So, it’s long been popular to bitch and moan about how much weight our soldiers carry. Okay. Fine. It sucks to carry all that weight, true. But it’s a lot easier to complain than it is to offer solutions. So, lest you think we are cynical grognards who do nothing but complain, let’s try to offer alternatives.

In that spirit, some rules that I’ll abide by when pondering the problem. Hopefully Fishbreath will also take up the challenge. And you, dear reader, can also feel free to write in with your own ideas.

1.) A loadout should be geared towards a standard area of operations.
This is mostly to avoid nonsense like having to worry about hot and cold weather gear. Since Borgundy is a European country (for some fictitious definition of Europe), I’ll keep this kit focused on a temperate climate loadout. I might also talk changes for winter/desert/jungle, but there it is. Remember, you can focus on one area at a time and leave some things home.

2.) Basic uniform and boot weight doesn’t count
This one is another simplifier. It’s also a huge pain to find uniform weights, and is one of the most likely things to change if you’re switching climates. Plus, it varies a lot, more even than armor. And when most people think “load” they don’t count the clothes on their back or the shoes on their feet. It is assumed your soldiers wear boots and a uniform. You needn’t account for it in the table.

Do note, however, that if you choose to issue protective gear integrated into your uniform (e.g. some combat uniforms have integrated elbow/kneepad pockets) that those protective items count. So if you picked Crye’s combat uniform, say, you would need to list the weight of the elbow- and kneepads, if you chose to issue them. Supplemental stuff (poncho, poncho liner, soft shell jacket, greatcoat, etc.) does count for the weight table. This also goes for extras like spare socks. Those count for weight too.

3.) You may stipulate the sort of infantry your loadout is for (e.g. Light infantry, Motorized infantry, Mechanized infantry, etc.)
Your loadout needn’t work for all situations. You can feel free to assume your soldiers in question have to march everywhere (light infantry), get some trucks to move them (motorized infantry), or get APCs/IFVs to move them about (mechanized infantry). If they have some kind of transport, you can feel free to note things that are carried in the vehicle. These don’t count toward your weight limit (duh), but also don’t count towards the things I’m requiring on the person, like food/water/body armor below (also duh).

4.) You must budget for minimum amounts of water (at least one quart) and food (at least one day’s worth) on the soldier’s person
This is mostly to make the motor/mech guys work a little. You might end up away from your vehicle, so you need to keep some minimums at hand. The above (especially for water) are particularly spartan minimums. But you need to have some food and water on your soldiers, even just a canteen and iron rations.

5.) You must provide a minimum standard of protection (some form of ballistic helmet, AND some form of body armor) on the soldier’s person.
Now I’m being mean. Yes, I know body armor is heavy. Get over it. You have the same political considerations as real military officers. Protect your boys in uniform. I’m not telling you what kind of body armor to wear, that’s up to you and your expected threat. A flak jacket with no plates is ok. A plate carrier with rifle plates and no supplemental soft armor is ok. But you gotta take something protective on the chest. And don’t forget that if you choose SAPI/ESAPI plates, they need soft armor backers to function as advertised. Yes, those count too. As does your plate/armor carrier. Similarly, your helmet must offer some amount of ballistic protection. PASGT is fine. A simple bump/climbing helmet isn’t.

You can always pack more, but some level of head/body protection should be standard and worn at all times.

6.) You must standardize on a weapons supplier, (i.e. choose NATO stuff, or Russian stuff, or Chinese stuff, but no mixing)
This one’s just another real world constraint. You likely have a friend you buy all your small arms from. So do so.

You can have plenty of fun making various specialist loadouts, but you should start with the basic rifleman. Have fun!

The Downselect has happened! Just last week, we saw Australia announce the two preferred bidders for the wheeled component of the Land 400 program. They are Rheinmetall (entering a Boxer MRAV with Puma turret)¹ and BAE/Patria (entering a Patria AMV with a CV9035 turret).

Land 400 is designed to replace the Australian LAV IIIs and M113s with a new family of tracked and wheeled vehicles (respectively). The choice of the Rheinmetall and BAE/Patria families represent pretty safe choices. Both of these base vehicles (the Boxer MRAV and the Patria AMV) are in use with armies already, both have already met with some export success, and both have seen some combat in Afghanistan. That’s a laundry list of modern ways to be able to slap a big “PROVEN!” sticker on your vehicle. Someone paid for development already, someone else has already bought one, and some half-starved, uneducated baddies-of-the-year have shot at it with 50 year old hardware. Sigh.

Still, that’s more than can be said for the unselected vehicles. The STK Terrex III out of Singapore had some interesting features but didn’t make the cut. On the one hand, the Terrex had really good networking, an excellent camera system for all-round visibility, and plenty of internal volume. On the other hand, that made it big, heavy, and underprotected. Unlike the Lance turret on the Boxer, the Terrex’s turret can’t make STANAG Level 6 protection, at least not in any version currently fielded, and the turret manufacturer (Elbit) hasn’t challenged this. And a bigger vehicle means more armor weight. That said, it’s a wheeled vehicle, so they all have big, vulnerable tires that everyone seems to be forgetting about. The bigger problem for the Terrex is that it’s completely unproven. No one has bought any. It’s in a USMC competition, but that hasn’t concluded yet. Australia wanted MOTS above all else, and Terrex III isn’t off the shelf by any stretch of the term. Hello development costs, hello inevitable delays, hello griping, hello significant chance of legislative budget kill. So the Terrex III got a ‘no thanks’.

General Dynamics’ LAV3++ also got a rejection letter. There’s not a lot of growth room left in that design, and they would have needed to pull out more stops, or really, really play up the savings to get a nod. It would have likely been better to try to preempt the competition with an upgrade offer direct to the Australian MoD. By this point, they’re looking for something new. The upgraded LAV also failed to meet the desired protection levels. Sorry, GD. You’re out.

Let’s also look at the two competitors. Overall, I’d say the Rheinmetall option is better². The turret has much better electronics, and the turret and vehicle offer much better protection. It’s also going to be the more expensive option. BAE/Patria have their work cut out for them to upgrade the protection, and/or make a big play for local manufacturing. They’d also probably be wise to play up the price, but it’s not clear what each side can offer, since they’d need to do some work to get protection levels to the desired level.

As for Rheinmetall, they have the best entrant in the pageant. In addition to excellent armor on both the Puma turret and the base Boxer vehicle, they’ve added an active protection system with an estimated 26 countermeasures. They’ve also added a .50 caliber HMG in a remote weapons station that’s slaved to the Commander’s sight. Finally, the Lance turrets, like the ones on the Lynx at Eurosatory, had Spike ATGM launchers installed.³ These are properly shock-isolated, so bumps from plenty of cross-country driving won’t damage the missiles over time.

I wish Rheinmetall, Patria, and BAE the best of luck in the next phase of testing. And, I’m in agreement with the Australian MoD on their downselect choices. Good times all around.

1.) That Lance turret again. Score.
2.) Cf. my APC Procurement selection
3.) Why the Pumas in the Bundeswehr don’t have these fitted yet is beyond me. But it’s clear they can be without much trouble. Which will make IFV procurement fun when I actually get around to making that budget challenge for Fishbreath.

Eurosatory 2016 has just happened¹, and let’s take a look at some of the big ticket items. Specifically, let’s look at a new IFV from Rheinmetall.

I’ve written a lot about IFVs, and what’s clear is that there are a lot of different variations on the theme. Different armies want different things, and it seems nobody quite agrees with me (and my conceptual Borgundian army). Let’s see what Rheinmetall has to offer.

Unlike the Puma, the Lynx is a private venture aimed squarely at the export market. So they’ve had to keep costs under control, and develop for one of many armies. Or not–they’ve actually gone and made several different options that you can select from in the Lynx. The base chassis, under all the new stuff, is the same as the Marder 1 IFV. This is an older IFV design, but it’s functional. This saves on some testing, and allows a cost saving option if you can get your hand on some used Marders. The Marder is 1970s vintage tech, but it was a well-protected IFV in its day. And the Leopard 2 and M1 Abrams are both also 1970s vintage, and are still great choices with upgrades. Why shouldn’t the Marder 1 be?

That said, just about everything else is new. Engine, armor, sensors, weapons, suspension. And unlike the Marder, or any other IFV, there are options! We’ll look at what options are available, and then go over what we’d pick. Rheinmetall plans to expand this into an entire family of midsize armored fighting vehicles, but for now we just have the two IFV options.

First of the options is size and dismounts. The clever men of Rheinmetall have developed two versions of the Lynx: the KF31 and the KF41. The KF31 is 7.2 meters long, weighs 38 tonnes, and holds six dismounts. It has a 755 hp engine, so it should have no trouble keeping up with your MBT of choice. Here, you’ve basically got a Puma. Granted, it should be cheaper than a Puma, and it lacks the quick attach/detach armor kit, but otherwise it should meet the same combat profile and provide the same high-end sensor and protection levels as Puma. Cool.

The other size option is the bigger KF41. It’s 7.7 meters long², weighs 44 tonnes, and holds eight dismounts. Eight! Be still my beating heart. Plus, they redid the suspension design to take the added weight on the KF41, and put in a 1,050 hp engine, so it should still be able to move well. Both the KF31 and the KF41 have blast-resistant seating for all nine or eleven occupants. Both versions, of course, have a crew of three.

Both also have similar turret options in the Lance turret, which is a COTS project. A Lance variant was used in the British Ajax AFV. The Lance turret is available in an unmanned configuration or a manned configuration, and both are available on either Lynx variant. If you want to have the commander be able to stick his head out of the turret, you can. If you want the crew isolated from the ammo, you can. The two man turret does have some reasonably effective ammo isolation, but the unmanned one is going to be better in that regard. You can also choose your gun: the Lance can be equipped with a 30 mm or 35 mm autocannon. Regardless of which size you choose, the Lance is designed to accommodate two ammunition types in a dual feed system, and has all of the electronics and shell-programming systems in place to handle airburst rounds if you so choose. The Lance turret also has the same great optical suite as the Puma, with modern thermal viewers for the commander and gunner, plus obligatory laser rangefinders. The commander’s sight is independent, of course, and is configured to be ready to synchronize to a remote weapons station. Just add RWS.

As a brief aside, while the Germans do not make such a gun, if you’re interested in the 40mm CTWS, that shouldn’t be too hard to fit to the Lance, since that’s what the British used in their Ajax.

But wait, there’s more. The Lance turret has a coaxial machine gun, in proper 7.62×51 mm caliber, unlike the Puma. Plus, it’s got an automatic barrel change mechanism with three barrels to keep up that sustained fire, since it’s not easily accessible in either the manned or unmanned turret versions. Further, the Lance turret can be fitted with a two-tube launcher for the Spike LR ATGM. Unlike the Puma though, where this has been claimed for a while but keeps getting delayed, this was mounted on the Eurosatory display model. You can have your ATGMs now with Lynx!

Protectionwise, Lynx is loaded up with the latest composites, and matches the levels of Puma at protection level C. It’s not easily removable though, so it doesn’t have that slightly better than normal strategic mobility of the Puma. OF course, that assumes that you not only have Pumas, but that you have a bunch of A400ms that work, and no one does yet. A stripped down Puma is still too fat for midsize airlifters that actually function like the C-130J.

The turret also has the usual smoke grenade launchers, plus plenty of cameras, just like Puma. No active protection system (hard kill or soft kill) is fitted though. You’d have to select one to add.

The display model at Eurosatory was the KF31, with a two-man turret, 35 mm gun, and ATGMs fitted. Built for the show, and looked great. Plus, got a lot of attention too. I know Rheinmetall will be entering the Lynx in the Land 400 competition, and I wish them the best of luck. No word yet on what they’re entering though, or what the Aussies have asked for.

What about Borgundy? Well, it should be obvious that yes, we’d totally buy this. I don’t have pricing information yet, but I might be able to scrounge something up or guesstimate. Anyway, we’d order the KF41 with an unmanned turret packing a 30mm gun and the ATGM launcher. 30mm because that should do whatever support job we ask of it and we get more rounds. ATGMs because duh. Eight dismounts because that’s a full squad, and unmanned turret for the extra survivability. We’ll just need to add the active protection system of our choice.

1. (I hope we aren’t giving the impression that we’re rich or famous enough to be there. Yet. -Ed.)
2. I’ve long thought that adding about half a meter or so of length to an existing six dismount design would give me eight dismount capacity, and would be a worthwhile improvement to the FV510 Warrrior or the M2 Bradley.