The ideal scout car

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I want to go on record with my opinion about scout cars.

The background is not offensive scouting, certainly not offensive scouting over long distances. The core missions of such scout cars would be rather providing near reconnaissance at 10...20 km distance to friendly combat troops in a mobile land warfare situation (defence against invaders, so on own or allied territory) and defensive reconnaissance along the lines of this.

Both tasks would largely require surveillance (including acoustically) and defeating lightly armoured hostile scouts (BMP-2-like threats at most).

This is also a  relevant blog post  (this is no mistake, despite it seemingly being about something else initially).

The vehicle

4wd cabrio car (polycarbonate windscreen folding forward, tarp weather protection not for use on a mission), electric drive (one electric motor per axle) with range extender engine (even a two-stroke petrol engine without catalytic converter would be militarily acceptable) for rare long marches. A classic forward engine compartment holds the batteries, as an underfloor battery would increase the height of the chassis.

Variable height suspension.

Camouflage paint, camouflage mats, additional camouflage materials (burlap, netting, local plants), including reversible to adapt to two different environments in a matter of minutes. Various civilian tire profiles in use.

This is the ideal configuration; a civilian 4wd SUV could be converted into an acceptable vehicle in a day by field workshop.

Close, but too high and lacking a .50cal.

The crew

A crew of three; driver, commander/dismount and gunner

The equipment

• eLORAN/GPS/Galileo precision navigation
• microphone array (direction finding against tracked vehicles, engine noises, helicopters, mortar shots, gunshots from small arms to tank guns
• IFF interrogator for aerial targets (as the one on the man-portable Stinger launcher)
• IFF interrogator for land vehicles (if that's in use with the army)
• fresh water and provisions for days
• a tactical radio linked to vehicle power supply, allowing to feed info into a battle management system 
• a hand-held thermal viewer + colour camera with GPS/Galileo/laser rangefinder/digital magnetic compass 
• a high powered spotter scope
  
• a small radio for the commander to transmit imagery from the handheld sensor through the tactical vehicle radio into a battle management system
• tablet computer with battle management system / navigation software
  
• collapsible ladder, equipment for fast-roping from a vantage point on a roof
  
• a pintle-mounted 12.7x99 mm machinegun with red dot + thermal sight and SLAP munition
• a few 1 kg anti-tank mines (magnetic fuse, shaped charge warhead, activated by radio signal for the next minute) 
• tools to overcome fences and ditches, break into garages and houses
• possibly unattended ground sensors (radio datalink, GPS/Galileo, battery and possibly additional PV power) mostly to detect traffic along roads (vibration wake-up, sound recording and wide angle photo for ID)
• cheap radiation and chemical agent detector equipment
• the crew itself may have carbines, mostly to deal with hostile stragglers (else pistols would be plenty firepower)
  

The tactics

• These scouts would basically be everywhere behind FLOT*; no need to send scouts out before combat troops move into a certain direction; the scouts are already there and can report what's there and what's not and how usable the routes are.
• Hostile scout vehicles short of main battle tanks could be defeated at about 500 m or more (depends on heading of the target). To upgun to a M621 20 mm gun would further increase this effective range, but I consider this unnecessary.
• Threats would be detected, reported, even indirect fires could be called to defeat temporarily not moving threats.
• The costs per team would be considerable (less than 250 k € should be possible, though), but super affordable compared to IFV-like scout vehicles.
• The team and its vehicle would be super stealthy; silent, low silhouette, well-camouflaged, the vehicle would be easily hidden even in civilian car garages and ISO containers.**
  
• The team has a third person*** to dismount while retaining mobility (driver) and firepower (gunner). The dismounting commander could inspect buildings including bridges and could interact with local civilians to gather information.

There is the question of why no armour? The scout team would need very, very bad luck to be hit by artillery or mortar effects. The weakest weapon that hostile scouts would likely use is a 14.5x114 mm machineguns with about 30 mm RHA penetration. Even a mere vertical all-round protection for the crew (not engine compartment) would amount to more than a ton weight and add much cost. Moreover, any armour at window level would greatly increase the silhouette and this is detrimental to survivability. Many hostile scout vehicles would have 30 mm guns with at least APDS, and to protect against this leads to a well-armoured IFV that cannot be hidden easily at all. The whole armour thing is a super slippery slope towards being big & expensive and thus unavailable in the desirable quantities.

The idea is furthermore that dedicated military vehicles might be used by the army/militia in some quantity, but could be reinforced and replenished by civilian conversions with about identical tactics. Representatives of the latter category should thus also be used on ~10% of the exercises in the field.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Forward line of own troops. Likely not really a "line", and certainly not a straight one. It's just the briefest way to say that they're not infiltrating to scout between hostiles.

**: The option of hiding the vehicle and deploying the acoustic and handheld viewer sensors to an observation post for a dismount is a good reason not to choose a mast-mounted sensor as in the Fennek vehicle.

***: I see absolutely no reason why a volunteer woman would not be suitable for this team, so I did not write "man".

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