MWMIK: Four-Ton British Military Buggy
This new "Mobility Weapon Mounted Installation Kit" (MWMIK) may look like some anachronistic sci-fi movie prop—you know, the kind where it's 1,000 years in the future, but everybody still drives Hummers?—but the four-ton 4x4 is an actual real-life vehicle, intended to be used by the British in Afghanistan. It's certainly got the ability to bring a lot of firepower to the table, including "a .50 calibre machine gun or an automatic grenade launcher and a general purpose machine gun," but if I recall correctly, the current trend in anti-guerilla warfare is to put more armor on your vehicles, not leave them open-topped like a dune buggy.
Apparently the old Land Rovers used by the British troops have been open topped before anyway, so it's not really worse, at least.
Army to use 'Mad Max' 4x4 to fight Taliban [Daily Mail via Gizmodo]
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Yeah, seriously, who the hell would want to ride in that thing? Even the most basic IED would kill you. Not to mention bullets. I can only guess that there must be some need for a vehicle that's light and fast that an armored vehicle simply can't match. Can't say I see that, though.
It's designed to be used as a desert fast recon/attack vehicle with enough firepower to take on small groups of enemy that it might encounter.
With it's 80Mph top speed, I think the idea of these is to hoon across the desert, hit the enemy before they realise what's coming, and get the hell out of there before they get a change to hit back. They're definately NOT aimed at urban combat use!
The old Land Rovers that Joel is referring to are the ones that the SAS used to great effect in WWII in the desert that were nicknamed "Pink Panthers" - they'd do recce behind German lines then when they found an airbase they'd race in convoy down the landing strip shooting the hell out of everything they could before racing off into the desert before the Germans could retaliate.