Tag Archives: commentary

TTPs: The Drawn Gun

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They say it can’t be done. Suppose you’re being held at gunpoint. And I’ll be mean. The guy with the gun is six feet or so away. So he’s out of reach. Or maybe there’s a counter in the way. You have a concealed, holstered gun.

So how do get the gun in play? If you draw, you die.

Right?

Not exactly. Usually we make a number of assumptions, and turn it into a race. You have to clear your cover garment, get your gun out, and take the shot. He just has to take the shot. When I put it that way, you lose every time.

I hate losing. We’re looking at the wrong problem. What’s going on in his head? He’s got a gun out. He’s expecting something from me. Maybe I’ve got a gun, and I’ll draw. He shoots! Maybe I’m going to give him something, like a wallet. I give him that, maybe toss it to him, whatever, and then maybe he leaves. Maybe he shoots me first. Maybe any hand motion is going to look like I’m going for a weapon to this guy, and he’ll shoot me.

Did you notice a common theme in those? Read them again. What am I doing in all of those options?

Standing still.

You might be skeptical. “Of course you’re standing still, parvusimperator. If you run, he’ll shoot you in the back. And if you charge, you probably won’t be able to get to him before he shoots you with the gun drawn.”

All of these points are true. Backwards, I die. Forwards, I die. Sure. And none of those will help my draw, or more importantly, help me go on living.

But what about going sideways? Let’s take a good deliberate step sideways, and draw at the same time. What then?

Well, we’ve done something unexpected. Now he’s got to process this. I grant you, it won’t take very long, but we don’t have to buy ourselves much time here.

Since we’re not doing something that he’s expecting, he has to ask “What happened?” Answer: “That tricky parvusimperator moved! He’s no longer in front of my gun!” “Where did he go?” “He moved sideways.” “I’ve gotta reacquire that target.” And then he has to turn his gun to face me and shoot me.

While I’ve broken this down nicely, all that is going to be processed pretty fast. That’s why it’s critical that you draw as you move. If you move and then draw, it will take too long. Draw as you move. This will take some practice. Start slow and gradually build speed. Be safe.

Also, it’s best to train to shoot more than one shot when you do this. If he’s worth shooting, he’s probably worth shooting again.

There you have it. We’ve done the impossible. Provided we’re quick.

It certainly beats the alternative.

US Ground Combat Systems Are Not Obsolete

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I came across this article in the Free Beacon this morning, whose headline reads as follows: “Army’s Ground Combat Systems Risk Being Surpassed By Russia, China”.

Look, if you’re reading this article, you’ve read a lot of our articles. You know that I, Fishbreath, am not the expert on ground combat systems. Not really my cup of tea. You know, therefore, that when I say, “Man, this article is dead wrong,” that it really is just flat out dead wrong. Let me revise the Free Beacon’s headline: “Army’s Ground Combat Systems Risk Being Roughly Equalled By Russia, China After 40 Years Of Curb-Stomping Dominance”.

In the modern era, a combat system’s age is not nearly as important as its current capability. The T-14 and the Type 99 are modern tanks. They compete against the modern American system, the M1A2, in the three categories by which all armored fighting vehicles are judged: firepower, protection, and systems1.

First off: firepower. The American contender mounts the stalwart Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore gun in the 44-caliber length. The Germans, being a little squeamish about depleted uranium2, made an L/55 version for higher muzzle velocities. This gun, either the lengthened version or the original with depleted uranium, still sits in the top tier of tank guns as far as penetration goes3. The Russian and Chinese entries both use the Russian standard 125mm caliber; the Armata uses the 2A82, the shiny new version sans fume extractor for installation in the unmanned turret, while the Type 99 uses the ZPT-98, the traditional Chinese clone of the 2A46. Neither is clearly superior to the Western choice of gun. Standard 125mm ammo is nevertheless lighter and shorter overall (counting the penetrator and propellant) than the one-piece 120mm loads usually fired through the Rheinmetall guns. In exchange, the Russian-style gun gains the ability to launch ATGMs—questionably effective against modern tanks—and a little bit more power for HEAT rounds, which have the same issue as the ATGMs. Call this one a slight win for the Abrams.

Next: protection. The Type 99 falls behind quickly here; it’s more or less a T-72 hull, and the T-72 doesn’t have a great deal of headroom for armor. Too, the Type 99 has to deal with the swampy, rice-paddied Chinese south. The Chinese can’t build a T-72-based tank much heavier than the current 52 to 54 tons, and the protection they can achieve there is limited, given what they have to work with. The Armata, though it weighs in in the 50ish-ton range itself, has the benefit of an unmanned turret. Unmanned turrets can be smaller, and armored volume is expensive in weight terms. Our own parvusimperator claims Armata has roughly Western-equivalent protection. Give Armata an edge, even; there are no squishy humans in its turret, and no explodey ammo in its hull. The unmanned turret, unproven though it may be, neatly isolates the two. Call this one a slight win for the Russians.

Finally: systems. This is the hardest one to write about, since the Russians and the Chinese aren’t talking. We know more or less what’s in the M1A2: nice digital moving-map navigation, color displays, modern sighting units, separate ones for the commander and gunner, with nice thermal displays. I think it’s reasonable to assume the Armata has similar. We can see that it has an independent sight for the commander, and the Russian avionics industry has built color MFDs and moving map systems in the past. Presumably, the charionics4 in their tanks won’t be too far behind. It’s even less possible to speculate about the Chinese; their latest MBT entered service around the turn of the century, and who knows what they’ve stuck in it. Call this one a tie between the Americans and the Russians.

In a way, though, systems are the least important item here. Unlike armor or guns, swapping out the computers, stabilizers, navigation systems, and sights in tanks is more or less trivial. There may be integration costs, and there are definitely upgrade costs, but ordinarily, you don’t run into the same sort of critical design problems you find when, say, trying to cram a 140mm gun into an Abrams turret.

So that about wraps it up. Contra the Free Beacon article, the new Combloc5 tanks do not surpass the Abrams in any meaningful way. Where they are superior, it’s a matter of degrees. Elsewhere, they still fall behind the Abrams. What we have today is not a new era of Combloc dominance. It’s a return to parity for the first time in almost forty years.

Let’s go back a few years more than that. It’s 1972, and the fearsome T-72 has just entered service. It’s faster than the M-60, hits harder, has better armor, and is being cranked out of the Soviet tank factories at an astonishing rate. The armored fist of the Soviet Union could well crush Western Europe. This doesn’t sit well with Western Europe.

The Germans and Americans are already hard at work on the MBT-70. It reaches a little too far, and doesn’t quite work out. The Germans and Americans each take the blueprints and build something on their own, and we get the Leopard 2 and the M1 Abrams, entering service in 1979 and 1980. This begins the aforementioned era of Western tank dominance. The Abrams and the Leo 2 are vastly superior to the T-72 and T-80. The Russians do some various upgrade projects to the T-72 and T-80 over the years, but never regain the lead. The Leo 2 and Abrams see upgrades on more or less the same schedule; they’re still a generation ahead.

Finally, today. The Russians have Armata, a legitimate contender; the Chinese have the Type 99, which is sort of the Gripen to the Abrams/Armata F-22: some of the same technologies, still half a class behind. Which brings us to the final decider. Quantity.

The Russians have about one hundred Armatas. They only entered service last year, so I give them a pass. Their eventual plan is to acquire about 2300.

The Chinese have about 800 Type 99s. I have no idea if they’re still being produced.

The Americans have roughly 1000 M1A2s, the most recent Abrams. Of course, we also have about 5000 M1A1s of various marks, most of which have been upgraded to include nearly-modern electronics.

Even if we allow that the Type 99 and the Armata are superior to the average Abrams in American service, which is wrong, we still have twice as many as both other types combined.

The Free Beacon may say otherwise, but I say we’re doing just fine.

  1. To include sights and viewers, as well as command and control computers. ↩
  2. Understandable, given that in most hypothetical wars, the Wehrmacht Bundeswehr would be shooting it over their own land. ↩
  3. As far as anyone knows. Armies are a little cagey about revealing how punchy their guns are, for some unfathomable national security reason. ↩
  4. Electronic systems for tanks, by analogy to avionics. (An avion is a French plane, a char is a French tank.) ↩
  5. Yes, I know they are, respectively, not Communists anymore and nowadays only Communists inasmuch as they’re heirs to a truly Communist body count. I don’t care. ‘Combloc’ is a reasonable way to refer to Russia and China in the context of this article. ↩

NATO Rants

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Unlike a lot of my other posts, this will not be from the perspective of my fictional country, Borgundy. This is Parvusimperator the American talking. -Ed

During the Cold War, NATO was a damned good idea. A more permanent alliance. Get interoperability right before war begins. Get joint exercises done. Get experience working together. Get units (especially American units) forward based, where they can be ready for trouble.

All well and good. But the Soviet Union is no more.

So what do we think of Russia? Well, Putin likes his saber rattling and his little wars. Well and good.

And most of Western Europe does not like defense spending. Fine. Neither do I. I’d rather pay less taxes, personally.

Here’s what I hate. Freeloaders. And that’s what the vast majority of NATO members are. FREELOADERS.

To hell with defense welfare. Germany and Italy and the rest can sure afford two stupid percent of GDP per annum on defense.

We shouldn’t have to support you all. We oughtn’t have to support you all. We increasingly can’t afford to support you all.

Finally I can write what I’ve wanted to say for years. Pull your damned weight or we’ll leave.

It’s simple, really. If Russia is worth losing sleep over, then spending 2% GDP per year is something that’s worthwhile. And if they aren’t a threat, if y’all have got this, then fine. We’ll take our army and go home. And you shouldn’t have a problem with that, right?

You don’t need our armed forces. No, the Libya intervention went fine without us. We were called for help purely for sentimental reasons. Serbia wouldn’t have been any trouble at all. And those Russian tanks, they’re rusted out. Going nowhere. Probably not even loaded with ammunition.

Don’t like the 2% GDP per year target? Okay, fine. That’s just the median level of spending from the end of the Cold War until 2003. It’s not enough, good point. Name some other benchmark and meet it. Any way you cut it, our European allies are a bunch of useless freeloaders, who couldn’t stop a paper brigade of dummy tanks. ISAF sucked in the ‘Stan against a bunch of underequipped terrorist scum. They’ll do worse against an actual army with materiel.

Were it up to me, I think y’all should have a year to get your act together. And then, since we all know you won’t, we’ll take our stuff and move it elsewhere. Maybe back to the States. Maybe to Korea and Japan. They actually spend money on defense. Make the pivot to Asia real.

And I would then hand Vladimir Putin a ceremonial blank check. He’s your problem now, useless socialists.

MMQB: MHS Decision Analysis

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Last week, we reported that the US DoD chose the SiG P320 as its new handgun. So let’s take it apart Monday Morning Quarterback style.

First, is this an improvement? Yes, but with caveats. From a shooters perspective, given the choice between a new M9 and a new P320, I’ll take the SiG every day of the week. I like the ergonomics of the P320 better. I like the trigger better. The P320 is one of the new crop of striker-fired pistols that’s been designed to try to compete with Glocks and M&Ps, both notorious for mediocre to lousy trigger pulls by having a good trigger. Plus, it’s a striker fired trigger, and I prefer that to a double action trigger. Also the P320 doesn’t have a slide-mounted safety/decocker. I would prefer one control or the other (i.e. a safety or a decocker, but not both) mounted on the frame. Plus, the P320 is a modern, polymer-framed design, so it’ll require less lubrication and maintenance. The P320 is also equipped with sight dovetails, and comes with decent night sights out of the box. In any case, it’s a lot easier to order/mount tritium sights on the P320. The M9 does not have sight dovetails for the front sight, limiting the changes you can make. Well, without drilling, and I doubt the DoD is going to do that.

There are two caveats here. First, I’ve tried to be as kind to the M9 as I can. The ones in the inventory are mostly ill-maintained and worn out. They’re in need of spring replacements, locking block replacements, and a bunch of TLC. The M9s in inventory are pretty much EOL.

Second, in the grand scheme of things, pistols are relatively unimportant arms. So I might like some more cost analysis, but I think the M9s are too abused to be salvageable in a cost-effective way. Which means the alternative to this sort of winner is rolling in M9A3s to the existing contract. And I don’t think ignoring more recent developments is in any way a good idea. Plus, the DoD wanted a striker-fired design, and wrote the rules accordingly. Good for them.

Okay. So let’s look at the chosen P320 itself, viz.

There’s a few things I like, and one thing I really don’t. Let’s start with the positives: it’s a good design. The DoD wanted modularity, and even though I’m not sold on this being all that useful, they did and got it. And it is cool from an engineering standpoint. I like that the pistols are finished in something FDE colored: guns are a pretty good spoiler of camouflage if they’re colored black as they usually are. So that’s a small thing, but a nice one. The full-size pistol has an installed factory extended mag, and that’s good too. Not a lot of extra length for five more bullets. That’s a tradeoff I’m cool with in a service/duty pistol. And there are flush fit ones for when you don’t want the extra length. Finally, if we look closely at the rear sight, we’ll note that it’s mounted to a large plate. This is removable, and can be replaced with a SIG Romeo 1 mini red dot, or something else with the same footprint. That looks like some planning ahead for once. Red dots are a much nicer sighting system than irons, and it’s really good to see the idea getting traction out of the box in a big contract.

Now, the negative. You guessed it: that manual safety. I don’t like it. I don’t think factory standard striker-fired triggers benefit from one, and it’s one more thing to screw up. If you think otherwise, well, at least it’s ambidextrous and sensibly mounted to the frame. Still. Not needed.

Finally, the thing everyone’s probably wondering: Why not Glock? By all accounts they were part of the downselect.

Well I don’t know. Rampant speculation time. First, that safety I don’t like. If the DoD required one, or wanted one enough to give more points to the design with one, that’d be a good reason. The manual safety on the MHS winning P320 looks reasonably well thought out, if you like such things. I haven’t seen the guts though. Historically, adding a manual safety to Glocks hasn’t ever worked out well. The designs have been awkward. So that’s a possible reason.

Possibility two is a lower bid. Either SiG wanted the contract more, and was willing to go lower, or maybe they had production capacity to deliver faster. I don’t know. But economics is something else that’s good.

Finally, modularity. The P320 is modular, and the DoD really wanted that. The P320 is more modular than the Glock. Those are points in its favor.

So, did the DoD do badly by not picking Glock? Nope. Setting aside any particulars, both Glocks and P320s are good designs. Bet between the two, you can’t go wrong. I’d probably decide based on who could bid lower and deliver faster anyway.

Finally, what does this mean for shooters? Will SiG dethrone Glock in terms of popularity? Well, the future’s hard to figure. So…maybe? But probably not anytime soon, if ever. We can expect some Glock design improvements, to take care of things like that trigger, because competition drives innovation. Plus, we can expect SiG to gain a lot more aftermarket support, which is always great. So this is nothing but good for us shooters.

Also, the pistol the US Military issues doesn’t have any bearing on what pistols I buy, like, or carry. It didn’t before, it won’t now.

Hudson H9 Range Report

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I’ve got some data for you from Top Men in the field. First, here’s the design overview and analysis.

Range impressions were good. In general, people were happy with the trigger. It’s nice. Of course, it will take some getting used to, like any trigger (good or not). But they seem to have delivered on their design goal of “Crisp, 1911-like trigger” in a striker-fired design.

The gun is also very low recoil and very flat shooting. Our shooters really liked it. That’s another design objective accomplished.

Further things for the plus column: while the grips are not interchangeable with existing 1911 grip panels, Hudson has contracted VZ grips to make them. So options should be available pretty quick.

One other note, this likely a negative. The patent design shows a large number of small parts. So disassembly might be a royal pain. We can’t judge reliability from that, though, so don’t.

These sorts of range expos are not good for judging a pistol, but they can help build excitement and optimism. Check and check.

One more thing. Mags appear to be based on those for the S&W 5906. Which is a strange choice for magazines, as that pistol is no longer in production. It should keep some costs down though. And for all I know those get the grip angle they wanted better than other magazines.

Avidity Arms PD10

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More fun from SHOT. The Avidity Arms PD10 is another relatively new arrival. Avidity Arms is a small outfit, who have been working with Rob Pincus.

The PD10 is a roughly Glock 19 sized, single-stack 9mm pistol. It’s polymer framed. It uses 9mm 1911 magazines. On the one hand, this was almost certainly chosen to avoid magazine development and testing costs, so the final product could meet their target price point. Magazine development (like any part of pistol development) is expensive, and a single-stack, Glock 19 sized gun isn’t going to be in the running for any police or military contracts in the 21st century. Note that this does mean the grip is going to be somewhat longer than on a Glock 19, to accommodate a standard 1911 magazine.

It also raises some objections from me. I understand 9mm 1911 magazines are relatively common. But when you hear “9mm 1911”, you don’t think “paragon of reliability”. You probably think “unreliable”. Maybe “Jam-O-Matic”. 9mm 1911s have a well-deserved reputation for being difficult to get running right. The magazine is a part of this. I’m skeptical of using these in a pistol and getting a reliable result. Good 9mm 1911 magazines are also rather expensive, which bodes badly. Part of the problem with 1911 reliability is people buying cheap, crappy mags, discovering that they jam a lot, and blaming the platform. Ol’ Slabsides has a bunch of nostalgia value to back it up. This doesn’t. Also, with a 1911, you can at least buy a known good pistol while you mess around with magazines.

Problem two with 9mm 1911 magazines is that they tend to come in ‘full size’ lengths. Why is this a problem? Because that means you’re getting a ‘full size’ pistol. It’s a lot harder to scale a design down than it is to scale a design up. Want a bigger version of your pistol? That’s easy. A smaller version takes a lot more testing. I bring this up because small single-stack 9mms are selling really well right now. The M&P Shield, Walther PPS, and Glock 43 are all extremely popular. They’re all small. Considerably smaller than a G19 as far as length and height goes. For most of the gun-buying public1, I don’t really see the appeal here.

The PD10 seems to come with decent sights out of the box. They’re metal, at least. I don’t know what the sight picture looks like. The front dovetail is an M&P type, and the rear dovetail is a Glock type. I don’t know why this wasn’t designed to take M&P sights (front and rear dovetails) or Glock sights (front screw and rear dovetail). Picking a common sight mount is a good choice, but it really should be a common sight set.

And, of course, there are all the questions of reliability and company longevity that come with something new. Like I said with the Hudson H9, probably best to wait and see how this shakes out. In the meantime, the SiG P239 is a known reliable single stack 9mm pistol. Consider that if you’re in the market for a 9mm single stack that’s bigger than the M&P Shield.

1.) Fishbreath will be along in a moment to tell you about small-handed people who need pistols too.

Some Thoughts on the 1911

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I’m a big fan of the 1911 platform. There’s a lot right in that design. And they’re super fun to shoot. Let’s spend some time talking about what to consider if you’re looking to buy one.

The 1911 has some obvious shortcomings, like a single-stack magazine and its weight. There are handgun designs that carry bullets more efficiently today. However, the 1911 fits nearly every hand as a result of the narrow, single-stack magazine, points well, absorbs recoil well, and has an excellent trigger. They are fun to shoot.

As I put this together, the 1911 design has been around for 106 years. Splendid! That does, however, mean that things have changed a lot. The basics are the same, but we’re no longer sole-sourcing parts from Colt, and we’re no longer only trying to run US Army 230 grain ball ammo through it. Be aware.

Recall that the original design had a 5″ barrel, a steel frame, was chambered in .45 ACP, had relatively loose tolerances, and held seven (7) rounds in the flush-fitting magazine. The further you diverge from this, the more you hit tolerance stacking difficulties. So the more difficult it will be to get it running well.

Now, one could get a very fancy 1911, like my Springfield Professional. That’s an excellent choice, though not customisable at all. There are, of course, many other excellent places to get semi-custom (pick from a features list) or full custom (specify everything), though expect to pay a premium and wait. If you can find one configured to your liking, a bit more of a premium will let you skip the wait. These are very, very nice guns and you can be sure they’ll run well, even if you choose some bizarre configuration. Of course, this isn’t the only way to get a nice one.

There are lots of good guns from companies like Colt, Springfield Armory, Dan Wesson, etc. out there that will be cheaper than the semicustom builds, but still offering quality and desireable features. However, it is a little harder for one to choose a pistol in this price range. At the low end, you tend to get USGI-pattern clones from various foreign companies. There is little to differentiate those. At the high end, you cannot go wrong. Choose a smith or a company you like, spend some pleasant hours on the phone with them talking about your build, pay a large fee, and wait. You will be taken care of. But what about the rest?

Jeff Cooper commented that all you needed in a 1911 was sights you could see, a good trigger, and a dehorn job. We are not as minimalist as the great Colonel, but this is an excellent place to start. For sights, you ought to be sure they’re mounted with dovetails. Avoid the USGI-pattern mounts. Dovetails will let you a qualified gunsmith fit different sights should you wish something else. There is no one standard pattern of 1911 sight dovetails, so do your homework and see that your gun has a common one. It is easy enough to have the sights changed out to something you prefer if you can’t find a gun in your price range that has what you like, so long as you have done the rest. If you do not know your sight preference, it may be expensive to ascertain it. Personally, I would suggest a high visibility front post and a plain rear, with the rear notch rather wider than the front post. Add tritium if you insist. As with many things, your tastes may differ, and I shan’t bother to argue with you.

Triggers are very important. They are one of the reasons people still love 1911s. A well set up trigger will make you look good. There’s not much I can tell you, not being a hardcore pistolsmith. Most reasonably well put together 1911s will have a decent trigger. For a good, or better still, a great trigger, you will have to pay more. Fortunately, you get what you pay for. I would not obsess too much about the weight, so long as it isn’t ludicrously heavy. The short, crisp characteristics that are so easy to come by are far more important then whether your trigger measures four or five or howevermany pounds. I should also point out that modifying the trigger on a 1911 is most certainly not something that can be done by a talentless hack, like modifying the trigger on a Glock or M&P. If you want changes to the trigger characteristics of the 1911 you bought, see a proper 1911 specialist pistolsmith. This is not something for a guy with youtube, files, and a kitchen table.

A dehorn job is definitely nice to have, though I wouldn’t obsess over some of the slick guns out there. And I probably wouldn’t send a gun off, but that’s just me. Avoid guns with obvious snag points. This is as good a time as any to segue into feel. The feel of a 1911 is pretty important if you’re picking one. They all point the same (superbly). Some thought should be given to the grips, though these are quite simple to change out. Do not hesitate to do so. I would strongly suggest using flathead grip screws, as John Moses Browning intended. If they come loose, it is easy to tighten them back up in the field with the rim of a .45 ACP cartridge. To hell with “modern” hex, torx, or whateverx bits.

Personally, I’m also a big fan of checkering on the front and backstrap. Since the backstrap is the mainspring housing, it’s easy enough to change out if you don’t like the one you’ve got. You can add checkering/texture up front by sending to a gunsmith. At a cost of course. I think it’s easier to get this from the factory. A well-stocked gun store will have many examples for you to feel, but it is how they perform on the clock that counts, so find a rental desk if you can. As an example, Fishbreath complained quite a bit about the 20 lpi checkering on Dana1, until he got some range time. And then he understood and could appreciate the checkering. Though, he still might prefer something a trifle less aggressive. Note also that while a good gunsmith can usually add checkering to the front of a well-built (i.e. not too thin) frame, he can’t often change it. Something to keep in mind.

Let’s also talk magazines. There are many manufacturers, and some are better than others. This is a rather annoying Achilles heel of the modern 1911: there is no longer a standard magazine design. There is no ‘factory standard’. I have had good experiences with Wilson Combat ETM HD magazines and Tripp Powermags. I have also heard good things about Chip McCormick magazines. I would not recommend deviating from these three brands. I would suggest buying one or two of each and seeing if your gun has any preferences, and then buying more of those. Do not cheap out on magazines. Note also that my brand recommendations do not change if you are choosing a 1911 in some not-.45 ACP caliber.

1.) My aforementioned bureau gun.

M&P 2.0 Range Reports

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Alas, I am not (yet) an important member of the Gun Media to warrant getting my hands on weapons that are so new as to be unreleased yet. But I have friends who are. Let’s look at what Top Men think of the M&P 2.0. My overview of the design can be found here.

Our sources really liked the new grip texture. They said it was good enough to not require modification out of the box. Your mileage may vary, since everyone’s tastes are different, but that’s a big improvement. The stock M&P 1.0 pistols have pretty slick grips.

The trigger was always going to be the $64,000 question. And our sources say it’s much improved. Likely totally redesigned. It’s got a very “Apex-like” feel, with much less of a mushy feeling, and a crisper reset. It also felt lighter than an M&P 1.0 trigger. They also got some time on a Performance Center version which had an even nicer trigger and a red dot. This version performed very well.

Accuracy at distance, even with wind, was good. Small sample size, but this is a good sign that S&W has fixed the accuracy issues. We can certainly hope.

I’m hoping S&W gets its act together and makes a good pistol. Competition drives market improvements. Also, note that the M&P series is second only to Glock in terms of aftermarket support, and whoever’s in third place doesn’t come close. M&Ps have a pretty decent lineup of accessories and training aids. So it’s good if they can keep their product solid.

Design Compromises: A Case Study

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Every design is a compromise. There are no free lunches. And trying to work out the why can be very informative. So let’s take a look at one of my favorite tanks, the M1 Abrams, and look at some design compromises, and their results. Since it’s very nearly equivalent, and designed at about the same time, I will use the Leopard 2 as a point of comparison. The Leopard 2 is somewhat more conventional internally in a few subtle ways.

The most obvious difference is the engines. Both designs have 1,500 hp engines, but where the Leopard 2 uses a pretty conventional twin-turbo V12 diesel, the Abrams uses a gas turbine. This gives the Abrams better acceleration, but also necessitates a greater internal fuel capacity. Where the Leopard 2 can get away with 1,200 L of fuel stowage, the Abrams needs about 1,900 L to meet its (shorter) range requirements. More fuel means more space. We can note that the Abrams has fuel tanks on either side of the driver, in addition to in various other places. The Leopard 2 does not have fuel stored up front in the hull.

The hull front on the Leopard 2 is used to store ammo in a pretty conventional rack. There’s not much in the way of blast venting provision here, so a penetration would be extremely bad news. That said, this is a pretty common place to store reserve ammo1, and hull hits are much less likely than turret hits. Still, from a survivability perspective, this is clearly not ideal.

The Abrams designers were able to shoehorn a few (six 120mm rounds, more of the smaller 105mm rounds) into a compartment aft by the engine, because of the shape of the gas turbine power pack. This rear ammo compartment has blow-out panels and a heavy door to isolate it from the crew compartment, but it’s not a lot of reserve ammo. The Abrams carries the vast majority of its ammo in the turret bustle. On the one hand, this makes subdivision easy. It’s a simple engineering exercise to add blow-out panels to the bustle, and this makes the Abrams among the most survivable tanks in the world.

Storing 34 120mm rounds in the bustle has its disadvantages. It forces a wide turret. Turret height is determined by the desired maximum gun depression, and a wide, tall turret means the armored volume is correspondingly large. The Abrams has considerably more armored volume than the Leopard, both in relative terms (i.e. crew space), and in absolute terms. Because so much of the Abrams’ ammo load is in the turret, there’s a significant amount of armor protecting the side of the turret bustle. More volume means it takes more weight to provide the same level of protection. Or, you have to use more expensive exotic materials (like depleted uranium).

On the other hand, more internal volume is another survivability gain. Armor penetrations are less likely to cause significant casualties or destroy enough systems to score a mission kill simply because there’s more volume to deal with, and volume leads to dispersion, which is the enemy of the shaped charge jet.

To be honest, on these grounds I prefer the survivability over protection. Protection can be added, but it’s much harder to do a redesign in favor of survivability.

We can see another difference in the guns on the latest models. Since the M1A1, the Abrams has been equipped with a license built Rheinmetall 120mm/L44 gun, just like Leopard 2s up to the A5 model. Subsequently, the Germans went to a longer L55 gun for more penetrating power. The Americans have not. So what gives?

Recall that Americans like their depleted uranium. The Germans don’t. Something something environment or something. Anyway, depleted uranium makes awesome armor. It also makes awesome armor piercing rounds. The Americans have done a good job of sinking plenty of R&D funding into new depleted uranium APFSDS rounds. They’re up to a fifth iteration of the design with the M829A4 round. So when adapting a longer barreled gun proved more costly than anticipated in the 90s due to stabilization issues, the US Army quietly dropped the project and stuck with their fancy rounds.

I don’t know if the Leopard 2 didn’t have the same stabilization issues as the Abrams with the longer gun, or if the Germans were just unwilling to change round composition. Regardless, the Germans adapted a longer gun. It means they can use tungsten-based APFSDS rounds, but it also means they will have somewhat more restricted mobility in urban environments.

For this one, six of one, half a dozen of the other. I’m indifferent here, provided both are available. I do wonder if the DU rounds will also perform better in the L55 gun, or if they’re optimized for the L44.

I suppose I should also comment on the engines. I strongly suspect that the Germans made the right choice here with the conventional V12 diesel, though I would strongly prefer an air-cooled model like the AVDS-17902. It’s possible the gas turbine just hasn’t gotten enough development funds, but a diesel engine company can push research into the civilian sector to recoup costs there, in addition to the military. I also approve of forward fuel tanks, and don’t approve of forward ammo stowage. Remember, well-designed fuel tanks provide reasonable supplemental protection.

1.) It’s also used on the Leclerc, K2, and Challenger 2, among others. Doesn’t mean I like it.
2.) Early versions powered the M60 Patton, and the 1,200 hp variant powers the Namer. A 1,500 hp variant is available.

Litmus Testing

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As an armchair military theorist, I am not burdened by an obligation to tradition or entrenched interests. Similarly, I do not have an actual army to test ideas on with exercises or actual combat. And there’s always the temptation to think ourselves (as armchair theorists) better than the real staff officers of the world.

We may or may not be. But I think there’s something to be said about conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is conventional for a damn good reason. Just as cliches are cliches for a damn good reason too. In both cases an idea has survived repeated testing over time. We can conclude that it should be pretty good. Maybe not great, but certainly not bad.

So while the temptation to think we are the Basil Liddell Hart reincarnate, and that we somehow Know Better (TM) than every other military in the world is great, when we do we’re almost certainly being delusional. Avoid the temptation!

I’m often a conventional sort of guy, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Often, if you put a little effort into it, you can often come up with some of the same reasons real armies stay with the boring. Let’s look at a couple of our crazier ideas:

Heavy Infantry Fighting Vehicles. This one is dangerous. Both the US and German armies had designs for heavy (about 62 tonne) IFVs in the early 90s. Both moved away from that plan, likely on cost and deployability grounds. So, much as I like this one (it’s even mine), it’s suspect on those grounds. Cost is annoying because it’s so hard to get a handle on cost at the best of times. Do note that the (US) Government Accountability Office study into the GCV and alternatives rated the Namer as considerably more expensive than the already costly Puma, to the point where even though you’d need more Pumas for a platoon, going with Pumas is the cheaper option.1

Fishbreath’s Ka-50. Yes, the Ka-50 is fun to fly in DCS. But the Russians haven’t been willing to put money into the single seat version, Kamov has made two-seat versions for the export market, and even those haven’t sold. So I strongly suspect that there are fundamental issues there, though I’m not enough of a helicopter expert to precisely identify them.

So there you have it. We’re not immune. We all think we’re brilliant. It’s totally fine to think outside the box, but do your homework. And be suspicious of ‘brilliant’ innovations that no one else has gone for.

As a side note, this is why I was so happy to hear these news updates. Time to see how some of my theories turn out in the real world.

1.) GAO reckoned that Pumas would cost $6.9 million and Namers would cost $11 million, and that each US Army mechanized platoon would require either four Namers or five Pumas. Personally, I’d go with three Namers or four Pumas, but either way, the fantastically expensive German IFV winds up cheaper, presuming the cost estimates are correct. Also note that the GCV was more expensive than either at $13.5 million, which probably bodes ill for the affordability of a heavy IFV, seeing as it needs weapons and fancy optics like the Puma and tons of armor like the Namer.