1" thick armor... gun turrets... built-in battering rams
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| Photo: Miranda Informativa |
What to do when RPG's, AR-15s, and land-mines can't kill your rivals fast enough? When the mass-graves and gory piles of severed heads don't spook 'em like they used to?
How about some narco tanks, vato...?
In a multi-lateral conflict that keeps getting worse as Mexican drug cartels war over control of lucrative smuggling routes, government forces have captured two jerry-rigged "tanks" in separate incidences: built on American truck chassis and protected by heavy, sloping armor and bulletproof glass, the media in Mexico has been quick to dub them the "Monsters".
Although they more closely resemble a homemade APC, the ungainly vehicles are heavily armed, with rotating gun turrets, rams, myriad gun ports, devices that pour oil or nails on the road... think Mad Max meets James Bond. They are soundproofed and air-conditioned, can carry 12-20 armed men, and are built to withstand up to .50 caliber weaponry or a grenade blast.
Of course, Mexican and Columbian drug mafias have previously produced homemade, one-use (throw away) submarines to bring cocaine to North American markets, and just last year snapped-up large passenger jets at auction prices only to dump them in the African desert packed with cocaine bound for Europe... so nothing should surprise us coming from these people anymore:
Alas, the human cost has been ghastly: the ongoing drug war in Mexico has already killed five times more people than US fatalities for the whole of the Iraq War... even record busts/confiscations can't seem to put a dent in the perpetual carnage on America's southern border.