Russian Tank Conspiracy Theory

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Ok, so they weren’t really tanks but its easier to write in the title than ‘Light Armored Wheeled Infantry Fighting Vehicle’.

So last month I was drivng back to Michigan from some backpacking in Colorado. If memory serves, it was on I-90, first on the west side of the state then again about 6 hours later on the east side when I passed a flatbed semi heading west carrying some kind of eight-wheeled vehicle under a blue tarp.

Coincidentally, my original job in the Marine Corp Reserve was an assaultman where I learned to shoot rockets and missles. Vehicle identification also came with the territory. Granted, I only saw it for a couple seconds and it was covered from the top just past halfway. However, I am very confident that it was a Russian BTR-90 and a brand new one, at that. It is, after all, a rather distinctive vehicle. In fact, not just 45 days before that, I got a chance to see one up close…in Poland. So what the hell were two Russian Military vehicles doing on the back of a couple flatbeds driving across the American Midwest?

Conspiracy theories abound.

Here it is, if you’re interested:
http://ttjstk.myrice.com/elswq/lj/zjc/btr_90_5.jpg.jpg

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bad link

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It could have been the US’s new vehicle, the Stryker

Or sometimes the US likes to pick up Russian hardware for training purposes whenever Russia has a sale. We got a dozen Mig-29’s that way a few years back.

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They could’ve been heading to a museum or two, or to a training range, or who knows…as for where they came from…well, they could’ve been captured in Iraq and cleaned up for transport, or they could’ve been bought “gently used” by one of our more recent Eastern European allies (we recently bought a bunch of MiG-29s from one of the former Soviet republics who couldn’t afford to keep maintaining them anymore - starts with a “b” if I recall, but I don’t remember which republic…). No big deal. They’ll probably wind up outfitting the OpFor at the National Training Center - more realistic that way. Beats dressing a Humvee up and trying to drive it like a BTR.

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Michigan? It was probably one of the next generation of SUVs being shipped out for a road test.