Vehicles in the Military:

A Symbiotic Relationship between Man and Machine

Roby Behrens

The military has many different branches in which there are thousands of jobs and skills for soldiers to learn as well as thousands of different machines for soldiers to interact with. To simply name a few of these machines, one would have to separate the notion of a mechanism into three categories: computers, accessories, and vehicles/artillery. The cyborgian concept in part, is about a bond that forms between humans, the tool users, and our tools. For example, when people drive cars they must adjust their mindset and physical position to create an interface with the vehicle. Because people become used to driving cars their mindset changes along with their pace of life. Their lifestyle adjusts and hence they become a cyborg. In the world of cyborgs, the military has unconsciously created an entire division of ways that humans may interact with machine. In battle, soldiers rely on weapons to gun down their opponents and survive. They adjust and interact with a gun to aim, unconsciously reload, and rely on the bullets to keep them alive. By using a gun, a soldier becomes a cyborg. A gun however, only occupies the arm using it, the eye aiming, and the other arm reloading. While the user may become a cyborg, this is only a basic human-machine interaction. It is arguable that a car may even be more cyborgian than a gun because cars require more cooperation between the two entities. This is where the military has expanded the notion of cyborgs - through vehicles and artillery.

The first weapon of artillery that comes to mind when considering the cyborgian mindset of its operator is the tank. The tank provides an external shell or external shell for its inhabitants which can be considered cyborg armor. To operate a tank, the driver must sit in a specific position and use both hands to control the levers.

Aside from the actual driver of the tank, there are also gunmen who must interact with full-body apparatuses that control mounted guns.

Another immensely cyborgian vehicle in the military is the Humvee, which is a military vehicle that features mounted guns, posts for soldiers to shoot from, and military computers built for radar and communication. The Humvee can be considered cyborgian because it contains all the aspects of a car only it also provides multiple outlets for interaction and an exoskeleton.