Okay, I spent way too much time as a teenager playing Steve Jackson Games’ excellent Car Wars — a board game in which the goal is to outfit cars with all sorts of weapons and then blow away your friends (and it is a travesty that there has never been a computer car fighting game as cool as this board game).
Anyway, Steve Jackson Games is getting ready to release an updated, streamlined version of the game and just by coincidence the U.S. Army is working on an SUV that contains most of the elements of the erstwhile fictional game.
They’re calling the behemoth SmarTruck, and this thing is loaded with all the options:
Packed with more gadgets than a Swiss army knife, the vehicle’s Ford F-350 chassis boasts a remote-controlled, laser-sighted machine gun, a grenade launcher, night vision, bulletproof glass, Kevlar armor, a GPS locator, electrified door handles, and blinding lights.
To elude pursuers, the truck can cover the road behind it with an oil slick, a smoke screen or sharp tacks to puncture enemy vehicle’s tires. It can prevent attempts to latch explosive booby traps onto it and clear mine fields.
Even James Bond never had a vehicle that cool.