UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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This, in no way, looks like a vehicle that could offer anything but hindrance, difficulty, and cost to the job, being quite ineffective at most things required of it. It is designed with a purpose in mind and it wasn't the streets of London.
That may be true, but even worse, America shows: When you put war equipment on the streets, they'll use it to wage war. The tools may not be the root of the problem, but they will supercharge a dehumanizing "us versus them" mindset of police.
Well yeah but they fucked up the moment they gave every cop a gun. That’s not a factor with the situations these vehicles will be used for. American policing is not comparable.
People will refer to these as "tanks" especially when a weapon is mounted on them but they are not, they are correctly referred to as MRAPs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine-Resistant_Ambush_Protected_Vehicle
You are right, MRAPs are for counter insurgency conflicts and for the love of whatever god you do or don't worship please don't let police institutions anywhere near war, what you will get is a genocide disguised as a war (turns gaze straight at the IDF with a Gorgon Stare).
Good news though! A common complaint from warfighters is that MRAPs are inherently tall (to direct mine blasts away) and thus easily tipped over and they are heavy af and probably super annoying to pull back upright so take from that what you will UK citizens.
Ineffective? It’s there to block streets and deliver riot police to an area. Looks like it’ll tick both boxes.
Most things this vehicle has been designed for cannot be found in London and most challenges London has for vehicles cannot be overcome by such a design. They're incompatible; all the way down to visibility, agility of the chassis, vulnerability to liquid explosives on hard ground and panels, to even basics like the turning circle.
Is it great in softer, non-urban, open, and wider terrain? Yes. Is London any of these things? Definitely not.
There are vehicles for the job that would make the desired impact. This is definitely not one of them.