Autoblog

The French military may not be fighting in Iraq, but their tires are: Michelin just landed an exclusive $1.7 billion contract with the US Department of Defense to supply the American military behemoth with tires. For the next ten years (at least), every vehicle in the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps deployed around the world will be shod in Michelin rubber.

This isn't the first Pentagon contract Michelin has won, either. The French tire company previously won a contract worth $700 million to supply the tires for all US warplanes. In order to meet the enormous supply demands of the US military, Michelin has invested a reported $16 million. For the sake of our brave boys and girls serving overseas, let's hope the French tires don't throw up their arms and surrender at the first time of trouble. (No whitewalls, please.)

[Source: F1i.com]

Spray-in bedliners? They're not just for pickups anymore. The U.S. military has begun working with Line-X and Rhino Linings to coat entire buildings and vehicles in the durable black stuff - including the Pentagon, bulletproof vests, and Humvees. The companies have found alternative uses for their polyurethane coatings before - Disneyland rides, anti-spill ground cover under oil tanks, and so on... but this is the first time we can recall learning of its use for the military.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the 9/11 attacks brought the military to their doors, as the spray-on goo is capable of "reducing the disintegration of bricks or concrete into deadly flying fragments in a bombing or other attack."

Let's hear it for creative repurposing!

[Sources: Detroit Free Press; Appearance Plus]

 

The dust has hardly settled on the second DARPA Grand Challege and the Pentagon’s Defense Advance Research Project Agency has already announced a new challenge that pits competitors and their autonomous vehicles against an urban environment. The new Urban Challenge will occur on November 3, 2007, but not before many rounds of qualifying. The course will be 60-miles long and entrants must safely complete it in less than six hours while obeying traffic laws, avoiding obstacles, merging with traffic, negotiating intersections and even backing in and out of parking spaces. None of these elements were present in the prior to challenges that took place in the desert.

The top prize will again be $2 million, but there will also be a second prize of $500k and a third of $250k. What’s even more interesting is that DARPA (a.k.a. the government) will be offering research funds to certain contenders in exchange for limited licensing rights of any resulting technology.

We suspect this is the Pentagon’s subtle way of gaining access to the technology that created the Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT) and David Hasselhoff’s impenetrable coif of helmet hair, both of which could prove useful in an urban battle environment.

Read more details of the Urban Challenge at MSNBC’s article here.

[Source: MSNBC via Engadget]