Challenging the IFV concept - Part 2

.
I argued yesterday that the IFV concept of today isn't even close to the answer to a tactical problem that it was meant to be in its conception.

IFVs are compromise vehicles;
jack of all trades, master of none.

IFVs can move infantry into a battle with tank-like mobility, but just few.
IFVs can support tanks with autocannon (20-40mm) and ATGMs (2-4km usually), but they're poorly supplied with ammunition for this .
They have elaborate fire control and weapon stabilization systems, but little capability against difficult aerial targets.
They can lay suppressive fire with a coaxial machine gun, but no better than tanks can do.
They are armoured for survivability, but much less than the main battle tanks.

- - - - -

An especially disappointing compromise of the IFV is its passive protection. The armour protection is in between MBT and light, 'rear area' AFV armour levels.
Few modern IFVs attempt to come close to MBT protection levels at least against shaped charge and mine weapons; count me as unimpressed.

The whole concept of a high-cost compromise vehicle seems to deliver too little bang for the buck in general; especially too few infantrymen. The IFV concept suggests that IFVs are THE transport vehicle for infantrymen in heavy brigades. IFVs are expensive and relatively thirsty, so their quantity is dangerously low (A Puma-equipped Panzerbrigade with a single Panzergrenadierbataillon would end up with only about 300 infantrymen seats in IFVs).

There's no need to reinvent the wheel, though - we just need different compromises AND the readiness to get rid of an one-size-fits-it-all vehicle. Standardization benefits can be had with vehicle families of specialized vehicles just as well.

HAPC

The Israelis never bought into the IFV concept (and therefore deprived us of the opportunity to have it reality-checked in one of their wars). They kept the MBT/APC fleet until quite recently when they added a specialist vehicle concept; the heavy armoured personnel carrier (HAPC).

That's the American battle taxi concept mated with MBT-like survivability.

I think that makes a lot of sense; the relative lack of secondary fire/explosion threats in such a vehicle and the smaller silhouette (no turret) makes this concept even more survivable than MBTs (that doesn't need to be true for specific examples).

I propose to adopt this concept for the task of moving infantry on the battlefield till they dismount and do their job in the combined arms team of tanks, infantry and indirect support fires. HAPCs can carry a full group (10-13), not just the small ones we got used to see in IFVs (6-9).
The HAPC should be based on the same components and have the same (if not better) protection level as the MBT; the requirement for a rear door/ramp requires a different internal layout and therefore a different hull, though.

The HAPC concept has just one flaw; these vehicles are thirsty (heavy) and expensive.
Again, it cannot be the primary vehicle for a brigade's infantry. It can only fill the high survivability battle-taxi niche.

APC

The Heer had serious resource restrictions in WW2; one of these was a lack of SPW. It was only able to equip few Panzergrenadier units with SPW and equipped all else with trucks instead. That wasn't perfect, yet successful as the divisions had at least this reduced SPW inventory.

We're still in a similar situation, just at another level. We cannot afford (and sustain) HAPCs for all heavy brigade infantry. But we can afford to have some of the infantry in HAPCs and most in normal APCs (armoured personnel carriers).

Those APCs should have rear area protection standards; artillery fragment protection, bullet-proof, mine-protection and reduction of shaped charge behind-armour effects (spall liner).
Every such APC should be considered as a transport/utility vehicle, not as a combat vehicle. The self-defence armament could easily be limited to a 7.62 machine gun, at maximum a 20mm lightweight autocannon. The dismount strength should be the same as the HAPC's, but with a bit extra volume for extra equipment.

This is pretty much the classic APC concept as known by M113 and Fuchs. A cheap wheeled APC based on a medium truck chassis could satisfy as well.



RFCV

APC and HAPC replace the infantry transportation job of the IFVs . That's no complete substitution for an IFV, though.

The rapid fire capability of an IFV (coupled with usually much greater max. gun elevation in comparison to MBTs) is valuable and shouldn't be ditched.
A replacement vehicle for this (let's call it rapid fire combat vehicle, RFCV) should first fix a major flaw of the IFV; its inferior protection. A rapid fire vehicle with autocannon(s) would be a duel vehicle, in line-of-sight of the enemy just like MBTs. It needs MBT-level protection like HAPCs. This level of protection is not available for IFVs because the dismounts add too much volume and surface.
No matter how well an IFV is protected; a dedicated firepower vehicle that simply got rid of the dismount requirement (or limited it to a scout team's size like two) can be better-protected.

The RFCV should share the chassis with MBTs and have a IFV-like, but improved firepower.
It should be master with rapid fire, not just mediocre. Its ammunition should either leave no lethality wishes left or it should be available in such quantity that suppressive fire is possible for minutes (yes, I'm talking about heavier barrels than usual).

The Russians have shown off prototypes of such a concept, the BMP-T.

I'm still trying to understand the concept behind the automatic grenade launchers on that vehicle, but otherwise it's pretty much something that I could agree on.

My T-95 speculation could be understood as an upper limit, high-tech extreme of the RFCV concept. This upper end would be too expensive for a force that doesn't have huge quantities of medium tech MBTs in storage.

A variation of the RFCV concept could integrate a mortar for efficient indirect fire support; turreted medium mortars are proven tech and could easily be installed coaxial to an autocannon. The result would look a bit like the BMP-3 turret (a full gun is usually pointless for a vehicle that fights side-by-side with MBTs, though).


I have favoured a move away from the holy cow Schützenpanzerwagen / infantry fighting vehicle for years. The concept itself is outdated, was never fully realized in practice and it's in my opinion inferior to more specialized vehicles that actually delete the need for a medium chassis family. The IFV also hurts our heavy forces because it's a major reason for their terrible quantitative infantry weakness.

S O

.

Challenging the IFV concept - Part 1

.
Infantry fighting vehicle (IFV, Schützenpanzer/SPz in German) discussions are usually about which is better, whether the protection is sufficient, whether the new model is a good design or about the dismount strength.

We've become used to IFVs as self-evident combat vehicles, as self-evident as are main battle tanks (MBTs).


I tend to think way outside the box and often come to unorthodox conclusions (and surely don't hit the nail every time - a 3/5 hit rate would already be phenomenal). My thinking about the IFV concept was stirred up by several exceptions to the rule and by military history.

Let's begin at the origins.

The Germans deployed (similar to some French vehicles) Schützenpanzerwagen, SPW (SdKfz 251 and SdKfz 250) during WW2.

These were half-tracked vehicles to get a better off-road capability than all-wheeled vehicles. The off-road capability was indeed quite good because of the large tracks and therefore low ground pressure (the similar American half-tracks had much smaller tracks and inferior off road capabilities; they even needed front drums as aid to cross trenches).
Fully tracked vehicles required more elaborate gearboxes and were expected to be much more expensive. The compromise at the time was therefore a half-track.

This gave the infantry of armoured divisions (actually just a portion of it) protected mobility. The infantry was able to keep the pace of the tanks in all terrains and were available for the combined arms combat. These SPW were bullet-proof (except against AT rifle and equivalent bullets), but not shell-proof. Their protection wasn't superior to 1920's tanks, but they faced 40's anti-tank defences. Nevertheless, bullet-proof was better than no armour.

The rise of light shaped charge-based anti-tank weapons (Panzerfaust, Bazooka, Panzerschreck, Piat) during 1943-1944 provided infantry with deadly short-range anti-tank self defence weapons. Tanks were no longer able to easily overrun infantry without serious losses.

These infantry AT weapons were effective at ranges like 30-150 m and easily outranged by normal infantry weapons (rifles, machine guns), though.
The users of such AT weapons were difficult to spot by tanks (limited fields of view are still a problem for tank crews) and much easier to spot by infantry.

The solution to the Panzerfaust problem was to use infantry (and mortars, artillery) instead of tanks against their users and to support the infantry with tank weapons over a safe distance.
Mortars and artillery were able to kill infantry, but were poor at spotting it. The use of infantry support for tanks was therefore of utmost importance.

A normal infantry attack was dangerous and slow. Infantry dismounting from tanks (tank desants) was faster but exposed to extreme risks.
This was the point when the SPW concept proved its worth again; these vehicles carried infantry at high speed and enabled it to fight with its weapons and with good vision - still outranging the AT weapons. Even a hit by a shaped charge was not necessarily a disaster - shaped charges aren't very effective behind thin armour plates (much of their effect is based on turning the armour into fragments).

The only remaining problems at that time were the short range of the German flamethrowers (very effective weapon kit for SPW vehicles in WW2) and the SPW's vulnerability to shells.


WW2 ended, but the technical-tactical challenge didn't end in 1945.

The conclusions of German officers from WW2 were clear:
The Panzergrenadiere (~mechanized infantry) should get a vehicle that
- was as mobile as the tanks (full track, speed, power/weight)
- had a shell-proof frontal armour plating
- carried about eight Panzergrenadiere for primarily mounted combat
- had a serious weapon (12.7 mm MG or 20 mm autocannon) for ground combat and air defence

The intent was that the combat would happen mounted if possible - this enabled very quick actions at tank speed instead of infantry speed. The Panzergrenadiere had to defeat the enemy infantry (which had only short-ranged light anti-tank weapons). The mounted fight required good vision when mounted - this meant that the vehicle should be open.

The Heer (German army) finally got a technically flawed vehicle (HS30). The vehicle had also a conceptual shortcoming; it wasn't able to resist shells (or shaped charges). Costs and fuel consumption would easily have been twice as high if that tactical requirement was met. Germany wasn't rich at that time, so the HS30 (and all later IFVs) had to be protected inadequately.

The NBC battlefield plannings and the rise of proximity fuses for artillery and mortar shells also questioned the wisdom of an open-topped battlefield vehicle. It became necessary to provide a protective roof, but the Heer still stuck to the principle that the Panzergrenadiere were meant to fight mounted.

The IFV/SPz concept was in serious trouble during the late 50's and early 60's because of its vulnerability, but that was only the beginning.

The next problem - and this should have been a K.O. hit for the concept in my opinion - was that the effective range of infantry anti-tank weapons increased while the effective range of mounted infantry was stagnating.

It became eventually during the 70's obvious that an IFV with mounted infantrymen would be at high risk (and not the scissor to the paper) when facing infantry at short range.
IFV crews were - just like the main battle tank crews - better off with long-range fire tactics and a call for indirect fire support against infantry. There was no range any more at which mounted Panzergrenadiere were able to defeat enemy infantry without catastrophic risk.

IFVs were nevertheless improved - they got anti-tank missiles to assist the MBTs in tank battles (and to bolster their morale), sometimes at the cost of one infantryman less.
Passive low light and even passive infrared sights were introduced and fully stabilized main guns (autocannons of 20-40mm calibre) with laser rangefinders and ballistic computers became standard. The IFV became an autocannon-armed combat vehicle that complemented the MBTs with its dissimilar armament. It also happened to carry infantrymen, but they had ever less ability to fight mounted; they were often reduced to using firing ports with minimal vision, and even these were at times blocked by armour upgrades.

The IFVs became really expensive and therefore inevitably really few. Some Western armies didn't compensate for this with the provision of enough cheap APCs (armoured personnel carriers) for supplementary mechanized infantry, though. The armour and mechanized infantry brigades of NATO forces are often dangerously weak on infantry.

There's actually some hope for the survivability of IFVs today; active protection systems and many other advances (mostly against shaped charges, not so much against shells/kinetic energy penetrators) may finally give the equivalent of shell-proofing to future IFVs like Puma.

Mounted combat for Panzergrenadiere is nevertheless an anachronism. Some modern IFV designs provide only hatches for two dismounts, more for observation and last ditch defence than as offensive conceptual mainstay. Today's dismounts can be happy if they have seen the surrounding terrain before they're ordered to dismount.

Modern IFVs are reduced to autocannon combat vehicles - they should not be called IFVs or Schützenpanzerwagen at all.
Our armies are clinging to the IFV as mainstay of infantry power in armour and mechanized brigades - the result is a very weak infantry component, a weak link in combined arms warfare.


This got quite long, so I'll post my suggestions in a second part.
I'll place more emphasis on non-hardware topics in the next weeks.

S O

.

Will the 5th be the last manned fighter generation?

.

I mean, there are those that see JSF as the last manned fighter -- or fighter-bomber, or jet. And I'm one of -- you know, I'm one that's inclined to believe that.

This quote was attributed to Admiral Mullen by many newspapers and blogs in May and caused a short flare-up of discussion about manned vs. unmanned combat aviation.
Strangely, the transcript says that a comptroller called Robert Hale said the quote, not Mullen.

Anyway; let me vent off my unimportant opinion on the issue, after three weeks of maturing the thought.

I'm actually utterly undecided on this issue in regard to conventional combat aviation. A new strike fighter type seems to require a development phase of two decades unless something terrible happens. The need to replace the F-22 and F-35 will probably arise by 2040 if things keep on going as slowly as in the past decades (which included a big chunk of the intense Cold War).
It's near-impossible to be serious about such long-term predictions; even the engineers who are deeply involved in this kind of stuff couldn't do much more than to throw a coin.

I think that the whole debate looks into the wrong direction anyway. It looks at conventional air power, the man+machine sized air power.

The beauty of unmanned aviation isn't merely its potentially extreme endurance and the supposedly reduced risk for humans.
The beauty of the concept lies in the ability to create aircraft smaller than man+machine. It's just about machines, and those can be really tiny.

Long-time readers of this blog won't be surprised about this opinion of mine:
A classic fighter is irrelevant in the low-level micro air war.
A F-22 is entirely irrelevant in regard to drones that are smaller and cheaper than its missiles. The same applies to Rafales, Typhoons, PAK-FA and all other conventional fighters.
They're useless against small drones.

The next great challenge in air war will not be about complex fighters and bombers; it will be about drones of one pound to few hundred kilograms weight.
These drones will be close to earth, probably even resting quite often on the surface (this makes them invisible to doppler radar modes as usually used to locate moving aircraft).

These drones can be too small, too numerous, too difficult to hit and too cheap to be defeated by conventional missiles and fighters.

There's some buzz about space war and some buzz about robotic air war, yet I'd like to assert this:

The future aerospace warfare will know three levels:

* exoatmospheric

* classic atmospheric

* miniaturized low level

Exoatmospheric warfare will be the supreme discipline. I expect that the nations with space programs today will participate. At most Europe, USA, Russia, PR China, Japan and India will exploit it well - others might limit themselves to countermeasures against hostile satellites.

Classic atmospheric air war may be robotic or not; I strongly suspect that the difference will be slight. The greater difference to air wars as we know them will probably be the increased use of hypervelocity missiles (that may leave the atmosphere temporarily) - ballistic and quasi-ballistic missiles. These will probably be the offensive air war weapons of choice for powers that cannot establish and maintain a full conventional air war system.

Miniaturized low level air war will be completely new and probably surprisingly low-level. Classic air superiority is here equally irrelevant as in space. Any country with some electronics companies could participate. There will be air-air, air-ground and recce drones.

- - - - -

The established air superiority and air defence may be irrelevant to the new levels, but it's only natural that they'll emerge (and be improvised at first).

Just a short list of possible threats to low-level drones:

* small fighter drones
(there's actually something quite close under development)

* machine guns and auto cannons
(automated or manual fire control)

* barrage balloons with net obstacles
(proven countermeasure to planes till WW2, effective up to several hundred metres)

* good old shotguns
(they work on birds - they will work on bird-like drones)

I actually gave a hint on the shotgun vs. micro drones idea already in April:

Shotguns (especially automatic ones) also seem most promising to me as a counter-weapon to the micro air vehicles that are under development; bird-sized flying reconnaissance/surveillance drones. You don't want to shoot an erratically-moving 10 cm diameter target at 50m distance with an assault rifle - it would take several magazines on average to hit once. A shotgun would kill such a target just as if it's being used for bird hunting.

Why is no miniaturized air combat drone known publicly (or why don't I know about it)?
Maybe because the West ignores the possibility of quantity-produced cheap enemy drones so far. Another plausible explanation: They may be hidden in black budgets.

- - - - -

The next fighter is likely unmanned, but no classic fighter generation as apparently expected by most people. I'm completely undecided on whether the next classic fighter generation will be robotic.

S O

.

Sub vs ASW ship: The range mystery

.
I wrote about the new Russian frigate class recently, and there's something that keeps irritating me. Maybe it's justified by obscure operational analysis, but why exactly have even relatively new ship-to-sub missiles such a limited range?

The RPK-9 Medvedka (2nd link) (to be used by the Russian frigates) and the RUM-139 VL-ASROC both are believed to have ranges of little more than 20 km (I'm not in the mood to think in nautical miles today).

RPK-9 Medvedka (Russia): 20 km
RUM-139B VL-ASROC (USA): 22 km
These ranges likely don't include the range (about 10 km) of the payload; a lightweight anti-submarine torpedo.

The heavy submarine torpedoes (much slower, of course) are believed to have ranges like 40-60 km.

YU-6 (Chinese): 45 km
Mk.48 ADCAP (USA): 50 km
Torpedo 2000 / Tp62 (Sweden): 50km
Black Shark (France/Italy): 50 km
Seehecht M2A4/Seahake Mod.4 (German): 50 km
Spearfish (British): 54 km
These ranges depend on batteries or chemical power storage. Old torpedoes might have old components and therefore shorter ranges.

No matter what the real (and effective) ranges* are; let's temporarily stick to the assumption that the publicly available specs are for real.

The range disadvantage would be no major problem if the torpedo attack was detected early on open seas, as the target could speed away from it. That would work just fine for (usually fast) warships (depends on how early the warning was, of course).
That's a rather optimistic scenario, though; early warning, high speed and the necessary freedom to maneuver out of range cannot be taken for granted.

Another excuse would be that submarines cannot acquire sufficient target information at beyond the ASW missile's range to risk a shot (that might give away their presence). That's possible, but would often be untrue. SSKs in ambush positions near a coast could expect external targeting assistance (airborne radar data, radio data link). It's furthermore not a safe assumption that the ASW ship will detect the sub at a longer range than it will be detected by the sub. That's possible, but likely very dependent on the situation.

Another problem is that a submarine in a blocking position could easily repel an entire enemy fleet if the fleet is avoiding to enter the sub's weapon range. Such dances end sometime, and that's when ships (or subs) will be sunk.

The standard ASW method of attack would be the use of helicopters to deliver lightweight torpedoes against the submarine (after confirming its position with the helicopter's sonar systems).
That approach is in my opinion unreliable. I expect lightweight anti-air missiles on submarines in wartime. That's a top candidate for a secret capability; a strong requirement and a huge benefit of keeping it secret.
There were several disclosed projects for such weapons , including the ongoing IDAS missile project.

The heavyweight torpedo vs. ASW missile range comparison yields many uncertainties, but there's another irritating comparison possible:

The sub-to-ship missile vs. ship-to-sub missile range comparison.
Anti-ship missiles can be fired from submarine torpedo tubes with assistance of a special capsule and a booster.

SM39 Exocet (France): 50 km
UGM-84D Harpoon (USA): 140 km
P-800 Oniks (Russia): 150 km
3M-54 Klub versions (Russia): up to 300 km

These missiles are much faster than ships. This reduces the ship's speed to a question for the missile's terminal homing capability and pretty much deletes it out of the missile range question.

Again, the question of confidence in the firing solution arises; can a submarine make good use of such ranges?
Most certainly not without external assistance. The first few kilometers range advantage over ASW missiles are what interests me, though. A sub-to-ship missile that can reach just 10 km farther than a ship-to-sub missile constitutes a huge weapons range advantage.


Finally there's the story of the UUM-125B ASW-SOW "Lance" missile. It was meant to replace ASROC to offer a greater range, but got cancelled due to budget reasons in 1990.
There was a requirement for a longer-ranged ASROC equivalent in the 80's, and I'm sure budget reasons didn't change tactical considerations. The Lance is a strong hint that there's likely indeed an ASW range problem.

- - - - -

 

It seems to me as if the anti-submarine capability of modern frigates depends too much on fragile and somewhat weather-dependent helicopters. It's even more irritating that the Russian ASW FFG design apparently has only hangar space for a single helicopter (or, as some sources assert; only a landing pad).

It's usually a good idea to diversify, to have more than one asset to address a problem. A single, apparently fragile and not fully reliable asset (ASW helicopter) does not convince me as a single asset against the formidable challenge of SSKs.
Some ASW ships don't even use an anti-submarine missile and depend almost entirely on helicopters to kill subs. The production run of VL-ASROC (apparently only 450) wasn't big anyway.

My concept for a future naval battle fleet was in part designed to avoid this problem with a screen of small units that are usually unworthy targets for a sub (not worth to risk compromising the sub's own location with a first strike). These screening boats were meant to have heavyweight torpedoes (the same as used by subs).

The publicly available anti-submarine missile ranges make no sense to me. They're either wrong or many ASW ships have some quite questionable ASW weapons onboard.


*: I strongly suspect that they cannot match the range of the sub's anti-ship weapons.
The combination of payload torpedo length+weight, propulsion type and overall missile weight indicates that even SM39 Exocet is likely longer-ranged than ASROC.

S O

edit 2009-06-12: It seems as if the Americans see the need for longer range. I missed this apparently rather new proposal for a glide wing kit-enhanced VL-Asroc. Again, a hint that we've got a technical insufficiency in our ASW equipment at present.
.

Military clothes in civilian use

.
I was at the largest European rock music festival ("Rock am Ring", 75,000 visitors, three stages) on Friday till Sunday and had great fun despite the poor weather. My favourite bands were Madness and Limp Bizkit.

It was a great demonstration of the self-organizing behaviour of huge crowds and the (limited) power of a tiny but organized minority of security personnel.

I made another observation that keeps me thinking: There was a kind of unofficial dress code in force, 95% of the visitors had dark (black or grey) clothes or military-style clothes.
(I violated the dress code badly with a light leather jacket and got recognized by people whom I had met two days ago.)

German Flecktarn trousers were quite popular, but many other patterns were in use as well; DPM, Woodland, East German Strichtarn and some pseudo-military (greyish, blueish) patterns.
Most people with such clothes didn't look like actual (or past) military personnel at all.
Military clothes are also quite popular among construction workers and craftsmen (or outdoor workers in general) in Germany.

I guess that social scientists have already done studies about the reasons for this fashion in non-military environments. Their summary would be really interesting.

I wonder what future historians will think about this fashion.

Will they compare it to the pre-1914 seaman uniform (Matrosenanzug) fashion for boys?

What does the present fashion tell about the fashion of a hundred years ago?
The Matrosenanzug fashion of imperial Germany (actually: only in its middle-class) is often used as a display of militarism. Will camouflaged rock music fans be seen as hidden militarists in a hundred years?

The present German society doesn't appear to be militaristic at all - yet military pattern clothes aren't exactly an uncommon sight. The past years had lots of earth and vegetation-like colours in general in our clothing stores.

Well, this is (or was) lots of homework for social scientists - may they tell us about their findings.
I'm certainly interested in reading their studies (well, their summaries) on these topics.


Sven Ortmann

P.S.: Damnit! I forgot to make a photo on the festival!
By the way; the only military-look stuff that I use privately are sleeping bags.
.

Project 22350 and the Russian Navy

.

It's not difficult to find info about the U.S. LCS project that delivers less frigates than expected at higher costs per ship than expected - and lacks a reasonable unclassified explanation for the overall concept of the design(s).

There's another project that's at least as interesting to Europeans, though.

It's the Russian Project 22350 / Admiral Sergej Gorshkov (2nd link), a contemporary project of a new (ASW?) frigate class.

It's dissimilar to LCS as it's slower (not faster) than normal and has a normal (not shallow) draught.
Its armament (nothing special apparently), helicopter equipment (single helicopter only) and sensor equipment (no variable depth sonar apparently) isn't convincing and I assume there's a bit of disinformation about it in the air.
It's officially an ASW frigate with self-air defence capability and some impressive yet likely not terribly important anti-ship missiles.
The expected price is five to ten billion roubles, that's at most € 230 million (today's exchange rate). It's likely a bit more in purchasing power parity terms, but keep in mind that this figure was for the upper end; the optimistic price estimate is only half as high.


I think it deserves to get some more attention, the LCS is in contrast completely over-publicised.

It seems reasonable to expect a modernization wave in the Russian forces during the next 15 years, and this class will apparently be the FFG component of such a modernization.

There are other Russian projects advancing as well:

The corvette equivalent (rear area ASW) project is the Project 20380 Steregushchy class (2nd link).
(I'll drop them a note to choose a simpler name next time.)

They've got a new strategic nuclear submarine (SSBN) project since the mid-90's, the Project 935 Borei class.

The new nuclear attack submarine are the Project 885 Yasen class nuclear SSGNs. (I don't expect a new pure-bred SSN soon, but that's another possibility.)

The new 'conventional' submarines are the Project 677 Lada class SSKs, apparently with AIP.

They're also thinking about CVNs in the 55,000 to 60,000 ton range similar to the British and French concepts, but probably with some serious area air defence.

There's no new classic area air defence ship project publicly known (unless I missed it), so it's reasonable to expect the Russians to keep their large Cold War surface classes with strong AAW (Kirov and Slava classes) in service till the introduction of an AAW FFG or DDG.

The Russians had an impressive amphibious fleet. We'll get important clues about their strategy by their decision to rebuild it or not. So far I've heard of no major efforts in this area.

An important component of Russian naval power is air power. Both the Baltic and the Black Sea fleets have small enough areas of operation to get significant air support from land-based aviation. Their Pacific fleet can only reach the open ocean by passing through a couple of geographical bottlenecks that are in range of Russian air power as well. The Arctic fleet has the important mission of deploying and protecting strategic (nuclear deterrence) submarines (SSBNs). This can largely be done in range of land-based air power as well.


The last old Cold War design units will succumb to their age and leave service till about 2030 (bigger ships later than smaller ones). Everyone should re-assess the Russian fleet in the next years if he's still sticking to the image of the late old War Soviet fleet or of the rotting Russian fleet of Yeltsin and early Putin. We'll see an almost all-new Russian fleet soon.

S O

.

Human shields

.

A quite common allegation is that a war party (usually the one with inferior firepower) allegedly uses "human shields". It's one of the ethics-based attacks that information warfare and interested media/NGOs can launch.


Yet, I found it to be inaccurate at times.

Here's why: The international law ban (the accusation is also used loudly by hypocrites who too often ignore international law themselves) of such behaviour is based in the Geneva conventions.

Geneva Convention III (on POW)

Art 23. No prisoner of war may at any time be sent to, or detained in areas where he may be exposed to the fire of the combat zone, nor may his presence be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.

Prisoners of war shall have shelters against air bombardment and other hazards of war, to the same extent as the local civilian population. With the exception of those engaged in the protection of their quarters against the aforesaid hazards, they may enter such shelters as soon as possible after the giving of the alarm. Any other protective measure taken in favour of the population shall also apply to them

.

Geneva Convention IV (on civilians)

Art. 28. The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.

Art. 34. The taking of hostages is prohibited.

Art. 35. All protected persons who may desire to leave the territory at the outset of, or during a conflict, shall be entitled to do so, unless their departure is contrary to the national interests of the State.

Additional Protocol I

Art 51. - Protection of the civilian population
(...)7. The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.

The same additional protocol says

Art 51. - Protection of the civilian population
(...)8. Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians, including the obligation to take the precautionary measures provided for in Article 57.

and

Art 57. Precautions in attack

1. In the conduct of military operations, constant care shall be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects.

2. With respect to attacks, the following precautions shall be taken:
(a) those who plan or decide upon an attack shall:
(i) do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects and are not subject to special protection but are military objectives within the meaning of paragraph 2 of Article 52 and that it is not prohibited by the provisions of this Protocol to attack them;
(ii) take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss or civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects;
(iii) refrain from deciding to launch any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;

(b) an attack shall be cancelled or suspended if it becomes apparent that the objective is not a military one or is subject to special protection or that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;
(...)
4. In the conduct of military operations at sea or in the air, each Party to the conflict shall, in conformity with its rights and duties under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, take all reasonable precautions to avoid losses of civilian lives and damage to civilian objects.

5. No provision of this article may be construed as authorizing any attacks against the civilian population, civilians or civilian objects.

(All emphasis was mine, of course.)

- - - - -

Thankfully I'm no lawyer, but the language in these conventions is still easily understandable.

My reading of these conventions is that

* 'Human shielding' (if it fits to the conditions of the conventions) is illegal (for the signatories at least) and due to the prestige of these conventions largely agreed to be unethical.

* The same is true for attacks that occur in expectation of civilians/protected persons, albeit with little latitude ("feasible", "excessive", "reasonable").

* Civilians are entitled to leave.

* I don't see anything that prohibits soldiers from moving into civilian buildings and settlements or from fighting there (unless they prevent that the civilians leave).


One example: A patrol comes under intense attack from a house near a road. They saw civilians going into the house previously. They're pinned down and call for an air strike.
This is neither a case of human shielding (the civilians moved in - they could have run away) nor an illegal killing of civilians (the patrol had no real alternative except dying).

Now imagine the civilians were forced to go into the house and kept from leaving - then it's human shielding and illegal.

Now imagine the patrol had smoke grenades available and could have sprinted to safety a mere 50 m away. This is the point where the air attack would in my opinion become illegal for they would not have done enough to avoid civilian casualties as demanded by the convention.


Another example: A battalion takes a rest from the fighting and takes quarters in a village. The civilians are still in the village.
That does not appear to be human shielding, but - and this was surprising to me - an air attack on the village would likely be illegal.

- - - - -

The "human shield" term became well-known during the Gulf War 1991 when Saddam Hussein was doing exactly what these conventions (especially GC3) were meant to prevent.

Later usage of the term "human shield" was in part inflationary and tainted by partial public relations efforts in my opinion.

Some accusations of the last years sounded as if it was illegal to be a combatant in a settlement during wartime when it isn't per se.
It looked quite often more like public opinion warfare than like accurate descriptions of what happened.


Well, warfare is a very dirty and evil activity. It's naive to believe that any party that actively participates in a war would stay clean of war crimes. It's naive to think of one war party as despicable war criminals and the other as clean soldiers who never step over the limits and always do their best to be good.


Every statesman who launches a war should understand that he causes war crimes.

The reason is simple: War is too evil to match our expectations of a good world. It's too evil to even match the moderate expectations as written down in these conventions.

Actually, it's evil enough that we should simply learn and remember not to wage needless wars.
We should only wage wars of necessity.

S O

P.S.: It's well-known since the First World War that the population at home is an important factor at war and its support must be assured.
The legal texts of these conventions form the basis for the public's consensus of what's ethical or unethical in war.

Armies and air forces can talk about supposedly special circumstances in a war in an attempt to exceed the limit of ethical actions, but that's strategically extremely risky.

It's also not helpful to point at evil enemies. That may be part of the justification why you're fighting them, it cannot justify unethical actions on your part.

It's equally pointless (and strategically risky) to question the validity of the conventions in a certain war zone (Afghanistan didn't sign the additional protocol). The public doesn't seem to be interested in such details and applies the rules in general - not just when they are valid legally.

In short: Violations of these conventions pose a huge strategic risk (in wars of choice). The public support at home will be undermined by unethical behaviour of the own troops and we've had enough examples of how strategically decisive that can be.

.

Future war: The infantry perspective

.
I've got a couple of topics about future conventional warfare on my keyword list. The survivability of the infantry against a competent and adequately equipped and supplied enemy is of special interest to me in that context.
These future topics will rest on common assumptions about infantry in a future conventional war - and these assumptions deserve an own blog post:

First, I'd like to emphasize these criteria: competent and adequately equipped and supplied.

We will easily defeat incompetent enemies, enemies with inadequate equipment and enemies with inadequate supplies in a conventional war. Such enemies are still nasty as guerrillas, but pretty much hopeless in conventional war.

We should prepare for the defence of our nation and our alliance against seriously threatening enemies and not assume many enemy shortcomings in our defence preparations.

- - - - -

Future infantry will face many challenges and it will necessarily adapt (hopefully in time). This adaption leads to a vastly different kind of (regular) infantry warfare than ever before.
We have accumulated many evolutionary and revolutionary changes over the past decades without really having seen a full modern war pitching two competent, well-equipped and generally comparable opponents at each other. There was no such conflict that gave a live demonstration about the state of the art.

We're in the same situation as in the first years of the 20th century when a lively discussion about land warfare tactics was raging. Armies had very little relevant experience (Boer wars, Japanese-Russian War 1904/05, colonial wars, Balkan and 19th century Wars with long since obsolete equipment) at that time.

The lethality of artillery and machine guns exposed an utter lack of survivability of classic infantry offence and defence in 1914/15 and led to rapid adaption to the new circumstances.

It would be very unfortunate if we stumbled into the next major conventional war as unprepared, so I'll attempt to contribute a few mosaic pieces to the radically new picture.

Let's first list some new challenges for modern infantry:
* significant increase in infantry arms lethality
* huge increase in aimed indirect fire lethality
* introduction of electronic warfare
* huge increase in (especially vertical and technical) reconnaissance capabilities
* significant increase in dependence on and potential of electronic communication
* huge improvement of technical means for night combat
* changed demographics and population health
* significant change of economic production output per capita (= war economy potential)
* improved passive protection

The increase in reconnaissance and lethality is a survivability challenge for infantry.
Defensive positions must not be exposed to (aerial) reconnaissance. This pretty much excludes the viability of open field defensive positions as were seen at Kursk.
A hill is not a serious concealment against reconnaissance any more.
We may rule the skies, but twenty ton air superiority fighters don't hunt three kilogram drones at 300 m altitude - we should expect effective aerial reconnaissance by the enemy.

Camouflage and deception will be of utmost importance. Cover will often not be much more useful than concealment because accurate 152mm shells can negate most cover.

The reconnaissance + fire coordination process will still take some time. Well-camouflaged positions may be disguised by advanced reconnaissance techniques, but a frequent change between imperfectly camouflaged positions might give as much survivability as staying stationary in a perfectly camouflaged one.
Imagine a jamming-saturated environment that prohibits immediate imagery transfer by radio from small drones to recon units - the drone might need to fly back to upload its information and the subsequent analysis of footage might take an hour or two.
We might even experience that moving units are more difficult targets for reconnaissance than static units.

Modern reconnaissance technologies negate much camouflage and concealment that was still effective in the 80's.
* Artificial camouflage nets can conceal/deceive, but they cannot camouflage if the enemy reconnaissance is looking for its distinct colour set and other characteristics.
* Even dense, green forests might be unable to offer proper concealment against foliage-penetrating radars (see also here).
* Most types of smoke are quite transparent for thermal sights.
* Aerial drones can detect radio activity that would usually be hidden by hills or mountains.
* Battlefield surveillance radars can detect even crawling men at several kilometers distance.

- - - - -

The survivability challenge restricts the options of the infantry. It requires a good and correct training for the infantry. Know how of WW2 is in many cases outdated and outright dangerous.

The infantry should prefer to fight in these three cases only;

a) keeping up its camouflage/concealment
* Snipers can fire without compromising their location.
* Forward observers can call for effects without compromising their location.
* Mines (preferably command-detonated mines) do not (immediately) compromise the location of their users.
* Flanking fire can be undetected for critical seconds.
* Technical means (IR sights for effective fire through smoke) can create one-way vision opportunities.
* Indirect fires (like fibre-optic guided missiles) maintain a concealment or cover between shooter and target.

b) exploit its lethality for a quick advantageous fight and break contact ASAP
* Ambushes meet the criterion as they promise an unfair and quick battle.
* Hit and run attacks exploit the precious moments of surprise more than a single engagement.
* Opportunities to overrun compact positions quickly should be exploited.

c) negate enemy lethality
* Combat with plenty of support (AFVs, C-RAM, mortar counter fires, ECM, advanced smoke, decoying) can enhance the infantry's survivability by negating enemy lethality.
* A cheaper method is to stick closely to enemy forces ('hug' them) - inside their minimum safe distance of their fire support. This might be impossible in face of small precision munitions and infantry weapons lethality.

Surprise becomes a necessary and indispensable condition for survival and success in offensive actions, even very small ones. Even a meeting engagement would be won by the side that opens (effective) fire first.

Forget about evasive drills for unintended sudden contacts. You're dead if you walk into the kill zone of a competent ambushing party. Such evasion drills work against incompetent (or extremely unlucky) enemies only.
Camouflage, concealment, deception and smart movement are the means to achieve this surprise.

The golden rule for defensive success is the same as for offensive actions; you cannot succeed any more if your position was revealed minutes ago. Keep in mind that attacks should be executed with superior force and promising amounts of support. Less powerful attacks don't meet the competent/equipped/supplied criterion triad.
A detected infantry force needs to relocate if possible - ASAP. Mobility isn't as much a cornerstone of infantry as it is for mounted units, so such a sudden requirement to break a contact is quite a challenge.

The necessity to move once detected & identified puts a premium on the ability to track & hit moving targets and on the ability to restrict movement in order to undermine enemy survivability.

Tactical combat in an offensive that's being launched after both sides had the time to prepare for defence is especially difficult. Another just as likely more common form of combat would be combat in a less-prepared environment - hasty defence, hasty attack and meeting engagements. These won't include all offensive and defensive characteristics of deliberate actions - they would be 'incomplete' and have a very different face.

Forces that depend a lot on supplies will often face supply shortages and be limited in their abilities. They will also often already have suffered casualties (= a loss of capabilities, usually uneven among all kinds of capabilities).

Forward units might find themselves behind "enemy lines" when their mobility and/or communication lines were not sufficient to withdraw them in time. Infantry will be reinforced by other combat and non-combat personnel (stragglers or assigned replacements).
Fighting "behind enemy lines" requires a suitable mindset - closer to guerrillas than to fortified occupation camp style.

Imperfect situations without fully intact support, networking, positions and coordination are likely more crucial than breakthrough battles or battles with limited objective that rest on a plan. The real strength of an army becomes visible once things start to go awry.

A partial loss of abilities on one or both sides can create vastly different conditions and requirements.


Guerilla methods differ in both sustainability practices and survivability practices from regular infantry methods. Most guerilla sustainability methods are no good for regular infantry, but their survivability tactics are mostly an adaption to the high lethality of their adversaries.
We should look closely at these tactics, for we will likely need them on our own when we'll face competent and well-equipped adversaries in the future.

Western infantry has to leave its peacetime path and should seek a new setup.

sustainability:

improved wartime regular army sustainability practices

survivability:

modern light infantry / modern irregular survivability practices

lethality and other effects on the enemy:

traditional regular army abilities plus exploitation of modern and future technologies

Just like in the 20th century, irregular and light infantry (Jagdkampf and others) tactics seem to be a great foundation for modern infantry tactics. Our infantry will face huge survivability challenges against strong adversaries in the future, and I believe it's not adequately prepared.

S O

.

Foreign comments on the German attitude towards war

.

I found a typical comment on that topic here (hat tip to Weblog Sicherheitspolitik).

Germans are in the process of redefining themselves as “victims of war.” Claiming that all war is always horrible for everyone involved, they remove all questions of who and why. Pacifist Germans have conveniently drawn the wrong conclusion from WW2 - that freedom and democracy must not be defended militarily.
You hear this all the time in Germany: that Germans know the price of war and have learned their lesson - unlike those naive, stupid Americans. In this self-serving myth, having started a war that killed 50 million ended up cleansing and purifying them, enabling them to reach a higher moral plane. Thus the perpetrators gain the moral high ground over the victors. Or so they think. (The irony is that most Germans have no memory of any war, while millions of Americans were affected by the effort to win the cold war and subsequent conflicts)

It's interesting because it mixes facts with misunderstandings, myths and a kind of strawman argument. Honestly, that's exactly the mix I was expecting from a right wing American on such a topic.


Let's look at it, piece for piece.

"victims of war"

The two older generations were indeed victims of war, and one more generation of Eastern Germans as well. The war had extremely adverse effects on health, wealth and freedom. The hardship of rebuilding a country that was bombed to rubble was obvious. It took almost two decades to recover materially, so the war meant a loss of three decades to these people.

The opposite of victims are perpetrators, and it could be argued that Germans are not only victims but also perpetrators of WW2 and holocaust.
The largest base for this allegation is that Hitler came to power through democratic elections.
However, the result was only 33.1% for the NSDAP in that election. Only 71.1% of the eligible voters voted in that election in November 1932. That reduced the share to 23.5%.

The requirement for voting rights was 20 years of age. So only those born in 1912 or earlier - and only a third of them - can be blamed on base of this argument.
The German statistics agency's data (dated 2006) shows that in 2006 there were about 153,000 Germans living who were born in 1913 or earlier. Time went by, and an extrapolation for today yields about 107,000 likely survivors born in 1913 or earlier.

So today we've got probably only about 25,000 survivors who have voted for the Nazis in November of 1932. They're all 95 years or older.

The generations who experienced the horrors of war and had to rebuild Germany, pay reparations and suffer from dictatorships is much, much stronger today - it's the grandparents generation and the Eastern German parents generation.

So what is coining a nation more; millions of victims or ten thousands of perpetrators?

The truth is: Few living people are still to blame for what happened several generations ago.

"Claiming that all war is always horrible for everyone involved..."

I support that claim by about 95%. Sociopaths tend to like war, and most of them reveal their true nature only in war. Some wars are necessary and serve to improve a nation's fate, but even then the war itself is horrible to most. It's the least favourable tool to reach a goal.

"...that freedom and democracy must not be defended militarily."

This is where a kind of strawman argument/myth mix kicks in.
There's a wide-spread and absolutely ridiculous assertion in American right-wing circles that Germans/Europeans wouldn't want to fight, not even for their own freedom. I think that nonsense is in the background of this quote.
Another assumption in the background of this quote is apparently that Americans defend freedom and democracy militarily.

The reality is a bit more complex.

1) Germans are ready to defend sovereignty with military means and we spend billions on the military even though there's no-one really threatening us today.

On the other hand there's simply no consensus that the sovereignty of non-allied states needs to be defended by us.

Well, that's the point of an alliance: It establishes a difference between the normal relations among UN members and the relations inside of the club (alliance).
Why should we promise to defend everyone if not everyone promises to defend us?
Unlike some other nations, we at least stick to our commitments in the Charter of the United Nations in regard to non-allied countries.

There are some pacifists in Germany, numbering probably some hundred thousands of citizens. Yet even most of these would agree that the Bundeswehr should attempt to repel an invasion of Germany to defend "freedom and democracy".

2) Americans don't defend freedom and democracy. That's the propaganda, but in fact it's neither about defence, nor about freedom or democracy. At least not all at once.

It's not about defence because they have never entered a war on their own to defend any democracy. They were either declared war on by their enemies or they defended non-democratic states. The entry into WW1 was not about freedom either, but a plain meddling in another continent's war among similar powers. It could be argued whether the Republic of Korea was a real democracy in 1950, but that's an exception.

It's not about freedom or democracy because U.S. wars are about "national interest" or "national defence". The "freedom" and "democracy" part is just the propaganda to build up and maintain support for the wars at home.

"You hear this all the time in Germany: that Germans know the price of war and have learned their lesson - unlike those naive, stupid Americans."

That's kind of accurate, and I would like to add that the lessons learning process was indeed very intense and thorough over decades. The effects seem to begin to fade, though.

In this self-serving myth, having started a war that killed 50 million ended up cleansing and purifying them, enabling them to reach a higher moral plane.

That's a gross misunderstanding. The war did not cleanse and purify "us".

Let me explain. The wars before 1945 were fought by "them", not by "us". Only a tiny minority of "them" survived and they are so old that their role in our society and politics is now very small. The most well-known example is probably former chancellor (social democrats) and 1st lieutenant in WW2, Helmut Schmidt. He's a kind of a wisdom reservoir on two legs, but very, very old and an exception to the rule.

Someone asked me a while ago how Germans could like the Indiana Jones movies (you know, Nazis being the baddies). Well, it's simple: We like to see Nazis being thrashed. They're not "us", just like they're not "us" for British, French, Russians or Americans (with up to a per cent exceptions everywhere in the Western world).

So since the Germans of WW2 are not "us", "we" weren't "purified" and "cleansed".
Instead, we had a decades-long exposure to lessons learned debriefings. THAT is what created an above-normal awareness to certain dangers.
I argued in 2008 that this was actually an exaggerated effort, as we should learn more from others' history and others should learn more from our history.

"The irony is that most Germans have no memory of any war, while millions of Americans were affected by the effort to win the cold war and subsequent conflicts"

Well, it's true that we didn't fight hot wars in 1946-1998, but there was a quite depressing thing going on during the Cold War that was very influential nevertheless:

Americans, Brits and Frenchmen had to expect to die to Soviet nukes if WW3 happened.
Germans had to expect to die to Soviet, American, French and British nukes if WW3 happened.

It's quite depressing to know that your "allies" would not defend, but kill you in the event of war.
It's certainly something that clarifies the insanity of war.

Oh, by the way - it's also a strong counter to American claims that we should be grateful for the defence that the USA provided to us during the Cold War. The "Nuclear umbrella" was in reality just a "Sword of Damocles".

- - - - -

It's obvious that opinions shared by local or national majorities have a common base. Common experiences, common lessons, common problems, maybe culture - there's always a reason for it. That alone should be enough not to ridicule majority opinions of foreign groups, but to take them seriously and to analyze the reasons (more than just superficially).

A feeling of superiority with the own position isn't fully justified until the analysis of the roots of both the own and the other opinion is complete and supporting for the own position.

Mr. Greenwald did not analyze the roots of the German majority opinion properly, nor did he understand that opinion fully. And - as it's obvious by my comments - I suppose that he didn't even understand his country's behaviour fully, as he seemed to believe in covering myths instead.


On the other hand - maybe I'm just not done with my analysis of his opinion and its roots. It's difficult to know when you're done with it (and you probably never are as both are changing over time) on your own.

I hope that this - even if not complete and maybe not 100% correct - provided additional insights and pushed readers towards the complete picture on the issue.

It's as always - only in religious mythology you have prophets who give a complete and perfect statement. In reality you should join mosaic parts gained from many sources to complete the image. I am always just trying to provide additional mosaic parts and to correct wrong colour pieces on some positions.

S O

P.S.: Isn't it funny? Just two decades ago the same WW2 stories would have been used to make sure Germans DON'T think about waging war again.
.