2025/07/05

The direct/indirect/antiair fires tank concept

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I wrote in the past about tanks that have a unusually high maximum elevation of their main gun and can be used for indirect fires and for short range air defence.

/2010/04/medium-calibre-allround-option.html 

/2017/01/42-elevation-tank-turrets.html

/2023/04/a-compact-and-agile-exploitation-brigade.html

/2023/09/the-directindirect-fires-armour.html

 
I have never elaborated on the technical side of the shot, but the technical details matter for understanding the concept.

A tank gun has a very high muzzle velocity even with a high explosive shell (it won't be less than 700 m/s). A variable propellant strength may be used and special shells or fuses may increase drag to brake the shell, but a basic tank gun HE cartridge is going to produce a cannon-like, very flat trajectory.

This makes it difficult to hit a flat target with a point detonating (impact) fuse. A slight error in elevation or a slight deviation of muzzle velocity leads to a much greater range error of the shot than the shot's lethal radius. 

Historically, the best use for cannons in indirect fire at short and medium distances was to use a bouncing shot (cannon shells bounce off flat ground when fired at no more than 10° elevation as a rule of thumb). A delay fuse would then cause the explosion  when the shell is airborne after bouncing off the ground. The fragmentation effect of this would be greater than with point detonation, but the dispersion would be bad.

How about proximity fuses? Again, quite the same as with point detonating, just worse. The fuse may trigger much too early, especially when it overflies a building. Even a time-gated proximity fuse wouldn't be satisfactory. 

Normal time fuses use 0.1 second intervals. A shell travelling at 600 m/s would thus fuse somewhere within 60 metres - unsatisfactory, as the lethal radius even of a 120 mm HE shell in much smaller. 

The technical solution is to use more modern fuses that deliver accuracy of about ten metres. The elevation may still be off a little, but an explosion 3 m lower than intended or 3 m higher than intended isn't a too terrible variation.

Here's an example of such a very accurately fusing fuse.

 

This can be used to explode the shell inside a building (setting the timing accordingly and disabling a point detonation feature if present).

This can be used to shoot at aerial targets in the way heavy anti-air artillery did in WW2, just much more accurately.* 

Ideally, the fuse would have selectable point detonation (quickest direct fire shot mode that's somewhat useful on everything, including messing up a T-14 tank turret) and delay (for exploding BMPs, BTRs and rooms in a building)

 

The technology for proper fuses for very flat trajectory shots hasn't been available for very long. Most main battle tanks of today are from a 1970's conceptual design and prototyping generation, when such fusing wasn't on the horizon yet. The Chinese have newer designs, but they were catching up. The South Koreans have a newer MBT design, but they have mostly hilly to mountainous terrain. Same with the Japanese. The current equipment is thus no argument against the validity of the direct/indirect firepower tank concept. It makes sense that the in-service tanks lack it and at the same time the concept  may be entirely valid with our current technology.

Back to bending that flat trajectory a bit: The muzzle velocity depends on the propellant temperature. One might have a cool/cooled and a warm/heated cartridge compartment to enable a choice between two muzzle velocities. The difference wouldn't be great, though. This would not enable shooting over most hills in the line of sight.

Another possibility is to use a fuse or shell feature that deploys a braking element, such as in trajectory-correcting munitions. Another analogy is the nose or drag ring that can be added to rockets of manually loaded multiple rocket launchers to slow them down and thus reduce the often terribly long minimum shot distance. 

High tech approaches include variable injection of liquid propellant, use of electro-chemical-thermal gun principle and so on, but such already researched and tested technologies appear to find no users for good reasons.

In the end, a fixed cartridge with combustible case is realistic, a semi-fixed cartridge for varying the propellant strength by adding or removing modules would only be reasonable if the tank is used mostly in indirect fires. Another option is to simply have two different kinds of HE cartridges with combustible case; one for high muzzle velocity and one for low muzzle velocity. The latter could be used to shoot over hills, but it would have a reduced maximum range and longer time of flight. The shell orientation at explosion would also differ, leading to a different optimisation for fragmentation pattern and thus a different shell design.

 

The great potential of the concept of a direct/indirect/antiair firepower tank is in the versatility. This may go so far as to enable a much smaller and thus much more agile tank brigade without a dedicated artillery component. I described that concept in the 3rd and 4th link above. The same brigade would have dozens of assets capable of sniping away observation drones without need for any dedicated air defence vehicle.


S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Proximity fusing may be preferable for this, but ordinary artillery proximity fuses meant to fuze a couple metres above ground don't work on air targets. Their safety feature keeps them from exploding before the zenith of the trajectory was passed.

2025/06/22

Due to recent events...

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I'd like to remind you that any NATO member attack on another country without permission by the United Nations is a violation of the North Atlantic Treaty. 

Article 1

The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17120.htm

The U.S. has ONCE AGAIN intentionally, habitually and grossly violated its obligations to the NATO other members.

The high risk of this happening again was obvious for days, but the terrible NATO general secretary didn't put it on the agenda during the NATO meeting. Instead, the "5%" brain fart of a lying moron was to be discussed.


/2008/09/overly-aggressive-allies.html

/2010/09/anglophone-disrespect-for-international.html

/2014/03/hypocrisy-in-effect.html 

/2017/04/the-us-blatantly-violated-north.html 

/2018/04/comment-on-recent-cruise-missile.html

 

It was completely unnecessary, actually. 

And it's not sure at all whether the supposed goal will be achieved. It's not a nature's law that a nuclear weapons program needs to be confined to a few locations. A dispersed enrichment program could lead to a simple gunshot uranium fission device. Iran is likely holding back from expending some of its better rockets.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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2025/06/16

Hostility caused by fundamental misunderstanding

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I ask you to read this (shockingly, already 15 years old!) blog post first:

So, Iran is sponsoring terrorism abroad, right?
graphic taken from U.S. Congress

 
Well, look at the following map and search for "coincidences":
regarding copyright: see lower bound of image

The so-called proxies turn out to be Shia / Shi'ite groups outside of Iran.
 
This opens the possibility that the Western public (not terribly literate on such issues) misunderstands Iran's policy regarding support for outside groups. It might actually be about
  • support for religious fellows who are (or feel) oppressed by sunni-dominated governments
  • an effort to overcome the solitude as only Shia country by having at least some friends abroad 
Again (I wrote so previously), maybe the best approach to overcome the war in Yemen including the Red Sea crisis and missile launches on Israel is to split Yemen into a Shia state and a Sunni state. The unification of both Yemens was an obvious mistake.
We should have a peace conference with incentives to both Houthis and their main opponents to agree to a partition (preferably with better-drawn borders, but a decent seaport for the Houthis) rather than focusing on shooting down Houthi munitions and bombing them targets in Houthi-controlled territory.
 
Lebanon's issues could be addressed by replacing the Shia sponsor Iran with a more secular, more international order-focused sponsorship.
 
 
Last but not least another thought; even a democratic Iran would still be majority Shia and might still behave very similarly, feeling solidarity with Shias abroad, supporting their cause in some way, including arming them!
 

S O
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2025/06/13

Issues with "self defence"

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Countries are entitled to defend themselves against aggression, that's universally accepted international law and almost everyone (exceptions include some particularly dumb Germans who apparently like to give BJs to Putin) gets and respects that.

The application in practice isn't without issues, though. Those issues go beyond 'false flag' actions and lying about who started the shooting.


Suppose there's a country A and a country B. They've been at each others' throats for decades. Maybe four decades, maybe eight. Maybe it's possible to tell who did start it originally, maybe not. Maybe the conflict escalated through non-warfare hostilities such as sponsoring terrorism and sabotage/assassination campaigns, maybe not.

Is there still a right to self-defence in such a permaconflict? And if yes - who has it if the origin is unclear?

Even more troublesome: What if the originator of the conflict is known, but the origin has been many decades ago and both sides were actively hostile to each other (albeit not waging open warfare) for a long time? Suppose we agree that if country A was the original culprit then country B has the right to self-defence. When does this right end? Does it ever end? Can A be blamed for not quitting the permaconflict even if it gets harrassed by below-warfare level hostilities of B? It's human nature to NOT show the other cheek for decades. Suppose we say B loses the right to self-defence in response to below warfare level hostilities if A shows the other cheek. For how long does A have to show the other cheek, or how much punishment does it have to endure while showing the other cheek until B loses the right to kill citizens of country A and destroy things in it (or possibly maintain a naval blockade)?

 

Personally, I believe there are seemingly perpetual conflicts in which I stop caring about who started it. I transition to looking who does much more damage and then am convinced it's appropriate to demand an end to lopsided killing and damage as a step towards getting out of the vicious circle of violence. That demand is easier to meet than a demand for showing the other cheek for a long time.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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2025/06/06

Minimum army weapons set, revisited

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I like to cut things down to essentials, so I wrote in 2023 about a minimum weapons sset for an army. To have very few different weapons helps coping with the difficulties in procurement.

/2023/01/a-minimum-army-weapons-set-for.html

So, almost two and a half years more developments in the Russo-Ukrainian War, does the blog post hold up well (IMO)?

 

#1 hand grenade, a timeless classic

#2 rifle, a timeless classic

#3 (light) machinegun, infantry will go on strike if it only gets rifles

#4 HEDP rifle grenade, infantry will insist on having something to shoot into a window 50 m away and this is the simplest means unless you insist on firing many shots.

#5 short range anti-MBT weapon They're worthwhile, but don't deserve a "minimum" list entry according to my opinion as of today. Fibreoptic FPVs can fly so well around obstacles that they can engage well in areas with very short lines of sight, so we don't need weapons that excel in such places any more.

#6 Well, this was close to the fibreoptic FPV quadcopter, albeit I mentioned a rocket-propelled missile as representative (there were no fibreoptic FPV quadcopters yet). The increased agility, the hover ability and the ambush ability of fibreoptic FPV quadcopters are huges advantages, worth more than the speed loss compared to the missile. So I say the #6 entry would not be represented by a rather fast fibreoptic FPV quadcopter (with thermal channel)

#7 LMM is still quite expensive (~30k €) compared to some targets, so one should rather look at an even cheaper solution now. I don't happen to know a truly satisfactory one, though. Mayb one could trust #6+#10 and scratch #7?

#8 C-UAS RCWS,  absolutely, still a great take!

#9 wheeled 155 mm SPG This one is increasingly dubious until we learn to manage the drone threat at least at 20 km depth. Some reports indicate that towed guns dug in (even 105 mm) are better, it's almost safe to say that spending the same money on towed 155 mm L/52 with auxiliary propulsion rather than on 155 mm SPGs is better. Please note; I am a proponent of using PGM missile artillery, which was not included in the lsit because a "minimum" list has to assume air support.

#10 Tamir, still a great take (to deal with Shaheed, cruise missiles, GUMLRS-ish munitions, not as the Israelis do against ordinary Grad and homebuilt rockets). Don't buy Israeli, though. Build an analog.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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2025/06/05

Rackets

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So according to the news, the German minister of defence comes with news from NATO; according to NATO directives or whatever Germany is supposed to add formations to its armed forces.

Meanwhile, some American dipshit in office blathered something about seeing NATO countries moving towards 5% GDP military spending.

 

This truly is the idiocracy timeline !

 

The German constitutions says 

Article 87a
[Armed Forces]

(1) The Federation shall establish Armed Forces for purposes of defence. Their numerical strength and general organisational structure must be shown in the budget.

Translated to commoner language, this means it's the legislative branch that defines the general organisational structure in Germany, NOT the minister of defence. I understand it's done differently in practice, but the German minister of defence has jack shit authority to define the general organisational structure of the German armed forces (except in his capacity of also being a member of parliament and having one of hundreds of votes in there).

That's exactly as much (=jack shit) authority as NATO does have in the matter.

This is a well-established racket. It's something similar to the appeal to authority fallacy.  

 

Regarding the 5%: Dipshit's own country won't spend that, there's no reason to bother paying attention to the word salat puke of the lying moron. There's no 5% GDP military spending agreement, no 5% GDP military spending obligation - there's none for 2% GDP, either.

Our #1 defence policy issue is the efficiency of spending followed by keeping China out of Europe. The military spending budgets are plentiful, regardless of the fact that claiming the opposite is fashionable.

 

related:

/2017/02/stephen-m-walt-on-2-debate.html

/2018/04/patterns-of-propaganda-for-higher.html

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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2025/06/01

In-war deterrence by nukes

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It's about time to spell out something painfully obvious, because I don't see anyone else doing it:

Russia would have lost this war decisively long ago if it was no nuclear power.

The frontline combat is at a stalemate, the naval blockade crumbled long ago and Russia cannot win by strategic air war because Ukraine gets enough outside support to cope with the damage done to its infrastructure and economy.

Ukraine, on the other hand, could have won long ago by a strategic air war effort:

It could have destroyed the oil refineries, which a Russia under sanctions could not have coped with.

It could have destroyed enough transformer stations to collapse the Russian rail traffic in European Russia, which Russia could not have repaired due to sanctions alone (tiny chance that China could have helped out enough). 

Both would have collapsed the Russian economy as much as the railway grid bombing collapsed the German economy in I/1945. 

Why didn't Ukraine do it? My best guess is that its Western supporters gave support under the condition that no such extreme (=decisive) measures would be taken. Why would they have done that? Nukes.

So nuclear munitions are not just a deterrent in peacetime that so far helped to avoid direct war between nuclear powers. Nuclear power status has consequences during wartime that go beyond making force concentrations and single breakthrough points impractical. They also exert political influence. In the case of Russia, nukes protect Russia against strategic knockout blows.

 

Ukraine really has to work toward collapsing Russian ground forces' morale in order to reconquer the occupied areas. That is, unless a Western nuclear power grows some balls and knocks out Russian oil refineries by itself. The British could do that with cruise missiles.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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2025/05/30

The "new" warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War

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A string of twitter threads by different authors create an impression that this war is very different, kind of with different rules than previous wars, military doctrines from pre-2022 are obsolete now.

https://x.com/sambendett/status/1927076283000701067

https://x.com/GrandpaRoy2/status/1927714854351085928

https://x.com/Playfra0/status/1928183254089429005

https://x.com/GrandpaRoy2/status/1926930735266509094

I object.

 

Quite generally, when somebody claims that previous military theory is obsolete you should ask yourself what previous military theory this person knows about. You're nearly perfectly safe if you assume the answer is "very, very little" even if said person is a general.  Very few people dedicated much of thier lives tot he study of the art of war and people who learned some of it profesionally (such as generals) hardly ever learned much that goes beyond their own country's doctrine, and very little about how and why their county's doctrine came to be.

The drone war in Ukraine isn't terribly new. It's almost exactly a replay of the air war development 1911-1945, for example.

 

Yes, the kamikaze FPV threat is severe to up to 9 km depth, often extending to 20 km and rarely extending beyond that with almost none happening beyond 40 km depth against non-strategic targets.The long-established military term in English for this is "battlefield interdiction", and air forces aspire to do it not to 40 km depth, but to hundreds of kilometres depth.

To move yourself or goods to the front seems like running the gauntlet on the final 40 km and gets the worse the more close you are to the front? Does that sound all-new to you? Then you're not aware of the experience of the Japanese merchant marine trying to resupply distant island bases in the Pacific War or the experience of the German armed forces in France during June 1944, when the Northern French railway and airfield network was bombed to swiss cheese standards by the 9th Air Force. Do you think it's now that quadcopters are capable of cheap PGM-like precision attacks even on individuals? 8th Air Force fighters got bored in 1945 and began strafing individual bicyclists hundreds of kilometres away from frontlines in 1945.

What's "new" is that wer're in a brief "the bomber always gets through" pahaes during which there aren't enough counter-drone ("C-UAS") defences, so drones of BOTH SIDES are effective at battlefield interdiction instead of one side establishing low level air superiority/supremacy or both sides defending effectively to diminish the threat. That's about the situation we had in the very early 1930s when bombers were not slower than fighters.

All those improved fortifications, evolved through wartime experience? That's fortifications designed by amateurs who learned lessons by spending blood. There were VASTLY better field fortification schemes back in the 1950's already, but the overwehlming firepower of nukes didn't allow them to become very central to doctrines. Netting not just for concealment, but also for keeping drones out is new, but it's also pointless in face of the heaviest anti-trench munitions (bombs, TOS-1, napalm B).

Tanks get cages to keep FPV drones out? How is that conceptually different from cages to keep hand grenades out?

The frontline with up to 40 km battlefield interdiction poses a different challenge than pre-2022 warfare for breakthrough efforts? Sure, but is it really new, or worse? Breakthroughs against ready defenders were never easy, after all. I actually madke the case that the drone war situation is liberating in a way; suppose the FPV munitions are effective in a radius of 10 to 20 km. Traditional ATGMs were effective in a radius of 0.6 to 4 km mostly, with 2 km being a common practical limit in Ukrainian terrain. Now look at my (very) old text about repulsion and let it sink in. The increased radius of action actually liberates the attacker, he doesn't get channeled! Pre-2022 the same effort looked like this and it was the shorter rnage of the ATGMs that was slowing down the attacker. Now there's no such measures to limit losses to ATGMs. Attackers who would want to breakthrough could shout 'Damn the torpedoes, flank speed ahead!' and the breakthrough could be VERY quick if done well, which includes dealing with the WW2 revival band of mines, anti-tank ditches and gimped dragon's teeth as well as a fires plan that would make 1917's Bruchmüller proud.

I could go on, feel free to bring up true novelties in the comments. I have a hunch I'll reply with a military history analogy.

 


Patton was once asked about how he was such a good general and he replied (paraphrased) that nothing was really new to him during WW2. He knew everything from books already. Such students of military history and art people don't get fooled by fake novelty, but they are RARE.

Don't get fooled by people who claim novelty and impossibility because they don't know the past.

 

related:

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/fact-check-military-hardware-novelty.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/update-ugv-history.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2015/05/another-fact-check-military-hardware.html 

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2023/07/russian-fortifications-present-old.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2025/05/c-uas-on-battlefield-at-very-low.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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2025/05/12

C-UAS on the battlefield at very low altitude

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/2017/08/very-low-level-air-defence-against.html

/2018/05/summary-modern-air-defences-for-europe.html

One might increase the rate of fire of a MG3 back to about 1,500 rpm and use a duplex cartridge (two bullets in one cartridge) for 3,000 bullets per minute rate of fire, 50 per second.*

 

All kinds of drones and most missiles would be hit very quickly and be stopped by such a volume of fire even from a single RCWS. The detection of drones might depend on a quickly rotating (~100 revolutions per minute) AESA radar with such lower power and (by radio band) such a high atmospheric attenuation that it senses drones out to no more than 400 m and cannot be triangulated from more than two kilometres away.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

* 20 mm autocannons with simple HE-PD rounds would be an option for tanks, I dislike the specialised and expensive 30 mm autocannon with HE-PROX rounds solution. One might also stick with the duplex round MG3 approach as long as the tank has a coax gun of more powerful calibre, ideally a .338 chaingun.

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2025/05/08

A mystery about FPVs and tanks

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The FPV (kamikaze drone) threat is by now well-known to those who paid much attention to what's going on in the Russo-Ukrianian War. Yet, there's a mystery that this war cannot tell us anything about:

What if there was a proper breakthrough and a proper exploitation of the same. Mounted forces roam deep and quickly, expoiting that they are not opposed properly. Would the FPV threat be iminished in such a situation, meaning that such exploitation forces need no great C-UAS defences? Or would the movement (dominantly along roads) create turkey shoot conditions for whatever FPV teams are in the area? Just let one drone rise to spot movements, then the turkey shoot begins?

Properly-planned standoff ECM support would rather not be available, after all.

 

And suppose it's neither extreme, but the FPVs still cause much damage; is the exploitation drive still 'worth it'?  Imagine a FPV unit doing one high value target kill per day during static trench warfare conditions, but ten per day during a four-day mobile phase being on the defender side. The FPV unit's lethality would be way up during the enemy's offenisve, but the harm it does might seem like acceptable losses if the breakthrough exploitation bags many prisoners of war, captures much material and conquers a city or two.

The pychological element may be decisive. A FPV unit may run in panic just as any other unit. Or maybe it doesn't - who knows? I suppose nobody, so we won't know until ther eis acutally mobile warfare again. More mobile than the Kharkiv offensive (which wa skinda slow) and more mobile than the Kursk offensive '24 (same). 

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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