2023/01/07

Army luxuries

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I meant to write a blog post outlining the essentials for a European army, focused on deterrence & defence in Europe. It first got unwieldy and then I realised that I was foolish; there are too many such necessities.

So instead, I'll try to write a not necessarily complete list of things that are almost certainly luxuries in European armies. Some of these luxuries are still nice to have, but luxuries and unlikely to justify the budgetary expenses nevertheless. I may later write a brief list of necessities that we don't have.

 

Rifle-proof body armour

Videographic evidence does not show much hard body armour in use in Ukraine, and it appears to be confirmed yet again that high explosive shells, not bullets, are the real killers by a large margin.

/2009/05/body-armour.html

/2009/11/body-armour-update.html

Attack helicopters

Attack helicopters have become a farce over Ukraine due to battlefield air defences that they cannot cope with. They're about as useful as a pickup with a mounted rocket launcher for too small (57...80 mm) rockets, for lobbing rockets into the general direction of villages or fields is their (and Su-25's) standard operating procedure there on both sides of the conflict.

The Western attack helicopter approach emphasises staying close to the ground, expose the platform very little and briefly, find targets with expensive sensors from there (treetop height) and engage them with quick and expensive missiles. This can be done MUCH more easily, with more persistence and for much less budget by a combination of land vehicles with mast-mounted sensors and missile launchers. Both 4x4 vehicles and trailers can be used for this, there's no need for expensive helicopters.

Attack helicopters are extremely dangerous to poorly-equipped insurgents (and survivable against them especially at night), but they have approximately no use for conventional deterrence & defence in Europe.

Heavy lift helicopters

There are 15 ton lorries, 'nuff said. Heavylift helicopters are obscenely expensive to buy and operate. Their occasional quick transport function does simply not justify their obscene costs.

Utility helicopters

Military utility helicopters play a small role over Ukraine. Their greatest usefulness appears to be evacuation of wounded personnel in extremely low altitude flight (thus mostly limited to good visibility conditions). Modern Western utility helicopters range from about USD 12 million to obscenely overpriced. I understand if existing moderate operating expenses utility helicopters are kept in service, but it makes no sense to buy those, even the 'cheapest' ones. European NATO has hundreds of civilian helicopters that can be commandeered and used for casualty evacuation at very low levels in good visibility conditions.

We don't need to spend gazillions on army rotary aviation; we need a reservist scheme for civilian helo pilots and aircraft mechanics.

Area air defences against manned combat aircraft

I argued in favour of such myself AND the Ukrainians depend very much on their S-300 and Buk systems, but I still rate these as unnecessary luxuries TO NATO land forces today.

NATO has so many fighters and so much capability to strike at airbases that it could gain and maintain air supremacy without such anti-platform area air defences. This picture changes a little if we ignore the Americans and assume that the Russians launch a war with a real strategic surprise (one they rebuilt their missile inventory), knocking out hundreds of European combat aircraft on the ground.

Anti-missile defences are a different story. Such defensive missiles (or gunfires) should be cheaper than the targeted munitions (per kill). Both the Israeli Iron Dome approach as well as autocannon-based (30 or 35 mm) approaches appear to be well-positioned to get many deserved orders for protecting rear area point targets against cruise missiles of any kind. Anti-missile defence is more tricky far 'forward', as radiating much with radars is too treacherous there. It provokes artillery fires or missile attacks.

Missiles that were designed to take on high-flying supersonic combat aircraft which feature countermeasures are too expensive for a fight against mere munitions, almost none of which feature countermeasures.

NATO could easily stomach the damage that was done by hundreds of Russian cruise missiles, especially when assuming that some of them would be intercepted by fighters. So even the necessity of anti-missile defences is debatable as long as Russia doesn't have something similar to GUMLRS (such as the Iranian BM-120) in large quantities.

Infantry fighting vehicles

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

Infantry fighting vehicles proved to be not survivable enough in face of anti-tank guided missiles. That may be rectified with hard kill active protection systems (adding even more expenses and maintenance needs), but the issue remains that the infantry needs protected offroad transport capacity a lot more than autocannon fires when tanks are already providing support. The IFV-mounted anti-tank guided missiles are a secondary explosion hazard if carried inside and generally not needed, as the dismounted teams can operate such missiles just as well.

Then again, I am on record as an opponent of the IFV concept.

/2009/06/challenging-ifv-concept-part-1.html

/2009/06/challenging-ifv-concept-part-2.html

/2014/06/challenging-ifv-concept-part-3.html

/2014/06/challenging-ifv-concept-part-4.html

/2022/03/ifvs-are-failing-again.html

MBT direct fire support (in slow-moving attacks)

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1564983903475175424?s=20&t=FZFQqz7j5s-YHZy8uC1YKg

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1564983903475175424?s=20&t=FZFQqz7j5s-YHZy8uC1YKg https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1564983903475175424

The Ukrainians have at the very least occasionally used main battle tanks to provide indirect fires on point targets, with aim corrections based on observation by 'bird's view' drones. The Russians do it as well.

All horizontal targets can be hit by 155 mm howitzer indirect fires and vertical targets (such as building walls) can be hit by tank indirect fires (or by artillery that's close enough).

What fire support roles are left for tanks to fulfil? Suppressive fires with machineguns (could be had with other platforms than tanks, even unmanned ground vehicles) and direct fire support (on targets visible to the tank) that needs to be very quick (including against moving targets).

You don't need the hunter-killer "all in one" approach of the tank for direct fire support to infantry when you can set up the fire support for a not very hasty attack. Even infantry in surprise meeting engagements could be well-supported without tanks, as long as drones and loitering munitions don't get countered. This is more an important insight for those "mobile gun system"-ish direct fire support procurement programs than for legacy main battle tanks. It may still make sense to keep reservist main battle tank units with legacy systems for fire support.

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2010/06/assault-guns-past-and-future.html

Artillery or mortar autoloaders

Autoloaders can increase the rate of fire of howitzers (they cannot increase the rate of fire of mortars, as manual mortar loading is very quick). This comes at the price of technical complexity that provokes high purchase prices, technical failures, high maintenance needs, high operating costs and low readiness.

The Russo-Ukrainian War has shown that having enough artillery munitions, firing well over 100 rounds per day and gun for weeks if not months and small shot dispersion are more important than what NATO artillery and their suppliers publicly obsessed about; high burst rates of fire, with high MRSI* counts.

The really slow-firing M777 and some other towed howitzers and Caesar did well (as would have any 155 mm towed howitzer of the 70's and 80's). 

The ability of a 155 mm artillery piece to fire hundreds of shots in a day for weeks without needing depot-level maintenance is much more important than the burst rate of fire in the first minute or two of firing. Autoloaders are nice to have when they work, but appear to be unnecessary and inadvisable luxury for artillery guns.

Dedicated forward observer vehicles (unless they have a high mast)

Ebpv 90, an almost unarmed dedicated artillery observer vehicle

Dedicated forward observer vehicles without a high mast have no good perspective on the battlefield. They see too little compared to mast-mounted sensors and 'bird's view' drones. Tiny masts such as the one on the German 4x4 Fennek vehicle aren't satisfactory by comparison, either. The very minimum should be a tethered drone (example).

Mortars smaller than 120 mm calibre

Smaller mortars deliver less firepower for about the same personnel requirements and they require about the same logistics support for the same effect. Moreover, smaller calibres almost invariably offer less maximum range, but not much less minimum range. The safety distance (of impacts) to own troops is quite similar as well. Finally, 120 mm offers enough 'bang' to justify a good (proximity airburst) fuse.

Tracked self-propelled guns

Tracked self-propelled guns have much higher procurement and maintenance costs than wheeled SPGs, but they didn't seem to justify this extra effort requirement during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Their losses were on par with towed artillery pieces of the same calibre. The mud periods were the only times when tracked SPGs offered a real advantage over wheeled SPGs that really mattered. Yet driving in mud conditions is very straining for tracked SPGs as well and greatly increases fuel consumption, maintenance needs and wear. So wheeled SPGs being restricted to paved roads for a couple weeks per year seems tolerable given how much less they cost than tracked SPGs.
The tracked SPG's typical advantage of firing with 360° traverse of a turret didn't seem to matter much with modern position-finding and north-finding equipment. The SPGs were usually hiding in woodland or behind (or inside) buildings and move into a firing position when they receive a firing mission by radio (or SatCom). This renders the 360° turret traverse of M109-patterned SPGs unimportant at least in the front-line combat of the current war.

Multiple rocket launchers with unguided rockets

These classic MRLs were used much until they ran out of munitions, but their huge dispersion at distance, their long minimum firing distance and their (dispersion-driven) huge minimum safe distance of their fires to own troops have shown them to be the inferior artillery concept. 

The transition to wheeled multi missile launchers for guided munitions (and possibly short-range heavy warhead rockets along the lines of TOS-1) including air defence missiles and loitering munitions seems to be very advisable.

Heavy unguided anti-tank munitions

The likes of Panzerfaust 3 and RPG-29 were employed in quantity, but didn't appear to score many tank kills. This may be due to video documentation bias, of course. On the other hand, longer-ranged weapons usually exceeded the tank kill count of Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck in 1944/45 whenever both were available. It appears to be normal.

It is debatable whether the repelling (deterring) function of short-ranged AT weapons was super-important and super-effective, but it appears that a sufficient distribution of guided anti-tank missiles (or at least predicted line of sight missiles such as the 800 m range NLAW) and the use of loitering munitions and attack drones can substitute for burdening the infantry with 10...15 kg heavy dedicated anti-MBT munitions that still have only 200...600 m range.
The more lightweight anti-"tank" munitions on the other hand were useful and good enough for keeping BMPs at a distance, enabling the expensive anti-MBT missiles to be focused on actual MBTs when both MBTs and BMPs (IFVs) were present. Even a 67 mm calibre M72 LAW has plenty penetration to deal with a BMP. We could probably go even smaller than that.

Radar-guided anti-tank missiles

It appears that the Russians were indeed too inept to cope with the mid-90's thermal vision approach to anti-tank missile guidance, which keeps astonishing me. That approach has many advantages, so it's an unnecessary luxury to introduce radar-guided anti-tank missiles.

Battlefield surveillance / artillery radars

Such radars pick up movements of personnel and (at greater distances) vehicles. This provides some intelligence on where the enemy is and how active he is, but it can also be used to choose coordinates for artillery fires. The approach is not very long-ranged unless you have a high vantage point (hills or a high building) for the radar.

Mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles (MRAP)

 
These vehicles are very fuel-intensive relative to their usable payload, especially when compared to 8x8 logistic vehicles with protected cabs. Their protection is useful at times, but MRAPs are designed for on-road operation and too often fail on unpaved roads in mud season and offroad. Being de factor road-bound on a battlefield is a risk in its own right.
It makes sense to give wheeled vehicles fragmentation protection, but the protected cabs of 9...15 ton logistics vehicles are much more sensible than the offspring of occupation wars, the MRAPs. This was totally anticipated by just about everyone, of course.

Dedicated counter-artillery radars

There are some in use, but the losses of towed artillery are similar to the losses of protected self-propelled artillery. Counter-artillery radars do not appear to do the job as advertised, or else the towed artillery would have been slaughtered (as it is slower to leave its firing position). In fact, even the short-ranged 105 mm guns proved to be very survivable. 

'Bird's view' drones and often times high vantage point (hill, roof, mast) sensors can pick up artillery firing signatures (flash, smoke) fairly easily at long ranges, around the clock. They are justified for other reasons already, so if they can do the job of spotting artillery (even and especially when it does shoot & scoot), then the case for a dedicated tool becomes very weak.

Dedicated counter-artillery radar may make little sense any more, but some counter-artillery radar modes in multi-purpose radars do make sense, as they would force the enemy artillery into the shoot & scoot behaviour that reduces artillery fire intensity. The "scoot" (movement) part of that tactic also exposes them more to bird's view (drone) observation. Such a 'counter-artillery radar mode' by-product of a battlefield air defence radar may also assist 'bird's view' operators with leads on where to look for targets with high zoom.

It may also make sense to keep rocket/artillery/mortar alerting functions in some multi-purpose radars. This function does not permit to determine the origin of the munitions accurately, but it permits prediction of where it's going to impact. This can be used to alert troops in the danger area seconds before impacts, reducing surprise and giving them a chance to seek cover if not move away. 

I limited this statement to dedicated counter-artillery radars because counter-mortar is a different story. Counter-mortar radars are much smaller, lighter, cheaper, less demanding regarding vehicles and power supply and the OSINT data on mortars does not allow the conclusion that they proved to be very survivable even in face of countering radars. Furthermore, mortar firing signatures (flash, smoke) can be hidden from 'bird's view' sight much more easily than artillery firing signatures.

Radio communications jamming

It appears that triangulation and listening to human-to-human radio traffic is much more valuable than jamming, which also degrades how well your own forces can use the radio frequencies for communication. Other radio frequency jammers than comm jammers have proved to be very useful, though that may be transitory. The useful jammers include jammers that counter the radio datalink of loitering munitions and 'bird's view' drones (if the latter can be jammed, which seems unlikely in the near future).

Headquarter tent & container cities, "fuel farms"

You can't have these within range of guided surface-to-surface missiles. The Russians are soon going to use Iranian GUMLRS (colloquially "HIMARS") missile equivalents. To defend against such missiles becomes too unreliable once the missiles use terminal phase evasive manoeuvres.

/2022/06/hq-issues.html

www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/5-482/Ch7.htm

Big field hospitals

Same story with hospitals (and indeed all red cross markings): The Russian military does not respect the red cross, so it's too dangerous to use  field hospital container & tent cities, and it's even debatable whether we should forego camouflage in favour of using the red cross on white background at all.

Field camps

Field camps are obvious bollocks from wars of occupation against poorly-equipped insurgents. Troops close to a wartime frontline should be housed in civilian buildings, in a dispersed fashion.

Divisional headquarters

It's a war of brigades, and those appear to be rather small (typical of countries with Warsaw Pact traditions). Divisional command made sense when the divisional artillery was able to cover the division's entire frontage with fires and served as the division commander's agile centre of gravity weapon. Nowadays the field telephone and radio nets as well as the command authorities allow for quick support fires beyond a division, the division commander's centralised control over artillery makes little sense at a time when the guy looking at the drone video feed is in a much better position to decide whether and what artillery strike is appropriate.

Long-serving (longer than 2 years) enlisted personnel

The mobilised Ukrainian troops do very well with limited resources. Even ad hoc formed infantry battalions manned by reservists served well even in the very first days and weeks. It is inappropriate to keep enlisted personnel in the services for long just to give superiors more experience in leading. We should instead recruit more volunteers for brief basic military service and improve the military education of the leaders.

Compulsory basic military service

Ukraine defends well against Russia with little resources despite having a mobilised personnel strength of apparently less than one million or slightly more than one million. European NATO alone has about two million men under arms (about half of them in Turkey). We don't need compulsory basic military service for deterrence & defence, albeit I understand that the Baltics would want to make the most of their small populations for their own security and prefer to have troops at home rather than at distant allies.**


S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: Multiple round simultaneous impact. Several shots with different propellant strengths and different elevation angles all impact at the target within a few seconds. The longer the range and the higher the burst rate of fire, the higher the maximum MRSI count can be. How many shells fit into a MRSI attack depends on the distance as well.

**: I'm opposed to "tripwire" forces and thus to the four multinational composite (thus poor cohesion, much friction) brigades in the Baltics and Poland.  I'd prefer to have a NATO land warfare training centre in Poland where the U.S. prepositions one brigade set of hardware and always 3 to 4 national NATO brigades are present for exercises, with spares and a NATO standardised munitions depot complex nearby.

P.S.: You're mistaken if you think that my frequent mention of bird's view drones indicates that i think that they are revolutionary. The principle was used in the early 19th century with balloons, WWI with tethered balloons and aircraft, WW2/Korea/Vietnam with forward observer aircraft and later also with scout helicopters. The real step forward is not the use of multicopters with electric motors; it's that the optronics have become great in the past 20 years. The high resolution, strong zoom and digital data compression enabling video transmission by radio are the real steps forward.

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9 comments:

  1. Much that attack helicopters can do, and a lot that they cannot do, can be done with bayraktar-sized drones instead.
    I think your opinion on artillery is influenced too much by the poor performance of russian counter battery fire. It's not a given that will remain as it is.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would like to add in a couple of things later but focus for now on the drone bit.

    One of the central elements of the modern drone seems to be greater potential of accumulation in knowhow by institution and especially manpower. I'm pretty sure that especially the Ukrainians have now a considerable number of "Experten".

    To your list of technical improvements I would also like to add (multiple) very large, high definition monitors with low energy consumption. It is likely that they greatly ease intelligence and cooperation.

    Firn

    P.S: I would also argue that those quad-copters enable the military use of lower-quality optics and thermals as they can observe more often also from a shorter distance. In relative terms those are of course much better then two decades ago.

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  3. "Mortars smaller than 120 mm calibre

    Smaller mortars deliver less firepower for about the same personnel requirements ..."

    Automatic mortars in 82mm might make sense in some cases along with usual classics but for quite some time the first mortar thing to ask is: "Why not a 120?"

    It was a good question in 1944 and the world is much richer, accessible and motorised.

    I was recently rethinking two ideas for the classic 120mm smoothbore:

    a) Simple industrial robots as automatic loaders:

    Obviously easier when mounting the mortar on a platform with stabilisers which can be lifted and dropped on the bed of say a truck. More difficult to pull off in a dug in position, but possible if the robot arm has an intelligent camera system.

    A larger painted muzzle cone should help too.

    b) Heavy rocket-propelled guided projectiles:

    The amount of shell propellent should be as high as possible while staying below the normal recoil (soft ground, vehicles!) and pressure limits of the tube.

    At a safe distance the rocket starts to accelerate and the guiding phase starts. Warhead might be sacrificed to some degree but the whole shell might be twice as heavy and only liftable by two persons with a special tool - or the robot.

    This is one advantage of simple muzzle loading mortars compared to modern breech-loaded artillery.

    Firn

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Those automatic mortars simply don't exceed the 16 rpm for 120 mm and 20 rpm for 81/82 mm that can be had with a well-drilled crew. Automatic laying between the shots is valuable, mortar autoloaders aren't.
      Mortars smaller than 120 mm are simply not cost-efficient and hardly any more mobile in practice.

      160 mm mortars exist with various loading approaches, but they lack a good range and require just as much a motor vehicle as would a 105 mm howitzer or 155 mm stub howitzer. The 160 mm munition is not NATO standard.
      The only real advantages would be that 160 mm mortars have cheaper barrels and the maximum elevation is 10° higher.

      Delete
  4. P.S: I should have written up to twice the weight of a normal shell.

    An unguided variant could be well suited for some sort of SMart submunition.

    It would help to reach out in depth and width against high value or time critical targets, for example as counter-battery (all sorts of mortars, tanks used as mobile artillery, AFV attacking a nearby sector, etc)

    ReplyDelete
  5. The last point is obviously completely wrong, and just shows your ideological bias.

    Ukraine would have never had the huge number of reserves or lasted as long in this war if it wasn't for their system of conscription.

    This war actually clearly demonstrated that conscription is still useful and the western project of "professionalization" was a miscalculation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's proven right for NATO.
      Regarding Ukraine, it's all about getting incentives for brief military service right.
      I admit that it's not proven for Ukraine and I wasn't very clear that I was mostly thinking of NATO&EU.

      Delete
    2. Why is it "proven" for NATO?

      If we ever get attacked we will be in the same situation as Ukraine now.

      Delete
    3. NATO has about 1.4 million troops in Europe alone, plus about that many in North America. The Russian armed forces numbered about 800k + maybe 600k by mobilisations.
      Ukraine has apparently much less than a million troops after mobilisation.

      Subtract conscripts (mostly Turks) and you end up with enough volunteer and career troops in NATO to easily defend successfully.

      2021 Ukraine was a dwarf in regard to military might. It's utter bollocks to claim that NATO is in the same situation.

      Delete