I have a vague recollection of seeing some sort of black SUV in modern-day presidential motorcades, but I don’t see that many and had never given much thought to what they were. Just part of the entourage. Or so I thought …
See what they really are here. Holy crap :eek:! Armored and possessing “a 6 barreled 7.62 mm mini gun. They fire over 4,000 rounds per minute The wipers need to be run to remove spent casings when the weapon is firing.”
The nifty video in the link shows exactly what that last part means about having to run the wipers.
There are times one of those would be a righteous ride. I’m thinking about the time I got cut off by some little…
well, you know how the rest of the fantasy goes.
I shoot news in DC and motorcades are a daily annoyance. In fact last night at 11pm I was blocked up trying to go home on the Rock Creek Parkway for some motorcade related to the Hu visit.
Guns aside, what knocks me out is the Suburban they drive that is used to disable roadside bombs. It has a pair of 2’ tall fat antennas on the roof, and from about 5 blocks away my scanners and 2-ways go crazy as the jammers kick in.
They use it for the President and for the Vice President, who is the one I run into more often driving down Mass Ave past the Observatory.
Radios crap out, scanners buzz, cops stop traffic… Here comes Joe!
I’m not sure about the mini-gun SUV, but at the tail end of the motorcades are two suburbans with the back windows open. If you pay attention you’ll see SS men in the back with guns. I was talking to retired Milwaukee Police Officer who used to work with the SS when the president would come to town. According to him, if anyone tries to get near the motorcade from behind, those guys make sure it doesn’t happen. But he said these guys make sure you’re dead before you even get close.
I’d assume there’s quite a bit more fire power behind tinted windows in various other parts of the motorcade.
ETA, there’s a picture of what I was talking about in that wiki link