Resurrected Weapons: ASP-30

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And now another casualty of the end of the Cold War and the “Peace Dividend”. To understand it though, we first need to look at the state of emplacement weapons circa 1980 (or now–they haven’t changed much). By ‘Emplacement Weapon’, I mean something large, movable by a group of men, that’s mounted on a tripod in a more or less fixed position, on a pintle in helicopters and light vehicles, or mounted in a remote weapons station. More specifically, I’m interested in the Browning M2 HMG and the Mk. 19 automatic grenade launcher, and replacing both.

The Browning M2 was designed in 1918, and has seen a long and storied use as an antiaircraft gun, as the armament of the vast majority of fighters in the Second World War, as a pintle weapon, as a weapon for remote weapon stations, as a gunpod gun, and even as an impromptu sniper rifle. It does many things well, like penetrate light armor, and reach out to about 1,800 meters. There are even some pretty fancy armor piercing incendiary rounds available. All wonderful things, but it can’t throw small but useful quantities of high explosive very well. The rounds are too small for that.

On the explosive-throwing front, we have the Mark 19, which was born out of the need for explosives-throwing on the Mekong Delta in 1966. It shoots 40x53mm grenades, which have more velocity than the standard 40x46mm grenades used in underbarrel grenade launchers like the M203. Even so, the grenades fly an arcing trajectory, and aren’t very easy to aim at longer ranges, despite the site having overly optimistic markings out to 1,500 meters. It’s another super useful support weapon, since throwing lots of explosives is always helpful. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could combine the advantages of both? Explosives, armor penetration, flat trajectory, and good range, all in a single weapon.

The ASP-30 promised to do just that. It fired the 30x113mm B round, getting a flat trajectory and effective range out to 4,000 meters on an energy basis. Even when tested on a simple pintle mount, the ASP-30 can match the range of the M2. Due to the relative volumes of the shells, the 30x113mm high explosive dual purpose rounds have about the same amount of explosives as the 40x53mm HE grenades of the Mk. 19. Those M789 HEDP rounds are also capable of defeating the armor of BMP-1s and BMP-2s, which is quite a bit more armor penetration than the .50 BMG. As a bonus, the 30x113mm B rounds are already in the NATO inventory, being used in the M230 autocannon on the AH-64 Apache.

So what do we give up? In a word: weight. The ASP-30 weighs in at 52 kg, which is 14 kilos more than the Mk. 19 or the Browning M2. This hurts mostly on the manpacking front. While more weight is something that needs to be dealt with, the ASP-30 has been tested on vehicles as light as HMMWVs, and as weight-concious as helicopter door gun mounts. It’s a big gun, but it’s workable in vehicular applications. Infantry will have to wrestle with it quite a bit more, probably with a multiple people lugging the big ASP. That said, it’s a really big capability gain, giving a two-for-one deal for light vehicles and as a RWS mounted system for light and heavy vehicles. More firepower, more range, plus it would mean reducing the number of sets of spares that have to be stocked. With savings like that, Fishbreath might even be interested.

Verdict: Approved by Borgundy War Department Procurement Board.

Fishbreath Plays: MechWarrior Online

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The Battletech Kickstarter kicked me back into playing some MechWarrior Online. I ought to note that, on the whole, I like it. I don’t think it quite hits the heights that previous MechWarrior games hit, but it’s a perfectly serviceable stompy robots game in terms of gameplay. That isn’t what this post is about, though.

No, this post is a rant.

Let’s talk about the grind. Oh, the grind. That necessary evil in free-to-play games, right? Yes, but this one is particularly egregious. Fans of the game may try and tell you it’s less grindy than World of Tanks, say, or World of Warships. They are lying to you. Let us be perfectly clear. There is precisely one type of player for whom MechWarrior Online is less grindy than the Wargaming.net games: high-level competitive players. World of [insert vehicle] does indeed require more out of you than MechWarrior Online does if you want to experience what counts as the endgame. I would posit that these players, though, make up such a tiny proportion of the playerbase that their opinions are basically meaningless. Let’s get down to brass tacks with a comparison.

I’m a fairly casual player in World of Warships, and a fairly casual player in MechWarrior Online. As such, my goal in the former is to have a couple of historical Second World War vessels, which occupy (generally) the top half of the tech trees. I need to get to about tiers 4-6. I average about a thousand experience per game, or more if I’m playing primarily for first-win-of-the-day. To go from tier 5 to tier 6 costs about 30,000 experience, which comes to about 30 games. (Going from tier 1 to tier 5 is about that difficult too, if I recall correctly.) It takes me about 60 games—certainly, no more than 75 on a bad streak, and no more than 100 on a horrid streak. So far, I’ve never had to grind for money; in the course of getting through my 60-100 games to hit the next tier, I’ve made enough to buy my way up.

In MechWarrior Online, as a fairly casual player, my goal is to build up a stable of mechs of various sizes and roles I can switch between as the mood strikes me. There are two obstacles here. First, earnings: I make about 80,000-100,000 c-bills per match in MechWarrior Online. A single light mech chassis costs about 2,000,000 c-bills. (A little less for 20-ton mechs, a little more for 35-ton mechs, a whole lot more for mechs which can mount ECM—note that ECM capability usually makes a given mech variant the most desirable of its chassis.) A medium mech costs about 3,750,000 c-bills. You’ll spend between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 for a heavy, and 7,500,000 to 10,000,000 for an assault.

You begin to see the magnitude of the problem. Buying a light, a medium, a heavy, and an assault chassis takes nearly 20 million c-bills and a shade under 200 games. Outfitting a mech can sometimes double that cost, especially if you don’t have a bunch of weapons and equipment sitting around your mech lab, if you’re a new player. We’re already up to about a 400-game grind to buy and outfit four individual mechs. That’s a big time sink.

It also isn’t the end of it. When you buy a mech, you unlock skill trees for that mech. Consider this: I earn about 800xp per match. If I don’t sink about 30,000 experience into each variant, that variant is between 10% and 50% worse in a variety of extremely important performance measures (speed, heat capacity, turn rate, and more) than someone else’s copy of that variant who has done the grind. That’s a 40-game grind in each mech after you’ve acquired it. I’ll grant you, that comes out to less than you need to acquire the mechs (a mere 160 games), but that isn’t the whole story.

You see, the mech skill trees come in three tiers. To unlock each tier, you need to finish the tier beneath it… on three separate variants of a given chassis. So, you don’t need 400 games and 40,000,000 c-bills to buy and outfit four mechs. You need 120,000,000 c-bills and 1200 games to grind out the requisite twelve variants to avoid being a gigantic drag on your team. More than 400 of those games will be played in mechs that are arbitrarily handicapped in an attempt to get you to buy premium time.

So no, Wargaming.net’s games are not more grindy than MechWarrior Online for the average player. Basically, if you don’t get summers off, you’re going to have to spend money if you want to fill out your mech stable, and a lot of money, at that. I leave gawking at the prices as a trivial exercise for the reader.

Some anti-patterns

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Another college pal, a fellow traveler in the world of the computer sciences, wrote up this list for me. Call him Shenmage, and encourage him to set up the contributor’s account I made him here, the lazy bum. -Fish

As a software engineer, I tend to come across code bases of various levels of quality. To make light of some of the oddities we encountered, myself and some of my co-workers started writing up the logical conclusions of the code structures. Each of these was encountered to some degree or another (though not necessarily as anything beyond a single method). Enjoy, and feel free to add your own to the comments section.

Walmart Pattern

  • Has everything you could ever want
  • You can’t find anything
  • Sometimes have to get multiple of something when you only want one

Sam’s Club Pattern

  • See Walmart Pattern
  • Can only get things in bulk (no single entities)

Titanic Pattern

  • Everything is well structured and coded to the dot
  • Only has a manual process for recovering the system (with potentially catastrophic consequences)

Power of Attorney Pattern

  • Pass SQL commands directly to a web service to get executed

Lottery Pattern

  • Retrievals are randomly generated
  • Only occasionally get what you want

Tardis Pattern

  • Alters history of an object
  • Does more actions than requested
  • Doesn’t do anything exactly as you request

Leaning Tower of Pisa Pattern

  • Perfectly structured but tightly coupled to outdated tech

Starbucks Pattern

  • More identical web services than you need
  • Expensive computationally

Monopoly Pattern

  • Multithreaded, but one thread eventually eats up all available resources

Glass House Pattern

  • Security on a system was completely ignored on critical components

Magic 8 Ball Pattern

  • Calls return only boolean values
  • ‘Maybe’ is included as a boolean value
  • Multiple ways to say each value

Speakeasy Pattern

  • Webservice is completely undocumented, so have to know precisely what to send where to use it

Narcissus Pattern

  • Class depends upon itself and uses itself to accomplish tasks

Lazy Inspector Pattern

  • Methods that should do tasks instead return true

Scorched Earth Pattern

  • Update method drops and recreates table

“What’s in the box?!” Pattern

  • Large, untyped, container objects are the only objects passed around the system

OCD ORM Pattern

  • Verifies all retrievals by retrieving again

M2 Bradley Part 3: Modern Competition

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Okay. I’ve talked about the Bradley’s massive firepower, and the many proposed variants that never actually entered production. I’ve mentioned that it compares pretty favorably to modern competition, but let’s actually give that a go. Let’s compare the Bradley to a modern IFV; specifically the CV9035 IFV. We’re going to try to keep this to a head to head between the two vehicles; we’re not going to try to compare the variants-that-might-be. For clarity, note that we’re looking at the M2A3 Bradley.

The Bradley wins the firepower shootout pretty clearly. The Bradley has significantly more ammunition available for its coax machine gun (both feature a 7.62x51mm GPMG coax), and features a twin-tube TOW missile launcher in addition to the 25mm autocannon, giving it an antitank punch (albeit an outmoded one). Let’s take a look at the autocannon though. This is as good an excuse as any to compare the two autocannons. The M2A3 carries 300 rounds of 25x137mm ammunition in it’s ready stowage magazines. One is for 67 rounds, one is for 133 rounds. The CV9035 carries 70 rounds of 35x228mm ammunition in it’s two 35 round ready magazines. Clearly the Bradley wins the “who can shoot longer without reloading” game, and the combat persistence of the Bradley has proven useful in Iraq. On the other hand, the 35mm gun is much better at penetrating armor. The best unclassified1 penetration data I have gives the 25mm M919 DU APFSDS round the ability to penetrate up to 100 mm of rolled homogeneous steel armor (RHA) or equivalent stuff. The 35mm can penetrate up to 130mm of RHA, and this is without using depleted uranium in the penetrator round. So the 35mm is going to be significantly more useful against more heavily armored vehicles, including other Western-made IFVs as well as the rumored BMP-3s with heavier armor. Not using depleted uranium yet means that 35mm has some growth potential left to help keep pace with future threats.

Let’s look at high explosive next. This is the more generally useful capability for an IFV. The 25mm HE shell has a weight of 180 g. The 35mm HE shell has a weight of 550 g, or about 3 times the mass. However (presuming the larger of the two magazines on the Bradley is loaded with HE), the Bradley carries about 3.8 times as many HE rounds as the CV9035. So, there’s a net HE weight advantage for the Bradley, and one might consider that the question comes down to the simple matter of whether one prefers more rounds or big rounds. But, being larger as well as used in many air defense applications, there are some wonderfully fancy fusing options available for the 35mm. These include the “3P” (Programmable, Proximity-fused, Prefragmented) as well as a hybrid KE/HE round called NR468 KETF (Kinetic Energy Time Fused), which sprays tungsten pellets. The bigger shell size gives designers more to work with, and more options are available.

One other thing is worth noting here. Most tracers on 25mm rounds burn out by the time the round gets about 2 km downrange, which makes it difficult to observe the fall of shot and score hits on further targets. The 35mm round does not have this problem, and Danish CV9035s have scored hits from beyond 3 km in Afghanistan. So, while the Bradley has the edge in firepower, there are a number of advantages to the 35mm gun on the CV9035.

Protection and survivability go hand in hand, and are both won by the CV9035. It has significantly better armor, using modern MEXAS composites that provide it with superior protection against both shaped charges and long-rod penetrators. The CV9035 underbody is designed to provide some measure of protection against mines, whereas the Bradley has a rather thin underbelly. In terms of supplemental protection, kits are available for both vehicles. The CV9035 should be better able to handle the extra weight in this area, since it’s a newer vehicle with a less heavily loaded suspension.

Survivability is more or less the flip side of the Bradley’s advantages in firepower; it’s packed with five TOW missiles, three AT4 rocket launchers, and 600 rounds of 25mm ammunition. The Bradley also lacks spall liners, and ammunition isn’t separated from the crew compartment. As such, it burns notoriously well. The CV9035 stores its smaller amount of ammunition in a safer fashion, and as a result it’s much less vulnerable to secondary effects. So the big2 Swedish vehicle is a safer vehicle for its crew and passengers.

Capacity on the CV9035 is a little vague, because different internal configurations. Ad copy from BAE-Hagglunds gives a capacity of 7, though I have some other sources3 that say 8. The M2A3 holds 7, though that last seat behind the driver is somewhat cramped. Possible slight advantage to the CV9035, but I’m about as willing to call this a wash due to uncertain sources.

Electronics fit is also a wash. Both the M2A3 and the CV9035 have fancy modern battle management systems, thermal imaging sights for the gunner, independent commander’s thermal imaging sights to provide a hunter-killer capability, and backup cameras to aid in administrative driving. There is, of course, the usual encrypted radio fit.

Despite similar weights, the CV9035 has significantly better mobility. It’s got a more powerful engine (755 hp as opposed to the 600 hp of the A3 Bradley), and the CV9035’s suspension is designed to handle soft ground (or snow) well. In Norwegian tests, the CV90 proved to have the best mobility of any IFV tested, beating out the Warrior 2000, the Bradley, and the Puma.

So where does this leave us? Well, despite the superior firepower of the Bradley, the CV9035 is as good or better in every other area. Once again, the CV9035 beats out a flashier opponent as the better buy. It does more things better, has more growth room left in its design, and is reasonably priced. I would also add that the CV9035 is probably not better enough to justify an upgrade if one already had Bradleys. But this is a showroom comparison, not a ‘should we upgrade’ article.

Interestingly, despite all of the many Bradley variant proposals, the CV90 series gives more options of things actually in production now (compared to the Bradley production line as it was when it was stopped). There’s the CV90 Armadillo, which is a turretless APC variant. There’s also the CV90120, which is a modern take on the Tank Destroyer/Assault Gun concept, being well armed but lightly armored. Finally, there’s the CV90+AMOS which features a turret with a pair of automatically loaded 120mm mortars for a very powerful short range indirect punch. The most interesting Bradley variants never made it to full rate production.

1.) While these are almost certainly not correct, I expect them to be reasonably close. Also, for most mature systems, I figure they’re all going to be off for similarly classified reasons, i.e. I figure they should be off by about the same amount and so make good comparison metrics.
2.) Seriously, this thing is bigger than a Leopard 1 tank. Ask me if I care.
3.) Including my copy of Jane’s Armour and Artillery, 2008-2009. It’s old because those books are damned expensive. I wouldn’t be opposed to someone gifting me a more recent copy though.

Luchtburg Picks A Carbine

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The Luchtbourgish procurement apparatus has been slothful over the last year—the members of the Procurement Board have made their preferences clear on a number of challenges, but the secretary has yet to finish typing up most of the proposals. He’s hammering one out right now for you.

The Luchtbourgish Individual Carbine Competition has a few extra constraints imposed by Luchtburg’s defense priorities. One: Luchtburg has a vast stockpile of 7.62x39mm ammunition left over from its time as a Russian client state. Any proposal for a weapon chambered for a different cartridge will have to account for the price of acquiring new ammunition stockpiles, and other new infantry weapons to replace other 7.62x39mm . Two: Luchtburg is a jungle country, and a heavy bullet is desirable1. Three: Luchtburg’s land army is small2, and so the price of an individual rifle is less important than it might be otherwise.

With those constraints in mind, I can easily eliminate 5.45x39mm and 5.56 NATO. Neither are bad cartridges, and both are perfectly acceptable choices. They are not, however, the right choice for us. Disposing of 7.62×39 to acquire a new cartridge would be expensive—conservatively, the cost of a modern corvette out to a ten-year horizon, and probably another FREMM over the 25-year lifetime of the Procurement Games. It would also violate another constraint: jungle effectiveness. I can also eliminate full-size rifle cartridges, for the same reasons that parvusimperator does. I’ll leave the takedown to his post. (Look back through the militariana tag for the post about SCHV rounds.)

So, that leaves me with the intermediate intermediate cartridges, if you will: 7.62×39, the great granddaddy of the field; the modern American contenders, 6.5 Grendel, 6.8 SPC, and .300 Blackout; and lesser-used wildcats. The latter class is right out on production scale grounds. We’ll be buying, at the least, several hundred million cartridges, and sorting out production at the same time as a new rifle is not something Luchtburg wants to do.

The modern American contenders present more interesting problems. I’m a huge fan of 6.5 Grendel based on its ballistics, and of .300 BLK and 6.8SPC based on larger bullets and similar magazine capacities to 5.56, along with specialty loadings for various purposes. The thing about .300 BLK and 6.8SPC is, I’m not sure that their main advantage over 7.62×39 is inherent. You could just as easily load 7.62×39 with a heavy, subsonic bullet for use with a suppressor, or load it with a lighter bullet and hotter powder for ballistics more similar to 6.8SPC. I don’t think it’s quite possible to match Grendel, which is much less a compromise round than the other two American contenders. Generally speaking, though, I don’t think that 7.62x39mm is less capable by design. It’s less capable by less development. The expense of developing new loadings down the line is offset by not having to buy new training ammunition, or new squad automatic weapons3.

You may have noticed that I’ve rather biased the contest toward 7.62×39, and may additionally have noticed that this seems not to leave me with many good options: old AK variants, the AK-103, and (questionably) the AK-124. Russian-built arms, dependable but not generally known for their accuracy are not a particularly good fit for Luchtburg’s well-trained, well-supplied, well-maintained professional army. Fortunately, there is another contender, and it is the victor.

Enter the Swiss Arms SG5 553R. A member of the SG 550 family, it’s based off the current issue arm of the Swiss military, a pedigree that carries weight in the halls of Luchtbourgish government6. SIG/Swiss Arms is a large conglomerate, no stranger to handling large contracts, and is not Russian—a point in its favor when it comes to support and services. The design has been in service long enough to work out its kinks. As a bonus, it accepts AK magazines, meaning Luchtburg can dip into its stock of those, too. The short version is very short, and with the folding stock, is suitable for issue to vehicle crews and others who work in cramped spaces.

It does have some downsides—for one, we’ll probably want to pay for a longer-barreled version. The extant ‘long barrel’ version only has twelve inches of barrel length. We’ll probably want 16″, or maybe even a 20″ (although whether the squad marksman will also use 7.62×39 depends mainly on how our cartridge development project goes7). For another, it’s a precision-machined Swiss masterpiece. That kind of quality comes at a price. It’s hard to find contract price figures, but I’d expect to pay north of $1500 per rifle. Finally, there’s very little data on the SG 550-series in the sorts of terrain we’ll be using it most often: jungle, seaside, and aboard ships, none of which feature heavily in Switzerland’s landscape. It’s possible that those rather harsh conditions will reveal some flaws not otherwise known.

With all that being said, though, it’s a gun with very little downside for us: it isn’t as thrown-together as a Kalashnikov, so it costs a pretty penny, but the nice thing about small armies relative to defense spending is that they can afford to be well-equipped. The SG 553R is a modern rifle with a fine pedigree, and it’s the thing to take Luchtburg into the next 25 years.

I admit, this one was something of a foregone conclusion, given the constraints I imposed upon my choices, but that, I think, is a lesson in itself: procurement choices are ordinarily dictated by factors other than the raw quality of the platforms. (Else I might have ended up with SCARs.) We merely continue in that long tradition8.

1. Undoubtedly parvusimperator will quibble about the effectiveness of a fast, small bullet, but penetration of a barrier to hit something directly behind it is a very different game from penetration of a barrier to hit something 50 yards behind it. That’s the story in a jungle.
2. 75,000 rifles would cover every front-line combat formation, including vehicle crew, with about 10,000 to spare. 200,000 rifles would cover every reservist as well, with plenty of headroom.
3. Modernized PKMs will serve for now.
4. Izhmash would certainly sell them to me, but it’s unclear whether they’re vaporware or actually in testing right now.
5. Formerly SIG, but they’re currently organized as separate manufacturers. I think. The web of firearms manufacturer acquisitions and spinoffs is dizzying to untangle.
6. Several of the generals on the procurement board carry surplus K31s as hunting rifles.
7. You need speed and ballistic coefficient for that, and it’s hard to get both out of 7.62×39 at the same time.
8. Although my frigate choice was a lot more wide-open, as was parvusimperator’s carbine choice. It’s probably also true that your headline capabilities are the ones where you get to be a bit choosier.

M2 Bradley Part 2: Variants

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I’ve already discussed my affection for the M2 Bradley. Everyone knows that the Bradley is loaded with firepower, though. What most don’t know, is that there were a ton of vehicles proposed off of the basic Bradley chassis. There would have been a complete family of combat vehicles that would fill a number of neat niches, but it didn’t happen for reasons of costs and that stupid peace dividend thing. We’ll start with the variants that we all know and love, and move to the more exotic ones.

The first and most obvious variant, of course, is the M3 Bradley Cavalry Vehicle. Intended for reconnaissance, it replaces all but two of the dismounts with a double load of stored 25mm gun ammo and TOW missiles. As far as recon vehicles go, it’s pretty big. But it’s also really heavily armed, and makes a good choice of a vehicle that can be used to cover the flanks against against an attack. It’s very much on the French model of recon vehicles, which is a model I approve of.

Next we come to the Bradley Linebacker. This was made somewhat hastily after the Bradley ADATS (see below) didn’t happen. It replaces the twin-tube TOW launcher with a four-tube Stinger launcher. It’s a pretty simple switch, and the resulting vehicle isn’t very well integrated into an air defense network. And Stinger missiles don’t have the greatest range, but it allows mechanized formations to have an extra antiair punch for dealing with low flying aircraft or attack helicopters. Also, visually, it doesn’t look all that different from a regular Bradley, so it’s a bit harder for ground attack pilots to spot which vehicles need to be prioritized.

The last of the TOW missile pod substitutions was the M7 Bradley Fire Support Vehicle. The job of this vehicle was to direct artillery fires. Key changes were a ground vehicle laser designator, a high end inertial navigation system to provide a good reference for the vehicle’s location, and extra radios to keep in good contact with the artillery. The laser designator, plus an additional high end night sight were in a box that replaced the TOW missile tubes.

There were several attempts to upgun the Bradley, given the concern that the 25mm autocannon would prove inadequate against newer IFVs. This has been a recurring trend, but they’re worth mentioning here. Variants have included using a 30x173mm Mk. 44 autocannon, the 35x228mm Bushmaster III autocannon, a 45x305mm cased telescoped weapon (the ’80s COMVAT program), and the 40x255mm cased telescoped gun from France. I don’t have much detail on the 35mm version, but the 30mm version had 180 ready rounds (and 360 stowed rounds). This is really good as far as 30mm gunned IFVs are concerned, but I don’t see much of a point. The 25mm M919 DU APFSDS round is almost as good an armor penetrator as the 30x173mm APFSDS used in Europe, and having 120 more rounds makes up for the smaller HE payload of the 25mm.

The cased telescoped rounds are kind of cool though. The 45x305mm CTA was originally a collaboration between Ares Inc and GIAT (France). While we in the US shut our part of the program down after the first Gulf War showed just how well we could kill BMP-2s with the 25mm, the French stuck with it, getting the English as second-choice partners and eventually shrinking the round down to 40x255mm CTA, which is now entering actual production. Interestingly, the Bradley can hold 105 of the 40mm CTA rounds. That’s a firepower upgrade I’d strongly consider, given the much bigger HE payload and the improved KE power in the 40mm CTA rounds. More on IFV guns later, for now let’s get back to the Bradley.

I’m going to group the next two variants together. Both replaced the troop compartment and the regular turret with a different arrangement to carry some new fancy missiles. Neither missile program survived the cuts at the end of the cold war. I’ll also look at both missiles in more detail elsewhere. The first vehicle was a dedicated anti-tank missile platform that would make the Soviets jealous. It replaced the turret and troop compartment with a pop-up KEM launcher assembly. This missile was beam riding and achieved results with a heavy long rod penetrator at high velocity. The second was the combined anti-tank and anti-aircraft ADATS missile, which ended up being adopted only by Canada. It’s a nifty electro-optically guided short range SAM that had a combination shaped charge and fragmentation warhead. The Bradley ADATS had a radar system that could track ten targets at once, but the missiles were laser beam riding, and the Bradley ADATS also had an infrared tracking system. Both vehicles and their respective missiles showed quite a bit of promise, but needed more funding to finish the program, and in the early 90s, this just wasn’t going to happen1.

But FMC’s2 engineers weren’t content to stop there. They had a number of designs based on the Bradley chassis and powertrain. This base, the Fighting Vehicle Systems Carrier, had a three man cab at the front that was lightly armored. You’re most familiar with this vehicle as the base for the M270 MLRS, one of the best rocket artillery pieces available. This vehicle gives the option of 227mm rockets with a wide variety of payloads or two ATACMS short range ballistic missiles. But that’s the one you know. The one that got made. What else is out there?

If you imagine an M270, but replace the missile launcher with a big aluminum box, you have the basic picture for the next set of vehicles that I’m going to talk about. The first is the XM1070 electronic fighting vehicle system. It has a crew of six (three in the cab, three in the box), a telescoping, 20-meter tall mast, and 60 kW of AC power on tap to drive all of the neat electronic warfare goodies that the modern general demands.

Next we come to the XM4 Command and Control vehicle. This had space for six men in the box, and had a telescoping 10-meter mast. Internally there were extra radios for the command staff, map boards, and battlefield management computers. Unlike the army’s previous command vehicle, the XM4 was designed to not require setting up a tent at the back for everyone to have enough space to get work done. As a result, it was NBC-protected and was capable of operating while moving, unlike the M577.

An ambulance variant was proposed as well. With the aluminum-armored body, it was designed to evacuate casualties and provide early medical treatment. Two medical personnel were carried in the cab with the driver, and the aluminum box could be configured for 9 patients on stretchers or 12 ambulatory patients on seats, all under armor that can resist artillery fragments and machinegun fire.

The next set of vehicles are logistics vehicles. Two cargo variants are avalable. One can carry six pallets of ammunition, the other can carry 2,000 gallons (7,570.82 L) of fuel. The cargo carrier can be switched from the solid cargo configuration to the liquid cargo configuration in one hour. Both cargo variants have a five ton crane. To round out the logisitcs and support package, an armored maintenance vehicle is also devised. This has space for three additional crew in the back compartment, and comes with welding equipment, an air compressor, a hydraulic pump, a workbench, and of course, plenty of tools.

There you have it. Probably the most versatile family of vehicles ever build around an IFV. Pity we didn’t see more of them in service.

1.) Thanks, Clinton.
2.) Food Machinery Corporation. I shit you not.

Omar’s Grandchild: In Praise of the M2 Bradley

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The M2 Bradley is America’s standard infantry fighting vehicle. It’s much maligned; its long and drawn-out design process is the subject of a feature film starring Kelsey Grammar. You would think after such a well-done (and funny) shellacking, I would hate it.

But you would be wrong. The Bradley is actually a really nice IFV. Borgundy would procure them if they were still in production. Like all designs, they are a compromise, but the resulting compromise is a better jack-of-all trades vehicle than any of its competitors. To understand the compromise, and why the Bradley still hangs with the best of them despite its age, we need to go back to the design of the IFV.

In 1967, the Soviets unveiled the BMP-1, and it took the world by storm. The BMP-1 was originally designed for the nuclear/biological/chemical contaminated battlefield of The Future, and was designed to put all of the squad’s organic firepower into a vehicle that could move with tanks and protect the soldiers from the hostile environment. They were expected to fight from within; the BMP-1 had firing ports to enable troops to shoot out, and even had devices to remove the weapon waste gasses from the interior. It was a bunker that could move at the same speed as a tank, and it had a PKT machine gun and a 73mm low-velocity gun to match the squad support weapons that couldn’t be fired from the ports.

The west was terrified. Here was an APC with teeth! Here was yet more firepower for the Red Tank Armies that would come thundering through the Fulda Gap. Western APCs would be shredded, since they were armed with only a machine gun. The Germans promptly and sensibly designed the Marder IFV1. But America did not. We were too busy in Vietnam to give much thought to armored warfare. And counterinsurgencies are expensive. We in America stuck with our tried-and-true M113 APCs as the world moved ahead. The Soviets would eventually make improvements to their BMP, and unveiled the BMP-2 in 1980. The biggest change was a shift to a smaller gun, because a high-velocity, stabilized 30x165mm gun has a longer effective range than the 73mm low velocity gun on the BMP-1, and stabilization lets it be fired on the move. The BMP-2 entered service in 1980.

By then America had been working on an IFV of its own, and they unveiled the M22 Bradley in 1981. It featured a stabilized 25mm gun, a twin launcher for TOW missiles, space for 6 dismounts who could fire out ports in the sides, and was amphibious. Of course, the complaints started immediately. Even though it was better protected than the M113, people complained that it wasn’t protected enough. Even though it had to be kept small to be amphibious (and the original was just barely amphibious), people complained that it didn’t carry enough troops. Everything is a compromise, and the Bradley’s designers had picked one set. Those who complained about armor were listened to, and the Bradley’s armor was progressively increased. The amphibious capability had to go (those who advocate river crossings underfire can shut up), and eventually the firing ports in the side were plated over. This wasn’t much of a great loss though; even professional soldiers couldn’t hit much when firing without sights through the tiny ports. And it was awkward for those inside, even though the Americans had provided a really compact weapon for use in firing ports. Russians used their regular AKs, and this was very difficult in the cramped interior. No longer burdened by firing port access requirements allowed the designers to reconfigure the seating arrangement. The resulting more sensible layout allowed accommodating an extra man, and was generally easier to get in and out from. The original layout was still better than that of the BMP.

No one would ever complain about the firepower on the Bradley. Well, except the British, who thought it overly extravagant to stabilize the 25mm gun. ‘Why would anyone need to fire on the move?’ they wondered. They got their answer with a side of crow in 1991, when the Bradley killed more Iraqi tanks than the M1 Abrams. And the TOW missiles were another large part of this. The Bradley had some anti-tank firepower built in, so US Mechanized troops had tank-killing support down to the squad level to help them face off against the Red Menace. The Bradleys were designed to kill the large numbers of non-tank armored vehicles in the Red Army, leaving friendly tanks free to concentrate on killing enemy ones. The TOW missiles were added since the Bradleys might also encounter tanks. Part of the reason why the Bradley couldn’t carry a full squad of dismounts was because of the stowed firepower. The Bradley carries 300 ready rounds of 25mm, plus another 600 stored 25mm rounds. The coax machine gun has 800 ready rounds, plus another 1,400 stowed. There are also 5 TOW missiles carried internally, in addition to the two loaded in the launcher. Use of a roof hatch allows for (somewhat awkward) reloading without the troops having to get out of the vehicle and climb about.

Of course, by now there are many other competitive IFVs. The Bradley has been heavily upgraded to compete, and it’s still a world-beater in a lot of ways. The Bradley was one of the first IFVs to feature an independent commander’s thermal sight, allowing for hunter-killer type operations where the commander searches for a target and hands it off automatically to the gunner for engagement. The Bradley’s 25mm gun now features depleted uranium APFSDS rounds, which are about as effective as the 30x173mm APFSDS common among NATO members. Even so, in the late 90s the US Army debated switching to a larger round for more HE effectiveness and round commonality with our NATO partners. Once again, a war in Iraq3 showed that the original design had lots of merit. In urban warfare, the aforementioned large ammo capacity of the Bradley proved a significant asset. Bradleys proved to have great staying capability as a base of fire, and worked great at providing support. What they lacked in HE quantity per round, they made up for in numbers. The Bradley’s front armor has been upgraded to take the Russian standard 30x165mm APDS, and modern explosive reactive armor kits are available to increase protection against RPGs and ATGMs.

Electronically, the Bradley’s sensors are better than most of the competition, save the very expensive Puma. The M2A3 also has the latest battle management kit installed to maximize crew awareness. Its dismount capacity matches that of the competition as well. The firepower suite is what makes it stand out, being well suited to infantry support tasks and having enough rounds for long engagements.

1.) Not to be confused with the Marder I, Marder II, or Marder III tank destroyers from World War II. The uncreative Germans like to reuse names.
2.) Not to be confused with the M2 Browning heavy machine gun, the M2 Carbine (a select-fire version of the M1 Carbine), the M2 halftrack, the M2 light tank, the M2 Medium tank…shut up, Hans.
3.) Operation Iraqi Freedom

Challenge Response: Borgundy Integrated Air Defense

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To work out our short to medium range air defense system, it’ll help to see how it plugs in to the rest of our integrated air defense network. We’ll bracket the problem by working out our man-portable system first, then our long range system, and then we’ll fit our challenge answering system in between.

For man portable air defense systems (MANPADS), there are two schools of thought. One is typified by the famous FIM-92 Stinger, and relies on some type of infrared seeker for guidance. This one is much more common. The other system, typified by the RBS-70, uses a semi-active laser homing guidance method.

On the one hand, the Stinger is easy to use. Acquire target, get tone, shoot. The operator does not need much training, and the missile is fire and forget. Plus, there are no emissions (like radar or lasers) to give the missile launch away. On the other hand, IR guidance is commonly used in short range missiles, so infrared countermeasures are common. A large part of the success or failure of Stinger-type missiles depend on the relative strength of the seeker design and the countermeasure systems on the opposing aircraft. The RBS-70 is not fire-and-forget, and requires a trained and keen operator. The laser-homing seeker is much harder for an aircraft to spoof, and is generally considered only counterable kinematically. This is a problem for all MANPADS; they must be small to be able to be carried by the infantry, so they don’t have much room for launch motors. That said, not having any kind of big obvious radar makes them much harder to suppress. Kinematically, the most formidable missile in this size class is the British Starstreak, which has a nice range advantage over its competitors and achieves the astonishing speed of Mach 3.5. Starstreak uses a SALH seeker, and an interesting warhead that requires a hit to work (i.e. it has no proximity fuze). Given the missile’s speed and the size of other missiles’ warheads, this is probably not much of a disadvantage. Starstreak uses the nigh impossible to decoy SACLOS guidance system, which is training-intensive. However, even for this most modern of the SACLOS system, manufacturer claimed hit probabilities are significantly lower than those of contemporary IR guided weapons. This might have been somewhat rectified by the auto-tracking system that the British had planned to develop for Starstreak, but this has been cancelled.

Looking at IR guided missiles, the seeker is key. Range, performance against countermeasures, and Pk all depend on the seeker. Of the IR guided missiles, most modern ones have a two-color seeker. A focal plane array seeker would be better, but none are currently available, so range is more or less equivalent, as is countermeasure resistance. Some variation in counter-countermeasure capability can be expected based on software updates, but these don’t really put one model ahead of the rest. Interestingly, the French Mistral 2 sacrifices weight for kinematics, and is capable of an astonishing Mach 2.5. It’s not as good as Starstreak, but it’s far ahead of the competition. That said, it’s very heavy, and can only be fired from a tripod platform or from a vehicle mount. Ready to go, Mistral 2 in launcher weighs about 40 kilos or so, more than twice that of Stinger. We’ll take the mass produced, lighter, cheaper Stinger. We nominally deploy a platoon of MANPADS per battalion.

How does Stinger stack up to the Russian systems that Fishbreath hasn’t allowed me to buy? Pretty well. Stinger is pretty similar to Igla-S, with a bit of a larger warhead and slightly better range. Newer Russian systems (the Verba) come with a three-color IR seeker, as opposed to the two-color of Stinger, so that’s a seeker advantage to the Russians. Verba should be better at distinguishing between real targets and decoys. Overall, the missiles are quite comparable. Stinger also has the very neat M1097 platform, which I’ll get to later.

MANPADS only gets us so far though. It’s mostly an ambush sort of weapon. It’s great for pegging helicopters or low flying aircraft, but it’s not that hard to switch to a medium-altitude attack profile and avoid the pesky little missiles entirely. So we’ll clearly need something bigger, which brings us, as promised, to our long-range air defense system.

The western standard long-range surface to air weapon system is the MIM-104 Patriot. It’s got a PESA radar, was the first in the world to network effectively with other air defense components as well as AWACS, and has been proven in combat. It has some notable shortcomings, including not providing all-around radar coverage and using towed components rather than self-propelled ones. There’s also the issue with the latest missile, the PAC-3, having relatively limited range. This missile problem also plagues the MEADS system, which uses the same PAC-3 round. MEADS does have much better radars than Patriot, and uses solely self-propelled vehicles. However, it’s not actually ready yet; while it is on offer, the buyer would have to toss money at it to finish development, which has left it out of the running in several recent contests. In general, Borgundy doesn’t like to be the first to adopt something, so MEADS is out. Plus, waiting sucks.

The other alternative is SAMP/T, a land based Aster system. While its radar provides all-around coverage, it lacks the range and power of the Patriot’s radar, being based on the smallest and least-capable naval Aster-compatible radar system. Patriot brings many more available missile types, having an ABM-ready missile in the PAC-3 and an anti-ECM aircraft missile in addition to the regular SAM. The Patriot missiles have longer range and slightly more speed (Mach 5 v. 4.5), but use track-via-missile guidance, as opposed to the Aster’s active radar homing seeker. Track via missile is cheaper (for missile components) than active radar homing, and doesn’t give the distinctive warning of an active-radar seeker, but is dependent on that main radar, so it’s vulnerable to ARM attacks as well as escaping the envelope or breaking line of sight. All that said, we still think the Patriot is the better buy. It’s proven interoperability is a big edge, and we can expect future upgrades, since the US has opted to keep upgrading Patriots rather than go with MEADS. We’d really like to see MEADS radars and some of the fancy plug-and-fight capability of MEADS make it’s way over to the Patriot system.

How does Patriot compare to Russian systems? Well, the latest Russian system, the S-400 (which is a lot more expensive than Patriot, strangely enough), has a really long range missile, and Patriot lacks anything in the same range class. However, such a missile has serious radar horizon issues, and I wonder what targets it’s designed to engage at 400 km. Probably AWACS or incoming ballistic missiles, since anything else would be able to make a turn or something and make the missile miss. Otherwise, the systems compare quite favorably. The regular SAMs on the Russian systems are pretty comparable to those of Patriot as far as kinematics goes. Sensorwise, the Russians have a bunch of cool options like a radar-on-a-pedestal to help provide locks on low-flying targets. On the other hand, Patriot has a much better networking system, specifically when it comes to networking with other things that aren’t SAM systems. Just like the US Navy’s Aegis SAM system, Patriot can network with the F-35 Lightning II for targeting data to cue and guide the missiles. S-400 can also network with other systems, but not as well as Patriot. It certainly can’t use a Su-35 for targeting data directly. The S-300 systems can really only network with other missile systems, and they don’t do this very well.

Now let’s examine the medium-range problem presented by Fishbreath. We need to fit something in between the Stinger and the Patriot. We’d like it to be able to network with the Patriot system as well as other air defense assets, and we’d like it to be reasonably mobile. And, the western SAM market being what it is presently, there aren’t that many options. Roland and Rapier are out of production, and both are rather archaic. Rapier also fails to meet mobility requirements. It may also help to consider how the system will be deployed. As we’ve said, MANPADS are generally deployed at the battalion level. The Patriot system is quite elaborate, and as such it’s not going to be the best choice for covering a fast moving armored assault. We would expect Patriot missiles to be deployed at the Corps level if at all in an operational theater. Like most longer range systems, they’re much better suited to protecting big zones and large fixed targets. There are a couple upcoming SAM systems that look promising: CAMM and LFK NG. Both of these seem like formidable options, but aren’t available yet. We could wait. We could also make do with some older systems, like buying used Rolands or trying to get France to keep the Crotale lines open. But we won’t, because (a) that’s rather poor cricket, as Fishbreath would say, and (b) there’s an obvious system that meets all of our needs and then some: NASAMS II.

NASAMS II was originally developed for Norway’s air defense needs. It was originally designed to fire the AIM-120 AMRAAM, but launchable missiles have been extended to include AIM-9, IRIS-T and a RIM-162 ESSM variant with the AMRAAM’s active seeker. The system is designed to have high network interoperability and pull data for targeting from other platforms. It can also use it’s own radar, which is usually either an AN/TPQ-36 or an AN/TPQ-64. The -64 is the radar used with the latest variant of the venerable Hawk SAM system, so these are pretty common and not all that expensive. Alternatively, since the missiles all have either active radar seekers or IR homing seekers, the launchers can fire off of external references only, which is perfect if they’re on the move and caught with the radar out of position. The launcher is a rather simple affair that can be mounted on the back of a truck. An alternative rail-type launcher can be mounted on the back of a HMMWV. Plus, we were already going to buy AMRAAMs, ESSMs, and either AIM-9s or IRIS-Ts, so we don’t need to stock another missile. Being a rather simple system, we expect costs to be low, for once.

Compared to Crotale, we can get better guidance options with either IR or active radar seeker in NASAMS II. Crotale uses radio command guidance, which also requires either IRST cueing on the launcher or radar cueing from the launcher. Radar cueing can be particularly dangerous for short range systems, since they’re quite overmatched in range by anti-radar missiles. Compared to the nearest Russian equivalents, the launch system is going to be cheaper than the SA-15, but that’s not strictly a fair comparison, since NASAMS doesn’t have a radar of its own and Tor does. As a battery with radar(s) command vehicle and several launchers, NASAMS II is pretty similar to Buk. The missiles are somewhat less well performing, but cheaper. It networks much better though, and the launchers can be used independently. We’re trading raw power for economics and trickiness.

Okay, let’s review. We have Stinger missiles as our man portable air defense system. We can also use the M1097 Avenger system to gain some network capability on the short range end. This system holds eight Stingers on a rotating turret on the back of a HMMWV, and has a network datalink for missile cueing. We have NASAMS II launchers that can be fitted on the back of medium trucks (or more HMMWVs), and those can cue off of networked radars or their own radar system, and we figure that each division would have a good number of these to use and allocate to brigades as they advance. Finally, we have the big Patriot missiles for area and corps-level defense. We can network in AWACS assets, and even our fighters.

But wait, there’s more. Since the Borgundian War Department is somewhat paranoid (it’s in their job description), and they reckon that the Sov–I mean, the Russians might decide that perhaps, just once, they might try this launching this new ‘surprise attack’ thing themselves rather than getting suckerpunched. So it would be really cool if we could have a big radar to provide some level of early warning. Fortunately, Raytheon is happy to deliver. The AN/FPS-132 BMEWS has a trio of AESA arrays that are a massive 25.6 meters in diameter. It provides all around coverage at extremely long ranges, albeit at rather low resolution. Still, it’s a nice addition to the network.

Any network this fancy needs a name. Something cooler than just Borgundy backwards (like Iraq’s system). Since a cornerstone is the Patriot, and most of the components are made by Raytheon (headquartered in Andover, Mass), and since I know he’s Fishbreath’s favorite football coach, we’ll call our system BELICHICK. Air defense control personnel will be issued the SB15 sweatshirt, hooded, grey.

PDWs Suck

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Time for me to tear down a childhood hero. Time for me to expose that the emperor has no clothes. PDWs suck. They’re pointless. They’re stupid. They don’t serve any good purpose and oughtn’t be procured. Let’s define our terms. Personal defense weapons (PDWs) are generally considered to be a class of submachine guns like the FN P90. They’re about as big as a regular pistol-caliber submachine gun, and fire a round that’s designed to be tiny but still penetrate soft body armor.

The FN P90 was introduced in 1991. It was supposed to be issued to “rear echelon” troops, people like clerks, mortar gunners, and vehicle drivers. People who might get in a firefight, but whose primary duties don’t include being very proficient with an assault rifle. This idea is not without historical basis. The M1 Carbine filled basically the same idea, and was well liked by American troops, since it was smaller, lighter, and just generally handier than an M1 Garand or M1 Thompson that frontline infantry usually carried. The P90 was designed to build on the success of earlier submachine guns like the HK MP5, but it was chambered in a new bullet. Instead of shooting already-standard 9x19mm Parabellum, the P90 fired a new 5.7x27mm round that was designed to defeat the soft body armor that Soviet troops were starting to get issued. There were, however, a few problems. First, in that same year, the Soviet Union collapsed, so all those European governments madly slashed defense spending and proceeded to sing kumbaya in a big circle that would eventually be called the EU. Nobody wanted to buy a new gun that needed a whole new non-standard bullet. And there, FN ran into more problems. First, everyone knows that if you want a round to be a standard NATO thing, you have to get America on board. Both 7.62x51mm and 5.56x45mm were American designed rounds that spread1 to the rest of NATO. And not only did FN fail to get America on board, but before FN could lock up a bunch of contracts, HK brought out the MP7, with it’s own itty bitty high velocity round, the 4.6x30mm. Now, there was a question of which standard to go for.

Meanwhile, the window on the concept’s usefulness was rapidly closing. Other developments would come in and make the P90 and MP7 obsolescent and pointless. That development was the M4 Carbine. This was introduced in 1994, and led to a whole series of what we might term assault carbines, if we liked to classify things. Once the US Army showed the success of the concept, other manufacturers followed suit and introduced short-barrel versions of their existing assault rifles. To be fair to previous engineers, there were a large number of compact versions of the M16 developed for close quarters battle in Vietnam. However, these weapons weren’t the most reliable, and tended to be special forces only. The M4 was a refined and reliable execution of the concept, and saw widespread issue to regular, second-line troops. Eventually, it actually came to replace the M16 for general issue; soldiers in the US Army are issued M4s almost exclusively. For those of you wondering if we can go shorter, we surely can. There’s the Mk. 18 CQBR with a 10.3 inch barrel (instead of the M4’s 14.5″ barrel). Other weapons like the G36C and the AKS-74U also have very short barrels. And that brings a pretty big set of nails in the coffin of the PDW.

To see why, let’s take a look at the big picture first. The compact carbines like the Mk 18, G36C, etc. all share the vast majority of features with their larger parent designs. That means armorers don’t need training to work on a new design, brand new contracts don’t have to be inked, a whole new set of spares doesn’t have to be stocked, and the army doesn’t have to have yet another caliber. All these things are positives that directly affect the bottom line. They also improve combat effectiveness; everybody can use the same magazines firing the same ammunition. Plus, even out of a short barrel, assault rifle rounds like the 5.56 or 5.45 are a lot more effective than 5.7mm. The 5.7mm does penetrate soft armor, but most armies are issuing hard plates now, so that’s of limited value. And what good is penetrating the armor if the terminal effects suck? And 5.7 has atrocious terminal effects. It does a very poor job of getting bad guys to stop what they’re doing and die. Against unarmored threats, conventional pistol rounds like 9mm perform far better. Put another way, 5.7 fires a bullet about two-thirds the weight of a 5.56 round at half the muzzle velocity. And we’re having arguments about whether or not 5.56 is effective enough! So, why would anyone use a much lamer version of it?

The proponents of the PDW will argue that I’m missing the point. Since PDWs are designed for “Second Line” personnel, we can assume that these personnel will not be very good at shooting, and will miss often, so we should give them a weapon that is light and has lots of bullets. The loaded P90 doesn’t give up much weight or bulk on a compact carbine, or even an M4. And spraying wild panic fire is a sign of poor training. But even if we were doing that, assault rifles were designed to perform the same function: to provide conscripts with effective automatic firepower that could also reach out to the longest normal infantry combat ranges (3-400m). Conscripts aren’t very good at shooting, but we gave them effective rounds anyway. Bullets should do their jobs if we (or luck) do ours. We got rid of submachine guns for general issue a while ago because they don’t do anything that a carbine can’t, and submachine guns at least share rounds with pistols. An M4 or Mk. 18 can spray and pray with the best of them, and it’s round is significantly more effective than either 9mm or 5.7mm. And while the 30 round standard assault rifle magazine is smaller than the 50 rounds in the P90, “second line” personnel can share 5.56 with the “front line” personnel. They can’t share 5.7. The logistics gains plus combat efficacy if those rounds hit mean that the smart buy is the carbine.

Sorry, Stargate fans.

1.) Some might say were forced, but not I.