The American Empire may be in decline, but our military does not plan on going down without a fight. (Which is good. That’s literally their job.)
Their latest invention, an amphibious assault fortress for the Marines, looks capable of taking on the entire world.
Look at that beast. It’s called the Ultra Heavy-lift Amphibious Connector and is designed to seamlessly go from water to land and deposit tanks and troops. From CNN:
Here’s how the UHAC works: The tracks, which are made of what the Marines call “captured-air foam blocks,” extend like flippers to propel the craft through the water. When it hits the beach, the foam flattens to become like the tracks on a tank or a bulldozer, only much softer, according to a report from Stars and Stripes.
Here’s the kicker, though. That massive beast you just saw is only half the size of the actual one. It’s a scaled-down prototype. The real deal will be twice as big. And mounted with guns.
“The full-scale model should be able to carry at least three tanks and a HMMVW (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle),” Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Perera, the Warfighting Lab’s Infantry Weapons Project officer, said in a statement. That’s about three times the load that the Corps’ current craft assigned to the task, called a Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC), can handle.
It also will be able to surmount bigger obstacles. While an LCAC can only get over a 4-foot-high sea wall, a full-size UHAC will be able to get over sea walls as high as 10, 12 or even 16 feet, according to the Corps.
The UHAC prototype type is not armored or armed, but Perera said production models would have armor plating and a .50-caliber machine guns for protection.
They also would be much faster. The prototype could only go 5 mph on the water, but a full-size UHAC should do 25 mph, Gen. Kevin Killea, commander of the Corps’ Warfighting Lab, told Stars and Stripes.
Hahahhahah good fucking luck collecting on that debt, China. You’ll be seeing these things in Shanghai shortly.