Hacked toy truck saves soldiers' lives

Hacked toy truck saves soldiers' lives

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The lives of six U.S. soldiers were saved by a modified remote-controlled truck, according to an Army officer stationed in Afghanistan.
Sent to Staff Sgt. Christopher Fessenden back in 2007 by his brother Ernie, the toy truck was the creation of Ernie and Kevin Guy, the owner of a hobby shop in Rochester, MN. Along with sporting a desert-camouflage paint job, the truck was also mounted with a small video camera that transmitted footage to a monitor mounted on Chris’ rifle.
In an email to Ernie, Chris Fessenden wrote that the truck had been responsible for locating at least four explosive d

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Once again, good old fashioned American Know how beats out DARPA or the other multibillion dollars companies. Here the love for a brother and American ingenuity come up with a simple rc truck and camera phone (?) and become deployed to the sand box to play Army…for real this time.

The makers of the truck TRAXXAS traxxas.com... claim that this bad boy can reach speeds of 60 mph. And this from Staff Sgt. Christopher Fessenden,” The funny thing is the Traxxis does faster speeds than the trucks we are operating in under the governing speed limit… so the traxxis actually keeps up with us and is able to advance past us and give us eyes on target before we get there.”
I think we need to call Traxxas and send a several crate loads to our men in the box. And we better do it soon before some Pork loving bureaucrat or obfuscating officer puts the brakes on it.

Go Blue
G_D Bless America and our Troops.


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Cool story! This is exactly why no modern army would ever be able to defeat American citizens on their own soil including thier own government troops.

double tap

American ingenuity at work. If it can ever be classified as a weapon, the Geneva Convention bans it because bringing your own weapons to war is illegal. Another great way to tie the hands of soldiers and cause unneccesary death. Don't forget, you can't even shoot a man once you walk past him, it's illegal. Can't shoot a man in the back, it's illegal. In sports, if you forget or bend a rule, you go into the penalty box. In real life, you go to jail. If you follow the rules, you die.

Go America. I'm glad I'm not in combat anymore.

It's a damn good thing they didn't sell it to their friend.... they would have been sued by the weapons manufacturing association lawyers for infringing on their "property."

But seriously, what turned out as a cheap effective tools would be sold by GE, or Westinghouse, as a $30,000,000 weapons platform requiring millions in support, special training, and of course, a binding contract for the next 150 years.

Originally posted by hawkiye
Cool story! This is exactly why no modern army would ever be able to defeat American citizens on their own soil including thier own government troops.

We would definitely push the foreign troops into the ocean!

Cool story.

Back when I was racing R/C I had always thought about how easy it would be to strap a cam on one and use it for this very purpose.

Traxxas makes stuff more aimed at the entry level R/C enthusiast, not the racing scene, but there stuff sure is durable which is probably why it worked out so well for them. The brushless Stampede can indeed reach some impressive speeds with HV lipo packs.

Too bad they probably won't put these into service on a larger scale. I guess $600 or so for a unit is too cheap for the government, they rather spend $20,000 on something that does the same thing.

I like the way his brother painted the truck
Pretty cool

Originally posted by James1982
Cool story.

Back when I was racing R/C I had always thought about how easy it would be to strap a cam on one and use it for this very purpose.

Traxxas makes stuff more aimed at the entry level R/C enthusiast, not the racing scene, but there stuff sure is durable which is probably why it worked out so well for them. The brushless Stampede can indeed reach some impressive speeds with HV lipo packs.

Too bad they probably won't put these into service on a larger scale. I guess $600 or so for a unit is too cheap for the government, they rather spend $20,000 on something that does the same thing.

Thank you.
We could probably shave of millions of dollars by allowing "common" people to come up with good ideas.

Thats straight out of the worst home alone movie !! But very effective. Props to the pair that brewed this up! You know those parking sensors that they put in cars right now? I wonder if such a thing could be designed and applied to this bit of genius ? Such a thing, if viable in terms of cost and weight would increase the effectiveness and life span of one of these little lifesavers by some degree, if it could be tuned to detect a wire before impact.