The US Air Force Wants to Blow Up Some Cybertrucks
And no, this is not a joke.
A few years ago, a buddy of mine, a fellow veteran who should’ve known better, decided to blow nearly $100,000 on a Tesla Cybertruck. This is an entrepreneur who could have walked into a Chevy dealership, picked out a Corvette that would have turned heads for all the right reasons, and still had cash left over for fuel and tires.
Instead, he chose to park a stainless steel geometry lesson in his driveway.
Naturally, I made fun of him for it. Relentlessly.
At first, he brushed it off, quoting Elon Musk about it being “apocalypse proof.” But the apocalypse never came. Instead, he got eight recall notices and enough unsolicited parking lot questions to qualify as a Tesla brand ambassador.
Now, years later, it’s not just me giving him grief. Every time he’s on the road, pedestrians glare at him like he’s personally responsible for blocking their view of the sunset. Other drivers won’t let him merge. Even cyclists give him the finger.
Now, the Air Force just announced it wants to blow a few of these things up for missile testing.
Yes, somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon’s procurement system, an Air Force contracting officer has typed the words “Tesla Cybertruck” into an official munitions procurement form.
The US Air Force actually wants two of Elon Musk’s stainless steel Cyberbricks for live-fire missile tests.
To be fair, this is probably the best use I can think of for a Cybercuck.
The request, posted Wednesday on a government contracting site, is part of a larger order for 33 vehicles bound for the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The Air Force wants to study what happens when advanced munitions meet whatever it is Tesla calls “apocalypse-proof” engineering.
Why a Cyberheap, Exactly?
According to the Air Force, these trucks aren’t for cruising around the base or hauling jet engines. In fact, they don’t even have to run. The contract stipulates they only “need to be towable, and the lithium-ion batteries must be removed before testing.”
The justification memo reads like the script for a low-budget sci-fi movie. US adversaries, it says, are “likely” to adopt Cybertrash on future battlefields because they don’t take “the normal extent of damage expected upon major impact.”
Wait, wait, wait. Someone hold the fucking phone here…
Which “adversaries” will be adopting Cyberfail as their primary APC anytime soon?
And of course they’re tougher than normal pick-up trucks (except maybe the Toyota Hilux) because the Cyberjunk is clad in stainless steel. By the way, stainless steel is still nothing compared to real MILSPEC STANAG-engineered armored personnel carriers.
Ya know, the ones designed and built by companies that actually know how to make war machines, like Roshel in Canada and General Dynamics Land Systems in the US.
Okay, so they’re tougher than your average pickup, and planners want to know how to kill them before someone drives one into a warzone with bad intentions.
Granted, in 2023, Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov unveiled a Cyberheap retrofitted with a machine gun and claimed it was headed to the front in Ukraine.
Tesla reportedly disabled it remotely, prompting Kadyrov to call Musk “not manly.” Ouch…
Wait, hold on again. [Ahem, sorry] Can these things be remotely disabled? Well then, why in the living hell would the Air Force be concerned about “adversaries” showing up on the battlefield with this Cyberscrap? Just push the disable button, you muppets!
Is the Air Force trolling us? Just spending money because ‘fuck you and your tax dollars?’
Okay, so Musk pitched the Cybertarget as “apocalypse proof” at its 2023 debut, a claim that no doubt caught the attention of military planners and DoD budget hawks looking for the next threat profile.
But now, please allow me to expand on why an electric pickup, no matter how shiny and angular, is not exactly a combat enhancer.
First, weight is the enemy of mobility. The CyberFUBAR tips the scales at over 6,800 pounds empty. That is before you bolt on armor, radios, weapon mounts, and the other essentials that turn a civilian pickup into a battlefield asset.
In soft sand, wet farmland, or the mud pits that Eastern Europe calls “roads,” that weight becomes a liability. It digs in, bogs down, and turns a high-tech asset into an immovable $100,000 lawn ornament.
Last I checked, the CyberCoffin wasn’t tracked.
Second, there’s the electric heart of the disgusting beast: the battery pack. In civilian life, it’s a marvel of engineering. In combat, it’s a giant, high-voltage Achilles’ heel. One well-placed round, even from small arms, can puncture cells and trigger thermal runaway, essentially turning the truck into a rolling barbecue pit.
There’s a reason why the US Army hasn’t yet rolled out electric tanks.
Unlike a diesel Humvee, which you can limp along with a few leaks and a quick prayer to the machine god, a compromised battery means you’re done. No patch kits. No “field expedient” repairs. Just a smoking hole and a very long walk.
Third, maintenance in the field is about as realistic as my Army recruiter’s pitch that got me to enlist. On a real deployment, vehicles are kept alive by soldiers and mechanics improvising with whatever parts they have.
You can’t exactly pull into a forward operating base in the Donbas and ask the motor pool if they have a spare Tesla drivetrain or a replacement stainless steel quarter panel.
Finally, there’s the profile problem. On a battlefield, stealth isn’t just for aircraft. Vehicles are painted matte, netted, or camouflaged to reduce visibility. The CyberFlakMagnet’s shiny, reflective skin is a recon drone’s dream. It stands out against terrain like a disco mirror ball in a coal mine at night… that is to say, practically begging for a laser designator.
It all adds up to a simple truth that any combat veteran understands: the battlefield is the ultimate myth-buster. If a piece of kit can’t be repaired in the mud, driven by an exhausted 18-year-old, and survive being shot at on Tuesday so it can keep running on Wednesday, then it’s not a war machine. It’s just expensive shrapnel waiting to happen.
Okay, let’s recalibrate here.
I think the Air Force’s interest here is less about putting CyberIEDs (Improvised Engineering Disasters) in American convoys and more about understanding what might end up in enemy hands.
Testing vehicles at White Sands is standard practice. Everything from the aforementioned Toyota Hiluxes to armored troop carriers has been shredded there in the name of science and national security.
But this is the first time the test subject could double as a Silicon Valley status symbol. If nothing else, it’s an acknowledgment that military planning now has to account for the proliferation of civilian tech in warzones, whether it’s a DJI drone or a $100,000 EV pickup.
Maybe that’s the biggest takeaway here: The Ukraine War opened the door for mixing civilian kit in battlefield applications on a large scale.
Musk predicted Tesla would crank out more than 250,000 CyberBOHICAs (Bend Over, Here It Comes Again) a year. Reality has been less cinematic; just 10,700 sold so far this year, according to Cox Automotive.
That’s not exactly battlefield saturation, but the Air Force isn’t in the business of betting against Murphy’s Law. If something can show up in combat, planners assume one day it will.
Two of these wedge-shaped electric beasts are headed for the kind of missile test that will do what no recall ever could: permanently fix all the Cyberscrap’s problems at once, by making it disappear.
So, when the Air Force finally gets those Cybertjunks out to White Sands and puts a missile into one, I’ll be watching the footage with popcorn in hand, because somewhere out there, my buddy will be watching too.
And in that moment, as stainless steel shards arc gracefully through the desert sky, I’ll text him just four words:
“Should’ve got a Corvette.”
Слава Україні!
Blowing up trucks—sounds like fun. I think people that actually understand modern warfare should be in the trenches with the Ukrainian soldiers, who seem to have a tremendous amount of what we used to call: Yankee ingenuity.
I wonder if this is simply to test if the flying Ginsu Knife (AGM-114R9X) is as effective targeting this type of truck as any other garden variety pickup truck. Hence the need for two specimens.