Richard Bong’s Ghost, I appear to have left out the F-35A from my procurement discussions. How could I have?

To be honest, I came into this not liking the Lightning II at all. It’s heavy, ugly, has relatively poor handling characteristics on paper, and is riding a massive hype machine. Oh, and it’s really, really expensive. It’s just not what I would have considered. But, I can’t have a discussion of modern fighter procurement without at least touching on it. And that means admitting that the F-35A is about as desirable as an independently-wealthy supermodel in a dating show. Which is to say, unfathomably desirable. I have great respect for the Israeli air force, and they’re on The List. I also respect the South Korean Air Force, which is also in a threatening location, and they cheated on the requirements (no really, they rewrote the requirements) just so they could get a piece of that Joint Strike Action. Neither of these air forces were part of the original partnership group, so they’re not trying to preserve local jobs. And despite the sticker price, Singapore calls it ‘economical.’ So, what am I missing? Well, a classified-level briefing and some fancy mathematical models of air combat, certainly. But beyond that, it’s probably important to figure out why the F-35A is so desirable to the world’s air forces. So let’s take a closer look at the Pride of Fair Columbia.

The F-35A is stealthy, and it’s in production now. Where else can you get both of those? Go ahead, look around, make a few calls. I’ll wait.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Right there is something that you can get nowhere else without violating our rules. Stealth is cool. Is it as stealthy as a B-2A Spirit? No, but the Lightning II isn’t a big heavy bomber either. Its stealth is X-band optimized, and with internal weapons carriage its radar signature can’t be beat in its class, unless you want to look at prototypes or things that the US Congress says You Can’t Have. And unlike some people, I’ll hold myself to those rules. If you want stealth this is the only game in town. And you know the stealth is going to work, because Lockheed Martin has plenty of experience with those materials and that design. Which reminds me, just in case you’re not sold on this whole ‘stealth’ thing, go blow the dust off your VCR and put in your CNN Archive tapes from Gulf War I. Pretty cool. Operating with impunity over the heart of one of the premier air defense systems at the time. Stealth is a massive gain for survivability in the face of modern, integrated air defense systems.

I know what you’re thinking though. First, you’re going to gripe about the F-117A shot down over Serbia. And yeah, okay, you got me. Stealth isn’t perfect, and I never claimed that it was. This is not a cloaking device. It just makes it a lot harder to detect on radar. And in Serbia we’re talking about a really clever piece of surface to air missile operation, plus somewhat sloppy route planning package on an aircraft that had no systems to warn it of an incoming missile. Credit where it’s due, that was a hell of a shot. But it’s not really an indictment of stealth technology as worthless. We still have a phenomenal sortie:loss ratio here. The next obvious gripe is that the F-35A can only carry two JDAMs internally (with two AMRAAMs, or six AMRAAMs without the bombs). And it’s true, that’s not the greatest loadout ever. But we need to be precise–that’s the sneaky loadout. Two 2,000-lbs-class precision guided munitions is exactly what the F-117A carried. It can carry more in low-threat environments, when we’re less worried about our radar signature. But, unlike an F-16 (say), the F-35 can also sneak in and blow stuff up like an F-117. Which was pretty freaking useful despite its smallish loadout. And the Lightning II has really good range performance with only internal stores too.

But there’s more to the F-35 than just the stealth option. Even if we load up all of the external stores, we still have all of the electrics. And the electrics and sensors on the F-35 are second to none. On the front aspect, the F-35’s IRST is basically a built-in Sniper XR targeting pod, and that model is top of the line. So it’s got all of those features without needing to blow a hardpoint on a TGP. That’s not all though. There are six IR sensors around the airframe, arranged for all-around, always-on coverage. You read that right. Always-on. The computers integrate all this for the pilot to identify and track things all around him. When he turns his head, he sees what the appropriate sensor sees, right in his helmet, but the rest of the sensors are still feeding the computer data. No sensor panning. With the computer’s sensor fusion, this gives him the best situational awareness anywhere. Infrared and radar data is combined for identification and tracking purposes. The distributed IR system gives not only awesome infrared searching and tracking, but also missile approach warning, all in one system. But that’s not all. The F-35A has one of the top radars in the world, the AN/APG-81. It may not have the raw power of the IRBIS-E, but it’s cleverer, with fancy LPI modes and built-in electronic warfare capabilities. It’s got everything you’d want for reconnaissance too, with multiple ground moving target detection and tracking, high resolution mapping, and combat identification modes. But wait, it gets better. The F-35A has an integrated electronic warfare suite. It can provide all the SAM radar ranging data and jamming support that it might need, no bulky pods or separate EW aircraft needed. The F-35A has a datalink as well. While it’s not the first fighter to have one (cf. Fishbreath’s post on the Gripen), it has a particularly good one with some compelling features. Specifically, it can datalink to things that aren’t aircraft, such as long range surface to air missiles in order to provide guidance data. It’s like having an extra wingman when you’re fighting near friendly ground forces. Call it a home-field advantage.

Okay, so the F-35 has a lot of really compelling features that you can’t get in any other fighter. Awesome. But what about handling? Well, it gets some help from the internal stores. Anything inside clearly creates no drag. According to many sources, the F-35A with internal stores handles about like an F-16 with a similar weapons load. Now, there are a whole bunch of caveats here, but since I’m not about to try to make a fancy 3D comparative graph of performance data on these two planes, so I’ll take them at their word of “Roughly F-16-grade handling”, and it ought to be good enough for the purposes of this argument. Is ‘Roughly F-16-grade handling” enough? While the F-16’s handling is pretty darn good, the Rafale’s is better, as is that of the Sukhoi Su-35S, the most likely near-term opponent (anything more advanced isn’t in production yet, so it’s a lot harder to predict what the production version will be capable of). So what does that better handling get you? To know this, it helps to know why we bothered going for handling in the first place. At the start of the “Fourth Generation” of jet fighter design, a missile could reliably engage a bogey regardless of its aspect. But the missile had a limited envelope, which is to say the zone in which it could see a target to engage it. Call this envelope a roughly 60-degree cone with the apex at the nose of the launching fighter. Better maneuverability meant that you could get your cone on the other guy first, and so you got first shot. Does this ensure a kill? No, because P_K is never one. But it helps, because it usually gets the other guy to go defensive, which meant he had something better to do than try to kill you. Getting first shot is always better. Now, the F-35’s designers say that given the fancy sensor fusion and all-aspect sensors, as well as missiles that can engage a target on any relative bearing, we don’t really need all that agility. You’ve got first shot if you can see him and if he’s close enough. You also get the stealth on your side, to reduce your radar signature, and thus the range at which the other guy can lock you up and get his shot off. All points in the Lightning II’s favor. And there’s the aforementioned integrated electronic warfare, to make an opponent’s life worse.

But what if we’re wrong? What if the Pentagon and Lockheed got their vision of the future wrong? Well, we’d still have all the nifty strike and EW support aspects that I mentioned previously. As for the dogfights, let’s look at some history. The F-4 Phantom II is, on paper, rather a poor dogfighter. It’s big and doesn’t have the handling of it’s Russian contemporaries. In Viet Nam, we saw that it’s vaunted AIM-7 Sparrow missiles weren’t very good at their jobs. And, since the USAF and USN didn’t train pilots in dogfighting, they weren’t very good at it. So the Americans got their butts handed to them by the Vietnamese. But then, the Americans decided that something had to change. So the TOPGUN program and the Red Flag exercises were created, to train pilots in dogfighting. Even dogfighting with opponents who flew different planes, with different strengths and weaknesses than a pilot’s own. And the pilot training emphasis meant that afterwards the Americans gained a favorable kill ratio against their Vietnamese opponents. Similar results happened in the Arab-Israeli wars, where superior training on the part of the Israeli Air Force made up for any shortcomings in their fighters. Looking even further back, General Chennault’s Flying Tigers had an impressive kill:loss ratio against Japanese pilots in China, despite flying aircraft that looked terribly inferior on paper. So, if we do our part with a good training program, we can make up for any shortcomings that a fighter might have. But to be fair, we don’t know these shortcomings yet.

With all that said, the advantages of the Lightning II outweigh the disadvantages of lower payload and less agility when compared to the Rafale. We’ll suck up “good enough” 4th gen fighter handling (or better depending on which reports you read) for the avionics, situational awareness aids, and stealth features. Stealth provides an extra option for the Lightning II; if we choose not to use it on a given mission we get a F-16/F/A-18 with stupidly good avionics and integrated ECM. That’s a fine package. Also, being American, the F-35 is dominant in the 4th dimension of aircraft design (i.e. the political one) as well.

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Now we get to the good planes. The planes that made the cut. The planes that have the right stuff. So which will win?

First to go is the Eurofighter. This is another case of reality making an otherwise excellent fighter not work out well in practice. It should be a great choice, being optimized for air-to-air engagements first, and having what is by all accounts an excellent cockpit. In simulated dogfights, it’s even beat the Raptor a few times–and when it did the planes weren’t fitted with IRST or helmet-mounted sights. And that hints at one of the problems. Stinginess on the part of the builders because of a hippie ‘peace dividend’ has not only reduced the procurement numbers, driving up the costs, but they’ve also looked to delete things no sane person would remove. The Germans bought fighters without the suite of jammers and warning systems. The British considered deleting the gun. And everyone is dragging their feet on the latest sensors. IRST and AESA radar integration are proceeding slowly. Who knows if or when the fancy AESA radar will actually fly on production fighters–which means Borgundy might have to shoulder the cost of integration of something that really ought to come standard on a modern fighter. Plus, the fact that there are three countries as primary contractors instead of one means that you get to deal with politics and all three. Hello delays, cost overruns and a sticker price that is embarrassingly high. The Rafale is slightly less dogfight optimized than the Eurofighter, but it has one prime contracting nation that is actually upgrading, and it’s a whole lot cheaper. The Rafale also carries more. Both the Super Hornet and the Gripen are significantly cheaper as well. So, the Eurofighter gets the axe.

Next down is the cheap and cheerful Gripen. I’ll go light on the summary, because Fishbreath has written on it extensively. Suffice to say it’s cheap to buy and cheap to maintain. I could make this elimination much easier by looking at the Gripen-C that’s actually flying as opposed to the Gripen-E that has been offered/promised Brazil, but that’s hardly fair. Also, Fishbreath would whine. So, why not the Gripen-E? Well, again, where’s the radar? It’s promised an AESA unit, but very little is known. I can tell you it won’t be a very powerful unit, because power requires transmit/receive modules and the Gripen has a tiny nose. Will it be good enough? Will it have the features that we’ve come to expect on such excellent units as the APG-80? We don’t know. We could probably take a chance on the radar, but the Gripen’s small size means it’s rather payload and range limited. It’s certainly not going to be very capable of a deep interdiction tasking. In terms of dogfighting, its small size is a benefit, but it doesn’t help it as a bomb truck and we need to do both. Borgundy is also concerned about the EW systems, or rather, the lack of a strong integrated EW suite. We’d probably have to pay for more of that, especially as SEAD capability is notably absent from the Gripen-E. Honestly, the Gripen’s low cost and ease of maintenance led it to fare much better than I thought it would, but at the end of the day, we want fancier electrics and more hauling capacity.

That leaves the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, which I will refer to as ‘Rhino’ like US Navy pilots and aircraft handlers, and Dassault’s Rafale. The Rhino has a significant price advantage, but otherwise they’re very similar fighters. Both have plenty of carrying capacity and hardpoints, with the edge going to Rafale for overall capacity. The Rhino has had an AESA radar for longer, and it’s currently widely in service. Rafale is just now getting those pushed out to the Armee de l’Air’s fleet. The Rhino’s radar is a bit better according to the published statistics, but the Rafale has an IRST unit. Both have a serious avionics suite built around making information easily available. Due to the IRST and the superior EW-suite, the Rafale does more with sensor fusion in it’s cockpit. On the EW front though, the Rhino beats all comers with its specialized EW-variant called the Growler, which is a phenomenal addition to the support fleet of any air force.

Handlingwise is where the Rafale edges out the Rhino though. The big Rhino could really use more engine power than it’s got, and in embiggening the Hornet, the spry handling has suffered. The Rafale has a more recent aerodynamic design and better power for its weight. The Rafale can still get decent range with conformal fuel tanks and no fewer than five hardpoints plumbed for droptanks. And, with nine other hardpoints, the Rafale is still capable of hauling a heavy warload. It’s got the interdiction capabilities, the dogfighting capabilities, and the sensor capabilities that we need. So it’s our choice for modern multir—hold on.

I appear to have forgotten one. Bugger. That won’t do at all.
It appears our conclusion was a trifle premature. Join us next time when the Rafale has a fly-off against the F-35A Lightning II.

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Let’s start to whittle this field down some. First to go is the MiG. The MiG-35 is a much improved version of that old terror of the late-80s, the MiG-29. It has much improved avionics, and maintains the type’s famed agility. However, no one has actually bought the MiG-35, so parts availability may be a concern. While the avionics are better, they’re still not as good as what comes standard in Western types. Plus, even with the new electrics and polish, it’s fundamentally a short range fighter, with relatively few hardpoints and small gas tanks. Also, being Russian, it’s harder and more expensive to maintain. So it’s really unsuited to our needs.

Next down is the Su-35S. On paper, it looks like a phenomenal fighter, with a big, powerful radar, great agility, tons of hardpoints, and long range. However, it’s doesn’t really have much in the way of ground attack capability with guided weapons when compared to western types. It can’t actually haul that much weight, especially for it’s size–it only carries about as much as the significantly smaller Super Hornet. Plus, being a really big Russian fighter, it promises to be an expensive maintenance nightmare, with high life cycle costs. As Fishbreath pointed out, it’s limited to Russian missiles currently. While western weapons could be integrated, we’d have to foot the bill, which probably will murder the highly competitive unit cost. And did I mention political pressure from other NATO members? So this one is out.

We can also eliminate the F-15E Strike Eagle without too much trouble. It’s a big fighter with plenty of range and an impressive hauling capacity to be sure. Also, it’s got a two-man cockpit, giving the advantage of a second pair of eyes and someone to mind the guided weapons. But it’s also very, very expensive to procure and operate, and really doesn’t have the fancy built-in sensors and avionics that we’d expect in our modern fighter. Some countries have procured versions with electronics that are better than the USAF-standards, but those are a mixed bag, and bring up questions of spares availability. Plus you’re stuck paying for all of the integration and testing yourself, which really isn’t ideal, and further drives up the cost. It also invites delays. We can do better for our money, so the Strike Eagle strikes out.

Much as it pains me, we find the F-16E Viper (Block 60) to be the last eliminated in the preliminaries. The Viper is basically the benchline combat fighter of it’s generation, doing just about anything you could ask of it reasonably well. And the -E model adds a fancy AESA radar, some integrated jamming equipment, a revamped cockpit, and conformal tanks (with the added side effect of completely ruining the lines). One might think this would be a shoe-in, because it’s reasonably priced to purchase and operate? So why did it fail to make it to the final round? Simple: it’s just not a big enough improvement on the -C Viper. When you’re confronted by the prospect of S-300PMU2 and S-400 SAMs and big, new Flankers, you want something more than last year’s fighter with a few more optional extras added. Plus, while the F-16E is reasonably priced for a modern combat fighter, the bill won’t sit well when it comes time to put the budget up for a vote. Borgundy is currently an operator of F-16Cs, and while it would make sense from a spares perspective, the bill for what will be seen as a ‘glorified upgrade’ won’t sit well. They’ll want a capability gain, as will the Aviation General Staff. When it comes down to it, in the fourth dimension of fighters, politics, the F-16E is all wrong. So, unfortunately, we must eliminate one of my favorites from this competition.

On to the Final Showdown!

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The modern combat fighter is an essential component of the modern air force, especially considering that heavy bombers aren’t what people tend to build these days. We’ll first look at Borgundy’s thoughts on air combat, how this influences our desires, and then we’ll look at what’s available on the market. And yes, this is going to take multiple parts.

The primary duty of a fighter is to establish and maintain air superiority. Once air superiority is established, other missions become easier. Without an ability to maintain air superiority, all those wonderful armored vehicles we just bought are just a bunch of big targets. So having a fighter that is good at air combat is key. Unfortunately, these days everything is multirole (or other, stupider, advertising-speak equivalent terms to multirole). But we’ll still want to make sure our multirole fighter is a capable aerial combatant.

However, the most important component is not the fighter, but the pilot. Good pilots in inferior fighters beat poor pilots in superior fighters almost every time. To get good, you need flight hours. And, while trainer hours are good, hours in type are better. So we’ll want to be able to keep maintenance costs down and availability up. This will also help with sortie generation. Sortie generation is most easily accomplished with numbers, however, so we’ll also be looking to try to keep unit costs down.

Let’s look at some other constraints, helpfully brought up by Fishbreath. As a continental power, Borgundy doesn’t really care much about aircraft carriers, so we also don’t require our fighters to be able to make a carrier landing, which opens the field up quite a bit. We also don’t care about buddy refueling, because while it’s a nice bonus, we can actually operate real tankers from land based runways. That was easy, actually. As you may have already guessed, Luchtburg and Borgundy are different places.

We have other interests and constraints as well. While the air superiority mission is paramount, since we’re buying a multirole fighter, we’ll want it to actually be able to haul some bombs. This means we’ll like designs that have plenty of hardpoints, but also the capability to lift plenty of weight of stores. A helpful bonus is plenty of hardpoints plumbed for drop tanks, because operating range is an important concern for us. Borgundy’s location is helpfully far from the front lines of a resurgent Red advance, but that makes range more important to adequately strike deep or operate over expected battle areas in Poland and the Baltic States. Range can also be enhanced with conformal fuel tanks, another feature that we’d like to have.

Next we come to the electrics. Specifically, we’re looking for a modern phased array radar, preferably actively scanned. We want infrared search and track, glass cockpits, helmet mounted sights, missile approach warning systems, integrated jammers, and the more computing we can get to process all this for the pilot and make his life easier, the better. But good electrics are no substitute for good kinematics, and the reader should rest assured that the standard, John-Boyd endorsed benchmarks of thrust/weight ratio, wing loading, and fuel fraction are no less important than the modern benchmarks of sensor potency.

Speaking of John Boyd, there is one more hard constraint that he would be proud of. Borgundy refuses to look at any fighter that does not come with an internal gun. While this is much less of an issue for Borgundy than it would be for Luchtburg, in that it only rules out certain variants since we’re not just looking at naval fighters, this is an important point to make all the same. Borgundy has made a habit of taking lessons from history, and we recall how well dogfighting worked in Viet Nam when AIM-7 Sparrows didn’t live up to their purported P_k. So, we can start the fighter availability by throwing out the JAS-39F (Two-seat Gripen NG), as well as the F-35B and F-35C (VTOL and Naval JSFs).

Anyway, on to the contenders! We have, in no particular order:

–Saab JAS-39E Gripen NG
–Dassault Rafale B/C
–Lockheed Martin F-16E Viper
–Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet
–Eurofighter Typhoon Tranche 3
–Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II
–Mikoyan MiG-35 Fulcrum-F
–Sukhoi Su-35S Flanker-E
–Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle

Quite a few planes. Next time we’ll take a look on which of these we can rule out early, and which will make it to the Final Round Flyoff.

Comment on our procurement posts in the Procurement Games comment thread.

For a while, I was very skeptical of the whole IFV concept. IFVs don’t hold as many men as the typical APC, so they force you to use smaller squads or split squads between multiple vehicles. And the modern combined-arms army is very light on infantry to begin with. However, the typical ‘battle taxi’ isn’t very well suited to keeping up with MBTs—they’re either wheeled MRAP-like things, or old tracked designs from the 60s. Neither will do when you are planning deep thunder runs into enemy territory. And the IFV does have some significant advantages–namely massive amounts of firepower to support and (generally) better protection than APCs. The protection means it’s more likely to be able to stay with the infantry it’s supporting, so they can remount faster. Plus, we’ve gotten away from the conscript armies of years past, so we don’t have the masses of men that your Grandpa’s army had. We need force multipliers.

At this point, I should probably go and settle the whole “Tracks v. Wheels” thing, at least as far as the Borgundian War Ministry is concerned. On the holistic level, both have their place. For IFVs, the answer is tracks, tracks, tracks. IFVs are part of the combined arms team. Would you send your quarterback on the field without receivers or the offensive line? No, you wouldn’t. No one would be there to snap the ball to him and he’d get pounded into the dirt. The combined arms team must work together, and to do that it must stay together. So, it’s critical that the IFV can keep up with the MBT, which is pretty much forced by it’s bulk to be tracked. That gives us a baseline to shoot for. If the IFVs can’t keep up on rough terrain, because of it’s wheels, then the MBTs are forced to slow down too, and you lose mobility. Similarly, on roads, the extra speed of wheeled IFVs is wasted, because they can’t go faster than the MBTs without becoming separated. Also, tracks mean less ground pressure, which is good when you place a premium on protection and really don’t care about weight overmuch (within limits–weight concerns will be revisited later).

A tracked IFV does disqualify a number of good vehicles from the running, simply because they are unsuited to our needs. These include the Patria AMV and the VBCI, plus some more that I’m either forgetting or am ruling out because they have insufficient protection. Concerns over protection and survivability rule out the BMP series for us, as they tend to be light on armor and packed with ammunition. They have an unpleasant history of burning quite well when they meet opposition. Currently there are two fine vehicles that are in production and might be suited for our needs: the CV90 and the Puma.

This time, I’ll cut to the chase: the Puma is the winner on grounds of survivability, protection, electronics, and firepower. Let’s break it down. In no particular order, we’ll go with protection first. Much has been said of the Puma’s modular armor as an aid to deployability. To be blunt: I don’t care.I won’t deploy them without tanks, and my tanks weigh 67 tonnes with the latest upgrades¹. But modular armor is good for the conventional warfighter because it makes it easier to replace damage modules or to upgrade them in the future with better stuff. That’s a win right there, and no other IFV on the market has such things. The CV90 is reasonably well protected, and has some improvement kits, but they’re not as well integrated, and they’re certainly not as easy to swap up to an upgrade later. It should be noted that the baseline Puma (without the supplemental armor packs) is about as well protected as the fully kitted out CV90 Mk. III. A fully kitted out Puma has side protection roughly equivalent to it’s front, or the front of most other IFVs on the market. It’s also equipped with a ‘softkill’ active protection system. The cost is weight: the Puma is the heaviest IFV around, weighing in at around 43 tonnes in full battle rattle. As mentioned before, this is not a great concern.

The Puma’s biggest gains though are in survivability. Ammunition and fuel are stored outside of the crew compartment. While this makes reloading the main gun a bit more annoying, it means that the infantry and crew inside are safe from cookoffs and most secondary effects of a penetrating hit. Which is good, because as well armored as the Puma is, it’s going to be hanging around with MBTs and their big guns, plus weapons designed to kill those behemoths. The extra survivability systems will ensure that the crew and infantry have their best chance to live to fight another day. Vehicles are repairable–personnel not so much.

The Puma has a dual-feed autocannon capable of firing the NATO standard 30x173mm round. This round is quite a bit better at penetrating armor than the Russian 30x165mm round (which is why you should read the fine print carefully when a manufacturer says that their vehicle is protected against 30mm rounds). While I might prefer a 35mm gun (and think one could be accomodated if not for the design’s airlift restrictions), the 30mm gun is an acceptable compromise, especially seeing as 30mm airburst ammunition is readily available. In terms of armor penetration, a 35mm gun doesn’t get you that much more. While 35mm rounds are more effective airburstwise, a vehicle can carry about twice as many 30mm rounds. 40mm Bofors guns would provide a significant gain in round effectiveness, but also reduce the ready ammunition capacity by roughly a factor of 10. The Puma has a 5.56mm machine gun, which is an adequate coaxial weapon. It can be fitted with a 7.62mm machine gun for those less concerned about transportable weight, which Borgundy will probably do. The biggest win for the Puma over many of it’s contemporaries is in the missile suite. The Puma is designed to fire the Israeli Spike-LR ATGM. This is more or less a longer-range Javelin equivalent, top-attack mode and all, and should be able to defeat heavily armored targets that the 30mm gun can’t.

In addition to good firepower, the Puma has really good optronic systems as well. It’s hunter-killer optics suite (separate optics for the commander in an independently-rotating mini-turret) and targeting systems are as good as or better than the systems on many tanks, not to mention the vast majority of IFVs. They’re roughly equivalent to that of the newer Leopard 2 variants. Additionally, the Puma has several cameras around the hull to improve his situational awareness, since he can’t stand up in the unmanned turret and poke his head out. While the CV90 has a two-man turret, which I like better overall for the situational awareness, it doesn’t really have a good option for a proper independent commander’s sight. In addition to the computerized fire control system, the Puma has all of the fancy battle management computer systems that you’d find in a modern MBT. What’s more, there are viewscreens available for the passengers allowing them to see information from the camera systems or the battle management computer, providing an informational advantage to the infantry in the back.

Compared to the CV90, the Puma is ATGM-equipped, is tougher, has a better targeting and electronics package, and is more survivable. And, as mentioned previously, it has much better protection and survivability than the BMP-3. In addition, the targeting and electronics on the Puma are much better than those of the BMP-3. The Puma is certainly the best of the lot for Borgundy given our priorities.

Up next, the Ultima Ratio Regum—Artillery!
More specifically, Self-propelled howitzers, because towed guns are so World War I.

1. Someday I shall discuss the Borgundian opinion of strategic mobility, or why I’m ignoring the ‘Shinseki School’ and buying superheavy German vehicles without really paying attention to the weight. But today is not that day.

Comment on our procurement posts in the Procurement Games comment thread.

Ah, Artillery. The real killer. The big guns. The terror of Verdun, the Somme, Passchendaele, and hundreds of other Great War battlefields. No army would be complete without it.  We’re going to be looking for a self-propelled howitzer of 155mm caliber. Generally speaking, heavier calibers are too unwieldy, and their role can be replaced by accurate fire from smaller guns, or, in the case of hardened point targets, hardened penetrator bombs dropped from medium altitude. 155 mm gives us commonality with our fellow NATO members, plus many options for guided rounds or specialty antitank rounds (e.g. SmART 155).

We can first rule out the current trend of “truck artillery.” These suffer when compared to proper self-propelled pieces in two key areas. First, and most obviously, they lack any protection for the gun crew when operating it, much like a towed gun. We would prefer our artillery crew to have protection from fragmentation, or actually have the lower cost and maintenance benefits of being a towed gun. A similar thing can be said about the on-vehicle ammunition stowage. The on-truck units don’t have very much integral capacity, and are very dependent on resupply. While ordinarily we expect a steady stream of supply trucks bearing ULCs of fresh shells, we really can’t count on this. Proper self propelled howitzers carry two to three times the ammuniton. So the latest ‘it must be air-mobile’ craze has once again brought us the worst of both worlds: the cost of a self-propelled howitzer but the lack of integrated support mechanisms of a towed howitzer.

After the above, you may be forgiven for asking “Wait, Parvusimperator! Why not get only towed guns? Those worked great at the Somme and Verdun. And the USMC can move theirs with helicopters!” Both are true, and, while towed guns are very old school, they’re still darn useful because they’re cheap and easy to move. And no one said we won’t be buying those, just not today. The key advantages of self-propelled howitzers are that they can get in and out of action faster. On-board fire control is also a big plus. Plus, having treads (at least on the proper models) will mean that they can keep up with tanks better. So we’ll still be wanting some self-propelled howitzers for our armored formations. With treads.

We can also rule out any vehicle that doesn’t have a barrel that is 52 calibers long (i.e. 52 times the diameter, or gun caliber). This is actually not that restrictive for modern systems as most recent designs are built to the NATO Joint Ballistic Memorandum of Understanding, which calls for a 155mm gun with a barrel length of 52 calibers (155mm/52 in shorthand) and a chamber volume of 23 L. The chamber volume means that we can use NATO standard propellant charges. Increased barrel length for an artillery piece means better range, but also makes the gun somewhat less wieldy. On a self-propelled howitzer, this is an acceptable trade off.

Next, we’ll ask ourselves, “Do we need a specialist resupply vehicle?” Because if we do, our choice is obvious: only the South Korean K9 comes with one (called the K10). Technically, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann has said they could make one for the Panzerhaubitze 2000, but they haven’t yet. Armored resupply vehicles are pretty cool. They’re usually about as fragmentation resistant as the self propelled howitzer that they accompany. Plus, they’re treaded. Tracks mean they’ll go anywhere. And, of course, there’s that fancy resupply robot arm that means you can resupply in a harsh, NBC-contaminated modern battlefield. Awesome. However, they’re pretty expensive for something that has limited use. Plus, if you actually are using them regularly, you need a lot of them, because they usually only carry a couple extra loads, so they’ll be shuffling back to whereever you stashed more rounds frequently.

The alternative is to use trucks with flatpacks and ULCs, unloaded by all-terrain forklifts and burly artillerymen. This certainly doesn’t work as well in the NBC-contaminated battlefield, but otherwise, it has the distinct advantage of being cheaper and more flexible. We’ll need trucks and all-terrain forklifts to manage other logistic burdens. Also, trucks and forklifts are much cheaper than big reloading vehicles. So, big gain in versatility, losses in time to completely reload a magazine, and operating in NBC wastelands. Thus, we needn’t be overly concerned with the lack of an armored resupply vehicle. ULCs are also a lot more flexible, since you can pick a ULC containing specialized rounds off the back of a truck if you need those more than others, or even reconfigure a truck load without too much difficulty. The same cannot be said for an armored resupply vehicle–the reloading of which is slow.

All that said, the K9 is a good self-propelled howitzer, with good electronic targeting systems and a proper 52-caliber gun barrel, like all of the lastest systems. If we look at rate of fire and range, we find that while the K9 is good, it’s outclassed in both areas by the aforementioned PzH 2000 and the South African G6-52. The G6-52 is the longest ranged howitzer in the world, and posesses a phenominal six-round MRSI capability. In other respects, it’s pretty conventional, with a good rate of fire (burst and sustained), reasonably modern fire control systems, and good integrated ammunition storage. Interestingly, the G6-52 is protected from the front against 20mm gunfire. Which is better than any other self-propelled howitzer on the market, but isn’t actually all that useful–most first-rate vehicles these days are armed with an autocannon of at least 25mm. Interestingly, despite its phenominal range, the G6-52 has not enjoyed much export success.

This brings us to the PzH 2000 (which is in desperate need of a better name). It’s range is second-best behind the G6-52, and it manages a good but not exceptional 5 round MRSI capability. But it’s fire control systems are second to none, and its ammunition storage and loading mechanisms are world-beating. The PzH 2000 holds a whopping 60 rounds with associated propellant charges, so it is better able to deal with supply line disruptions. It also has a very well designed automatic loading system, that gives it excellent burst and sustained rates of fire. What’s more, all 60 rounds are acessible by the autoloader, so the crew never has to wrestle rounds from reserve to ready magazines inside the vehicle. This is one less thing for them to do if they’re also manhandling rounds into the vehicle from ULCs. On the support and spare parts side, the Panzerhaubitze 2000 has won several contracts with other NATO members, making long-term support something to trust. It’s the best overall self-propelled howitzer on the market today, and Borgundy’s choice.

So, Germany has swept the Major Ground Combat Vehicles. It’s a big win to be sure. Next up, inspired by Fishbreath, will be a long investigation of fighters, which will no doubt end in a fat procurement contract (or two). We’re going to need something to drop those hardened penetrator bombs now that nobody’s making really big guns. Will the Germans continue their sweep? Will Parvusimperator join Fishbreath in procuring Viking fighters?

Okay, so all the boilerplate out is out of the way. On to the problems! Since Borgundy is very much a traditional, continental power that focuses on conventional warfare, we’re going to be spending some time with the army first. We’ll buy some front-line combat vehicles: MBTs and IFVs. First up, the MBT.

I love tanks. Tanks are wonderful things, and modern tanks are fascinating beasts of battle. But which to buy? Well, that very much depends on your combat doctrine. Borgundy’s ground doctrine is a lot more tank-centric than you might expect from being a NATO member. In fact, they’ve probably stolen more than a few pages from the Soviet doctrine on ground combat. And, being in Northern Europe, there are rivers and other waterways, which mean bridge crossings are going to be a factor in movement in theater. At first, this would seem to suggest that I’d go Russian for my tanks, which tend to be good at fording and light to pass over the crappy infrastructure of Eastern Europe.

But this would be wrong. For one thing, they’re not logistically compatible with NATO weapons.  More importantly, they’re not as good from a firepower or protection standpoint. The Russian 125mm smoothbore is lower pressure than the 120mm NATO ones, and the Russians haven’t kept up on their projectile design, so their APFSDS rounds penetrate less armor than the current state-of-the-art from Germany or America. Russian tanks, historically, have been small and light. They get their protection from ERA tiles–which have gaps which the tiles don’t cover and are weak where different tiles meet. They’re also not very good against follow-up shots. Frankly, I trust boring old composite armors more. Plus, Russian tanks don’t have the fancy internal electronic systems that the Western tanks do. So, we’ll be going Western for our tanks.

Here’s where it gets interesting. There are lots of western tank makers. Probably the most obvious choice to anyone who knows me is the M1 Abrams. This is my favorite tank, actually. Great speed and tactical mobility, great firepower, and great protection. Plus, it pioneered fancy electronic things like an independent commander’s sight and a battle managment computer. However, there are a few factors that make it a poor procurement choice for Borgundy. The first and most obvious is its gas turbine engine, the AGT-1500. This has notoriously poor fuel economy at idle. It’s closer to, but still not as good as, a diesel at high speeds. Fuel economy would have been improved if they had put in the LV 100-5, a newer gas turbine design with improved fuel economy, but that program died with the Crusader Project (Thanks a lot, Rumsfeld). The AGT-1500s are also old and a pain to maintain. There are some good things going for the gas turbine though, namely really nice acceleration and that they start in cold environments easily. They’ll also run on just about any flammable liquid.

If the only downside to the Abrams was its gas turbine engine, I’d probably be okay with it. However, there’s another issue: materials. The Abrams has some really nice armor of some top secret composition. The export models (“Monkey Models” in analyst parlance) have a lesser form of armor. Export customers also don’t get the fancy American depleted uranium-alloy rounds. Again, you get something less. Is it bad? No, but it’s not as good as the top shelf. So it’s also almost certainly less good than the competitors. A lot of this is speculation, I don’t actually get to see real-world data on these, just the estimates. But all estimates put the newest Abramses in about the same protection class as it’s contemporaries, so a downgraded export model wouldn’t be as good. And who wants to get the ‘monkey model’ anything when they don’t have to? So, Abrams is out.

Another obvious choice, since I do put a premium on protection, is the Challenger 2. This is a British tank, and by all accounts it’s very tough to kill. To make the export model competitive, the Brits even put a proper 1,500 hp engine in it to make up for the weight. For some reason, they use a 1,200 hp diesel in the regular army ones. There are two problems with the Challenger though. First, it has a rifled gun that uses two-piece ammunition. So you’re stuck with developing for something different than everybody else’s smoothbore 120mm guns that fire one piece ammunition, and you can’t share. Second, the rounds it does have aren’t quite as good at tank killing as the latest from Germany or America, because the Brits haven’t kept up with round development. So you’re stuck behind the curve. (Also, it’s technically not offered any more, but it was recently, and it’s a pretty well-known tank to discuss all the same).

Next we come to the Leclerc. It’s a French tank of relatively recent design. It has an autoloader that does a good job of isolating rounds from the crew, an improvement over Soviet designs. It also is good at deep fording, is relatively mobile, and has a very good fire control system. However, I’m not generally a fan of autoloaders. And the protection on the Leclerc is mediocre. Not bad, just not as good as its contemporaries. It’s also stupidly expensive because of the low production rate. I’m not averse to expensive things (ask Fishbreath), but I really don’t see myself as getting more bang for my buck here.

So now we come to my choice: the Leopard 2E. It’s got a big, 1,500 hp V12, so it has plenty of power. It has the most powerful tank gun…in the world, the Rheinmetall 120mm/L55 smoothbore. The Germans develop some very nice tungsten APFSDS rounds for it, and you can use any NATO standard 120mm one-piece ammo. So you’re not shackled ot one supplier. It’s even been tested firing the Israeli LAHAT gun-launched ATGM. The 2E has enhanced armor on the turret face, on the hull glacis, and on the roof over the older Leopards. It even has good deep-water fording capability (4 m if you erect the snorkel) and has a modern, computerized fire control suite with all the usual trimmings.

So there you have it. My pick of Tank Buy. I’ll let Fishbreath write up his own ode to the T-90. I know this is probably a really boring pick (Sweeden came to a similar decision in a test of these very tanks), but them’s the breaks. It’s the most popular tank on the export market for a reason–it does a lot of things very well. There are some that do specific things better, but it’s really hard to find a big enough improvement to justify the other trade-offs. And no, I’m not going to apologize for picking the Glock of modern MBT procurement. I’m no tank-hipster. No points for guessing the standard sidearm of Borgundy either. On to Infantry Fighting Vehicles.

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