San Diego School District's New 18-Ton Armored Vehicle | Hacker News Reader

San Diego School District's New 18-Ton Armored Vehicle

npr.org

103 pointsfizl59 comments

Why aren't these things dismantled and the ports sold and stripped, and then that money sent to schools to you know, pay for more teachers, get more computers, and upgrade classrooms??

What the hell is wrong with people? You think that this thing is free, what about the costs to store it, repaint it, service it, transport it? That's certainly not free on the off-chance that they need to use it against some (probably) student gunman? Really?

These vehicles need to not only be taken away from civilian use, but those responsible for their procurement at the local and federal levels, including whoever is in charge of this program, need to be brought to some kind of justice and/or punished.

Some speculation: Because stripping the thing, and selling parts, would probably mean more work for the military organization who wants to get rid of it. And if you'd let a company dismantle the vehicles, and sell it in parts: The customer would again be some part of the military. And they usually require a lot of certification and paperwork to go with all the stuff they sell, after doing all the work to have these used parts tested and re-certified, not much profit might be left, and all money be sunk in the military-spare-parts industry.

Much easier to just give them away for free, be no longer responsible for anything related to these vehicles, and claim to have supported the homeland in the fight against terrorism equivalent to $$NEW_PRICE.

(apparently the $5000 the school district had paid was only for transportation)

I'm guessing that stripping it for parts, transport, and coordination would cost about as much or maybe even more than whatever value you could extract that way.

Then just drop the thing in the fucking ocean and call it "a reef". Why even pay to have this sort of shit shipped back to the states?

Recycling a perfectly useful vehicle like that is better than throwing it away for nobody to use. It's a used truck with superfluous armor.

They're unsafe. High center of gravity, probably have no emission controls, too heavy for city streets, etc.

> too heavy for city streets

It weighs less than an empty garbage truck or a full school bus, both of which are routinely allowed on city streets.

Both of which are actually useful for something other than fulfilling the violent war fantasies of power-tripping bureaucrats.

How shit are your school buses that they weigh more than the max mass of a full size low floor bus (non articulated version)

About the same, they tear up streets too.

If it's from Afghanistan, there's no ocean there to drop it in. And they don't want to leave it for bad actors (as witness ISIS allegedly using captured ex-US artillery pieces).

Unless they drive the thing across the frozen Arctic Ocean, then there is an ocean between Afghanistan and San Diego for them to drop it into.

I'm all for removing them from Afghanistan; I just don't want them brought back into the states.

A lot of the stuff isn't brought back. IIRC about a third is donated to locals (stuff that can't be used to fight in the future, a third is junked, and a third is brought back.

Some of those questions are answered in the article: the San Diego school district paid only about $5,000 to transport it

The district plans to store $20,000 to $30,000 worth of medical supplies donated by partners in the medical industry in the vehicle. The MRAP arrived in April, and students at Morse High School's Auto Collision and Refinishing Program got to work painting it.

$5k for a new vehicle is still pretty cheap. It will mostly be used for storage and showing off a big logo. And schools have free labor :p Since it doesn't actually come with guns, I don't see any reason for a civilian not to have one (aside from being silly).

I always thought the idea was that these things are loaned to local governments on the condition that they can use them until there is a need to send them back into combat..

That's the premise, but in practice, they're never recalled and usually scrapped by the receiver after reaching EOL.

sell it. i doubt some department in alaska is probably quoting a new one from the manufacturer right now. accept it in SD, send it to whoever was going to buy anyway, pay 80% to SD school district to use on something it actually need.

you don't even have to be too smart to see how this is better than maintaining a beast like that just because 'it was free'.

The price isn't free, it's was more than $700,000. If these school districts wanted to send a political message worth hearing, they'd protest government fat and refuse shipment.

If they were to be completely practical, they still wouldn't take these. "It will be carrying teddy bears"... buy a van! The maintenance costs on this are incredibly expensive in the long-term, and I can only imagine what this would do to small-town roads or fields with even semi-regular use.

It was interesting to see that Uber is providing financial support for police militarization:

https://twitter.com/shane_bauer/status/507978633894313985

Shane Bauer's full coverage of the "Urban Shield" police convention in Oakland was great:

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/09/video-highlights-oak... https://storify.com/smbauer1/urban-shield-swat-convention-in...

The waste is terrible but I'm thinking there's something worse going on here. Children are being desensitized to seeing the weapons of war being used in daily life by local authorities. This is a bad, bad thing.

Honestly this is more insidious than the brain washing that went on in the Hitler Youth. This has got to be what the Jews in the ghettos were seeing before everyone found out who they were to be used on.

I don't really see how this is vastly different to the armored trucks used by banks and security services for decades?

Its a tank. At school.

Where the children are suspended for nibbling a pop-tart into the shape of a pistol.

Tank: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Japanese_...

Armored truck: http://www.armoredcarssale.com/vehicledata/international/470...

Their vehicle: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/09/13/mrap-ambulance_wi...

To be fair, an MRAP is quite a step above armored car—including being huge, heavy, fuel-hungry, and designed for use in war zones.

And MRAP use was somewhat controversial even in Iraq, where they were designed to be used: https://web.archive.org/web/20070718130937/http://www.defens...

For a lighter look at what an MRAP really is, thanks to Top Gear (though this is a South African vehicle, not the ones we deployed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDoRmT0iRic

They're not tanks, but I can see why people would call them that.

Armoured vans used by banks are highly dangerous on the roads, so are just regular armoured cars.

Putting a MRAP into the hands of people who do not routinely drive them is just gross negligence. If the drive hits anything at road speeds and they're killing it. This is not a vehicle that should be put anywhere near children, it's just negligent.

If the US Gov't wants to unload these things, how about donating them to the UN for their use, while giving the US Gov't a credit toward back dues?

Deleted comment

I would imagine there is corruption involved. They get rid of these as "unfit" so they can turn around and buy some more from their "friends" that just happen to build these.

Because they're buying things they don't need.

It's good to be a defense contractor.

How much does it cost to insure and maintain these vehicles? And how much would it cost to fuel it to drive from where er it's kept to where ever it needs to go?

Because if you need a medical vehical there are probably better vehicles. Unless you actually need a 15 ton mineproof vehicle.

Larger entities usually self insure, so the incremental cost for this type of stuff probably isn't very high.

From what I've read about these things, the maintenance costs if they're used for anything but sitting in a parking lot are insane, especially in the civilian world. There's no established supply chain for special tools and spare parts like there are for normal, mass-market vehicles, so they have to pay through the nose and wait forever for them, or do without. Making this an especially strange purchase. Any cost saved on getting the vehicle will soon be eaten up by fuel and maintenance costs - I'm sure the gas mileage is terrible too.

San Diego is coated in Navy bases...so the extent to which you could argue that there is a plausible scenario where this thing would be useful is completely obviated by the existing huge military presence. Furthermore, even if it were useful for civilians, why is it in the hands of a school district rather than the police? Who is going to pay for the maintenance? This is completely insane. People are putting their own desire for a "cool" piece of hardware ahead of any rational justification for it relative to its costs.

The San Diego Unified School District, like most large school districts, universities, even transit systems, in the US has its own police force - this is going to a police department... they have 54 officers, so its larger than many small town departments by a good stretch.

Also, whether there's a military presence in the area or not is irrelevant to their needs - the military doesn't provide tactical support in law enforcement actions.

I'm not taking the position that it's a sane use of resources or a necessity (I don't think it is)...

You can't deploy military assets against the population. It's illegal, since that's how coupes happen. That's why we have the National Guard. Read up on Posse Comitatus. So, it doesn't matter that the Navy is in town.

Oh come on. An armored vehicle loned to the local police in a case of a school shooting is going to undermine the goverment?

Sadly your use of the word government is so sickeningly far from the meaning of a constitutional republic, I weep that yes such things do undermine the government (IE the people of the united states of america and not a small military cabal of police beholden certainly not to its local citizens).

From what I've heard, proximity to camp pendleton results in many authority positions in SD being held by ex-marines. Administrators at the school district probably had a hard time seeing why anyone wouldn't want an MRAP cruising around a high school

> People are putting their own desire for a "cool" piece of hardware ahead of any rational justification for it relative to its costs.

They are being told by one of the most powerful federal agencies (DHS) that if they take it, they are helping defend the country against terrorism (that was the goal of the gov program right?) then offered equipment at massive discounts. I can imagine some small-time local school exec or police officer would love to sit down with the big boys in DHS and feel important, then get to pat themselves on the back for making "their community safer" by simply writing a cheque.

Like many school districts across the nation, the school district has it's own police force: "San Diego Unified School District Police Department". Of course many now want their own SWAT teams. For the children!

What kind of schools they're running if they need cops so often that they've formed their own force? I'm pretty sure none of my schools in Canada and Finland had even a security guard.

I must have completely missed that, thanks! Luckily my first point still stands.

I'd rather it went to a school than the police. The militarisation of police is one of the scariest of the current "first" world country trends.

Clearly, we must lobby San Diego School District to start a Sensha-Do program, since they've already got a tank...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_und_Panzer

The most ridiculous thing about this, apart from it being ridiculous in every way, is that these are purpose built machines of war good for only one thing, being resistant to mines. They would have no advantage in use over nearly any other vehicle, police cruiser, ambulance, segway, bicycle, in the extreme situations cited as potential use cases.

I don't know what the fuck the dipshits at OSU are thinking when they say they'll use it in conjunction with football games. Maybe somebody got drunk one night and a little too into an academic paper on college football as pseudo warring tribes or something.

I guess these things are good for a couple other things besides being resistant to mines. Namely burning a fuckton of oil and accelerating the deterioration of roads. All the more reason to produce more machines of war to commandeer the resources of hostile foreign nations to have the raw materials to refine gasoline and produce asphalt.

Well that's probably not good thing, after all.

I'm not going to vote for more school funding when money will be spent to maintain armored vehicles.

Proving once again that the purpose of war/fear is to transfer public wealth into private hands.

Of course, before it was taken by the government, that "public wealth" was private wealth, and the taking of that private wealth was also justified with fear.

It is interesting that it got to this and I wonder how many in chain from next down the chain of "hey let's give this to the school district" idea person, to "i am painting a mine-resistant tank in white, so we can use it in a San Diego school district" thought "surely this can't be right" but then did it anyway.

In general, with all the militarization of police articles and news. Maybe the proper way is a militarized response to it. Crank it up a level and let it get even more ridiculous. Petty thieves and drug dealers should learn about how to build and detonate shaped charges to defeat these things. It shouldn't be too hard. A copper cone with some explosive behind it should do it. Then wait for the police to start flying drones with hellfire missiles through the inner cities and blasting away whole city blocks. Then use home made SAM missiles to defeat those and so on.

Pretty sure with proper PR one can easily invoke the spirit of Founding Fathers and revolutionary and constitutionally sanctioned fight against oppression in response the corresponding rhetoric about Drug or Terror War.

I live in San Diego and this has been big local news for about a week.

Obviously this is insane, not only because the militarization of domestic police is a serious issue and their justification for getting one of these is obviously a completely impractical use, but mainly because the reason the military is dumping these things in the first place is because they cost too much for them to maintain

TOO MUCH FOR THE MILITARY (budget: nearly 1 trillion) TO MAINTAIN!

Also... what's next, police getting all the Abrams tanks that the Army no longer wants but which keep getting built due to pork-barreling Congresspeople?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-end-of-th...

A lot of downsides to this. High maintenance cost, conditioning children to live in a militarized environment, more bureaucratic overhead for management and administrative decisions (the administrative officials may see this as job security).

You can't even give these MRAPs away to our allies. S Korean govt was offered 2000 of these by Pentagon. SK Govt was basically getting them for free plus transportation cost. Guess what? After a few trials in their nations, they realized it wasn't suitable. Too big/heavy. Gas guzzler. Expensive to maintain.

Invading Iraq was a mistake. Disbanding Iraqi army was a bigger mistake imo.

even if you believed the entire narrative it still doesn't work. The efficacy of a criminal is due to the response time of the enforcement.

It doesn't matter if 30 police show up in tanks if it takes them 45 minutes to do so, except for instance of you know, mass protest and civil unrest.

It's like we're moving towards a day where the photograph of the tank man is no longer shocking

? What narrative? What does efficacy of a criminal have to do with it?

These programs are a nice application of the "Stanford Prison Experiment". Dress a man like RoboCop and he starts acting like RoboCop.

You know that experiment had some serious flaws making the results highly suspect?

Free? How much does that thing cost to insure? And fuel?

A school district buying one of these is like a guy that makes $40,000 a year buying a Ferrari from the 1980s because it costs $10,000. Sure he can afford to purchase it, but as soon as he needs to replace the $4,000 clutch, he's going to go broke or have a broken, rotting vehicle stuck in his driveway.

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