doors? a roof? nah, we don't need that
They're apparently planning to buy 2.5k of these too! Light skeletonized utility trucks like this have been around for a while, but as a very specific niche for special forces, not general issue
Except now all the Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (which the US apparently has a ton of, you'd think the wealthiest country in the world would have, like, a mostly fully mechanized infantry force and not nearly half of its units without even organic APCs, but I guess not) are going to be converted to Mobile Brigade Combat Teams, mounted on these things.
Something I found interesting is that the Soviets actually trialed a similar concept of airborne troops mounted in stripped-down utility trucks all the way back in the '80s, with similar motivation - lighter-equipped units are easier to redeploy via air, as it takes less plane trips (and opens up the usage of more plentiful smaller planes) to get all their gear in place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYSb5VsQxNY
Except they pretty quickly came to the conclusion that this concept just doesn't work out that well. And even if they'd gone forward with it, there would have likely been just a handful of units like this, with the bulk of Soviet infantry remaining properly mechanized (in BTRs/BMPs for regular infantry, and BMDs for airborne).
Oh well, I guess the Americans have to see for themselves.
It's been thought for a while that MRAPs are too slow and heavy, so the move makes sense. I can see the logic in going hard in the other direction too - the current drone-dominated battlefield favors moving fast, being hard to detect, and not piling too many resources in one place where it can all get easily blown up.
IMO the real question for every military going forward will be how they deal with drones. Will squads of guys in these be supported by trucks dedicated to signal jammers? Will they mount LMGs to the top of these to try and shoot drones out of the sky? Handheld grenade launchers with grenades full of flak?
seems pretty easy to adapt to out-ranging shotgun pellets with drone munitions
Farther still makes accuracy more difficult, the wind 100 yards up is different than surface wind. Shotgun shells can be loaded with bigger, heavier pellets that hold momentum farther.