jtan163
M151 Mutt
The M151 MUTT is the vehicle that the US military adopted to replace the jeep after word war II.
Eventually the MUTT was itself replaced my by the HumVee (HMMWV).
I think MUTT stands for Mobile Utility Tactical Truck, but I'm not 100% on that.
I believe they were developed and manufactured by Ford, thought there probably would have been at least one other manufacturer at some time - the US military didn't used to like single supplier kit back in the cold war - too easy for a single factory to get nuked - people thought different in those days.
By all accounts the MUTT was a bit of a death trap, with all around independent suspension which caused it to roll a lot and no roll cage.
You don't see many of these in Australia - normally vehicles like this only become available from US government disposal auctions, which mainly occur in the the US, Europe and other places that there are large permanently basedUS military formations - these days i think this would include the Middle East. It would not surprise me if this was the only one in the country, and even if not it wouldn't surprise me if it was the only one of this particular FFR variant in the country,
This particular MUTT was apparently imported from Japan, which did (and perhaps stil does) have a permanent US formations based there.
The owner/importer was a japanese amateur radio operator (i.e. a ham).
If you look behind the driver seat (it's left hand driver - we are facing the driver side) you can see a military radio of some kind - I'm not sure which..
This vehicle was what the Australian and British Army would call FFR ( fitted for radio) i.e. had an electrical harness and hardware to mount radios, and probably has an extra alternator/generator and probably extra batteries to run the radio while the engine is switched off.
The vehicle appeared to be fairly complete - it appeared to have full CES (complete equipment schedule - that means all the tools, ropes, manuals, pioneer tools etc that the vehicle would normally be issued with).
It also has a fording kit - note the really long exhaust pipe at the back, and the snorkel for the air intake on the front.
I couldn't really get the driver's story - he's English was poor and my Japanese is 1000 times worse.
Still no language was required for me to communicate my admiration for his awful sexy boy toy, nor for him to understand my admiration of his lovely bit of militaria.
#71
M151 Mutt
The M151 MUTT is the vehicle that the US military adopted to replace the jeep after word war II.
Eventually the MUTT was itself replaced my by the HumVee (HMMWV).
I think MUTT stands for Mobile Utility Tactical Truck, but I'm not 100% on that.
I believe they were developed and manufactured by Ford, thought there probably would have been at least one other manufacturer at some time - the US military didn't used to like single supplier kit back in the cold war - too easy for a single factory to get nuked - people thought different in those days.
By all accounts the MUTT was a bit of a death trap, with all around independent suspension which caused it to roll a lot and no roll cage.
You don't see many of these in Australia - normally vehicles like this only become available from US government disposal auctions, which mainly occur in the the US, Europe and other places that there are large permanently basedUS military formations - these days i think this would include the Middle East. It would not surprise me if this was the only one in the country, and even if not it wouldn't surprise me if it was the only one of this particular FFR variant in the country,
This particular MUTT was apparently imported from Japan, which did (and perhaps stil does) have a permanent US formations based there.
The owner/importer was a japanese amateur radio operator (i.e. a ham).
If you look behind the driver seat (it's left hand driver - we are facing the driver side) you can see a military radio of some kind - I'm not sure which..
This vehicle was what the Australian and British Army would call FFR ( fitted for radio) i.e. had an electrical harness and hardware to mount radios, and probably has an extra alternator/generator and probably extra batteries to run the radio while the engine is switched off.
The vehicle appeared to be fairly complete - it appeared to have full CES (complete equipment schedule - that means all the tools, ropes, manuals, pioneer tools etc that the vehicle would normally be issued with).
It also has a fording kit - note the really long exhaust pipe at the back, and the snorkel for the air intake on the front.
I couldn't really get the driver's story - he's English was poor and my Japanese is 1000 times worse.
Still no language was required for me to communicate my admiration for his awful sexy boy toy, nor for him to understand my admiration of his lovely bit of militaria.
#71