Silence is Golden (and Hybrid)
For nearly a century, the military motorcycle has roared through American warfare, from troops riding with GEN John J. “Black Jack” Pershing chasing Francisco “Pancho” Villa across the southwestern United States in 1916, to evacuating the wounded from the battlefield during World War I, to delivering vital messages to forward units during heated battles in World War II. Used again in Vietnam and in Operation Desert Storm, with riders scouting hostile territories and leading convoys to American special forces units crisscrossing the treacherous terrain of Afghanistan, the military motorcycle, with its courageous and skilled riders, has proven irreplaceable on the battlefield.
While the utility of military motorcycles may reverberate through the decades, when it comes to stealth and eluding enemy reconnaissance, the roar of such bikes may be history.
That’s potentially thanks to SilentHawk, the hybrid-electric motorcycle prototype under development by Logos Technologies in partnership with Alta Motors, now in phase II of a Small Business Innovation Research award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).