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I noticed some not fully idiotic people on Twitter are praising Hegseth.
That seems ludicrous considering the overt stupidity and incompetence among other things, but bear with me - there's a reason.
Consider this: The status quo is a set of compromises. These compromises have upsides and downsides. Many (maybe all) of these compromises are suboptimal.
Now imagine you're a zealot regarding a single issue or a handful of issues. You're vehemently opposed to the downsides of certain compromises and you may actually be correct about that, too. Being a zealot, you apply a tunnel vision. The things you care the most about get weighted like 95%, all else 5% - at least until something terrible happens to you or people whom you love.
Then there's Hegseth acting as wrecking ball against decency and integrity, wrecking some of those compromises without replacing them with better compromises.
The tunnel vision guy that you are notices that Hegseth wrecked compromises that caused downsides that you zealously hate and campaigned against. You apply the issue weighing of 95% and suddenly Hegseth looks like the saviour to you.
Meanwhile, people who pay attention at a more wide angle easily see that Hegseth is worse than even the warmonger Rumsfeld, who deservedly burns in hell right now.
S O
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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
ReplyDeleteThe IFV role was originally something else, this autocannon combat vehicle focus is new and misguided.
DeleteORIGINALLY, the concept was for a very agile switching between tanks leading infantry follows in tank-friendly terrain and infantry leading tanks follow in infantry-friendly terrain. Said infantry (company) needs protected offroad vehicles to match the mobility of the tank (company) in the terrain. This meant bulletproofed and tracked with similar hp/ton.
Sometimes the two would split; a fixing force and a flanking force or a fire base and an assault team.
So the infantry with its AFVs would sometimes (though not far away from the tanks) also do mounted combat. More importantly, their AFVs could serve as base fo fire after the infantry dismounted - that's what the 20 mm gun was for. And a frontal protection against anti-tank guns (nowadays ~ ATGMs) was asked for (but this proved to be not feasible without too much effort).
So originally, the IFV was supposed to move infantry to the fight at the same mobility as the tank (and light protection). It was meant to serve sometimes as fire support TO THE DISMOUNTED INFANTRY.
Fire support to tanks never made sense. You could give tanks an autocannon, but it's rarely done because they can deal with almost everything (outside of valleys) using main gun and machineguns.
The IFV doctrine as we have it in the West is peacetime nonsense borne out of theory and small&unrealistic training grounds as well as originating in a lack of self-discipline (excessive wishlist writing).
I'd posit the opposite. We still need infantry. They still need transport - and fire support and defense. Trained infantry die, are expensive and can't readily be substituted with lower quality conscripts. But mechanization slows their death rates a lot. It's the cheap solution.
DeleteTanks may be less important than ever but an IFV remains useful and it has a clearly useful improvement path. Every IFV should be a VSHORAD. Every one should have APS radar linked to its autocannon to shoot down observation drones and FPVs.
That's why I argue in favour of APCs, but the extra expense, compromise, distraction and loss of transport capacity of an IFV is a wrong concept.
DeleteDistributed C-UAS should be done via machinegun RCWS. We need it on all kinds of non-combat vehicles (not just for C-UAS) anyway, and that's realistic only if we standardise on a mass-produced RCWS. It makes no sense to have an autocannon boutique item in parallel once the RCWS is dirt cheap (under 100k €).
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2023/06/a-praise-for-disrespected-battle-taxi.html
note the date!
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2017/08/very-low-level-air-defence-against.html
Infantry is the entire point of an armored vehicle designed to transport infantry. Things that reduce the amount of infantry carried, complicate training, challenge employment, and increase cost is counterproductive. If the argument is for a different type of combat vehicle, perhaps something like a BMPT, then that may be a discussion worth having.
DeleteGAB
Maybe the difference between APC and IFV should be communicated differently.
DeleteIt boils down to (rounded figures)
~40% less dismounting troops carried at
~100% higher cost due to the turret
for nothing but an increase of firepower from a machinegun (which actually could be a 30x113 mm with a gun like ASP-30) to a high velocity 25...40 mm autocannon.
The often added ATGM makes no sense outside of steppes and flat deserts because the dismounting team can employ ATGMs with more frequent surprise and with greater survivability.
It's IMO clearly not worth the extra expense. 4x or 5x the cost per dismount is not affordable for a large army, and small armies don't win national or alliance defence wars.
The same applies to undisciplined wishlist products like the mobile house Boxer.
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2014/11/newest-plans-for-more-gtkmravboxer.html
We need an APC that costs as much per dismount seat as a good car, not as a family home!
there are pros and con's to everything, having said that i also favor the apc, ifv's designs work great as cavarly vehicles though. Infantry and tanks need to fight their own separate battles, infantry in a modern mechanized army is there to fight in closed terrain that tanks cant clear, they dismount on top of the obcjective and proceed to fight as infantry, thats what they are there for, if you want to fight mounted you use tanks, also tanks and ifv's for tactical reasons need to move a around a lot and infantry should be nowhere near those heavy armored vehicles that are also shooting discarding sabots rounds all over the place.
DeleteAgain; the original concept for IFV was to not only reduce infantry losses in assault by half (which APCs did in WW2) and to allow for a very quick switch between tanks leading the fight in tank-friendly terrain and infantry leading the fight in infantry-friendly terrain. It was about maintaining a high tempo of advance by having the right tools for both situations in the battlegroup/Kampfgruppe.
DeleteIFvs in mounted combat was about either infantry shooting out of the vehicle (obsolete due to poor effective range) and about giving some support fires to dismounted infantry (base of fire).
To fight AFVs with APFSDS and ATGMs was not originally part of the concept and makes no sense due to costs, parallel existence of MBTs on the battlefield and superiority of dismounted ATGM employment over a mounted one.
You won the argument with "40% less infantry..."
DeleteFor the USA, GAO certainly pounded the point that the Bradley was built without a clear doctrine. Other armies may have different histories. The confused training priorities in IFV units is astonishing.
A bulldozer blade, stick blade, or mine plow is probably more mission appropriate for the AFV than a stablized turret with autocannon and ATGM. Cost is simply insult to injury.
GAB
Well, to be fair, the 40% rounded figure is disputable.
DeleteA big Marder IFV carries 7 dismounts, with commander dismounting and no ATGM carried inside 8 dismounts.
Meanwhile, the much smalller and cheaper tracked APC in German service during the 70's (M113, noticeably less mobile than Marder, so not a flawless substitute) carried 11 passengers (also 2 men staying in the vehicle). The IIRC even cheaper 6x6 APC Fuchs carried 10.
Meanwhile, the conversion of CV90 IFV to APC supposedly merely added one passenger.
A conversion of Bradley IFV (7 or 8 dismounts depending on whether Cdr dismounts) to APC would likely yield 10 dismounts total. 13 if jump seats were used.
A conversion of Bradley IFV (7 or 8 dismounts depending on whether Cdr dismounts) to APC would likely yield 10 dismounts total, 11 if a jump seat was used.
see figures 2 & 3 here:
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA586994.pdf
So conservatively that's 8 to 10 = 20% loss of passengers with IFV. Optimistically that's 7 to 11 = 36% loss.
But this is for a vehicle that wasn't designed from start as an APC. I think two jump seats would be doable and all ATGMs and big Panzerfaust/Bazooka rounds (bigger than a LAW) should be stored outside due to secondary fire and explosion hazard.
Small explanation: The commander is often not counted as a dismount. This happens when doctrine treats the IFV as a combat vehicle rather than as an infantry transport. The German doctrine was that the commander dismounts from Marder, but Puma is more of a combat vehicle and doctrine may have changed without my knowledge.There's no such confusion potential with one-man turret vehicles, for then driver and gunner aren't dismounts.
The temptation to keep a two-man turret fully crewed (2+driver) to make full use of the vehicle's combat abilities only got bigger during the early 90's when high end IFVs got very expensive upgrades with thermal imagers rivalling the best MBT thermal imagers. The 2nd man in the turret also increases survivability by more reliable detection of threats, which of course matters little to an APC that usually withdraws from sight after the infantry dismounted.