The call came in late in the morning as we were loading up for the brigade jump. A 10K forklift was stuck at the drop zone; one of only two large forklifts for the entire brigade (We hadn’t been issued our 6Ks yet). It had to be retrieved and it had to happen NOW! When we got to the DZ, we found a wrecker driver’s nightmare. On the forks was a pallet of 105mm artillery shells. It was sitting about 20 feet off the road; wind drift had carried it off course when the C-130 dropped it. The 10K had sunk completely to the cab. There was no entrance or exit path to the hole; it had picked up the pallet and while moving to load it on a truck, the forklift found a soft patch in the ground.
We rigged up the main winch and anchored it to a 5-ton on
the backside of the road from the 10K as DZs aren’t known for their large
quantities of trees that can be used as anchors. Even with a driver in the forklift all we did was drag the 5-ton
all over the place. When we were
re-rigged to try and use the 5-ton to pull as well, the enemy came over the
hill. So here we sit, and every vehicle
we have is either stuck or has a winch cable attached to it. The only option we had was unhook the anchor,
pile into the 5-ton, and make a run for it.
Most of us got in okay; a few were taken out. The only route we could drive out was across the DZ. We’re bouncing all over hell and a pair of hands appears on the side rails – the crazy SOB (my partner) is trying to climb up the side of a 5-ton bouncing across the DZ! We got him in in one piece and headed for the BSA. Needless to say, when we made our second attempt to retrieve the 10K and now the wrecker (without infantry support because they couldn’t be bothered), we got our asses handed to us.
Luckily, this potentially disastrous situation happened at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas and not in real combat. I was the wrecker driver on this particular mission and if nothing else, I learned a helluva lot. But the most applicable lesson that I learned is that the way we currently field MHE is completely inappropriate for how we use it.
MHE is generally an afterthought in today’s military but as the above scenario points out, it plays an incredibly critical role. The ability to airdrop supplies is meaningless if you can’t get those supplies off the drop zone and to the users of them. And yet we insist on just grabbing any old forklift off the shelf and throwing it into combat critical roles. We need to develop and field a truly combat capable forklift.
A Quick Lesson in Off-Road Driving
Most people can grasp the concept of why tracked vehicles tend to outperform wheeled vehicles off-road. They can achieve greater traction from the tracks and their tracks reduce their pressure on the ground. But there is a second benefit to the track design that few people tend to consider and the above scenario showcases it.
When a vehicle sinks in soft terrain, it will continue sinking until enough of the vehicle makes contact with the ground to support the weight. The ground pressure benefit of tracks relies on this but it also applies to the remainder of the vehicle as well, regardless of the configuration. One of the key design factors that makes the HMMWV perform as well as it does off-road is that the body of the truck sits very low in relation to the drive train and frame. The body will make contact and support the weight before the wheels become incapable of gaining traction in many cases. Track vehicles have a similar advantage in that they don’t have an undercarriage like a wheeled vehicle. They tend to have relatively flat bottoms and the entire power train is internally held. When a tracked vehicle sinks, unless it is in a REALLY bad spot, it won’t tend to sink all that far compared to a typical truck. In stark contrast, vehicles like medium trucks and conventional forklifts either have a body that is too high up or don’t have a body at all. With this design, the vehicle sinks very far, very fast and becomes extremely difficult to extract.
Properly Designed MHE
To prevent the kinds of problems as shown in the example above, the solutions are simple. For starters, all of your forward MHE should ride on tracks. Fielding the TSV would solve half the problem right off the bat as it combines the MHE with the transport vehicle for medium and heavy loads. But smaller loads will still require a forklift (such as MLRS packs, engines, and power packs). For these types of loads, we should field a forklift based on the readily available M113. Use an extendable boom like on the current 6K and you’re ready to go because anything larger than this is going to be on TSV pallets anyways. We could quite literally take the existing booms and forks and bolt them up to a modified M113 chassis.
A cousin to the TSV, the Pallet Handling Vehicle (PHV) should be fielded as well for proper handling and loading of the proposed pallets. The PHV would drive backwards (compared to the TSV) but would have the same PLS equipment as the TSV. It should also have a deck to allow for handling 1-ton pallets as well. No cab will be needed as it will be operating in the rear but it still has full off-road capabilities. The deck of this vehicle should include scales to measure overall weight as well as weight distribution. It will also include a crane for loading heavier objects onto the pallets.
Existing MHE will remain available for rear units and garrison conditions. But having these combat MHE systems available will fill the last remaining roles in our proposed logistical system. Combined with PLS, this package will be capable of meeting the logistical needs of the force in the years ahead.
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