ELECTRIC BIKES FOR STEALTHY RECON
Carlton Meyer
Low technology can provide low-cost, high-value products, such as an "Electric All-Terrain Bike" or Electric Bike for short. This would be a small ultra-lightweight motorcycle with a golf cart type electric engine for stealthy ground reconnaissance. Several commercial versions have already been developed.
Foot reconnaissance is ideal in slow moving warfare, but not practical for fast moving "maneuver warfare" or "airland battle". In addition, most of the world is open country: deserts, plains, tundra and farmland. Anyone attempting to rapidly scout open country by foot would quickly become exhausted, and easily detected with new technology. Russian and U.S. manufacturers are selling thousands of thermal imagers a month for a few hundred dollars each to every country around the globe. Anyone attempting foot reconnaissance in open country is likely to be spotted, then chased down and shot.
Unfortunately, armored fighting vehicles and HMMWVs are very loud and can be heard over a mile away. Their large size and turbine or diesel engines make them easy to hear, see, and detectable with thermal imagers at long ranges. While these vehicles often perform recon in benign peacetime operations, anyone attempting stealthy recon in a fuel-burning vehicle against a competent enemy during wartime would quickly fall victim to a TOW-type ATGM, machine gun, or tank gun.
Our military needs a very small, silent, ground recon vehicle with no heat or noise signature. Therefore, golf cart and current electric bicycle manufacturers should be asked to develop some demonstration electric bikes. Most would agree to do it for free since it would be a simple product to develop, with a huge potential market. In addition, GIs in maintenance units and logistics bases could put some together. They would only need modest performance, such as a top speed of 40 miles an hour and a battery life for two hours of operation. They should cost no more than $5000 each, and the electric engine would make them almost maintenance free.
A HMMWV could tow a trailer with four electric bikes until they are needed. A recon team could use the HMMWV as its mobile base and scout ahead with electric bikes. Easily replaceable batteries would allow a spent battery to be swapped with a battery just recharged with the HMMWVs' engine. Since thermal imagers can also detect body heat, heat shields (similar to windscreens) may be added to electric bikes to mask body heat. If a recon team is spotted, electric bikes would provide a quick method of escape. Electric bikes allow rapid stealthy ground reconnaissance almost anywhere in the world, while allowing recon to remain swift, silent, and deadly.
FEEDBACK!
"We also can put wider, fat "Extreme Terrain Bike" tires on your electric bikes so they can ride over sands and snows. We have already perfected an Airdroppable, folding pedal-powered militarized bike which can be seen at the link below:
http://geocities.datacellar.net/Pentagon/5265/atb.htm
This bike could be easily given an electric motor/battery. The best FLIR camouflage is for the LRS, SF, Division Scout, recon etc. cyclist to wear a "Thellie" Camouflage suit so he's invisible.
Despite over 200 years of successful military bike use, our biggest problem is the mindset of some in the recon community in general that are wedded to static-reconaissance instead of mobile recon. Unless willing to "improvise, adapt and overcome" our best candidates for a mobile bike recon might be Light Infantry Division Scouts and Long-Range Surveillance units with leaders that are open minded (as determined on a case-by-case basis)without years of toil invested into static-recon to get a fresh start.
Airborne!
Mike Sparks
21st Century Weapons
e-mail May 1998
1st TSG (A)