Great news: The Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux are coming to the United States. Not so great news: You'll need to enlist in the Army and pass a grueling special operations course to get behind the wheel.The US Special Operations Command has agreed to a deal with the Battelle Memorial Institute, worth up to $170 million over five years – with the option for two more years – to take off-the-shelf Toyota Land Cruisers , Hilux pickups, and Ford Ranger pickups and fit them with armor, heavy-duty suspension components, upgraded brakes, run-flat tires, new wheels, and sophisticated communications and observation equipment.The overall idea is to build a truck with inconspicuous looks to protect and allow communications between troops while blending into traffic in potentially hostile countries. To be frank, it's a pretty clever way of helping SpecOps troops move about without drawing attention. According to Military Aerospace , Battelle is going to provide "all materials, equipment, hard tooling, personnel, and facilities necessary to manufacture, fabricate, integrate, produce, and test the up-armored trucks and SUVs with Special Operations communications gear aboard." That makes it sound like a lot of the work is going to be out of the military's hands.The contract is for 556 vehicles, over two-thirds of which Battelle would fit with armor, Military Aerospace reports. Mostly, Uncle Sam is interested in the ultra-rugged 70 Series Land Cruiser , rather than the cushier model Toyota markets to American consumers. Military Aerospace didn't have a breakdown on how many Rangers or Hilux trucks SOCOM was buying.