The Bradleys Dirt Bike

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally, the Bradley was to carry a dirt bike for use by one of the scout team to increase scouting radius. I've never been able to find what kind of bike it was to use, and the idea was knocked down pretty quickly.

[LBraden]

I can see why the idea would be knocked down, not much space inside one of them things

[Canadian Army]

Here are two Motorcycles that they could have used:

The Armstrong MT500 is a British military motorcycle made by Armstrong-CCM Motorcycles in Bolton, Greater Manchester, who acquired the rights to the Rotax engine enduro motorcycle SWM XN Tornado from the Italian owners and developed the MT500 for use by the British Army in the Falklands war. In 1987, the design and production rights were sold to Harley-Davidson, who in 1993 released the MT350E. It is used by Canada, Jordan and the United Kingdom.

In 2005, the United States Marine Corps adopted the M1030M1, an off-road motorcycle based on the Kawasaki KLR650, and retrofitted it with an engine designed to run on diesel or JP8 jet fuel.

Since other U.S. tactical vehicles like the HMMWV utility vehicle and M1 Abrams tank also use JP8, adopting a scout motorcycle which runs on the same fuel would ease logistics.

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by LBraden

I can see why the idea would be knocked down, not much space inside one of them things

I thought it was supposed to be on a rack on the outside?

I remember reading about this, when they were still the XM2 Bradley IFV and XM3 Devers CFV.

(FWIW, naming a cavalry vehicle for Devers seems odd, since he was an artilleryman.)

[dragoon500ly]

The dirt bike was strapped to the ramp, on the inside. When they were doing troop trials in Ft Hood, the test platoon was using Honda dirt bikes, not sure of the exact model, but I do remember one catching fire inside the vehicle, poorly secured gas cap lid dripping gas on a hot exhaust pipe.

Hmmmm, after that little incident, I also seem to remember that the dirt bikes were withdrawn!

[CDAT]

From what I remember the bike was only for the CFV version who only had two dismount scouts giveing room for it.