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I had a summary of Defence & Freedom (my) theses back in (and up to) 2014:
/2014/05/blog-defence-and-freedom-theses.html
Let's use that to see how good or bad that list looks today.
2007 looks fine to me, save for the fortifications thing. Field fortifications wouldn't work against Westerners, but Russians are incapable enough that they work against them.
2008 I suppose opinions vary about the counter-piracy thing.
2009 I suppose my take on IFVs is still an outlier, despite the failures of BMPs in Ukraine.
2010 looks fine.
2011 The low force density thing is very debatable in light of how the Russo-Ukraine War went down, though I was rather thinking of a different scenario.
2012 The remarks on deconfliction, navies, army aviation and air force combat aviation are still outlier opinions.
2013 I know the opinion on submarines is still an outlier.
2014 They actually began getting ACV six years later, albeit I'll say those are underwhelming.
So 57 theses, only three of them were kinda (though not clearly) refuted by events and six are still very much outlier opinions (even though somewhat supported by events, but events did not change majority opinions).
I actually expected the list to have fared worse.
Maybe I should write a bit about the many "I told you so" theses.
S O
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Just because BMPs can be easily destroyed, does that mean the IFV concept isn't viable? The Ukrainians have a very high opinion of Western infantry fighting vehicles. Even the Bradley and Marder are among their most highly regarded combat vehicles. And there's a world of difference between those and a Puma or Lynx.
ReplyDeleteThe Ukrainians do NOT use the IFVs in the Western way.
DeleteThe German way in particular is to enable a very rapid transition between mounted and dismounted fight in mobile warfare.
The battles in Ukraine even saw IFVs misused for indirect HE fires. They hardly ever appear to fight in platoons, much less in company strength.
They're often being treated as light tanks, I haven't even seen indications that their transport capacity is used much.
When logistics, concealment and other issues forces very low force density combined with unpredictable battlefield situation, universal systems is better than specialists that never reach the density to cover all use cases. In the case of IFV compared to tanks, the superior frontal armor, sabot penetration, larger shells and ammo load doesn't do anything particularly useful. The field fortifications are not likely to be highly resistant against autocannon and artillery fire but still vulnerable to 105~125mm class shell fire, and the force density and engagement duration (of avoiding support fires OODA) means ammo load isn't that big of a issue.
DeleteThe key problem is that a combat vehicle doubles as passenger transport. Optimal for neither and too many souls at risk.
DeleteIFV vs MBT is worse than just letting dismounts use ATGMs, btw. The latter is more effective and leads to lower losses.
20...40 mm autocannons are VASTLY less effective against sturdy buildings than 105...125 mm HE or 105...120 mm HESH.
120...125 mm APFSDS is vastly less susceptible to hard kill APS than any shaped charge-equipped ATGM.
You cannot do overwatch AND storm a village at the same time, so specialisation into mounted combat and protected transportation doesn't really cost much.
I wrote more arguments against IFVs in those four blog posts, feel free to read.
It speaks against the IFV.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with IFVs is that almost nothing speaks FOR them. They never proved their worth in war under conditions where even bad concepts wouldn't have excelled as well.
See the links here for the arguments:
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2022/03/ifvs-are-failing-again.html
The ifv role is to support the tank. So why not a 25 mm gun would be useful to outgun the enemy infantry? To counteract their 20-25 mm antimaterial riffle . And of course to outrange their smaller machine gun?
ReplyDelete