When I was in the Transportation Corps I railed against the new series of vehicles the DOD was buying.
IMO they were designed by idiots and built by morons.
With the old stick trucks if your batteries died you could roll off a small hill in low range/high gear and roll start the vehicle. You cannot do that in an automatic.
If you don't have a set of slave cables you can back another truck against your bed and push start.
The diesel engine would run if you had zero juice in the batteries....if it would trun over it would crank.
The PLS trucks don't even have a mechanical gear shift they are shifted by a keypad.
Were these engineers drunk?
As pointed out by other posters the weak link in the new trucks are the electronics
One well placed shot and you have nothing.
If you are in a hot spot and have no recovery vehicle available you have to abandon the vehicle and cargo or destroy it to keep the bad guys from getting it.
It ought to be a law that you can't design something you will never use or work on.
The defense contractors seem to beleive flash rather that true reliability is what our guys need.
I would rather have a thirty year old reliable vehicle that will accomplish the mission than a brand new "gee whiz" that will fail me at a critical moment.
KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID KISS KISS KISS KISS