A camouflage pattern (fun)

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Kiwi humour (WW2)

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We then settled down to rest, when suddenly there was an unmistakable shell-burst close outside. I went to the door as the smoke and dust were clearing, and through the Castle gap saw, far out on the plain, four quickly flickering flashes. I started to count the seconds, but before the sound of the guns had arrived there were four sharp explosions, neatly spaced among the buildings. The corner of one house collapsed and the guns flashed again. I returned inside and remarked that we were perfectly safe as two shells never landed in the same spot, whereupon with a howl one entered the room above my head, passed through the next wall, and burst feebly, slightly wounding a pig. This confirmed my opinion that we were perfectly safe as certainly no three shells were likely to land in the same place, so we sat through the twenty-minutes bombardment in moderate tranquillity.

The idea of a sleep had to be abandoned, however, when a message arrived for me to report at Brigade. Cameron and Gilmour came with me, and we laboriously slogged our way through the mud out on to the road. The German gunners opened again and seemed to follow us. I had another chance to develop my theories as to the incidence of shell-bursts. There were two huge rocks behind which I averred it would be perfectly safe to shelter. We did so for a while, and left a moment before a shell burst exactly where we had been. After this I advanced no more theories and we very slowly made our way out on to the road and down to Brigade.

(Infantry Brigadier; 3. Greece: The First Action)

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"Shock", "Shock effect"

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There's much talk about "shock" in military (history) literature. The Soviets even designated entire armies to be "Shock armies". It's widely acknowledged that cavalry had a "shock" role in battle till the 19th century and that armour has taken over this role.

Yet, I've been unable to locate literature on what "shock" really means in a military context. I have thus deduced this unsatisfactory definition based on the observation of the word in use:

Shock is the defence-diminishing psychological effect of an attack with unusually quick effect.

Now there's a relatively recent article by Jim Storr who attempts to define and research the phenomenon a bit better:

‘Shock effect’ is a state where all or part of the enemy is rendered numb, lifeless, inactive or acting irrationally. ‘Shock action’ is the sudden, concentrated application of violence. It has been associated with rapid approach, such as a cavalry or bayonet charge, a tank attack, or a dive bomb attack. More importantly, it also includes the effect of concentrated HE fire.

This is really basic research on the topic. That's astonishing given the widespread use of the term in military writing for about 80 years.

I don't really like his idea because the infantry gun concept is unnecessarily elaborate for indirect fires (in comparison with mortars) and extremely risky for direct fire (in face of enemy indirect fire support). There's furthermore the question whether it's competitive (against portable grenade projection weapons or even an automatic grenade launcher on wheels).

His example scenario includes the pursuit of the enemy by attack helicopters - a form of support that should make infantry guns unnecessary in the first place.

The general idea of irresistible direct HE support fires is valid, of course. It's proved its ability to push defenders out of most defensive positions in many wars. Its limitations in a mountainous/hilly terrain (as in Storr's example) is that direct fire weapons can only defeat forward slope positions, and rarely ridge positions. A competent enemy will prefer reverse slope positions and use the ridge only for observation and rarely for firing.

The real challenge in hill/mountain fighting* is thus out of the field of fire of such direct fire weapons, which can often be substituted for by slower indirect fires.

In the end, I'm much more interested in a theory of shock in the context of conventional ground combat. How could shock tactics contribute to the ability to knock out, overrun and disintegrate an enemy brigade quickly and without incurring huge KIA counts? How does shock help us to turn enemies into prisoners of war?

Shock is an interesting patch of the huge mosaic picture that we call "warfare". We should understand it better than we do, and that would then be the starting point for a cascade of considerations and conclusions that could contribute to better tactics and operational art.

S O

related:

.../2010/01/panic.html

.../2009/02/jericho-sirens.html

*: I'm preparing a long blog post on this.

edit: A related ARMOR magazine article of '98.

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Club-K Container Missile System video

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Hat tip to the ELP Defens(c) Blog.

Eric Palmer hates this video, I love it.

We seem to see different things in it. ;)

To me this is a great marketing video. It shows the elegance of the covert approach to survivability better than anything else ever before.

Cruiser missiles have been launched by warships, launched by bombers, launched by submarines and launched by camouflaged military trucks before. There were efforts to create dedicated "Arsenal ships" with designs both from France and the U.S., laden to the max with missiles and striving for radar stealth.

Even the most expensive, ridiculously expensive, in my opinion outright idiotic installation of cruise missiles in dedicated nuclear submarines (SSGN) has been realised.

Meanwhile, the simple dispersion of covert containers on civilian transportation platforms has been neglected as a means to achieve survivability. I assume this method does simply not provide enough command slots for the military and not enough ship hulls to the navy.

http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/warship-stealth.html

http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2007/07/great-abm-deception.html

The idea is not totally new, of course. Trucks, rail and transport ships have been used as firing platforms for decades. There were rail-mobile ICBMs, for example. The use of standardised containers has spread in the military as well.

The impressive thing about the video is how it emphasises the simplicity and elegance of the approach (in part by by ignoring the whole necessity of target detection and identification).

We're living in an age of overwhelming firepower. They keys to success are survivability against such firepower and the abilty to find & identify the enemy. The destruction of known & identified targets is relatively simple nowadays.

The covert approach to survivabiliy is an important and neglected one. There's no convention that forces us to paint all military equipment in camouflage colours (as far as I know). Sometimes it's best to hide things in plain sight because the noise:target ratio is too high for their identification.

Sven Ortmann

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The case for a medium calibre all-round gun

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I've been fascinated by the ARES XM274 75mm cannon for years. This piece of the 80's was a 75mm rapid fire cannon (up to 60 rounds per minute) in a very light armoured fighting vehicle (AFV). The idea at the time was to equip a light tank (RDF/LT) with the firepower to defeat Soviet main battle tanks (MBT) without using tactically unreliable anti-tank missiles (and much more).

It was unfortunate that the idea of such a medium calibre gun was mated with the ill-fated idea of using a "Light Division" with many relatively light armoured vehicles. Such "light" Division and Brigade concepts have been discussed in the U.S.Army since the 70's and never yielded more than prototypes and the 8x8 "Stryker" vehicles.

Another attempt with such a gun was the Italian OTOMATIC SPAAG prototype - unfortunate as well because a bulky and heavy naval weapon was used. Naval guns have never been very suitable for land warfare (except in railroad artillery).

There have been two 60mm guns from Italy and Israel, of which the Israeli one (60mm HVMS) has gone into Chilean service as part of an upgrade project.

Experiments with a naval 57mm weapon on armoured vehicles went nowhere (except as specialised Eastern SPAAGs).

None of these guns has ever demonstrated the full potential of the medium calibre in my opinion.

Let's take the ARES XM274 cannon as a benchmark and assume the following:

- 75 mm calibre

- 30-60 rpm

- 60 ready rounds (spall-protected stowage)

- proximity fused HE-frag ammunition with electronic time fusing option

- APCBC-HE (armour piercing capped, ballistic cap - high explosive) ammunition with delay base fuse for explosive filler- one-man (tank commander, 340° field of view) turret

- shorter (62 cal) rifled tube than the extremely long one (overhang!) of the XM274

- 45° elevation/ 15° depression

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I wrote "all-round gun" in the title, so what could such a gun do?

Anti-tank capability with APCBC-HE

- unable to defeat main battle tanks reliably in their frontal 90° sector

- able to penetrate and defeat much other vehicle armour

- APCBC-HE (armour piercing capped ballistic cap - high explosive) is a robust WW2 technology for armour piercing rounds that could prove to be more resilient to active protection systems than modern subcalibre projectiles.

- superior behind-armour effect thanks to explosive filler and delay base fuse of APCBC-HE shell

- the cap enables the penetration at difficult impact angles

- the ballistic cap improves the ballistic coefficient for better performance at long range

- effective range 2+ km

Yes, this is pretty much the same penetration and behind armour effect as possessed by a Pzkw V Panther tank at the end of WW2.

This suffices because later armour strength advances have been applied almost exclusively to main battle tank (MBT) frontal armour. A Panther with improved ammunition could still defeat a Leopard 2 with a side hit. Much of a MBT's side protection is often from its diesel fuel's effect on shaped charge jets.

This idea of a 75 mm-armed tank is not meant to fully replace MBTs and their niche capability of penetrating frontal MBT armour (by the way, that MBT capability is not ensured either due to the offence-defence spiral).

The APCBC-HE would penetrate more than 100 mm RHA at 2 km and both shells would have a muzzle velocity of about 925 m/s. This suffices to extend the useful combat distance to about 2 km - it's thus unlikely to be out-gunned in most terrains against anything but MBTs exposing only their front.

Modern armour penetration rests on either shaped charges or subcalibre projectiles. Neither provide a primary behind armour explosion. Both depend on spall for effect to the sides of their path of flight. The spall can be and has been mostly mitigated by spall liners on the inside of armour and the interior of modern AFVs has been modified to minimize the chance of secondary fires and explosions. The behind armour effect of both shaped charges and subcalibre munitions has proved to be less reliable in combat than anticipated in peacetime.

A 75 mm diameter hole would produce much more spall and the explosive filler adds a hand grenade-sized primary explosion behind the armour.

The 75 mm APCBC-HE offers reliable penetration against the vast majority of armour plating and a reliable mission kill behind armour effect. It's a compromise below a full main tank gun - a compromise that avoids the latter's disadvantages.

Anti-tank capability with HE

The HE shell can be fired in an electronic timing fuse mode. This enables the tank crew to spray the target with fragments.

- The fragments would damage many exposed components, such as sensors, smoke dischargers and active protection system munitions.

- The crew might also be partially exposed if they didn't button up yet.

- The high rate of fire turns this into a practical approach; it takes only a single additional second to fire a HE shell in advance of two APCBC-HE shells.

- HE with delay fuse setting could penetrate lightly armoured AFVs and explode inside

The use of such HE shells against AFV could master the challenge of active defensive suites.

Anti-air capability

- sufficient rate of fire and maximum gun elevation for AA role

- AA range exceeds that of all self-propelled anti-air guns (SPAAG); up to 6 km against slow-moving targets under favourable conditions

- Indirect hit (proximity fuse) capability enables the destruction of small drones with one shot in what would otherwise be an immunity zone

- Passive sensors (radar warning receiver, laser warning receiver, infrared air search sensor), laser rangefinder, IFF interrogator and data link provide a good chance of detecting, identifying and hitting a distant target

- the increased range can provoke greater stand-off, thus degrade the enemy air power's sensor image quality

This isn't just a replacement for dedicated SPAAGs. Modern armies are insufficiently prepared to deal with small & cheap drones because their battlefield air defences were designed to defeat large & expensive manned combat aircraft. Even man portable air defence missiles (ManPADS) are more expensive than a normal reconnaissance or radio jamming drone needs to be.

Said drones could fly at 3-4 km altitude. Normal SPAAG (20-35 mm calibre, HE shells) would expend much of their ammunition before they could score the necessary direct hit on such a drone.

The increased range is also an advantage in itself as it adds risks and problems for an attacker.

Capability against "soft targets"

- 75mm was the standard calibre for infantry support in WW2 (assault guns, infantry guns).

- The medium calibre gun would combine rapid fire with HE+frag effect and have an airburst (electronically time fused) capability not shared by other armoured fighting vehicles (the Puma IFV's 30mm airburst is effectively a shrapnel/cannister technology, not a real HE airburst tech).

- Its blast is inferior to larger calibres, but we've got a "larger calibre" (120 mm) in our main battle tanks.

The inferior blast effect in comparison with main battle tank calibres (100-125 mm) was seen as a powerful counter-argument in previous medium gun calibre projects. 75 mm is probably the threshold. Earlier projects had furthermore no multifunctional fuse (delay / proximity / electronic time) as it is feasible today.

The calibre should be considered in the context of other calibres in use; at least either missiles or 120 mm tank cannons would be available to the same unit.

The success of relatively slow-firing 75 and 76 mm guns in support of infantry during WW2 (with vastly inferior ammunition technology!) should be evidence enough for a "good enough" rating of a modern 75mm gun against "soft targets".

Modern tank main guns of 105-120 mm calibre have rather few ready rounds. Most combat against soft targets would need to be done with the coaxial 7.62mm machine gun; a firepower matched by every other AFV. The use of a 75 mm calibre would allow for much more cartridges to be stored in the tank - maybe three times as many.

Capability in valleys, urban settings

- high angle of elevation (45°) vastly exceeds the elevation of main battle tank guns (usually only 20°)

This capability is rivalled only by the smaller calibre 20-40 mm autocannons of IFVs and 40mm automatic grenade launchers on light AFVs, not by any high velocity HE guns

Normal main battle tanks have serious problems with their gun elevation - it's one of their major weak spots. Normal infantry fighting vehicles have a major problem with their tiny shells if they face opponents behind walls. 25-40mm APFSDS ammunition can penetrate walls, but the chance of achieving anything by doing so is small and the cost is high. 20-40mm HE ammunition is unable to penetrate strong walls and the ammunition expenditure is high if good effect shall be achieved against weak and normal masonry.

The medium calibre provides a balance of good gun elevation and explosive power with the added benefit of a true air burst HE munition with all-round fragmentation pattern. The HE shell might even be built strong enough to penetrate weak walls and explode inside the room (or inside the wall for a big enough entry hole).

Indirect fire

- 75 and 76 mm have been popular light field artillery calibres in both world wars.

- A 75 mm medium calibre tank gun could occasionally be used for very interesting indirect fire missions. The HE shell would be set to its proximity fuse mode.

- The high muzzle velocity coupled with modern fire control, radio comm, precise position-finding and an electrically trained turret and elevated gun could yield a very quick on-target fragmentation effect in response to calls for fire.

- The proliferation of these medium guns on many combat vehicles (let's say we replace half of the IFV) coupled with a quite long range (about 15 km, significantly more than typical 120 mm mortars) would create a firepower potential of several hundreds of 75 mm air burst HE shells on target in less than a minute.

- Fleeting targets such as "shoot & scoot" mortar teams could be caught like that even if no dedicated indirect fire support was available for counterfire.

Indirect fire would be a useful capability to meet peak demand for indirect fires. The regular use of such guns in a "self-propelled cannon" role would consume much ammunition and wear out the tube. The 75mm indirect fire capability should thus be a supplement to, not a replacement for mortars and artillery.

The original advantage of the howitzer over field cannons - the descent of the shell more close to vertical with a resulting better fragmentation pattern - was partially negated by the introduction of air burst fuses (first used in late 1944 in a land battle). The advantage of larger calibres given by cargo shells (with submunitions) has been negated by the cluster munitions ban (Germany joined that treaty).

A relatively small 75 mm shell with airburst fuse has thus become a logistically quite efficient alternative if indirect fires shall provide fragmentation effect.

The 75 mm guns' specific advantages (high muzzle velocity = short time of flight, great quantity of tubes) would be an interesting addition to the indirect fire repertoire of a battalion combat team.

Survivability by minimum silhouette in "hull down" fighting positions

- thanks to the good gun depression (15° instead of typical 7-10°)

- further improved by one-man turret (narrow frontal silhouette in general)

This is less relevant, but nevertheless a small advantage.

Less hazardous gun

Main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles use mostly saboted ammunition against hard targets. These sabots separate beyond the muzzle and create a danger zone of up to 100 m length and 50 m width in front of the firing vehicle. Keep in mind that the vehicle may have turned in reaction to a surprising enemy and you arrive at a 100 m danger zone around such vehicles. This restricts actions.

105-125 mm main battle tank guns are furthermore very powerful guns with a huge propellant charge. Their muzzle blast creates a dangerous overpressure up to about 50 m away (no matter what kind of ammunition was fired). Again, it's very restrictive in regard to nearby exposed soldiers, civilians and even structures.

This medium calibre gun proposal would address these problems that we've become used to.

I proposed no use of a 75 mm saboted munition (using APCBC-HE instead) and the blast danger zone of a 75 mm gun is significantly smaller than the one of a 105 mm or even 120 mm gun.

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I laid out my concept for a rapid fire combat vehicle on heavy (40-50 ton) chassis before:

Challenging the IFV concept - Part 2

T-95

The concept truly fascinates me with its ability to address existing shortcomings and to provide a great deal of versatility. The T-95 text mentioned the possibility that the cannon could be combined with kinetic energy antitank missiles like C-KEM. This would add the niche capability of defeating MBTs with a frontal hit at low weight.

S O

edit: 2010-04-12: I'd like to add that the XM274 was an experimental gun that had a couple technical issues because it used many new technologies at once. There were issues with a novel propellant, it used telescopic cartridges ... in the end, it was technically not ready for deployment because some of these experiments were failures (the propellant produced a wide range of muzzle velocities, for example). I'm convinced that the described example gun would be feasible today, though.

edit 2011: There's a theoretical C-RAM capability. C-RAM has been attempted with 155 mm howitzers (IIRC and AFAIK successful demonstration), so a 76 mm HE shell with proximity fuse should have some potential as well (easier intercept, but smaller radius warhead effectiveness).

edit 2014: Three more remarks
(1) A precursor shaped charge could be under the ballistic cap of the shell to improve penetration, but maybe that's not desirable because it could trigger reactive armour.
(2) The non-ballistic cap (first "C" in "APCBC") was meant to prevent bouncing and shattering of the main penetrating body. Both cap and the ballistic cap needed to correct the former's shape may be unnecessary if much tungsten can be employed in this armour penetrating munition. It would then be rather "APHE" or "HEAT-APHE" with a precursor charge.
(3) In fact, one might delegate all anti-MBT firepower to the HVMs and then make do with a thick-shell HE ("SAP") round as the general purpose round for the 76 mm, since it would still be able to penetrate IFVs.

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Let's improve our democracy, a work in progress (III)

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This post is about three technicalities in representative democracy.

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The previous post in this series included the idea of specialised parliaments of small size; 20 to 40 MPs.

This seems to question the accuracy of representation, of course. Even a 40-member parliament could allocate seats only in 2.5% increments if every MP has the same voting weight.

Let's cut this short; I don't think that identical voting weight for all MPs is a necessity. Accurate representation is the necessity here.

There would be nothing wrong if one MP had the voting power of 675,475 votes and his seat neighbour had the voting power of 712,584 votes.

Even medieval or ancient math would have been able to cope with this in parliamentary practice. We should be able to cope with this tiny bit of complication in the age of spacefaring and particle colliders.

We should stop the approximate representation and begin with accurate numeric representation of the electorate. Every voter should have the same political weight.

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This does of course require a proportional representation. I do like the German system of a coupled majority vote and proportional representation. This is how it should be in my opinion:

Everyone has two votes; one for candidates (majority vote) and another one for parties (proportional representation). The votes of the losing candidates go into the pool of votes for their party. Not a single vote is lost while the advantages of both systems are combined.

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The next issue: The founders of the Republic feared a fragmented party landscape of special interest parties and the resulting problems in creating stable coalitions (the small parties would be able to blackmail the majority and thus distort representation).

The answer was a barring clause, a hurdle for parties; they need at least 5% share of the votes to join the parliament (save for a few rule exceptions). This served well to marginalize the fringe parties as well.

The result is of course the deletion of hundreds of thousands (afaik potentially up to 95%) of the votes. That was acceptable as an interim solution in the immediate post-war reconstruction period. I don't think that it's acceptable today.

Such barring clauses are typically about 2-10% in the Western World. As a very first step, I propose to lower the German barring clause to a lower value; let's say 2%.

As a second step I'd say that the deleted percentage of votes should be represented by a speaker who got elected by the barred parties. This speaker should read their statements to bills in the parliament (limited speaking time) and should always abstain from voting. He should also have the normal MP powers in regard to questioning the executive. This would still be a compromise, of course.

The speaker could also be turned into a one-man majority representative of the barred parties and candidates in order to further minimize the share of 'wasted' votes, to come closer to a perfect representation of the electorate.

That would require two of them, though. The barred parties tend to be either left or right wing and these wings rarely agree with each other. It would be pointless to unify them in one representative.

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The point of this blog post is again the desire for a more accurate representation of the electorate's political will through representative democracy. The present system (and pretty much every "democratic" systems in the world) is quite lax on this. The accuracy of representation was apparently no major issue at the time of the system's creation.

Today is a great time for fine tuning our systems. The historical custom of waiting with political reform until a crisis overcomes the inertia of the system is inferior in my opinion.

S O

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Karzai acting strange (finally!)

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You've most likely seen the recent 'strange' statements of Karzai. He begins to sound like a contra-foreigners politician.

I actually wondered for a long time whether and when this would happen.

The good news is that the Western media (and apparently the MilBloggers as well) seem to play their part of the script really fine.

Karzai's statements are in my opinion the best news from Afghanistan for a long time. I don't buy his statements at all, so I've got no problems with them.

Let's recall how it worked out in Iraq: The Americans staged their 'surge' show and the Iraqi head of government began to play the strong man. Then came the Basra battle. The British had caught quite some flak for their loss of control over Basra.

The new Iraqi security forces arrived, settled the affair their way and took over Basrah. Their head of government had won credibility and support and the Iraqi security forces were able to gain control of pretty much the whole country without much fighting.

Mission accomplished (not necessarily the foreigners).

It looks quite the same in Afghanistan. Karzai complained weakly about civilian casualties for quite a while. Now he's setting himself up as a strong leader who's not a mere puppet. He suggests that he can or will block the next foreigner's offensive, showing off some might. The message: He's the master in his own house.

Next, he'll probably send Afghan troops to take over some important places that suit themselves well to such a takeover*. The other places will follow suit.

The Afghan troops - freed from foreigner's control - will employ Afghan methods and are many times as numerous as the masters of Afghanistan of the 90's ever were.

His suggestions that he could join the TB to face foreigners if necessary can be read as a diplomatic solution for the conflict. His positioning against the foreigners is a quite obvious trick to boost Afghan unity (or to invent it).

I may be wrong with my interpretation of the script, but I'm sure that it's naive to simply believe the superficial story in the news.

The script -if it exists - could be the long-missed great strategic idea for a conclusion of the conflict. ISAF could achieve its mission (provide security forces till the mayor of Kabul's troops take over) while OEF-A might eventually clam victory as well on the basis that AQ (not the TB) was defeated in the area.

Again - just as in Iraq - the war went too badly to expect permanent & strong Western influence in the country. The result is a conflict (chapter) conclusion on the basis of a compromise.

The Western/Karzai alliance is sacrificing its white queen in AFG. Such a move is often decisive & highly interesting. Maybe the strategic dumbness of the 2002-2009 period has finally found its end.

Finally some context. I bought a gift booklet for a friend years ago - it was about Japanese wisdoms. The quick test-reading was satisfactory, and I recall one story very well. It was impressive.

A successful, famous Japanese leader worried that his highly successful reign might cause a very tough beginning for the future reign of his son. He began to act foolish up to a point where nobody saw the great leader in him any more and everybody got impatient about the succession. He finally died and his son proved to be a highly successful prince as well.

The lesson is of course that sometimes you need to shed some prestige to achieve what you want. This readiness to sacrifice something is crucial (and it doesn't always need to be whole armies in war). The West may do exactly this; step back, allow Karzai to gain in the process.

On the other hand, maybe we have neither a good strategy nor wise people in charge. Maybe it's really as the mainstream media asserts; a puppet officially out of control in a really stupid war gone really, really wrong.

Sven Ortmann

*: I hope he's got an invitation from Kunduz, but that's probably a too unimportant place. Maybe Kandahar will be the pivot..

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They lost their mind completely

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They lost their mind completely.

The Navy's estimated cost to build three Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers rose $5.4 billion, or 15.5 percent, since September 2008, according to a new Defense Department report.

Built at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Newport News shipyard, the three carriers now will cost a combined $40.5 billion, up from $35.1 billion in 2008, the report said.

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Tomorrow's Wars

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Tomorrow's Wars

by Victor Davis Hanson

This article is noteworthy (despite some inaccuracies) for it's warning of the possibility of conventional warfare in this half-century. Such warnings have become rare (a dangerous trend) and the few thus deserve raised attention.

Sven Ortmann
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Yes, Prime Minister

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Some wonderful British political satire from the 80's!

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