DUKW

GMC DUKW
File:IndianDefenders.jpg
Minor Faction	Indian Reservist Reinforcements
Other Faction(s)	None
Unit Type	Amphibious Armoured Transport
Designation	Transport
Production Building	Reinforcements
Secondary Ability	Disembark Passengers
Cost	N/A
Production Time	N/A
Heroic Upgrade	N/A
Dev. Status	Conceptual

Country of Origin	United States
Produced by/ Recovered from	General Motors Corporation
Key Features	» Amphibious six-wheel drive  » Sheet steel plating  » Bilge pump (to remove water)  » Art depicting a duck  » 100hp 6-cylinder engine

Tactical Analysis

• Ducks can swim: The DUKW, aka duck, is to put it simply, a truck, and like its nickname, can traverse land and water with equal ease.

• Duck riding: In addition to being amphibious, the DUKW, being a transport, has room for up to several Indian Reservist Defenders.

• Sitting duck: When the DUKW was produced, a weapon was not included. Regrettably, this means that the DUKW is unable to retaliate against attackers.

• Dead duck: The DUKW was never had a weapon in the first place, and the Indian army has no plans to outfit its DUKWs with weaponry at any time in the near future.

Operational History

India, as the most populous country on the planet, also has the largest standing army in the world. There are some perks to this; after all, such a large army is nothing to be sneezed at, and India certainly has no shortage of soldiers; a significant portion of the soldiers serving in the Pacific theatre during World War III were Indian.

But there are downsides to this as well. As one might expect, such a large army is expensive to equip and maintain. To bring the costs of equipping such an army down to manageable levels, a variety of cost cutting measures are employed; this can be seen in things like the fact that the average soldier of the Indian army is given only a bare minimum of equipment and training. A good number of military vehicles share the same frame and parts to simplify production and cut costs, improvised vehicles and equipment are not unheard of, and human or animal transportation is often used in lieu of motor vehicles to save on fuel.

Still, India has sought to keep up with the cutting edge displayed by the Peacekeepers, and parts of their army are notably better equipped than the rest. These elite military units equip their infantrymen with MX-15 rifles, supported by heavier-than-normal (for the Indian army) concentrations of armour, with air cover provided by Cutlass Ramjet squadrons and Shortbow attack helicopters. These elite units are some of the best in the Indian Army, and they're the ones who get sent into the most dangerous theatres, such as China.

Even then, cost-cutting has won out in some areas, such as amphibious transportation. In theory, India's elite brigades were to be equipped with Riptide. After buying a single example to test out, India came to the conclusion that they were simply far too difficult to maintain. The Riptide was consigned to a museum, while the Indians started to look for something cheaper and less maintenance intensive.

That something turned out to be the DUKW. The Normandy Landings had been a massive exercise in logistics, and to conduct an amphibious landing of such massive scale had required a staggering number of landing craft. As it turned out, there weren't enough available military transports to carry the entire Allied force across the English channel, and to make up for this lack of available transports the Allies turned to other options; civilian vessels like ferries and motorboats were requisitioned, old landing craft such as Omni-Landers were reactivated, and so on.

Among other things, however, the Allies also commissioned the construction of a massive number of amphibious transports solely for the purpose of providing transport during the Normandy Landings. It wasn't intended that these transports be used more than once, however, so the Allies looked for the cheapest, most mass-producible design they could find, and ended up selecting the DUKW. Thousands of DUKWs were produced in an incredibly short span of time, in a mad rush to meet the demands of Normandy.

After Normandy, however, there were so many DUKWs no one knew what to do with them. The Riptide was much better for amphibious transportation in general, and the Allies weren't planning on mounting another amphibious landing on the scale of Normandy. In the end, a number were relegated to logistics support, used to carry food, ammunition and other supplies, while others were sold off cheaply to anyone who would have them. Among the buyers was the Indian army, who bought up a large number of the transports and subsequently retired most of their hovercraft, keeping only a token force of Riptides.

Generally, the DUKW has served the Indian Army fairly well. While it isn't much compared to the Riptide, it's considerably cheaper in both maintenance and fuel costs, and still better than walking. It's used wherever India's elite forces are sent, even in the blasted landscapes of China, though it would arguably be more prudent to send a better protected vehicle into such a dangerous place.

Behind the Scenes

• Like most of the Indian Reservist Reinforcements, the DUKW was suggested by PsychoticLoner.