Finally the long retired M551 got a replacement....

[tankgirl72]

On 10/16/2024 at 12:29 PM, Maj.Hans said:

And yet still a role it may be required to fill.

 

If it's going to be airborne, it's going to probably be the only 'Armor' asset they get to drop.

Correct. They have had nothing since the M551 was retired. Its better than nothing at all. And the ability to air drop it when you do not have a runway available is great. Who the heck knows what the next conflict/war will look like in the state the world is in right now. It pays to have something ahead of the game.

 

[Captain_Colossus]

maybe against an opponent like the houthis in yemen or a rapid deployment to the arctic circle for some reason

 

opponents such as china or russia or north korea- well it is probably a given nuclear war would figure into that anyway, ending everyone's plans.

 

even if you dispense with that for a moment for the sake of argument, there is no obvious place to operate airborne units in the middle of the pacific ocean in a war with china. nor in a threat environment which we see in ukraine with a high density of air defense

batteries, jet fighters and interceptors with long range air to air missiles, or the large proliferation of ground and air launched hypersonic missiles which would conceivably kill many of them on the ground. again, the russians have the capability to deploy

airborne forces, it is just that they are not actually doing that. likely for a good reason

 

it is not completely mystifying- because you are seeing some of this happen already right now. with the exposure time limited because of the advancement in battlefield sensors and fast response times with missiles and attack drones knocking out vehicles the longer

they tend to loiter in the open, the tendency is to dis-aggregate and disperse vehicles rather than operate them in large formations, operations tend to be very quick involving small units attacking a few kilometers at time rather than big arrow offensives. in the case of the russians they have additional means and have more options to bomb and FAB targets before attempting to storm enemy positions. but generally progress is purposefully slow because attempting big moves is definitely going to cost you

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stuart666]

3 hours ago, tankgirl72 said:

Correct. They have had nothing since the M551 was retired. Its better than nothing at all. And the ability to air drop it when you do not have a runway available is great. Who the heck knows what the next conflict/war will look like in the state the world is in right now. It pays to have something ahead of the game.

 

They had Hummers with TOW missile launchers. if they were halfway competent, if they want a defensive weapon, they could procure something like Hummer with a Brimstone  launcher which would be a lot cheaper.

 

The truth is, any vehicle that is heavily armoured to stand up to tanks is going to be too heavy to drop. Any armour they drop is going to be too light to stand up to tanks. The US Army could do what the Russians did, attach a battalion of MBTs to airborne formations, them fly them in via transports at an airhead the paras create. That would work, particulary with as many C17's as the US has. But no, someone has to reinvent the light tank, even though nobody really asked for one.

[Maj.Hans]

It's not the armor I am complaining about, just the firepower.

 

It doesn't need armor in order to shoot and scoot when facing a T-90, just a gun (or a missile) big enough to kill the thing.

 

Edit:

This could come in the form of a 120mm main gun, a top attack gun launched missile for the 105mm, new magical mystical 105mm ammo, or even a vehicle mounted ATGM launcher that's little more than a remote control Javelin with fragment protection, etc.

 

I don't think it needs to be the primary vehicle mission but I'd like to see some capability for it to fight modern tanks.

Edited October 21 by Maj.Hans

[Captain_Colossus]

there are already m1 / challenger 2 / leopard 2 tanks with the armament - and this is not making any particular difference in this war; i have only seen one anecdotal report of an m1 engaging a t-62 somewhere near avdiivka, but no visual confirmation of it. with the exception of an m1 tank destroyed by a gun-launched ATGM which we know for sure, it is the drones which are involved in most of the carnage 

 

so this kind of thing looks sketchy to me

 

 

 

[Captain_Colossus]

at the risk of using cliches, it has been said already that attempting the same failed strategies expecting different results is the definition of something has become dysfunctional

 

and so at the beginning of the special military operation we saw what happened when the russians were lined up in large columns, we saw the russians get massacred in the first major battle for vuhldehar

and similar patterns repeating elsewhere more or less

 

then it was the ukrainian's turn to screw up. once the russians pulled back in late 2022 behind their defensive lines, the russians reconstituted and reorganized and rethought its approach to the whole thing. 

the ukrainians ran into the same general problem in their counteroffensives, massacred at long range without necessarily the pitched battles and armor engagement like one might expect

 

within the first few days of the 2023 summer offensive, already you had reports from the warfighters on the ground all the way to the top from zaluzhnyi that the traditional tactics were not working

which is where you saw the shift in tactics on both sides, notwithstanding periodic attempts to sort it out in relatively large operations once more just to watch the casualties pile on in similar patterns

 

and so i realize the tendency to hold on to preconceived ideas that we might be heavily invested in, but i think that this lesson still is not sinking in, there is still perhaps the tendency to hedge and still there is refusal to see what is happening. this is not to say that there is no need to train and sharpen skills on the basics, but that i lean towards believing all of that really might not apply anymore in a modern actual, serious shooting war where you might assume this is the way it should work. maybe it is better relegated to simulating cold war scenarios in steel beasts, or just to tinker in sandbox mode for kicks

 

[tankgirl72]

10 hours ago, Stuart666 said:

They had Hummers with TOW missile launchers. if they were halfway competent, if they want a defensive weapon, they could procure something like Hummer with a Brimstone  launcher which would be a lot cheaper.

 

The truth is, any vehicle that is heavily armoured to stand up to tanks is going to be too heavy to drop. Any armour they drop is going to be too light to stand up to tanks. The US Army could do what the Russians did, attach a battalion of MBTs to airborne formations, them fly them in via transports at an airhead the paras create. That would work, particulary with as many C17's as the US has. But no, someone has to reinvent the light tank, even though nobody really asked for one.

11 Hotel (tow gunner to include on the hummer platform) was being phased out early 90s when I was in.They lasted longer in the Marines. They have not had those for decades. As far as airborne. Its not all by parachute. The 82nd Airborne has the option to come in by blackhawk and Chinook like the 101st as well.

Edited October 21 by tankgirl72

[Captain_Colossus]

either way- whether landing them or dropping them- suddenly there are a lot of vulnerable transports moving around in contested airspace in full view of everyone in somewhere like eastern europe

 

 

[Stuart666]

What is more, despite pretending to air land BMD's by driving them around with their parachutes mounted, Russia did not do any kind of airborne assault with them. They knew Ukrainian air defences were too good. Even the assault landing by Helicopter at Hostamel airport got shot to bits, both on the approach, and after landing.

 

 

So really, what you want, is a machine that can fight off tanks, and yet be airslung under a heavy lift helicopter. That simply isnt achievable, not with current standards in armour. Maybe after someone develops deflector shields.

 

All this supports the narrative that Airborne these days probably ought to be left to dealing with 3rd world problems. You cant air drop them in the face of a first world threat, you cant give them armour to face a first world threat. So why give them light tanks that cant deal with a first world threat? I dont get it.

[mpow66m]

Deflector shields are coming in V5👍

[Ssnake]

Death Rays first.

[tankgirl72]

From the last few years we have learned just how bad of a ronson burner the BMP, BMD, and BTRs are. The russian tanks are also lacking protections for crews, no separate compartment for ammo or any internal blast protection like western tanks. The Soviets are like Klingons, no crew comfort and little thought for the crews survivability and that has had consequences in the last few years, sadly. I guess its similar to the fate the HMMWV faced though, it took time and many fatalities before a load of armor was bolted on and other kits were retrofitted to them.

 

As far as the US, bare in mind that we have air superiority before the airborne pops in anyway. Don't really see a big threat from whatever opposition we face in a landing. This is not the 1941 drop on Crete. 😉  I think the M10 will do just fine in the role it was designed for.

 

 

 

Edited October 23 by tankgirl72

[TSe419E]

The hum-v was never meant to be a combat vehicle.  I’d like to punch the idiots who thought it could be.

[tankgirl72]

21 hours ago, TSe419E said:

The hum-v was never meant to be a combat vehicle.  I’d like to punch the idiots who thought it could be.

Totally agree, I spent a lot of time in some. We lost to many troops both KIA and disabled for life in them. The lessons of IEDs in Vietnam against M113s and other vehicles should of been carried forward. All the money spent by the pentagon on lessons, all filed away and forgotten. We should of had MRAPs long before the war. The south Africans had them for several decades before us. (Casspir Buffel, etc) Sickening to think about.

Edited October 24 by tankgirl72

[Captain_Colossus]

4 hours ago, tankgirl72 said:

Don't really see a big threat from whatever opposition we face in a landing.

 

 

 

 

we have landed in ourselves in more than one debacle by this logic. rather curiously it is unlikely it always works like that

 

we have grown a bit accustomed to fight opponents who do not have the means to knock out airbases or other installations with ballistic missiles or cruise missiles or the new hypersonic missiles that russia has developed. the iraqis got lucky with a couple of scud - class missiles even in a losing bid, and you saw the damage those things can manage. we face opponents which have stockpiled hundreds of modern intermediate to long range missiles which are much more accurate and they can start attacking airbases or staging areas while we are posturing. these are specific threats just to name a few that you seem to ignore

 

and so i have made the case why the united states has not actually deployed these kinds of vehicles in an airborne operation before in a major war. we cannot just click a button and then they just sort of actualize on the battlefield somewhere

 

you may have noticed this new development which has entered the game recently which puts all players on notice. the surveillance and FPV attack drones have a suppressive effect and you see the denial of maneuvers in the open- and this is probably the main reason why there are so few tank battles in ukraine and why there are no large arrow offensives. in addition to the aforementioned missiles, the drones are also capable of attacking airfields and aircraft parked on the runways being serviced and so on. combined with the large amount of artillery and minefields and i suppose you can brush all that off as if it were not happening, but it is not as easy as you think it is

 

 

 

[Captain_Colossus]

on the subject of drones it has not widely entered into the public discourse, but there have been recent reports of drone swarms visiting langley. the story is almost altogether off the radar

the point is how easy it is to pull off a stunt like this. imagine if these things were armed. you do not even need a sophisticated air force to pose a threat like that against a first rate power

 

 

https://www.newsweek.com/drones-langley-air-force-base-us-military-mystery-1968605

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mystery-drones-swarmed-a-us-military-base-for-17-days-the-pentagon-is-stumped/ar-AA1saqAu

[tankgirl72]

13 hours ago, Captain_Colossus said:

 

we have landed in ourselves in more than one debacle by this logic. rather curiously it is unlikely it always works like that

 

we have grown a bit accustomed to fight opponents who do not have the means to knock out airbases or other installations with ballistic missiles or cruise missiles or the new hypersonic missiles that russia has developed. the iraqis got lucky with a couple of scud - class missiles even in a losing bid, and you saw the damage those things can manage. we face opponents which have stockpiled hundreds of modern intermediate to long range missiles which are much more accurate and they can start attacking airbases or staging areas while we are posturing. these are specific threats just to name a few that you seem to ignore

 

and so i have made the case why the united states has not actually deployed these kinds of vehicles in an airborne operation before in a major war. we cannot just click a button and then they just sort of actualize on the battlefield somewhere

 

you may have noticed this new development which has entered the game recently which puts all players on notice. the surveillance and FPV attack drones have a suppressive effect and you see the denial of maneuvers in the open- and this is probably the main reason why there are so few tank battles in ukraine and why there are no large arrow offensives. in addition to the aforementioned missiles, the drones are also capable of attacking airfields and aircraft parked on the runways being serviced and so on. combined with the large amount of artillery and minefields and i suppose you can brush all that off as if it were not happening, but it is not as easy as you think it is

 

 

 

I was referring to the types of wars we have been engaged in. Not against super powers like China with massive resources and equipment. That's a whole different ball game. We are not going to drop airborne forces on China or in Russia.

[tankgirl72]

As far as drones are concerned, I have seen squads of Russians and of Ukraine carrying jamming guns. A few videos of squads knocking down small drones with these, they simply fall out of the sky. There is one video somewhere, of some Russians also ripping the battery out when they knocked it down as it still had power.

 

It will not be very had to take these out because they are radio controlled. The Ukrainians knock out 100 or more a day, mainly the Shaheds. They have also employed

old Yak 52's with a gunner in the rear seat to take drones down and these have been so effective that now Russia is copying this and refurbishing a bunch of their old trainers to do the same job. Ww1 style marksmanship in the air in 2024.

 

 

[Captain_Colossus]

19 minutes ago, tankgirl72 said:

As far as drones are concerned, I have seen squads of Russians and of Ukraine carrying jamming guns. A few videos of squads knocking down small drones with these, they simply fall out of the sky. r.

 

 

 

 

you seem to be drawing an overly broad conclusion about the drone situation, that is to say, that they are simply beaten off and that they do not figure into it. i'll bite-

explain please then 1) the source of most of the vehicle losses and 2) why there is scant evidence of tank battles despite the hundreds and thousands of them available in this war

[tankgirl72]

I never said a large loss of armor has not occurred from drones. My point is that hundreds are now being shot down every day and jamming guns are being employed by infantry squads which from videos in the field, seem to be working. They have old antiaircraft guns and other platforms like the avenger  being employed as anti-drone weapons and the losses from drones are not like they used to be. The reason there was so much armor lost since was because this was literally a new  phenomenon and there were no methods or tactics to fight this new threat. There has since and that counter-threat is occurring quickly through the use of new tactics and tech.

 

Keep an eye out for daily reports from the Ukraine Defense forces and you will see this. Livemap also reports on this real time every day. Just the other day 75 out of 100 Shahed drones were shot down and those sort of losses occur almost daily. Some are always going to get through, just like every AA missile is not going to be fooled by flares or chaff.

Edited October 24 by tankgirl72

[tankgirl72]

17 hours ago, Captain_Colossus said:

on the subject of drones it has not widely entered into the public discourse, but there have been recent reports of drone swarms visiting langley. the story is almost altogether off the radar

the point is how easy it is to pull off a stunt like this. imagine if these things were armed. you do not even need a sophisticated air force to pose a threat like that against a first rate power

 

 

https://www.newsweek.com/drones-langley-air-force-base-us-military-mystery-1968605

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mystery-drones-swarmed-a-us-military-base-for-17-days-the-pentagon-is-stumped/ar-AA1saqAu

Thanks for linking this. Thats not good at all! Sounds from the report though that they were not hobby type drones. I do not think any off the shelf civilian drone has that range. Almost sounds more like a UAP or dare I say UFO incident and yes I do believe in them. There is just too much evidence out there. Even before the famous Navy videos.

[Captain_Colossus]

by logical coincidence some years ago i became interested in watching traditional japanese fencing as i was already interested in oriental philosophy, the latter eventually leads to the former

 

i am not an expert, nor have i tried it. i am only an observer

 

when you watch high level dans sparring it often looks ridiculous if you assume some notion that the cuts look somehow amazing or artistic, certainly the movies or some tropes that we pick up might lead us to preconceived ideas; not what you would expect when you actually watch it

 

the way i would describe it that opponents are so good at it that it has a neutralizing effect which tends to make it look sloppy (in reality there are many subtle positions to track), and it is the sloppiness which is effective- the sloppy cuts and strikes  are difficult to predict rather than what we should assume to look masterful- one mess versus another

 

generally any kind of fencing involves attempting to draw an opponent to often move first to overreach for a strike while exposing himself- and so if either side is aware of doing this, and is aware the other side is doing this, and is aware of being aware, and aware of aware of being aware and so on, then we can make the comparison here with all of this

 

one of the effective moves in this game is to draw an opponent to make a move- in doing so, it is using an opponent's own efforts and energy against himself, where in a subtle way like an mc escher illustration, there is only the slightest difference if any between black or white, foreground and background, attack or defense, all the same blending like the yin and like yang or whether the glass is half full or half empty. if an attacker is drawn into a trap and surrounded, attacker and defender and which one is which is a matter of perspective on some level. the principle of least effort is that you attempt to accomplish your objectives using the least amount of effort than an opponent who uses more effort to accomplish the same goal. when we see some professional performing some act if they look so good at it that it seems to require no effort, then we say it looks effortless, because we do not see the years of study or training in it but the end result 

 

and so i view this happening much the same way in this conflict; in the west we tend to want to view it from the perspective of forcing a decisive battle or series of battles and end it quickly and brutally; this would make logical sense until you look at it from other perspectives - if i can turn your efforts into a push and pull situation, then it starts looking different, i.e., player 1 retreats when player 2 attacks, player 1 attacks when player 2 moves on - drag this out rather than use too much effort force a situation. so this is where you will find that both sides have pulled back their aircraft and their tanks from getting overly committed, or at least that is generally what they ought to be doing instead of making these blunders we've seen repeated. then, once that happens, the 2d, 3d, 4d chess begins; now the drones come into it not simply because of their first order effects, that is, their payloads or their ability to bring in other weapons, say artillery or coordinate with other units, but the fact that they are so cheap. in an attritional war, 500 drones are still cheaper and easier to produce at a workshop by technicians than to deliver one mult-million dollar tank, even if 499 of the drones were somehow defeated or missed their mark but one gets through, it is still much more cost effective in the long run than the time to produce more dollar and time intensive machines and trained crews

 

astute players know of the problem to avoids over-extend; the difference is a clever player invites an attack- setting traps, turning the tables and so on and you really see where it is a puzzle as to which one is attacking or defending if both are aware of this same dynamic to some degree or another. hence, the attritional warfare you are seeing come out of this now rather than big arrows on a map moving around. it is more death by a thousand cuts than a knockout blow if and only if both sides begin to play it more safe. then the next evolution of the game begins where some side or the other, because patience is wearing thin, or because resource or manpower problems are accruing, one player may be forced into riskier moves in order to force a situation if the attrition game is a losing one

Edited October 25 by Captain_Colossus

[ultirapid]

🤩