J.C. was awarded the cartoon below:

(Major J.C.’s summary to the Delta Commander (Cartoon courtesy of author)

And yet it happened!

By Almighty God and with Honor,

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Feature Image: A formidably over-loaded Pinzgauer in service with Delta in the Iraqi desert. (Photo by MSG Nate F./U.S. Army])

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