Traxxas Stampede Saves Soldiers Lives in Afghanistan

[tamiyadan]

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[kaiser]

great story. time to outfit the miliatry with rc's.

[jwscab]

that's really cool......I ran across a job opening about 6 months back regarding rc equipment for military use, for almost this exact purpose, ied location and soldier safety....pretty neat stuff they need to move forward with.

[RedScampi]

Man that's a cool story! It really hits close to home for me. My wife's nephew and his men were hit but an IED this last weekend. Two sustained critical injuries, her nephew had damage to his leg and arm and a collapsed lung. Could be the military needs to supply RC's as standard equipment for patrols.

[fakiee]

That's an amazing story, we could all chip in and build one to send over?

[Lowgear]

Well... It was an appropriate brand since Traxxas' are disposable.

Still, thats really cool for sure.

[Johnboy72]

The military actually has rc vehicles, but like a bomb squad vehicle, you deploy it when you want to check it out. Google marcbot, it's a Traxxas Emaxx. But the things have gear reduction to make them slow, heavy batteries, super stiff springs, etc. We've talked about doing something similar with our rc stuff. Good PR for Traxxas and rc!

[mytimac]

Just thought I would post a follow-up on this great story.
I am good friends with the hobby store dealer who helped in this. Since this story he has sent a lot of trucks overseas with his Trucks to Troops program.
He has some great pics and stories up on the Trucks to Troops site.
http://truckstotroops.com/

For a long time he had stacks of trucks waiting to be shipped out, the room was packed with them.
The response he got to the news stories was amazing. For many days he was getting piles of letters sent to him.

[Coelacanth]

That's really old news (Aug. 2011). Someone posted that news article here when it was first published, but I suppose it's worth a second read.

[Goatless]

A few years ago, there was a story of troops using E-Maxx's to scan for mines in front of convoys. It was in RC Driver or Car Action, can't remember. Probably around 2000-2001.

[Lowgear]

I just went to that "Trucks to Troops" site and see they're calling them remote controlled trucks.