German light AFV armament

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German armoured vehicles very rarely used heavy machine guns like M2HB - such weapons were used on the very first equipment in the late 50's and some in the 60's, but became irrelevant later on.

Our typical Cold War armament for trucks, armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and similar vehicles was the 7.62mmx51 MG3 machine gun, often without any shield.

Only the reconnaissance AFV, the Spähpanzer Luchs uses an effective 20mmx139 autocannon - a caliber that was capable enough to defeat enemy BMPs and BTRs, but wasn't powerful enough if used against better-protected vehicles like Western infantry fighting vehicles (IFV).
Another weapon was introduced as alternative post-Cold War, the 40mmx53 GMG - an automatic grenade launcher like the better-known Mk 19. Such weapons have a muzzle velocity of about 240 m/s, barely enough to be considered useful against moving armoured vehicles out to about 500 m.

A 40mm dual purpose grenade can penetrate light armour with a shaped charge and achieve 'some' effect inside, but it's severely restricted by its rather low muzzle velocity (reduced probability of hit at longer ranges), safety considerations (fragmentation) and volume (only 32 grenades per belt).

.50BMG weapons aren't entirely out of favour in the Bundeswehr; navy helicopters, KSK special forces, navy ships and infantry snipers use that calibre - it's just not in general use.
Mungo ESK, Grizzly, Yak, Boxer, ATF Dingo, LAPV Enok, Fennek and the old M113- the light armoured vehicle procurement (the list isn't complete) of the Bundeswehr appears to be very chaotic since the 90's, but nevertheless these vehicles have one thing in common: An armament with MG3 and/or GMG.

I consider this armament as quite unsatisfactory for several reasons;
A) It's inadequate as overflight and close-in deterrent against helicopters.
B) It's inadequate in surprise contacts with enemy light AFVs like reconnaissance vehicles. Even some 1930's reconnaissance AFVs would be superior in 1-on-1 vehicle combat due to superior firepower.
C) Unsatisfactory external ballistics of the 40mm calibre. 240 m/s muzzle velocity is the key problem, but it's not possible to improve the muzzle velocity because of the exponentially growing muzzle energy and therefore recoil.
D) Inadequate armour penetration of 7.62NATO bullets against everything that was armoured; the lowest armour rating for vehicles is aimed against this calibre (and the Russian 7.62mmx54R). Only expensive high-end armour penetrating cartridges like SLAP have a good penetration capability.

I'd like to give a pleading for alternative armaments here.

Three alternatives come to my mind;
1) Heavy machine gun calibres; 12.7mm and 14.5mm, but potentially also much weaker ones, between 7.62NATO and .50BMG.
2) 20mm lightweight autocannons; some of these approached the weight and size of a heavy machine gun by the end of WW2. They can use explosive shells, but with little fragmentation effect.
3) 30mm low recoil autocannons; these became available during the 80's and use dual purpose (shaped charge plus fragmentation) shells. The AH-64 Apache helicopter uses the same ammunition to good effect even at quite long ranges.

I'd like to point out the other two interesting alternatives that don't require any new development.

Example: Vektor (Denel) GAMA
This is a South African automatic weapon that can be mounted on a vehicle (even a jeep) just like a heavy machine gun. It's a weapon for multiple calibres and can be converted to another calibre in 10 minutes without special tools.
12.7mm x 99 (.50BMG, very common in NATO, SLAP available), 12.7mm x 107 (Russian), 14.5mm x 114 (Russian), 20mm x 82 (very low impulse, old German cartridge), 20mm x 102 (a very common calibre in NATO) and 20mm x 110 (old Hispano-Suiza calibre) are possible.

Weight: 47 - 55 kg
Length: about 1.8 m
Muzzle velocity: 720 - 1,030 m/s
Cyclic: about 650 - 750 rds/min
Typical ammunition: AP, HE

Example: ASP-30
The best-known autocannon in the 30mm calibre for low recoil applications. It can be mounted on vehicles just like a heavy machine gun, but its ammunition is already quite big.
Calibre: 30mm x 113 B (the ADEN/DEFA pattern, used by fighters since decades and also used by AH-64 Apache attack helicopters)

Weight: 52 kg
Length: 2.06 m
Muzzle velocity: 820 m/s
Cyclic: 400 - 450 rds/min
Typical ammunition: HEDP

The armament of light armoured vehicles with only rifle calibre machine guns and low muzzle velocity grenade launchers is inadequate in my opinion. Weapons in between combine a much better effect than a MG3 with a much better ammunition supply than a GMG. The self-defence capability beyond rifle range could be much improved.
We already missed the opportunity to use Eastern German 14.5mm weapons for a free upgrade, I hope we won't stick to 7.62NATO and 40mm x 53 as light AFV armament forever.

S O

Free riders

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The current economic crisis and the piracy affair have one thing in common; they remind us of free riders.

Banks and industries never wanted much state involvement in their markets when the markets were fine and they themselves had money are calling now for state's aid.
Big corporations were often evading taxation with the help of lawyers and consultant (and by moving administrations to places like Ireland) - but want to get back from the society what they didn't give to it in the first place.

Shipping companies did the same - they evaded taxes and regulation by flying the colours of some unimportant Latin American countries like Panama.
It's strange to read that a "German" ship was now captured by pirates off Africa's coast. The crew is Filipino with a single Indonesian - no Germans anyway.

Why should such a ship be considered as a German ship? Why should the shipping company have the right to expect our state to bother about the affair?
Those shipping companies should call the navy of Panama, not ours!

The use of the military to protect our shipping is OK, its use to protect business interests leads only to shitty military actions and small wars - we should avoid that.


Such free rider phenomenons weaken and exploit states - and end up drawing us into crisis situations without justification. Much has been proclaimed about the decline of the state, allegedly powerless European governments and such.
It's about time to strike back, to protect the interests of our citizens and to show the cold shoulder to opportunistic companies.

The 'bad bank' discussion in Germany is a good opportunity; we should investigate the banks and learn which ones are about to fail without state assistance - and socialize them. Take away all shares from the shareholders who drove such greed and opportunistic behavior - a punishment as warning for future shareholders.
We can set up a re-privatization plan immediately afterward and withdraw all state influence in less than five years, when state-appointed small bank and savings bank managers have repaired the damage done by their incompetent idiot colleagues.

That won't work because our politicians aren't much better (they actually allow the idiot bankers to sit at the table when they discuss state help for banks), but it's allowed to have some political dreams ... maybe sometime in the future the useless conservatives won't be in the government.

We SHOULD nevertheless demonstrate state strength against free riders and force them to bear the appropriate responsibilities. Rights are the twins of responsibilities - we should grant no right without responsibility.

Sven Ortmann

Frauenparkplätze

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"Frauenparkplatz". I despise (and ignore) that word.
It's written behind many parking lots and means "parking lot for women". It's usually at some of the best placed parking lots (the very best are almost always empty and reserved for disabled people), close to the shopping center and supposed to provide women with - well, whatever.

I've seen an even more discriminating and outrageous sign a few weeks ago, but succeeded in forgetting the rubbish.

This kind of discrimination is a puzzle piece in the greater picture of how good intentions and political correctness can overstep the limit of appropriateness and can begin to hurt our freedom and equality in an inappropriate way.

The big things like CCTV and database scandals have our attention as freedom limiters and dangerous foreshadows, but the small things count, too.

I commit to prefer to park on a Frauenparkplatz whenever possible to protest and to take away the desired effect from these despicable signs.

Sven Ortmann

Unmanned ground vehicles - history and smoke

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Unmanned ground vehicles are in fashion. Thousands are in use in Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly as short-range scouts to inspect possible bomb sites - a task very similar to the one of police robots since many years.

A lot of buzz was surrounding the Guardium UGV at Eurosatory because it was a somewhat autonomous, potentially armed UGV - as in general attention is guaranteed once "weapon" and "robot" are combined.
I miss a much less known and certainly obvious application for battlefield robots, an application that is relevant in conventional warfare; smoke laying.
It's been a miracle to me why such vehicles are apparently not remote-controlled - I considered it as an obvious choice for remote control since the day when I learned about these smoke-laying vehicles that are apparently in use in the USA (M56 Coyote, M58A3 Wolf and M1059A3 Lynx) and Russia.
The U.S. systems might actually be remote-controllable; I just never found any source that confirms the suspicion.

Either you lay smoke by indirect fires or (certainly logistically more efficient) you do so with such vehicles. Other methods obscure merely point targets, not areas. It's obvious that such vehicles could lay the smoke farther forward if they're unmanned. It's a Himmelfahrtskommando, a suicide mission anyway.

By the way; the first UGVs in combat were apparently Russian teletanks in 1939 or 1940 (edit: wrong, the Japanese had the lead), followed by unmanned German demolition midget tanks (ironically named Goliath), based on a French prototype.
Remote control by radio was used to convert aircraft into target drones for a Royal Navy exercise around 1930 (the Royal Navy embarrassed itself with the lack of effect of its anti-air firepower).

Just to make sure everyone gets it: The armed, unmanned and remote-controlled by radio tanks/ground vehicles are at least a 69 year-old technology. The current buzz about the modern examples is extremely ridiculous.

Almost nothing is truly new, many innovations in the art of war and the tools of war are decades old when they still get great press as novelty.
Get yourself a Jane's Weapon Systems issue from the 70's; you'll find the predecessors and first projects of much of what's today "brand new", "revolutionary" and "innovative" in it.

It would be quite embarrassing if dedicated smoke-laying vehicles (if in use at all) were not set up for remote-controlled use, about eighty after the first application of remote control by radio. They deserve priority over fancy armed robots.

S O

Heavy bombers - scarier than ever before

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I made a small calculation during the South Ossetia War that I want to share:

It was about the effect that a heavy bomber could have in a scenario like the South Ossetia War with smart bombs.

Keep in mind that GPS and INS-guided bombs can be used with extreme accuracy against coordinates. They're not good against moving targets, but good at impacting at certain coordinates - and they're not significantly larger than unguided bombs.

A B-2 (the bomber that could realistically do a single sortie without support and have an impact) can carry 80x Mk-82 500 lbs bombs (about 227 kg). Replace the Mk-82 bombs by GBU-30/ GBU-38 guided bombs for this scenario.

Such a general purpose blast+fragmentation bomb has easily a lethal radius of about 40 m against soft and thinly armored targets (plus or minus a few meters isn't really relevant, you'll see that later).
A single bomb can ruin vehicles on about 80 m road length. The point of impact would be set a bit to the side of the road for greatest effect if road traffic is dense/jammed (this reduces the road length covered) or directly on the road if normal military march spacing is expected (this adds a bit road damage). Fuzes wold be set to super quick.

80 bombs with about 80 m road length covered each - that's 6,400 m. A single bomber could have ruined the day. A flight of about half a dozen bombers would have covered the entire main (and only relevant) road in South Ossetia's valley and ruined a motorized rifle division.

I made a similar thought experiment in 1999 during the Kosovo Air War. A single B-.2 strike could have wiped off most of the Yugoslavian electricity production by simply destroying the turbine rooms of the few power plants (less the nuclear one, that would have been too unsafe). The bomb bay wouldn't even have been half-filled for such a mission. Count your countries' power plants - how many bomber sorties would it take to wipe out 80% of its electricity production today? One? Two? I doubt that it would take more than three for any country, even not for Russia or China.

Precision-guided bomb carpets could also be real 'carpets', not 'lines' as in the past, even with a single bomber. A heavy bomber (or few heavy fighter-bombers like F-15E, Su-34 or Tornado IDS) could cover a whole small forest where an enemy infantry company hides.

That reminds me of an air attack in September 1939 when a Stuka wing surprised a bunched-up Polish division at a large railway station and effectively destroyed the division as a fighting force in few minutes.


I have often read that heavy bombers are dinosaurs of the Cold War. Such remarks were common till they were used to drop single guided bombs on Taliban groups in Afghanistan, thousands of kilometers away from their British Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean.
Single guided bomb drops are probably not their most important capability today; the sheer quantity in the bomb bay is a quality of its own.

Luckily, it's possible to substitute with fighter-bombers because it's really only about "guided bomb + quantity". There's no need to introduce heavy bombers into air forces that haven't got any today.

So-called "strategic" air power IS extremely powerful, and I can understand the attitude of air force officers in many cases; the potential was just not really unleashed since 1945. It wasn't the tool of choice in our past few conflicts.

S O

edit: 20090-03-20:
This video seems to fit fine:

Modern small arms calibres

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Some light food for a change...

I published an article about rifle calibre effects (mostly wound ballistics) at Steve's Firearm blog several days ago. The topic seemed to be more appropriate there than here.
Check it out, it's a myth-busting article meant to clean up the mess of misleading anecdotes, scientific mistakes and sentimental influences that surround the rifle calibre debate.

Rifle calibres have been discussed and changed since we moved from musket ball to rifle bullets in the 19th century. The introduction of modern smokeless propellants brought another huge boost for calibre discussions, again toward smaller calibres. The final push toward smaller calibres (calibres smaller than 7mm were already tested at the beginning of the 20th century) came after WW2 when almost every soldier got a fully automatic weapon.
The high ammunition consumption of automatic fire and issues with strong recoil (controllability of bursts and full auto fire) spoke in favour of small calibres.

Calibres around 7mm (at least 6mm) were discussed in many studies and by many commissions as ideal infantry calibres, and the British developed the good .280British rifle cartridge. NATO selected the 7.62NATO calibre due to U.S. lobbying.

The USA didn't use 7.62NATO much as assault rifle calibre - the M14 quickly got its successor in the M16 after only a few years of use as standard rifle. 7.62 was a widespread calibre for assault rifles in other NATO countries (Germany replaced the 7.62NATO G3 rifle only in the 90's) and is still the most wide-spread calibre for medium/universal machine guns.

5.56NATO, the new standard for assault rifles since the 80's, was a mixed blessing; less penetration of cover/armour, less wound ballistic potential, inferior external ballistics for long-range shots - the advantages of reduced recoil, volume and weight were only part of a trade-off that hurts elsewhere.


A good bullet design can improve wound ballistics in both calibres (7.62NATO isn't always as great as its reputation) and heavy bullets can improve cover penetration (an issue for 5.56NATO). That's probably not enough. It's reasonable to expect more than 5.56NATO can deliver while 7.62NATO as standard cartridge like in the 50's and 60's would be extremely heavy and require strict fire discipline to get the job done with the little ammo that can be carried.

I see two possible approaches to solve the dilemma.

A) Standard infantry calibre:
A common cartridge in the 6-7mm range with intermediate characteristics and modern bullet designs. This cartridge could meet the requirements for carbine/PDW, scoped rifle (squad sharpshooter) and light machine guns. The effect would be satisfactory, the weight+volume would be acceptable and the range would suffice for everything except vehicle-mounted weapons and dedicated snipers.
A single small arms calibre for the whole quad/platoon would simplify ammunition logistics very much even though different, exchangeable cartridge versions (ball, AP, tracer, IR tracer) would be used.

B) New mix of 5.56NATO and 7.62NATO:
Well-designed bullet designs are necessary to exploit both calibre's potential, and could fit different roles.
5.56NATO: PDW/carbine, light machine gun (bipod, squad-level support)
7.62NATO: scoped rifles, medium machine guns (tripod, platoon-level support)

It's not really necessary that all weapons reach out to 600m effectively. Carbines won't be very useful at that distance anyway and light machine guns put a premium on low weight for the machine gunner's battlefield agility. Small bullets can suppress almost as well as heavy ones - a strong advantage when you need to carry so much ammunition.
Medium machine guns - well, almost nobody accepts 5.56NATO as a medium machine gun calibre; the effective range and cover penetration simply doesn't match the expectations.

Finally, the soldier's dearest weapon: The battle rifle / assault rifle - the supposed "standard" firearm.

Decent marksmanship training, the ammunition consumption problem, improved sights and the experience against ill-trained spray & pray troops has led to an emphasis on the aimed single shot even more than before and even at rather close ranges. This emphasis was typical of the British army with its semi-automatic-only L1A1 (FAL) rifles in the 60's and 70's.
The preference for single shots (semi automatic fire in practice) saves ammunition and is a critical enabler for a possible return to 7.62NATO.

It's not necessary that every soldier in a squad/platoon has a weapon that penetrates common cover (walls, trees), it should suffice if a quarter or third has this capability - that's an opportunity for weight & volume savings.

Let's compare 7.62NATO battle rifles in contrast to 5.56NATO examples.

Pro 7.62NATO:
- better range
- better cover penetration
- better armour penetration
- better wound ballistics
Contra 7.62 NATO:
- heavier weapon
- fewer cartridges for same ammunition weight/volume
- a bit less controllable on full automatic fire
(designs with shoulder stock and barrel in one line like SCAR-H should be much more controllable than the older G3 and FAL designs). Such straight designs need a sight line high above the barrel - that's ideally suited to the modern rifle sights, but it was a drawback at the time of iron sights.

Other pro/contra arguments exist, but are much weaker than these (in my opinion).

The introduction of quality optical sights on non-sniper rifles (with up to 4x optical magnification) almost turns ordinary riflemen into squad sharpshooters and a few weeks of training can complete that evolution.
This turns the ordinary rifleman into a soldier who appreciates the advantages of 7.62NATO more than before - and might make 7.62NATO a great rifleman calibre.

That's a bit ironic and sad because the British went away from the single shot/7.62NATO design some decades ago after getting the universal infantry calibre issue right even earlier. The Germans turned away from the 7.62NATO as assault rifle and light machine gun calibre about fifteen years ago after playing around with the mislead and extreme G11 rifle design and its caseless 4.73mm cartridge.
Finally, the Turks are in the process of turning away from 7.62NATO, their army (biggest in NATO) will replace the G3 (7.62NATO) with half a million 5.56NATO HK416 ("Mehmetçik-1") in the next few years.

The French are the next who will reform their small arms inventory; their FAMAS F1 assault rifle still uses the first generation 5.56mmx45 cartridge, predecessor of 5.56NATO (FAMAS G2 uses 5.56NATO, but the French Army has held off a large scale purchase of the G2 so far).

The standardization of small arms calibres seems to be a mess in the NATO.
It's important to keep in mind that the optimum calibre or calibre mix depends on circumstances that change over time. A mix of 5.56NATO and 7.62NATO can satisfy, but we should consider a return to the 7.62NATO battle rifle if we aren't willing to introduce a universal infantry cartridge of 6-7mm calibre.

S O

Defeat - sometimes better than you think

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Sometimes you don't want to win.

Correct, winning isn't always the best thing. Actually, it's quite often a bad thing. Pyrrhic victories are such examples. Victory under a dictator is another example (Argentina would likely have remained a military dictatorship if it had won the Falklands War). Seriously, defeat in WW2 was in my opinion less terrible for Germany than a victory would have been. Even if victory would have happened as early as '41.

Look at the Vietnam War. Some hawks wanted to commit more troops, more funds - imagine that would have 'won' the war for the USA. Would that have improved anything for the USA?

The Afghanistan War is another such example. Was the Western 'victory' in the late 80's really in our best interest?
Hey, wouldn't we love to see a secular People's Republic in Afghanistan now? A central government in control & no poppy cultivation? AQ would never have settled down in Afghanistan after being expelled from Sudan, we would never have entered that quagmire! Any negative aspects of such a regime would have been ridiculously small in comparison to decades of civil war.

The most - endless examples are of course all the times we were better off not to wage war - that's of course something that's difficult to tell as example. Wars not fought are not really well-known.

Defeats in not terribly important wars (should unimportant wars be waged at all?) can also be a good preparation for a later major, truly important war. Losers learn/reform often better than winners.

By now you most likely think that I'm strictly anti-war. Well, wars rarely proved to be good methods. Most often, you only get a big mess by waging war. It would be wise to avoid at least those that do more harm than good.

The attitude that results from this is of course highly despised in military circles for reasons of reliability and morale. Soldiers are citizens, but are not supposed to question wars they've been committed to. That's OK.
It's really a political issue, not a military one, and it's a good idea to separate it. We should keep in mind (as politically-interested citizens) that war & peace are more complicated than "to win is good".

This topic is very much linked to the definition of "victory".
A so-called "won" war (your army being the last on the battleground) can be a Pyrrhic victory and as such pretty much a loss for the nation, a lost war.
It's quite a nonsense to cheer a 'won' war that as net result has hurt the country more than its alternative - not to wage war - would have.

A honest, rational assessment of the benefits and costs of warfare (even though it's difficult to convert human lives and expended treasure into a common measurement) could help to avoid the avoidable hazards of war and to find to an optimized policy for war & peace

Sven Ortmann

Spin on military procurement

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Lies and misleading information about procurement projects should be a criminal offense if done by officials. Such actions are misleading the taxpayers - the sovereign - about projects with significant fiscal relevance.

It's like lying about private investment opportunities - it's fraud.

I've got a very recent reason for this blog post; my patience with such practices was strained beyond its limits when I read an outright lie about FCS armor. My taxes are not involved in FCS, but the general problem is international - it's even universal. The underlying economic problem is the principal - agent problem.

This is the article that made me furious:

These included early versions of the FCS armor that were bolted on to an aluminum inner hull, a fact that Col. Gregory Martin, chief of the Army’s J-8 director’s initiative group, told us was “revolutionary” because it would allow armor to be swapped on vehicles as the armor is improved instead of the current state of the art which only allows so-called applique armor to be put on top of the existing stuff.

That's misleading at best (if looked at very well-meaningly).
I call it a plain and direct lie.

The very same layout was already used in the Vickers/FMC VFM 5 tank and shown to the public in 1985. Other examples of AFVs which have a basic armor with structural tasks and non-structural appliqué armor for most of the protection include XM8 AGS, Merkava IV, Boxer/GTK and Stryker.
The technique was innovative (maybe "revolutionary") a quarter-century ago. It would be a shame if it was still "revolutionary" in the USA today, despite the huge budgets involved.

I call that an attempt to lie at journalists to get better press for the FCS project - and in turn to secure the taxpayer's money for the FCS project.
(It's also a typical anecdote for the belief of many Americans that they're more innovative than they really are.)

The blog post at Defensetech hints unintentionally at another problem; specialised journalists are not entirely independent of the companies/agencies in their field of expertise. The chance that a very critical journalist who exposes all know flaws relentlessly gets an invite to a tour like that is dim.
I guess it's not a typical German problem that automotive journalists don't expose defects of domestic car designs (unless obvious) before general, investigative journalists do so.

This is a problem in the context of military procurement because we have a huge lobby and sometimes also a good public relations effort FOR projects, but rarely any organized resistance to projects outside of low-credibility peace activists.
Public accounting offices like the GAO and Bundesrechnungshof an few well-informed NGOs are no satisfactory solution in my opinion: We need more counterweight to the pro-project camp.

It might be possible to fix the unfair asymmetry of pro/contra military project propaganda by the implementation of many small improvements. Both a reduction of the pro propaganda (no lies, no misleading info, less motivation to spill out such propaganda) would help just like better-informed, more interested and more organized taxpayers would help.

S O

Airbus A400M - another project in trouble

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I posted recently about over-length military hardware programs.
The Financial Times Deutschland adds some context today with a new article about the Airbus A400M:

The FTD reported earlier that Airbus doesn't seem to achieve more than 29 tons of payload (several tons short), today they report about a longer list of troubles.
- likely delay till 2014
- already € 2 billion loss for Airbus in the project
- engine software troubles
- not capable of all demanded military flight manoeuvres
- wing area too small
- Airbus wants to re-negotiate

General Stieglitz, inspector-general of the Luftwaffe (chief of the air force) already complained about the delays in all major Luftwaffe programs; A400M, NH90 and Eurofighter/Typhoon (previously known as "Jäger 90" - the greens got laughed at when they expected DM 20 billion costs in the 1980's; less than the actual costs!).

The A400M story is quite outrageous because it was originally an industrial policy project; the Ukrainian-Russian Antonov-70 design was quite advanced when the A400M project was launched. A westernized (cockpit mostly) An-70 was expected to be more capable, cheaper and available at an earlier date than A400M.
The An-70 project died a slow death due to lack of funds from Ukraine/Russia - it wouldn't have been a smooth program, but would probably already be in full production with less costs than A400M so far.
Even some Western aviation journals of the 90's favoured the An-70, publishing favourable articles about it repeatedly till the A400M decision.

We've actually hurt the industry with the A400M project; engineers were distracted from A380 and A350 projects, and Airbus had cost overruns to bear (that will probably drive up the fly-away price for us!).

The Luftwaffe had almost a one-size-fits-it-all approach for air-lift, just like previously with the C-160 Transall; just one major transport aircraft instead of a mix of small/medium/heavy ones.
The A400M project will likely survive, not the least due to a lack of alternatives.
The primary problem is the lack of a transport aircraft with the right payload; new AFVs (like our new IFV Puma) are often around 30 tons in weight, requiring a payload of about 32-33 tons with useful range at the very least.
The market has several offers for smaller transport aircraft (like C-295, C-27), for larger ones (An-70 is no real competitor any more, maybe the old Il-76) and for very large payloads (An-124, C-17).

A mix of C-295 and C-17 would be an alternative to A-400M and might (despite the high cost of C-17's) even be cheaper & quicker due to no development needs.

Long story short; an attempt to beef up our aircraft industry went wrong due to the latter's incompetence and we end up with another overpriced, under-performing, over-length military hardware project.
We could have sunk the money into better army training (ammunition, fuel, spare parts) for real value.

S O

Quarter-century-long military programs

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The German army saw the need for a real-time reconnaissance UAV/drone in addition to the CL-89 concept - since about 1980 at the latest.

The system (KZO) is finally 'combat ready' in the German Army (the French one is another customer, but had similar systems before), with deliveries since 2005.
Its story was a story of changing requirements, reductions, work on spin-off projects (ESM, ECM and export recce) and delays, delays, delays. The troops expected it for many years, but it never seemed to arrive - until 2005.

The drone itself is quite promising - if it's really as survivable and as able to transmit its images/video real-time in an ECM environment as it was claimed.

Timeline:

1983 - Joint (GER/FRA) development program begins officially
1998 - troop trials
2001 - ordered
2005 - first deliveries
2006 - first use in Afghanistan
2008 - all systems delivered and "combat ready"

I've got a problem with this almost never-ending program length.

About a quarter century between requirement and full capability (with some question marks) is simply too long. Sure, the post-Cold War peace dividend slowed the program down (politics) - but it should have been in service before the Cold War ended. It was a required, after all - not sci-fi. The basic technologies were available since the 60's!

This is not the only quite questionable military development & procurement project.

The Tiger attack helicopter took almost forever as well (and we could have license-produced product-improved Apaches instead of starting the project in the first place). The Eurofighter/Typhoon is another one. Some projects lasted for decades till cancellation.

The Bundeswehr and its BWB (procurement agency) isn't alone, though: The British, Italians, French, Japanese and U.S.Americans have similar problems.
A common diagnosis is that requirements creep, budget games, high ambitions and gold-plating are some of the culprits for the problem.


Maybe we need to have much less red tape, but a strict and simple procurement system.

One example:

A technology & art of war agency can track technology development and develop new ideas of technology exploitation for the military mission.
Said agency initiates basic R&D two-year contracts that deliver several demonstrator systems or a non-technical improvement.

The joint general staff examines the products and foreign alternatives and writes a requirement.

A central development & procurement agency issues a tender for off-the-shelf equipment (including half-year period for privately financed development) or a tender for a development contract.

The development contract is fixed at up to ten years (set as maximum by law) with fixed value (inflation-adjusting, the use of the funds and the profit margin are up to the contractor) and a fixed result (several prototypes with well-defined specs - including a maximum production price).
The development phase includes a thorough proving ground and troop trial phase, a later deficiency correction phase and readiness for production. It can be canceled at any year by the agency based on political decisions. The design would be property of the agency. A failure to meet or exceed the initially guaranteed specs would result in a complete re-payment of all project funds (no bids from limited liability subsidiaries would be allowed).

Finally, there would be a tender for a production contract albeit this might result in just one bid if rare production techniques are necessary. No bid higher than the initially specified production price can be accepted and the lack of availability of an offer below the specified production price counts as failure to meed the guaranteed specs of the development project.

Product improvement / upgrade development contracts would need to be limited to shorter time spans (like max. four years).


This scheme would prohibit mission creep, development cost increases, budget-relaxing stretching of programs and would also reduce gold plating, technological risk and ambitions very much.
The reduction in ambitions and gold-plating as well as technological risk would be achieved through the risk for the development company; it wouldn't agree to a development contract with specs that might be beyond its capabilities.


I'm sure that many better schemes were already developed and proposed (I wasn't impressed by some proposals, that's why I developed my own one) - our politicians merely need to use existing good proposals to revolutionize procurement systems into something that's not a shame.

People and organizations often lack the self-discipline to execute an endeavor well that lasts very long - simple rules need to be applied to neutralize this weakness.
Development and procurement projects that last for a quarter century must not be tolerated; we need to become much more responsive and agile!

S O