Indian Motorcycles and Combat Bikes

In the video for "Sellout Song" Grim posted, I saw one of the men wearing an Indian Motorcyles t-shirt, and it piqued my curiosity. Clicking around, I found the following video on their website, along with a photo of a recently custom-built "Indian Military Scout Bike" (yes, I want one, complete with Thompson) that replicates some of the bikes used in WWII you can see in the video:



That reminded me of a time I was in Japan and was able to attend a demonstration by their Ground Self Defense Forces. I really don't remember much I saw that day, the typical tanks and helos, marching formations and whatnot. But one demonstration did stick in my mind. A squad of men on  mountain bikes raced down a mountain. As they approached the bottom, they locked their handlebars in place and, maintaining speed, unsheathed rifles and assaulted through an imaginary enemy at the base of the hill.

Wikipedia tells me this may have been the bike they were riding, the Honda XLR250R, although I don't see the rifle sheath. Maybe my memory is faulty; maybe the rifles were slung. Or maybe it was a different bike. Anyway, here's a photo from Wikipedia:


This reminds me of bicycle infantry units. Maybe I'll do a post on that next.

4 comments:

Grim said...

I hear SOCOM is after a quiet dirt bike for certain applications.

Tom said...

Indian's parent company, Polaris, might make them one, then. A quiet dirt bike would be a great recon vehicle, I imagine.

Tom said...

The DAGOR is one of theirs, for example.

Ymar Sakar said...

They could put a hybrid battery and kinetic absorber on it to run night vision/system recharge apps, and silent slow drives in the dark. Similar to the utility provided to infantry by mules. Could be a potential solution to all that weight packing issues for pure non mechanized infantry. It becomes difficult to outmaneuver light no armor infantry in cities. And America has a lot of cities.