Armoured raids fuel logistics

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Let's have a quick thought experiment: How deep could an armoured battlegroup raid (including a fighting withdrawal)?

The Leopard A4 has a "road range" of approx. 500 km (it differs a little from vehicle to vehicle, and this isn't comparable to the range metrics of a private car). The first approximation is that the raid could go 250 km deep.

Leopard 2A4 (c) böhringer friedrich (unchanged)

 

But the raid wouldn't be all on roads, so let's use the mixed surface range from the Swedish trials that I wrote about ages ago. The practical range was then 167 km. Later Leopard 2 versions are all heavier, so they would probably not even reach 150 km in such a test. So let's say the 2nd approximation is that the raid could go about 83 km deep.

Such a raid would not go linear, of course. IIRC a rule of thumb from WW2 operations was that you drive 100 km to get 50 km forward. The third approximation is thus that the raid could go about 42 km deep.

There was an old rule of thumb from aviation to always have 25% extra fuel in order to not run out of fuel in case of headwinds, navigational errors - stuff happens. Let's apply a 20% safety margin to the armoured raid - so one 1/6th less range. The fourth approximation is thus that the raid goes to a depth of merely 35 km.

A tank raid may be unattractive - who wants to give up terrain, after all? So maybe one is more interested in just advancing - but you cannot advance to the limits of your fuel without excessive risks, so an armoured battlegroup advance would still not go 2x35=70 km, more likely the limit is near 50 km.  This figure could be pushed up by driving more on road as the Russians did in February 2022 (risky and not promising), but not beyond 100 km.

A tank is famously characterized by protected firepower with mobility on the battlefield; the famous triad of firepower, mobility and protection (Germans sometimes add "Führungsfähigkeit" as 4th pillar, which is about human action, sensors and communications).

Sadly, the neglect of the variable "range" in "mobility" limits its mobility to the battlefield. Operational actions beyond the battlefield into areas without battle-ready opposing forces is hardly possible without the support of fuel-carrying logistic vehicles. So how many offroad-capable (8x8 or 10x10) logistics vehicles with diesel fuel would accompany the battlegroup? How many at least bulletproofed such vehicles (protection also for the diesel fuel, not just for the cabin) do we have? AFAIK the count is zero.

The consequences of fighting opposing forces of low capability in sandy regions and especially of training on tiny unrealistic army training grounds are merciless. Logistics is about supplying, carrying and living off the land. We need to carry more fuel for more mobility, for else even a frontline breakthrough could not be exploited decisively.

The German military of WW2 was sometimes unable to stop Red Army offensives by fighting the spearheads and resorted to accelerating that they ran out of supplies instead, moving the culminating point in their favour. Ground attack aircraft did better shoot up supply transport on the road than to try destroy the very difficult tank targets in the field. American logistics vehicles deliveries (Lend-Lease) allowed the Soviets to push the culminating point farther ahead of their railheads. This is how you think about operational art when you don't have overwhelming firepower, one side has the ability to break through and you're not mentally restricted to tactical peacetime training on small training areas.

 

related:

/2015/06/supply-flow-demands-and-logistical.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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A simplified view on WW2 Eastern Front

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There are occasionally distorting publications that overemphasize certain things or pieces of equipment in conventional warfare, and WW2 in particular. I will try to guide the reader's thoughts about such subjects to certain essentials.

From the German perspective, this is what was a must-have (beyond mere sustainment and trivial things) to defeat the Soviet forces in WW2:

#1: Capture many POWs

The primary tool for this were highly mobile (enough suitable vehicles and fuel) "fast divisions" (not just tank divisions) that enabled encirclements with not too porous pocket walls.

#2: Kill or maim many Red Army soldiers

The tool for this was ~80% indirect fires; howitzers and mortars. The quantity of available HE munitions was more important than qty of guns. The conflict saw much more KIA than POW in 1942-1945, as the Germans had lost the combination of factors that enabled grand encirclements.

#3: Reduce Red Army operational mobility and reduce its supply throughput

The tool for this was (night) bombing or railway infrastructures and especially "railheads" (where supplies were unloaded). The venerable He 111H of 1940 was fine for this even as late as 1945 on the Eastern Front.

#4: Stall Red Army attacks

Post-WW2 literature recounted that more losses were inflicted on Red Army assault troops by shelling marshalling locations prior to the assault than during the assault. About half of the defeated Red Army attacks were stalled before the small arms fields of fire of the German infantry. So this is in part about #2, but also very much about military intelligence.

#5: Break tank attacks

The most important tools for this were by far two basic types of long 7.5 cm cannons; one anti-tank gun (L/46 barrel) and one for AFVs (L/48), which foolishly used different cartridge formats. They proved to be effective enough even in 1945.

Such armaments could have been available in the mid 30's (two such guns existed then) already.

#6: Keep friendly losses bearable

A steel flak vest would have helped greatly, as would have a widespread availability of APCs for infantry assaults and general transportation on the last mile. Most important was proper infantry training, though. 6 month training binds many NCOs, but it leads to much lower casualty rates than 6 weeks training.

 #7: Good quality leadership that doesn't waste personnel and material with gross violations of operating principles (Einsatzgrundsätze).

This included to some degree good communications including radio tech.

 

This may all seem terribly obvious, but it wasn't obvious enough. Different compromises were made, and that led to military disaster.

You can deduct the importance of things during that campaign from these 7 (8 with sustainment) pillars. I suppose that they are still relevant.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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Road march speeds in WW2

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I remembered some data from road march speeds during WW2 (and the 50's) and found something curious. First, let me tell you  about the data:

The historical daytime road march speeds* varied from event to event, but the rules of thumb were

 

4 kph ~ 30 km/day

marching on foot, horse-drawn carts and artillery (not taking into account resting times)

 

60 km/day

European-style horse cavalry (10 kph for slow canter and up to 20 kph for fast canter for a brief forced march)

 

18...20 kph

bicyclist troops

 

20+ kph / minimum 200 km/day (rarely done 150+ km)

This applies to both tracked and half-track motor vehicles. Crew and passengers were exhausted by vibrations and noise. Both troops and vehicles needed many maintenance stops.

This speed probably also applied to motor-towed artillery, as artillery ordnance had poor suspensions and was thus often speed-limited, such as up to 30 kph except in emergencies. Even today most towed artillery is limited to 60 kph.

 

40+ kph / minimum 300 km/day

wheeled motor vehicles (likely 50...60 kph on good paved roads)

Wheeled motor vehicles had a substantial road march speed advantage (likely more pronounced compared to tracked vehicles than just 3:2*). Yet there was no substantial use of all-wheeled motorized formations as quick reaction reserves. They weren't even undisputedly dominant among armoured reconnaissance in Europe.

The disadvantage of a-wheeled armoured fighting vehicles goes beyond just inferior soft soil mobility compared to tracked and most half-tracked vehicles. The first tanks became shell-proofed instead of just bulletproofed by 1937, a move that wheeled armoured vehicles never matched. They have a too large armoured area compared to the more compact same-weight tracked designs (same problem as with half-tracks unless you reduce the wheeled front to an unprotected skeletonised structure). Armouring wheeled vehicles up to 60+ mm steel would make their ground pressure unacceptable on soft soil (true to this day, despite much better tires and CTIS).

So the wheeled armoured vehicles were not able to prevail in the gargantuan military experiment of the Second World War, despite attempts and already-understood hard soil/road mobility advantages. Even the ability of 4x4 motor vehicles to tow anti-tank guns and the ability to move even divisional field artillery portée (carried for march, set up like towed guns for firing) or as self-propelled guns on wheeled motor vehicles did not lead to such quick formations.

This begs the question why exactly they became such a fashion in 1999...2003 and later (post-2003 rather 4x4 and 6x6 MRAPs than 8x8 APCs). The Kosovo and Pristina deployment embarrassments and armies panicking about "relevance" cannot be the full explanation. Buying all those vehicles was really expensive, so I doubt the advantage in operating costs over tracked vehicles was a strong real argument, either.

The introduction of central tyre inflation systems, wider tyres and improved self-locking differentials did reduce the disadvantage of wheeled vehicles on soft soils, but their rise in weight more than countered this.)

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: I mostly remembered these, but checked Middeldorf/Handbuch der Taktik just to be safe. The minimum 200 km and minimum 300 km figures stem from it, I think both downplay the wheeled motor vehicle mobility of the time. A ratio of 200:450 seems much more plausible during that period. The cruise speed was double and the need for maintenance breaks was lesser with wheeled vehicles. Both tracked vehicles at 200 km an wheeled vehicles at 400+ km would have required one refuelling break, but refuelling was possible by decentralised use of jerry cans and fuel drums.

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Modern trench warfare

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The Russo-Ukrainian War revealed many weaknesses of the Russian armed forces, including inexcusable ineptitude in trench war (both layout of field fortifications and assaults).

At the same time, it did expose that the Ukrainians appear to have a very limited skill set as well. Their offensive skill appears to be limited (= they didn't show more yet) to attacks with limited objectives and pushing on rearguards while the opposing force retreats (around Kherson autumn '22).

 

There's plenty equipment in their possession that would enable more than that; artillery, tanks and BMP IFVs could be used to form forces for rapid breakthrough (advancing 10 km in mere hours) followed by exploitation (most reasonably advancing to Azov sea or a two-pronged encirclement) and widening the breakthrough by rolling up defence lines left and right (the frontal instead of 360° defence orientation of Russian field fortifications is among their visible mistakes).

 

We saw something similar in the Iraq-Iran War (Gulf War 1980...1988). Both sides had all the tools for mechanised warfare, but were unable to fight better than European armies in 1916.

 

An army can be reasonably competent, yet still have a very incomplete repertoire. Rapid mechanised warfare is among the most demanding forms of land warfare (though let's forget about the American talk about how difficult combined arms is - they complicate everything because they deal with their own issues).

 

The rapid advances of 1940 and 1941 are technically very feasible, but hardly any army (maybe nowadays none) can actually execute those any more. Manstein's forces raced about 300 km in four days to establish a Dvina bridgehead. The invasions of Iraq were slow by comparison, despite modern motor vehicles being much faster and logistics vehicles having much higher capacity (thus better road usage efficiency).

The normal mode of army operation appears to be very different from such rapid advances. It appears that superior firepower application for higher attrition during a static phase is the dominant approach. This serves not only to wear down the opposing forces so much that they become progressively less competent; it also serves as shaping operation for a later advance by demoralising the opposing forces, by temporarily disabling their headquarters and by destroying high value targets such as high-powered radio frequency jammers or battlefield air defence assets. We saw this in 1991 and 2022 very clearly.

The advance phase is then much less ambitious and rapid, thus less "overrunning" than the advances in 1940 & 1941. It's rather a shallow push into softened defences (in Ukraine) or a methodical advance with security efforts against opposing forces that put up a fight that's disproportionally small compared to their nominal strength (in Iraq). The artillery has largely the purpose to suppress or neutralise during the advance phase, whereas it's almost all about lethality (remember how popular that buzzword is in the U.S. armed forces?) during the static phase.

NATO probably likes this; it has good reason to expect a superiority in air/ground attack, its air forces would need some time to wear down radar-based battlefield air defences, rapid advances would multiply interoperability issues among the multinational forces of NATO and it has (at least in U.S. stocks) many guided artillery munitions. The biggest issues in this context are the small size of 'dumb' artillery munitions stocks and that NATO armies are rather weak on infantry and thus not so good at holding a wide frontage.

This dominant approach to warfare is also a slow approach to warfare, though. You cannot win a war in three weeks if you first soften up the opposition over four months before you begin to advance.

We could cut some military expenditures if we accept that we're really only competent enough for such a land war model of static phase with attrition by firepower followed by brief phase of advance.

For starters, the IFV concept isn't meant for this way of advancing. Moreover, tanks don't need to be built for Blitzkrieg if they are meant to support infantry. They would better be built for 98% indirect fires and 2% rapid reaction fires during overwatch. We don't need to mechanise things like battalion command posts or passive electronic warfare (direction finding) gear. To add an armoured vehicle to these makes hiding more difficult and may actually reduce their survivability. We would need armoured transport vehicles for moving things and people on the last couple kilometres where the opposing forces may observe the movement of said supplies and people. This means APCs with folding seats or benches, preferably (band)tracked, with armour against artillery fragmentation and defences against drones (loitering munitions). Nobody needs a turret with autocannon and gadgets on this, especially not if that reduces the volume available for transportation.

Infantry might be divided between trench infantry and (rarely in action) assault infantry then, not some general infantry/mountain/para/marine/mechanised differentiation and there's certainly no reason to emphasise any "light" or "airmobile" role.

The logistics need to be three- to four-staged in such a trench war;

• (transportation by sea or rail)
• transportation by civilian lorries
• transportation by military lorries within artillery range (40...120 km depending on opposition)
• transportation by protected off-road vehicle within observed / FPV range (2...10 km)
  

The supplies need to be compatible; 

• 20 ft ISO containers
• military lorries with DROPS/PLS/MULTI load handling equipment can either take the container directly or pull a big pallet out of it
• smaller pallets or boxes that fit into/onto vehicles for the last few kilometres
  

A breakthrough operation should not be made visible days in advance by massing of vehicles and supplies or by suspiciously increased fires. The logistical system should thus be a bit deceiving; emptied containers could be left standing and removed only much later. This would make it invisible when more supplies get stocked in one sector of the front for a breakthrough operation. Everything within artillery range needs to be dispersed (low value supplies such as diesel fuel, S-wire, construction materials) or hidden from detection (certainly all high value munitions).

Battlefield air defences would consist of very low level counter-UAV and of rear area intercept of precision rockets to span an umbrella of protection over clusters of high value targets (brigade supply depots, brigade HQ, important bridges, high powered radars).

The forces could be trained for limited repertoires instead of pretending we could do it all:

• Infantry brigades to fortify, hold and slowly push forward a frontline (few combat AFVs)
  
• Independent artillery regiments for larger calibre main effort breakthrough & counter-offence firepower (could be substituted by airpower)
• Small and agile armour brigades for rapid exploitation of breakthroughs and for flank counterattacks against breakthroughs, worst case mission rearguard during a withdrawal
  

- - - - -

 

One objection is totally obvious: This would be a force design to fight the current war ("the last war"). There are two problems with such a force design; the next war may be different and the very different strengths of NATO would let the current war look very differently if NATO was fighting itself.

Regarding the latter issue; the mentioned land forces design approach suits NATO's air power and missile strengths very well. Regarding the more general 'preparing for the last war' argument:

• There's hardly any good reason for Europeans to fight a land war far away from their continent. Thus European (great power) war scenarios are the only ones that really matter. The toying around of the British and French governments in faraway places didn't never yield net benefits to the British and French nations for more than a hundred years by now.
• The war in Ukraine actually looks eerily similar to WW1, WW2, the recent wars in the Caucasus area, the Iraq-Iran War '80...'88. It's not a one-off. Moreover, preparing for "the last war" was historically not a bad idea if said "last war" was a conventional one. Lessons learned in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/05 and the Boer Wars (the conventional stages of the latter) should have been respected more by European armies until 1914. A U.S. Army still mentally, organisationally and materially configured to fight in 1950 as it did in 1945 would have done much better in the Korean War. Besides, look at our armies; they use formations not very much unlike the tank divisions and American infantry divisions of WW2.

Much of my past writing assumed a mediocre degree of military competence on part of the Russian Armed Forces and thus I concluded that defensible frontlines are unrealistic in the early phase of a hot Russia-NATO conflict. The observations from the Russo-Ukrainian War indicate that defensible frontlines are still a valid concept against Russian Armed Forces, and they offer risk mitigation and cost-cutting potential for NATO (cheap territorial reserve infantry formations were used by Ukraine to hold the frontline).

The much more demanding concepts that I wrote about around 2011 might work brilliantly, but are more demanding and thus not the most cost-efficient approach to deterrence & defence by NATO against Russia.

The relatively affordable forces of the line make much sense at least until autonomous drones take over land warfare.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Zentraler Sanitätsdienst / medical services in a military

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According to the Bundeswehr itself, the central medical service of the Bundeswehr counts 19,860 personnel out of a total of 183,116 (31st July 2022). This does not include soon-to-be officers who are studying at universities, those are counted separately. The personnel share is thus 10.8%. The Heer has a 34.3% share only! This is insane. The constitutional mission of the Bundeswehr is defence, not being a self-licking ice cone.

This large share is not all due to the greater ease of recruiting (particularly for officers, as they can easily transition into high-paying civilian jobs after their volunteer term). The Bundeswehr does traditionally maintain an oversized medical branch, and it did protect itself well against the otherwise widespread outsourcing to civilian contractors.

Overpriced, overweight, oversized MEDEVAC - a nightmare

 

(c) Wolpat

I will propose an entirely different way of doing business that would provide better care* AND reduce costs. But first, let me make a statement appraising the extremely important role of army medical services:

The confidence of the fighting men in getting good and timely medical treatment is an extremely valuable boost to morale. The effect of seeing a comrade in pain with a leg bone shattered by a bullet turns into sheer horror if you think that he'll either bleed to death, get his arm amputated or die in agony due to wound infections. Small unit leaders can get the minds of his comrades back on track to pursue a mission if the wounded man's pain gets treated (so he stops screaming), his bleeding stopped and blood loss compensated with intravenous liquid (better things than saline solution are available) supply. He needs to be moved away for medical treatment properly, and well-informed troops will understand that the survival rate can be near-100% if wounded men arrive at a surgical hospital within an hour, as even the really bad cases have a good chance of survival if they arrive there alive.

The army needs to take care of its soldiers and doing so does indeed help accomplishing missions. I don't doubt that at all, it's just that the bloated peacetime medical service is largely unnecessary and partially even detrimental to this.

 

So here's how I would do it (or rather, this is a first order proposal for a long-term transition):

(First, a precondition; the German military is for deterrence & defence, not for military adventure bullshit on distant continents. Any deployment outside of geographic Europe and NATO-included territories should be banned (save for tiny 2-men military observer missions).)

 

Every soldier has to join an ordinary Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung (regulated health insurance, the most common kind of health insurance in Germany) and the Bundeswehr pays 100% (rather than the normal 50% employer co-pay) for the basic health insurance (no co-pay for any extras, but 100% reimbursement for dental treatments after service-related dental injuries and for certain jobs also 100% co-pay for eye surgery for improved vision). Illnesses and injuries in peacetime would thus overwhelmingly be dealt with by civilian medical care capacities.

The peacetime medical personnel gets reduced to

• One medical doctor per battalion-sized garrison, ideally with a civilian government-employed medical doctor (Amtsarzt) as helping out as backup. This medical doctor (actually no doctor degree required) gives medical courses at the garrison, confirms when a soldier is really too sick for work and is part of the battalion HQ.
  
• One combat medic with a combat medic backpack (and additional stuff stored in motor vehicles) per almost every** platoon meant for employment on the battlefield (not a member of the medical branch)
  
• Soon-to-be reservists on basic training
  
• Reservists on two-week refresher exercise
• A tiny, tiny overhead at whole Bundeswehr level administration for medical topics, mostly busy trying to introduce improvements (methods, tools, consumables, vehicles) and getting necessary procurement initiated.
  

(No medical doctors would be needed for the navy, for I would disband the useless service.)

The mobilised/wartime medical support would look like this:

Every non-officer in the Bundeswehr completes a full First Aid course (with a theoretical and practical test that needs to be passed!) every 2nd year, army personnel additionally receives combat injury-specific courses during the other years (also biannually, also with mandatory pass test). All personnel has a personal injury kit (mostly stored in upper leg pouches due to the low weight) and at least one canteen with (ideally sterilised) water (essential for treating white phosphorous wounds, for example).

Combat medics at platoon level stop external bleeding, replace blood loss (avoid volume shock), treat injury pain, provide quick assembly stretchers and arrange for casualty evacuation together with the assistant platoon leader. These combat medics would still be armed with a self-defence subcarbine with 100 m iron sights and carry maybe 2x20 rounds for it. Some platoon combat medics would receive secondary training as a signaller, to watch radio traffic for the platoon leader when the primary signaller is not available. Infantry combat medics would additionally carry non-munitions supplies such as batteries and not have an active combat role (other than keeping an eye on radio traffic and the back).

Battalion battlegroups have a bandaging station with a medical doctor and a few medics. They provide extra blood loss compensation, improve the blood loss stop and take care of burn wounds to limit the risk of infections. These bandaging stations/vehicles are the transfer point between casualty evacuation (CASEVAC***, transport by ordinary vehicle) to medical evacuation (MEDEVAC, using a dedicated vehicle with a medic taking care of the wounded during transportation - usually 4x4 vehicles).  They need to be highly mobile and should generally match the mobility of the battlegroup (so at least two 4x4 vehicles of less than 8 tons gross weight with 1.2 m maximum fording depth ability, better a 20 ft ISO container on a 8x8 universal container/pallet transport vehicle with protected cab). I would prefer complete camouflage over Red Cross markings for these vehicles, as the Russian military doesn't respect the Red Cross anyway.

We should not rely on helicopters for MEDEVAC, but (mostly civilian) helicopters could be commandeered for the purpose (with a new crudely-applied paintjob) - maybe their employment is not too risky, after all. No gold-plated nightmares like NH90 would even only be maintained in service, neither for MEDEVAC nor for CASEVAC.

An (the) army corps maintains two pairs of leap-frogging (moving alternatingly) mobile surgical hospitals. These would not be container & tent villages, but rather prefer to make use of civilian buildings with man-movable equipment (same as headquarters above battalion). Tents would be backups that should be avoided. Such a mobile surgical hospital would be the place for surgical treatment (including for eye and burn injuries), largely drawing on civilian emergency room experience of their personnel. Much attention would be on maximising the survival rates of highest priority patients, so these surgical hospitals have to be within range for the golden hour for battlefield injuries of almost all combat troops (not forward scouts). The primary job of these mobile surgical hospitals would be to make the patients ready for transportation by civilian medical transport vehicles to civilian hospitals. It would take care of all patients until they can be transported. This explains why we'd need leap-frogging hospitals; whether the army corps advances or withdraws or simply moves laterally to a different region; one hospital of the pair would stay behind with those patients that cannot be moved except in most dire emergencies. The exact required quantity of hospitals is driven by the operations area of the Corps (all combat formations within one hour radius of a mobile surgery hospital) and this leapfrogging (x2).

The MEDEVAC vehicles and their crews (for movement of wounded to the mobile surgical hospitals) would form each one MEDEVAC Company per mobile surgical hospital, consisting almost entirely of reservist drivers and reservist medics.

Battalion-level garrison medical doctors exist as in peacetime (though typically being reservists in wartime) unless the garrison is largely empty (it might be in use for refresher training for reserves in wartime).

And that's it. The use of civilian medical care in peacetime improves the care and reduces costs, while the wartime strength of the medical service would largely depend on reservists, especially regarding medical doctors.

The key challenge would be to recruit the medical doctors and medics who would normally work in the civilian world, but be available as reservists. This is so far being done by giving people contracts for 17 years including the time when they study medical jobs at civilian universities.

We'd need to apply a different motivation than providing medical training while paying them on the job for many years. I basically propose to pay only as much as necessary; they get subsidies for their years at a civilian university and become reserve officers (medical doctors for surgery/emergency care and for eye emergency care) and reserve non-commissioned officers (medics) with little basic military training and a two-week refresher course once every 2nd year (ideally with much of the 2nd week overlapping with a non-computer exercise at corps or at last battalion battlegroup level). The pay would be good, the intrusions into their life kept minimal and they would be shielded from the usual red tape bollocks as much as feasible.

Now keep in mind; this was partially tailored to an army that's based in its own country, preparing for being deployed to a rather populous (not desert-ish, devoid of hospitals) developed world region for alliance defence. This approach would work just as well for Republic of Korea (save for the navy) or Taiwan (save for their stupid forward fortress islands and their navy) and any European country if it abstains from stupid military adventures such as the stupid occupation wars of the past two decades or the war of aggression against Iraq in 2003.

- - - - - 

You may have noticed that what I described is not extremely different from what's being done or meant to be done, but I

• skipped insane waste of budget by relying more on civilian medical personnel,
• opposed the container+tent village nonsense for field hospitals,
• opposed MEDEVAC (dedicated vehicles) within the manoeuvre forces on the battlefield****
  
• and opposed gold-plated helicopters due to their high costs and survivability concerns.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Disclosure: I received spectacularly bad dental "service" in the Bundeswehr in the 90's myself, and this poor treatment was directly caused by persisting systemic nonsense. The dental assistants were inexperienced and thus incompetent and did not find the correct tools for the dentist.

**: Not for tank platoons, for example. Platoons of mostly vehicle crews (also some logistics small units) could simply have some extra supplies such as IV solution and extra bandages stored in their vehicles and a member or two with extra training. It would be difficult to find a good place for a medic in such platoons.

***: By the way; vehicles suitable for CASEVAC (this includes APCs and if existing IFVs, both of which should have folding seats to enable transportation of stretchers and small pallets) should have equipment to mark themselves as in CASEVAC action, so for example military police knows to prioritise them in traffic. This could range from detachable blue lights to a red cross flag attached to the vehicle front.

****: I am in favour of having tracked protected carriers with a crew of two but no dedicated cargo or passengers, held at infantry battalion level. These kind of (H)APCs would move infantry, supplies, prisoners of war (evacuation only) and civilians (evacuation only) through dangerous areas of the battlefield, preferably with concealment (by smoke and terrain features), rarely support by neutralising or suppressive fires (usually only for infantry assault to objective). They would have thin folding seats on the sides of a separated transport compartment to offer maximum cargo and stretcher capacity with folded seats. These universal battlefield transports would be preferred for casualty evacuation and could easily store a couple litres of medical supplies. The infantry would normally ride in vehicles that have the very same (limited offroad, 1.2 m fording, 1000 km road range, 80 kph road march) mobility and protection (presumably mostly against 99% fragments of 152mm HE@50 m, maybe PKM ball bullets @100 m threat) as the vehicles of the battalion battlegroup support.

 

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No, not everything needs to be bulletproofed

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I saw some calls for all logistics vehicles to be bulletproofed.

Everyone, pay attention to the context!

The Russian army gets its tires shot and its soft-skinned logistics vehicles (and not just those) demolished while invading a country and facing the partially-armed working age population.

The Ukrainians have hardly any such problems with their logistics vehicles while defending their own territory.

The real lesson is that a dispersed and lightly armed militia with training at most up to small unit level can cause trouble to invaders*, and that's not news.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: This and other events in the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine supports a concept of mine, which I didn't fully explain in public yet. In short, it's similar to Spanocchi's Raumverteidigung; battalions that 

• provide point defence/security for depots, airbases, airports, powerplants, bridges and such and provide counter-reconnaissance,
• then when hostile ground forces arrive in their area en masse the battalion disperses to become the everywhere-present eyes of the army and
• once it has stay-behind status it ambushes and raids support troops, helicopter forward bases and provides intelligence such as PGM targeting info and after a PGM strike battle damage assessment.

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Convoy spacing

.So this

  

and this

are a thing, and that's evidence for incompetence or lack of discipline.

I've seen spacing ranging from 25 to 200 m between military convoys advised in literature (including field manuals), but typically it's 50 or 100. You need extra spacing between units in addition to this.

The very minimum spacing is the same as in civilian driving; speed multiplied by 1/(2,000 h), such as 40 m at 80 kph (actually it's km/h). This is necessary for avoiding crash accidents when the front vehicle brakes.

A disciplined military can make use of its discipline and avoid many traffic jams by driving steadier than civilians

and this requires some extra distance. So for a fast-moving convoy (80 kph) we're at 50 m spacing minimum, and additional defusing of traffic jams and other troubles by extra spacing between units.

Now let's remember that a 152 mm HE or DPICM shell is dangerous to basic armoured (bulletproofed against normal rifles) vehicles out to 100 m. An airburst HE shell could puncture tires and unprotected diesel fuel tanks at such a distance with a low yet at the receiving end unacceptable probability.

The more vehicles are within such a shell's radius of effect, the worse (obviously). A spacing of 100 m largely negates the effect compared to 50 m. This is also relevant for bombs and Napalm tanks. The risk of secondary effects jumping over from vehicle to vehicle (one explosion or burn triggering the next) through much of the convoy is largely negated with spacings of 50+ m.

The direct damaging effects aren't the only issue with HE munitions, though. WW2 shells created craters of this size (at least when delay fuses were used):

and today's commonly-used 152 mm HE shells have much more explosive power.

One such shell hit on a road and the convoy would come to a halt. All wheel drive military vehicles would likely be able to bypass it on many roads, but not necessarily without some prior effort (digging, cutting trees, removing signposts, filling up a parallel drainage channel in some places). There's almost never a bridgelaying vehicle at hand to instantly bridge the crater and the situation is about the same with excavators and dumpers that could quickly fill the crater.

So the competent way to deal with such an obstacle is to immediately signal the entire convoy (minimum the march unit leaders) by radio to stop. This maintains the spacing and thus the reduced lethality of attacks by mortar, artillery or air (it's not helpful against infantry ground attack and thus not something you need in stupid occupation wars).

The alternative is a bunching up of the convoy, and it becomes an easy target. The soldiers might be tempted to leave their vehicles to bunch up and chat, and might miss radio calls of their cab-installed radio. Bunched-up convoys might even begin to block the road entirely (see previous link).

Another competent response it to immediately initiate the obstacle removal (trees felled by explosive charge to cover a road qualify as well, not every obstacle is a crater) or prepare and initiate the bypassing. Medical, wrecker, excavator vehicles might need to bypass the waiting vehicles on the road and military police should also be able to move freely (one good reason for giving them motorcycles, or at most narrow 4x4 cars).

The ease of bypassing is important for the choice of routes (roads through forests are a terrible, but often the least terrible, choice) and is the reason why the heavy logistics vehicles meant for hauling diesel and artillery/mortar/tank main gun munitions at battalion to corps level should have all-wheel drive (8x8, 10x10) and shouldn't be semi-trailers. Civilian-style motor vehicles can haul supply from depot (or fuel storage) to some corps supply hub, where the military all wheel drive vehicles can pick the supplies up.

Their limited offroad abilities are not crucial for driving over agricultural fields or through nature's reserves; they're crucial for being able to hide offroad, for better performance on wet unpaved roads and for being able to bypass obstacles.

- - - - -

One more thing; I don't understand why a proven technical solution to nighttime driving has fallen out of favour, partially being replaced by primitive and much less effective alternatives: I'm thinking of the Notek lights. They were designed to work at a specific distance, which was fine for certain speeds. Note lights cost almost nothing and should be installed on all military vehicles for use in the field other than motorcycles in my opinion.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notek

So this Notek system had four taillights in a box, spaced a bit. At distances of 35...200 m the human eye saw only one light, so the driver know he had fallen behind. At 25...35 m the following driver saw two lights and knew his distance was fine (for the cruise speeds of WW2). He saw all four lights when he was too close, at less than 25 m. We could easily adapt this for higher cruise speeds of today by making the spaces a bit wider and the (green) lights brighter. The costs would be negligible. We could maintain an acceptable spacing even during nighttime road marches. Instead, today's planners would rather think of installing mil spec infrared driving aid vision systems and then nobody would train the drivers to make good use of them to maintain the correct spacing.

Enemy air power doesn't require the visual spectrum; it can use radar and infrared. Light discipline is still helpful to reduce the threat of stragglers ad other poorly equipped ground threats and it makes traffic reconnaissance and dumb munitions bombing runs much more demanding.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Optimum army truck strategy

(I have too many blog post drafts ready to go, well into December. I'll thus publish this and maybe another in addition to the regular Saturday rhythm.)

Years ago - in ancient times before the Great Pandemic - I visited a small exhibition of old firefighting vehicles. Beautiful red & chrome trucks with special firefighting payloads. They were oldtimers, but in fantastic condition because they stood in firefighters' garages for decades.

I mean this literally. Most firefighting vehicles are hardly moving, like ever. There was a 1950's firefighting truck which had run only about 15,000 km until it was retired. 

currently on offer: 42,656 km at 35 years age

For comparison; a logistics company can easily get 400,000 km out of a comparable vehicle in eight years.

The demands are thus very different. Firefighters don't need to care about fuel efficiency or durability in terms of kilometres driven. They need to care about longevity; seals and rubber components need to be either fine for decades of service or easily replaceable. Corrosion is not really a concern because they park their vehicles indoors.

Armies are similar to firefighters, save for the indoor parking. Some truck types remained in service for four decades, and not just the model; the individual trucks lasted that long.

A look at a platform for used military vehicles provides some anecdotal confirmation:

https://www.trucksnl.com/de/militarfahrzeuge-lkws

At the time of writing I see examples ranging from a 1988 4x4 truck with 2,014 km to a heavier 1993 4x4 truck with 130,198 km. A 1996 IVECO EuroTrakker is one of the heavier and more-used vehicles, 1996 and 85,910 km.

So basically the civilian businesses drive trucks much and wear them out in a few years, while the government rather has trucks in the inventory for training and 'just in case we need them when shit happens'.

This parallel existence of both philosophies is extremely wasteful. Here's an alternative truck strategy:

• Talk to manufacturers of civilian trucks and tell them to keep longevity in mind.
• Buy civilian vehicles after they've run about 200,000 km in less than 10 years. 
• Repaint them, modify the cab, install what payload the military needs.
• Keep using them for another 30 years, adding only up to 150,000 km.*
• Repair them when possible with spare parts recycled from spent civilian vehicles. Using a COTS** design has the benefit that you have an easy spare parts supply.

It should be mentioned that the construction site vehicles that would be most suitable for military use (due to 6x6 or 8x8 formulas) do not drive quite as much as logistics vehicles, but the concept still works with them.

The IVECO Trakker range has plenty 4x4, 6x6 and 8x8 models for civilian uses that are also reasonable choices for military uses, for example. Up to 200,000 km Trakkers can be had for much less than 100,000 € despite the current price peak for used motor vehicles.

ivecodefencevehicles.com/Pages/Products/logistic-vehicles.aspx

The standard cab types are VERY similar to civilian Trakkers. Low budget armies might not be able to afford "tactical" trucks and instead make do with 6x6 and 8x8 "logistical" trucks, which have a little less off-road ability. Most army wheeled vehicles only need as off-road ability for hiding inside woodland or bypassing craters/wrecks on a road anyway. They don't need super gymnast suspensions. 

I strongly suppose that the army bureaucracies with tight budgets and no national truck manufacturers to subsidise by government contracts could benefit greatly from such a strategy.

 

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: Such vehicles are usually fine for 400,000...500,000 km. 

**: Civilian off-the-shelf

edit: fixed typos, inserted picture
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Future road logistics

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The army resupply effort was dominated by rail transport from the 1860's till the end of the Second World War in Europe. Rail lines had to be maintained, train traffic be planned and the value delivered was a quick delivery of large quantities of personnel and material over long distances. Transportation beyond the rail heads (forwardmost unloading point) was much more troublesome. Horse carts were very inefficient and could properly extend the supply routes as a rule of thumb by only 250 km.* Canals were rarely usable. Transportation by motor vehicle was first used at grand scale in 1914 by the French and proved able to extend the reach at huge cost (wear and tear of the motor vehicles, fuel consumption) first in North African campaigns and later in a most impressive display from Normandy to the advancing front in 1944.

Rail traffic proved to be much more susceptible to disruptions by opposing forces efforts (mostly air attack on the infrastructure, but also on the trains themselves). Today's electrified rail lines with automated (electricity-dependent) track switches are probably even more vulnerable, and bridges can probably easily be busted by precision missiles in the first ten minutes to two hours of conflict. Rail bridges are very difficult to replace in wartime.

Limburg railyard after bombing, December 1944

The military lorry inventories of the Cold War were probably not up the the task of supplying enough fuel and artillery munitions (all else matters little) over hundreds of km at the required rates. Civilian lorries are now undoubtedly required to sustain the French army during high intensity warfare in Poland, for example. We already saw the vulnerability of such a supply line extension in Afghanistan, dozens of lorries were torched by hostile forces in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) on several occasions.

Still, the state of the art is to have most supplies moved by civilian lorries over hundreds to thousands of km to some (makeshift) depot where dedicated military lorries with combatant drivers, camouflage paintjob and better off-road abilities can pick the supplies up and try to deliver them to drop-off points close to manoeuvre forces.

Technological advances in the field of civilian lorries are posing huge question marks:

A) "platooning"

It's still in the testing phase, but lorries can connect by short-range radio communications (and in theory also by coded light signals) to move as one, both in acceleration and deceleration. This enables driving with extremely little spacing without crashes if the environment is suitable for this platooning mode. The wind shadow effect is the primary motivator for this; all but the forwardmost lorry have much-reduced fuel consumption. The road capacity (in supply mass or volume multiplied by distance divided by time) is increased by platooning, but that's not much of a motivation in the civilian world.

This technology might be used by army logistics to increase the throughput of roads (such as through the Suwalki gap), but you really only need to have it increased if you have very few roads you can use for logistics. This in turn means that the opposing forces have a rather easy time disrupting the supply line, as they only need to mess with one or very few roads and lanes.

Doctrines for military road convoys that I saw called for a spacing of 50...100 m between vehicles. This was needed to avoid crashes (especially with overworked, tired drivers), but also to limit the effect that dumb munitions air strikes and artillery have on convoys. (Traditional military road convoys may still involuntarily bunch up at crossroads, bottlenecks or obstacles.)

Platooning may thus be impractical (too risky) in real world warfare, regardless of whether civilian lorry technology gets optimised for it.

B) Autonomous lorries

Lorry drivers are poorly paid in Europe because labour laws restricting how much drivers from poor countries may drive in rich countries without moving to the rich country are not being enforced properly. The people in rich countries know that autonomous vehicles may be available soon and few of them still get a lorry driving license. The regulations regarding resting times further add to the attractiveness of the concept of an autonomous lorry.

Autonomous cars are actually much more advanced already than almost all of the public appears to know. Tens of millions of km were driven in fully autonomous mode by test cars already, and the distance between two necessary human interventions is in the ten thousands of km for the technology leader. The issue that holds the technology back appears to be the need for further testing and the desire to cheapen the necessary sensor equipment.

Autonomous vehicles could be used to move supplies, but there are question marks about this;

- how do they cope with a myriad of hostile efforts (software and physical) to disrupt the flow?

- how does the cargo get unloaded?

- how do they cope if the mobile internet is down, but destinations or no-go areas need to be updated?

Autonomous lorries may be dominant in the long-range transportation business by 2030, so what changes are necessary to military logistics concepts? Will the armed forces draw all their necessary civilian logistical support from the remaining manned lorry inventories? Will those lorries be suitable for the military supplies and their loading and unloading processes?

C) Electric lorries

 

Electrical (battery-powered) lorries seem poised to take over the short range delivery business, such as supplying wares to supermarkets. They would probably also take over the long-distance haul business due to their energetic efficiency if the mandated resting hours regime was remaining as a major determinant. There's less reason to expect their dominance in long-distance transportation with autonomous vehicles. Ammonia or hydrogen may instead be used as range extenders, or we stick to diesel and diesel analogies (bio diesel, hydrocarbon synthetic fuels). Battery technology progress may change this, but keep in mind that Europe is fragmented into dozens of countries and many long-distance hauling lorries would have to be able to be used in almost any of these. It's probably going to take a while till the businesses will fully trust battery power even if it is more profitable on long distances as long as things go well.

Let's assume that battery-powered short-range lorries take over the regional supply sector. Those vehicles might very well have a huge Venn diagram overlap with the remaining non-autonomous vehicles. I suspect this because it's difficult to arrange for loading and unloading without a driver if the lorry has to be used with great many business partners. A lorry used to transport goods from one factory to another on the same route every day could easily have the loading and unloading jobs externalised. A factory that supplies goods to hundreds of stores would rather stick to having a driver, and possibly a parasitic forklift on the back of the lorry.

A round trip from a German supply depot to Northeast Poland and back would be about 2,000 km, half of which with heavy cargo and potentially with electrical power grid failing in Poland. Battery-powered lorries are most unlikely to be suitable for this well into the 2030's if not forever. This applies even if the long distance hauling business does get dominated by battery-powered lorries.

Diesel-fuelled lorries meanwhile could simply add a couple barrels of extra fuel or be refuelled with simple equipment (even with hand pumps or by gravity) even during their unloading process.

So the whole electric lorry inventory might be utterly unusable for military logistics purposes for want of battery-powered range, and this might be the majority of 7.5 ton and heavier lorries and semi-trailer tractors by 2035.

Civilian logistics are bound to change again during the 2020's, and army logistics dependent on civilian road transportation capacities may need to adapt.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: More about such logistics; book recommendation

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Combat resupply

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(see update at the end)

Combat tends to consume a lot of munitions, including munitions for direct fire - and those need be carried by either the infantryman or armoured fighting vehicle because let's face it, we collectively dismiss porters and those robodogs are nonsense.

A competent supply NCO in Vietnam was able to get a pallet loaded with all that's needed for utility helicopter airlift to the troops in contact. A very competent supply NCO would pack the stuff before it was asked for because he had the experience and paid attention to the radio chat.

I dismiss such helicopter logistics for European warfare and I dismiss this also for unmanned helicopters such as the K-MAX. Such helicopters are large and expensive enough to be high-enough-value targets for all those systems meant to defeat low-flying manned battlefield helicopters.

There is an alternative that might make sense for the especially weight-sensitive infantry, though:

The problem of resupplying infantry close to opposing forces or even in contact with munitions, medical supplies, hot food, fresh water and batteries might be solvable with rotary cargo drones. The small unit would need to have communicate a suitable landing zone's coordinates and a battalion supply team could send these drones en route (and recover them) with packages of 12-15 kg (it should suffice for the heaviest single relevant piece of equipment, such as an anti-tank guided missile).

The drones would navigate by inertial navigation sensor and could use a directional (downward focused) radio to interrogate another very low emission power radio beacon which would allow for a correction of a navigation error of about 20 m. I suppose (but did not succeed at checking it) that this error correction should suffice to land a drone on a flat roof after 20 km of flight.

The supply crew would recover the drones that landed in their varying supply point landing zones, switch in a charged battery pack, visually inspect for damage, check if the mission log shows any problems and ultimately load it for another delivery.

The drone could be equipped with the necessary sensors (such as LADAR) for flying close above the treetops of woodland to minimise the exposure to hostiles on the ground. Alternatively, they could fly below roof level through streets.

Any sensors but LADAR would necessitate an updating of maps with overland power lines and what maps generated by radar satellites in order to avoid crashes.

Here are some reviews of drones with up to 18 kg payload, that should be the relevant size and could also be used for a tethered sensor drone (almost no battery capacity needed due to cable power supply, no radio needed). Claims for rotary payload drones go up to more than 200 kg payload, but the next threshold after 15 kg should be at about 100 kg, since this would enable casualty and civilians evacuation (at night or complete with red-cross-on-white-cloth bags).

Now why am I not surprised that the big "defense" contractor companies didn't capture the market with this years ago?

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

edit: My bad, I overlooked this. They think of something like this, but bigger.

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Day and night

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It sounds utterly trivial, but one should keep day and night in mind.

For example, I did an intellectual pastime about how to secure Iceland in times of crisis (a NATO member without permanent military presence). My default assumption is that a U.S. airborne brigade would need to be flown in from CONUS because European paras would not have airlift available and/or be needed in Northern Norway and Lithuania.

But there's this little detail;  there's no night in Iceland during summertime.

(This is where some people think "Yeah, science!" and I think "No, this should be general knowledge already!").

There's no need for non- far IR ("thermal") night vision until September there.

The ideal planning for crisis and wartime should thus probably plan with different forces in summertime and wintertime; U.S. airborne and Canadians in wintertime (Americans have above average night vision equipment, Canadians have above average cold weather preparation & they mostly understand each other's language) and South European airborne/para forces in summertime (using C-17s on otherwise empty return flights).

The cargo aircraft logistics may suggest to plan with Europeans year-round because Iceland is along the trip back to North America anyway, but I don't think there's much wisdom in sending troops who are accustomed to +25°C into a -5°C environment as a strategic quick reaction force. (Iceland has in its most important areas an oceanic climate and is warmed year-round by the North Atlantic current, so it's even in wintertime nowhere near as cold as the humid continental East European climate.)

That's something I did not think about when I wrote this. Though I suppose to maintain a single air-lift capable brigade with towed 155 mm howitzers for alliance (Iceland) defence in summertime might be an even more appropriate thing to do for Spain and Portugal, as their land forces would have the longest marches to Eastern Europe. They could even have this brigade in a 12 month cycle of 6-7 months training and 5-6 months real readiness for 48 hrs deployment to Iceland (at 90% personnel strength, 90% equipment readiness, with munitions for 3 days intense combat and terrain-appropriate camouflages).

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Wartime challenges not related to "winning"

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• guarding, processing, transporting and supporting prisoners of war
• managing refugee traffic on roads
• marking buildings (with red crosses etc), visible not only in visual spectrum but also on imaging infrared and radar imagery - and communicating the locations to the opposing forces
• transporting, processing, housing and generally supporting refugees
• repair of electrical networks and powerplants
• repair of railway signals and actual rail networks
• repair or replacement of bridges
• salvaging ships and boats that were sunk or grounded in ports, in rivers, in canals and generally in maritime traffic lanes
• clearing of minefields and unexploded ordnance in general (and confirming that suspected areas are safe)
• rearranging trade (natural gas supply, food products, electrical power trade and direction etc.)
• evacuating nationals from countries that suddenly became too risky (because more or less allied with the "enemy")
• emptying or disabling gas stations in our "rear area" to deprive hostile raiding and deep reconnaissance forces of free fuel supply
• inspecting possibly sabotaged infrastructure and fuel stocks

...and many more. The above list as what I came up with at the speed of my typing (6 finger system).

I have a hunch that we aren't really prepared for all of the above, that we neglected these things albeit no doubt the German Bundeswehr, Rotes Kreuz and THW have some obscure and likely not up-to-dated plans to do at least some of these things.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Safe fuel storage at logistics hubs

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One of the things that the typically small peacetime exercises don't test & train much is how to run 'rear area' logistics, including how to run logistical hubs (the successors of the railheads of old). There aren't many supply transportation & field depot-running troops in peacetime armed forces. This is one of the areas that depend heavily on reinforcement by reserve personnel in many land forces.

I suppose it's fairly obvious that commercial transportation of supplies (semi trailers with container or fuel tank) should be the means of transportation towards two fairly protected and leap-frogging army corps logistical hubs. Transportation of supplies (=overwhelmingly diesel fuel and artillery shells & propellant modules) from the hubs to drop-off points (if not end users) in the field could and should then be done with military vehicles; mostly flat rack and PLS/MULTI/EPLS/DROPS-compatible vehicles in approx. 15 ton class. This resupply should happen daily, most likely it would happen on every other day and when things go wrong better don't depend on it at all. Hence all manoeuvre forces should be supplied for approx. three days minimum, and scouting forces for even longer.

Supply convoy in Vietnam; I would not want to serve in any
vehicle with "flammable" written in big letters on it, in a warzone!

The security of such supply hubs is an interesting topic. Relatively low quality troops could be used to secure them against attack on land, assuming that only armoured recce and airborne troops are likely threats (let's disregard agents and sabotage by civilians for this was hardly ever a substantial issue in short historical wars). Air and missile attack are an altogether different threat, and some area air defence system would be an obvious choice.

Defences alone would likely not suffice, though. The supplies consumed by a mechanised corps in a mere week may easily amount to 50,000 metric tons plus packaging material (lots of wood and plastic).

To store that many explosive munitions and that much fuel in a single area that could be secured against stealthy attackers like airborne forces or armoured recce forces by a battalion takes a huge area. All supplies distributed in pattern of 50x50 m cells with average mass stored per cell of 5 metric tons would still be 25,000,000 square meters - such as 5 km x 5 km, about the size of an airbase.
This area becomes even bigger if you want to keep one fire or secondary explosion from leaping to the next bunch of supplies by insisting on 100 x 100 m cells - now we're talking about areas such as 10 km x 10 km. You COULD bunch everything into a square kilometre, of course. That would produce a most impressive inferno once hit.

It's obviously the better the more closely you can (relatively) safely store at least the fuels, and this requires some resilience to damage. It might be possible to protect some fuel reservoirs by storing them below ground level (quickly done with engineers' earthmovers IF there are enough of both engineers and earthmovers). You wouldn't afford the resources and time to build Hesco barrier-styled  fortresses as on occupation camps at the end of the world, after all.

Storage slightly below ground level would still not fully protect them from whatever threat comes from above, and to cover the fuel tanks (typically bladder tanks, but there are also collapsible cylindrical fuel tanks) with much soil to protect against burning debris would make it much harder to leap frog quickly while a single small bomblet could still penetrate and set afire the supplies.

flexible fuel tanks that serve as their own trailer are most fascinating

Provisions that control the manage damage (countering leaks and extinguishing fires) without much human intervention would be great to have. Supply storage areas could be much more compact, and still withstand at least merely occasional attacks (or they could be much safer while still being huge).

Two rather obvious options for this are self-sealing rubber tank walls

and automated fire extinguisher solutions.

(principle of operation; it doesn't seem to be as efficient for bladder tanks)

Now let's play a guessing game!

What do you think, how very close to heart is a sufficient stock of such things (from self-sealing fuel bladders to piping and fire extinguishing systems) to the leadership of an army say, in competition with 200 more officer job slots or maybe ten to twenty new main battle tanks?
Do you think the four star generals would passionately argue to the minister of defence in favour of thousands of empty rubber sacks with protection features and equipment at the expense of some headquarters where 200 officers work?



This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I keep insisting on civilian control of the armed services and on reigning in against the pursuit of self-interest by the armed services. It's also why I am so concerned about the bias created by career paths (an infantry officer would have a different bias about bladder tanks than a logistics officer). The civilian leadership needs to be advised by or include non-insiders with sufficient knowledge, of course.

More on this problem in general (in a more abstract way again) later.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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