"The primary purpose of an army - to be ready to fight effectively at all times - seemed to have been forgotten.... The leadership I found in many instances was sadly lacking and I said so out loud. The unwillingness of the army to forgo certain creature comforts, its timidity about
getting off the scanty roads, its reluctance to move without radio and telephone contact, and its lack of imagination in dealing with a foe whom they soon outmatched in firepower and dominated in the air and on the surrounding seas - these were not the fault of the Soldier, but of the policymakers at the top."
--General Matthew Ridgway on the U.S. Army During the Korean War
http://www.geocities.com/wheelsvstracks
Part of the confusion the wheeled idiots create is to not differentiate between UNARMORED wheeled trucks and trying to slap a metal box on top of wheels. If you are very light you can be somewhat cross-country mobile with high RPMs and floatation with dune buggies but this has repeatedly failed once military equipment piles on as seen in the 9th High Technology Test Bed Division flop in the 1980s.
http://www.geocities.com/armorhistory/wheeled9thhttdmadness.htm
To get some payload, unarmored wheeled trucks with high torque like Land Rovers/Humvees can somewhat go cross-country--but only gingerly and getting stuck is common. Central tire inflation is also a bust (pardon the pun) because each tire is still churning up the ground below from 30-40 PSI fully inflated to a dismal 20-25 deflated--3 times the ground pressure of a M113 Gavin light armored track! What you see in this video is a truck roughly equivalent to our FMTV-series trucks get stuck in soft ground. Combine the mass of any vehicle with its acceleration the forces being imparted into the ground (F= M x A) to break its crust multiply faster than you can let air out of tires or even widen tracks--a lot of WW2-style tank duelers think they can have their heavy 70 ton tank protection and be cross-country mobile by having wide tracks. Field and combat experiences show otherwise.
When one places a heavy metal box on wheels to try to get minimal protection from small bullets and near miss bomb blasts, ALL cross-country mobility goes out the window. Even when you THINK you are mobile on a compacted dirt road ruts appear and VOILA! your entire column is stuck as seen in the Afghanistan videos with the Canadian LAV-IIIs getting stuck just trying to reach a mere village (no one shooting or blowing them up).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZandbBaUw_U
If the earth kicks your ass there's not much left for the enemy to do to finish you off.
Newton's Laws of physics must over-rule the fashion narcissism of the wheelsters and we must finally face the battle against the earth FIRST and win it with forces optimized for both closed terrain/3D maneuver in light tanks and open terrain/2D maneuver with medium-to-heavy tanks. The wheeled truck is obsolete for military applications and dead on arrival at the road/land mine interface on the non-linear battlefield even if v-hull shaped "MRAPs" and long overdue for a trip to scrapyards.
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