American missiles target American trucks as military trains for Cybertruck warfare
The Kadyrov incident reveals how viral military stunts now drive American defence procurement decisions
Picture this: Hellfire missiles screaming across the New Mexico desert, homing in on two shiny Tesla Cybertrucks parked like metallic scarecrows in the sand. It's happening at White Sands Missile Range, where the U.S. Air Force has specifically ordered Elon Musk's angular electric pickups for one purpose—to destroy them.
The Cybertrucks are part of a 33-vehicle shopping list for Special Operations Command training, but they're different. Whilst other target vehicles—sedans, trucks, SUVs—can be any brand, these must be Teslas. The military's justification reads like science fiction: "In the operating theatre it is likely the type of vehicles used by the enemy may transition to Tesla Cyber trucks as they have been found not to receive the normal extent of damage expected upon major impact."
Behind this extraordinary claim lies an even more extraordinary story: how a single warlord's social media stunt convinced the American military that Cybertrucks represent a genuine battlefield threat.
The warlord's performance
August 2024: Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's brutal strongman, uploads a video that will reshape American military training. There he is, grinning behind the wheel of a Tesla Cybertruck in Grozny's central square, a Russian Kord machine gun bolted to the truck bed. The 12.7mm weapon—designed to punch through light armour from 2,000 metres—sits loaded with belted ammunition whilst Kadyrov poses for the cameras.
"I literally fell in love with this car," he gushes on Telegram, claiming the truck came from Musk himself. The Tesla CEO's furious denial—"Are you seriously so retarded that you think I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general?"—only amplifies the spectacle.
Kadyrov announces the truck's deployment to Ukraine, where it allegedly "performed admirably" before Tesla mysteriously disabled it remotely. Then come more Cybertrucks, painted military green, appearing in forest clearings with mounted weapons. It's part product demonstration, part propaganda stunt, entirely unverified—and it's driving American procurement decisions.
When viral content drives military planning
Six months later, American procurement officers are writing cheques for Cybertruck target practice. Their justification document reveals an institution taking Kadyrov's claims at face value: the vehicles "have been found not to receive the normal extent of damage expected upon major impact." Found by whom? A sanctioned warlord whose battlefield reports amount to unverifiable social media posts.
This isn't systematic threat assessment—it's reactive institutional behaviour triggered by viral content. The heavily redacted procurement documents suggest military planners struggling to justify a decision already made: if a Russian proxy can weaponise Cybertrucks, we must learn to destroy them.
But the logic crumbles under scrutiny. Tesla's "bulletproof" claims extend only to pistol rounds hitting door panels. The company never designed military applications. The stainless steel construction, whilst unusual, hardly represents revolutionary battlefield protection. Yet somehow, Kadyrov's performance convinced Pentagon planners that American adversaries would transition to $80,000 electric pickups requiring charging infrastructure largely absent from combat zones.
The real security failure
Here's the uncomfortable question nobody's asking: how did a comprehensively sanctioned warlord acquire multiple American-made vehicles in the first place?
Tesla sells Cybertrucks exclusively in North America, with limited planned expansion to Gulf states. Yet Kadyrov—sanctioned by the U.S., UK, and EU for torture and extrajudicial killings—somehow obtained several vehicles, weaponised them, and claimed battlefield deployment. That's not a training problem. That's an export control catastrophe.
Rather than investigate how sanctioned entities circumvented restrictions, the military treats the breach as inevitable. One part of the security apparatus fails to prevent technology transfer; another part plans exercises assuming such transfers will continue. It's a peculiar division of labour: whilst export controllers play defence, weapons testers prepare for the consequences of their failures.
The irony runs deeper. American missiles will now target American trucks because American export controls failed to prevent American technology reaching American adversaries. The solution—more weapons testing—addresses symptoms whilst ignoring the disease.
Backwards training logic
The military's rationale contains a fundamental contradiction: they want to practice destroying Cybertrucks precisely because they're harder to destroy. But that logic runs backwards.
If resilient targets improve training for resilient threats, why not use actual armoured vehicles? If the goal is teaching troops to disable tough targets, practicing with the exception rather than the rule seems counterproductive. Successfully destroying one Cybertruck doesn't necessarily translate to improved capability against the Toyota Hiluxes and civilian pickups that dominate actual threat environments.
Special Operations Command's precision munitions primarily target conventional vehicles used by terrorist and militant groups across the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. These groups rely on readily available, easily maintained vehicles—not expensive electric trucks requiring specialised charging networks absent from most operating environments.
The institutional focus on exotic threats may actually detract from training against common ones. It's the military equivalent of practicing penalty kicks by shooting at a smaller goal—technically more challenging, but potentially less useful for actual match conditions.
When Silicon Valley outpaces the Pentagon
The Cybertruck procurement exposes a larger institutional challenge: commercial innovation now moves faster than military planning cycles, forcing defence establishments to chase civilian advances rather than anticipate them.
Tesla's truck embodies this acceleration problem. Its 48-volt electrical architecture, over-the-air updates, and steer-by-wire systems create new variables for military planners. Traditional threat assessments assume relatively static adversary capabilities. But when hostile actors can acquire and modify cutting-edge civilian technology faster than institutions can evaluate its implications, those assumptions collapse.
This dynamic extends far beyond electric trucks. Autonomous systems, advanced materials, and connected technologies all emerge from civilian markets before military planners can assess their strategic significance. The result: reactive institutions responding to demonstrated threats rather than anticipating technological possibilities.
The Cybertruck's journey from product launch to military target illustrates this new reality. Four years after Tesla's initial unveiling, American forces are still figuring out how to counter a vehicle that's already proven vulnerable to basic engineering problems—recall notices for faulty accelerator pedals hardly scream battlefield durability.
The new rules of warfare
Kadyrov understood something Pentagon planners missed: in the information age, a well-choreographed stunt can redirect enemy resources more effectively than conventional deception.
His Cybertruck performance cost nothing but generated American institutional responses costing millions. Military planners now dedicate training time, procurement budgets, and weapons inventory to countering a threat that exists primarily on social media. Whether intentional or accidental, it's a remarkable return on investment for information warfare.
This suggests new strategic vulnerabilities. If spectacular demonstrations of civilian technology adaptation can trigger disproportionate responses, future adversaries may exploit this institutional reactivity. Why engage in expensive military development when viral stunts can misdirect enemy planning?
The deeper problem isn't the Cybertruck—it's the institutional reflex to treat viral content as strategic intelligence. As commercial technology accelerates and information warfare evolves, defence establishments face an uncomfortable choice: develop systematic approaches to emerging threats, or continue chasing social media phantoms with precision-guided responses.
At White Sands, American missiles will soon target American trucks in exercises designed to counter threats that may exist primarily in the imagination of military planners reacting to enemy propaganda. It's a fitting metaphor for contemporary defence challenges: sophisticated solutions to problems created by our own institutional assumptions, driven by adversaries who understand how to game those assumptions through performance rather than capability.
The Cybertruck's transition from Silicon Valley product to military target reveals a world where the boundaries between commerce, technology, and conflict have blurred beyond recognition. In that world, perhaps the most important question isn't whether American missiles can destroy American trucks—it's whether American institutions can distinguish between genuine threats and expertly crafted illusions.