A little obscure, but... does anyone know why Half-tracks are no longer used?

[Reverend Joe]

I was trying to look into Half-tracks out of curiosity, but the Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-track) is both skimpy and suspiciously undersourced. The article only briefly lists the advantages of Half-tracks and none of the disadvantages so I can not only figure out how accurate the article is but I can't see why they were mostly phased out following WW2. Can anyone shed some light on the facts behind Half-tracks?

[Hooahguy]

my guess is that APCs took over. no use having a vehicle with an open top in this age of urban warfare. an apc can fully protect you from small arms, and a halftrack cant. the other uses for a halftrack - AT and AA - have been phased out. no point trying to lug around a big thing like that when nice little shoulder missiles can do the same job.

[Watchman]

Also probably no point. If you want a fast armoured vehicle, you go all wheels; if you want one with a lot of payload, you use tracks. Half-tracks probably in the final analysis ran into the same problem "hybrid" designs all too often stumble on - its performance hovered somewhere between the two without really being better than either at any given task, and more or less combined the problems of both propulsion systems.
Basically not worth the cost and effort.

[Ja'chyra]

As far as I can remember the UK only has wheeled like Mastiff, Jackal, WMIK, Panther, Saxon, Snatch etc or tracked like Warthog, Scimitar, Warrior, Challenger, Stormer etc but no hybrids.

[rotorgun]

I've heard it summed up by a few veteran GIs I've talked with who explained it thus: Half truck, half track, half:daisy:d :beam::joker: