Marine Skateboards

There was a time when nothing was cooler than a skateboard. Skateboard culture was massive. So significant that the military considered if there were any advantages to certain highly trained warriors moving from a crooked grind to a Casper flip.

A marine, of course, would not ride a standard skateboard. They were given urban combat skateboards, which appear precisely like conventional skateboards and could be purchased from any store. According to what was reported about them, they were intended to be used to identify things like tripwires and snipers.

The technicalities of how they detect tripwires and snipers are never completely explained, but given on what you know about skateboards, you can make some educated guesses. They move swiftly, so the concept appears to be that you can trip a tripwire and continue skating down the road before the accompanying booby trap does injury. Similarly, a sniper would have more difficulty targeting a fast-moving target. The skateboards were first tried as part of some Urban Warrior training in 1999. However, it appears that they did not establish their worth, and the boards have not become ubiquitous.

Year of Experiment: 1999