Tag Archives: militariana

Resurrected Weapons: AAM-N-10 Eagle

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Let’s continue our look at some vintage projects. The AAM-N-10 Eagle was a US Navy air to air missile program optimized for enemy bomber interception in the fleet air defense role from the last years of the Eisenhower administration.

The problem, evident even by the late 1950s, was that Soviet bombers could mount antiship missiles. So the bombers had to be engaged at long range, because intercepting large numbers of small, high-speed missiles is very difficult. To do so, and to get the fleet defense fighters outside the range of new surface to air missiles under development, the Navy proposed a subsonic, long endurance “fighter” and a high performance missile. This missile was the Eagle.1

The Eagle was developed by Bendix, in conjunction with Westinghouse’s big new APQ-81 radar and the Douglas F6D Missileer fighter. It was a two-stage missile, with a booster stage and a sustainer stage that would fire after a glide period. Both stages were solid-fuel rockets. The booster gave a speed of mach 3.5, and the sustainer could get the missile to peak at mach 4.5. Midcourse guidance updates were to be provided by the APQ-81, and terminal guidance would be an active radar seeker with a home-on-jam mode, much like a modern AMRAAM. AAM-N-10 flew a lofted trajectory, and had a 160 nautical mile (300 km) range.

That’s pretty impressive, but to get that performance in 1959, you needed a big, expensive missile. AAM-N-10 was 16 feet long ready to launch. The booster was 16 inches in diameter, and the second stage was 14 inches in diameter. The booster’s wings folded, and the second stage had a finspan of 34 inches. Weight was 1,284 pounds, with a 110 pound warhead.

The AAM-N-10 and the F6D were cancelled by Robert McNamarra in 1960, to free up money for other urgent programs2 and to establish the authority of him and the new Defense Department over the various services.

So what do I think of all of this?

Well, it’s hard for my opinion to not be colored by my opinion of Robert S. McNamarra, and I hate Robert McNamarra. His decision making process is suspect. And his “commonality” fetish got abused into some mind bogglingly dumb ideas.3 But he did get some good programs to completion/procurement, like the Polaris SLBMs and the M-16 (my favorite rifle). And here, I’m inclined to agree with McNamarra again. The Eagle was very specialized, and very expensive. It was useable from only one platform (Missileer), and for only one mission (engaging non-maneuvering bomber targets at extreme range). Missileer could not do any other mission either. Conceivably the AAM-N-10 could have been launched from the A-6 Intruder, but that would have required a different radar, or depending on an E-2 for all guidance updates. However, the core concept was a good one and we’ll see this become much more refined and sensible in the AIM-54 Phoenix.

Verdict: Funding request denied by the Borgundy Air Ordnance Procurement Board

  1. AAM-N-10 is the old designation system for air to air missiles developed by the Navy. ↩
  2. viz. the Polaris SLBM program and rebuilding the tiny and useless US Army ↩
  3. cf. the F-111B. ↩

F-35 First Red Flag Performance

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The F-35A is at its first Red Flag! And we’ve gotten some reports of how it’s doing.

First, a little review. Red Flag is the most advanced aerial combat exercise in the world. In a given year, there are several Red Flags, operated out of Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. There, the US Air Force and US Navy squadrons join with squadrons from other NATO and Non-NATO allies to engage in a series of realistic training exercises. They have the full suite of AWACS support, and air combat is staged against the Aggressors, instructor pilots who fly F-15s and F-16s and are trained in a wide variety of foreign flight tactics.

The Aggressor pilots are the best dogfight pilots in the world. That is literally all that they do. Their job is to be the nastiest guys in the sky, to catch pilots making mistakes in training where there’s a nice debrief so they can learn from their errors. Beats the Hanoi Hilton.

And the F-35 is, of course, the next fighter of the US Air Force, the US Navy, the US Marine Corps, the Royal Navy, the Israeli Defense Forces, South Korea, Australia, and a whole lot of others. It’s a huge, complicated, advanced program. And it’s had its share of problems as well as its share of detractors. And it was my pick for Borgundy’s Fighter in the Procurement Games. Despite the problems, I stand by that decision.

So with all that in mind, let’s see how it did. Keep in mind, this is only one Red Flag exercise. Small sample sizes can lead to problems. But it’s the data we have, and given the questions, it’s worth commenting on now.

As befits USAF doctrine, the F-35 has been primarily tasked with strike and SEAD missions. The USAF has F-22s for air combat. And the F-35 has done great. They didn’t lose any fighters on day one of the exercise when they engaged enemy air defenses, which is not something that usually happens. The Aggressor Team had to revise their exercises to be more complex and difficult in order to make life more difficult for the ‘Blue’ team (the good guys with the stealthy fighters). These tests are only interesting when they are hard.

But let’s talk about dogfighting. Nobody else has Raptors, so the rest of the world will need the Lightning II to be ready to mix it up, and the F-35 got some dogfights in. We do not know any of the specifics of the engagement–range, circumstances, rules of engagement, simulated loadouts, etc. But we do have a final score. 15-1 in favor of the Lightning. Questions abound, of course. What were the rules of engagement? What were the circumstances? Were these all WVR? BVR? We do know that the Aggressor pilots have had a lot of experience dogfighting (and mostly losing) to the F-22, so they may have been a little more ready for the F-35 than one might otherwise expect.

Pilot impressions of the Lightning II continue to be positive. The situational awareness is better than anything else in the sky, and unsurprisingly, pilots love being able to see and know more. No complaints about the aircraft have emerged. Also, it’s done great on the flightline. No F-35s have missed a sortie for maintenance problems, and the planes report a 92% mission readiness rate. Most legacy aircraft have a 70-85% mission readiness rate.

So despite the problems, many of which do not affect the -A variant, we can see that the Lightning is doing well in unscripted exercises. It’s a very good sign for the program.

And no, we do not expect the program to be cancelled as part of President Trump’s review.

Sunday Puzzle: Air-to-Air Refueling Edition

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Need something to wash the taste of Patriots victory out of your mouth? Try the Sunday puzzle.

Much ink has been spilled about the limited range of modern American carrier fighters. It’s one of parvusimperator’s biggest bugaboos. Sometimes though, it’s difficult to get a good sense for the penalties imposed by limited range. Let’s formulate it as a riddle.

You, Colonel Reader, command a fighter wing in Friendly Mideastistan. You have orders to strike a target in Enemy Mideastistan. Your target is six hours away from your airbase. Your fighters only fly for three hours on one tank of fuel.

Some additional parameters: your fighters fly at a constant speed without respect to payload or altitude, and their fuel consumption is also constant. You have exactly one airfield to work with, placed six hours from the target. Planes may not take off from or land anywhere else, nor may a plane run out of fuel in midair. (It looks bad.) Planes may refuel each other; there is no limit on how much fuel a plane may transfer. Takeoffs, landings, and refueling are assumed to be instantaneous.

Question 1: for each plane which drops a payload on the target, how many planes are required for refueling?

Question 2: describe the pattern of refueling which is required to get one plane to the target.

Answers and analysis:

Spoiler for

I first saw this as a question about circumnavigating the globe, so I’m going to talk about 180 and 360 minutes instead of 6 hours.

Two refueling planes are required per strike plane. All three take off at T+0. When they reach T+45, all three have 135 minutes of endurance remaining. The first refueling plane fully refuels the other two, at the cost of 90 minutes of endurance. It has 45 minutes of endurance remaining, and returns home. The other two have 180 minutes of endurance left.

At T+90, the first refueling plane has landed. In the air, the two remaining planes each have 135 minutes of endurance remaining. The second refueling plane fully refuels the strike plane. The refueling plane is left with 90 minutes of endurance, and the strike plane now has a full 180. The refueling plane turns for home.

At T+180, the strike plane drops its payload on the target, with 90 minutes of endurance remaining. The second refueling plane has landed. The first refueling plane, now refueled, takes off.

At T+270, the strike plane and the first refueling plane meet. The strike plane is running on fumes, with 0 minutes of endurance left, and the refueling plane has 90 minutes. It transfers half its fuel to the strike plane, leaving both with 45 minutes of endurance. The second refueling plane takes off.

At T+315, the strike plane and the first refueling plane meet the second refueling plane. The first two are running on fumes. The latter has 135 minutes of endurance remaining. It transfers 45 minutes of fuel to each of the first two planes, leaving all three with 45 minutes of endurance: just enough to get back to home plate.

And this, of course, is the best-case scenario. Our model is simplistic in the extreme; it doesn’t account for the time taken to refuel, the time taken to find the tanker, the difference between fuel consumption based on payload, the ordinary requirement that strikes be flown at a speed and altitude different from those used for best cruise performance, and a myriad of other factors.

Let us consider a real-world example which closely matches our riddle in its setup: the Black Buck raids, flown by the RAF during the Falklands War. The distance between the closest British airfield, Wideawake on Ascension Island, and Port Stanley Airport, in the Falkland Islands, is 6,300 kilometers. Different sources list the Vulcan’s cruising range at between 4,100 and 7,000 kilometers. Even if you choose the worst possible figure, the Vulcan’s endurance is nearly two-thirds the required range, much better than the half in our riddle. Of course, I haven’t been able to find actual range figures; this column does not merit that much investigation.

What it does merit, however, is the answer to our riddle for the real-world case. For each Vulcan strike (they were flown as single-aircraft raids), eleven tankers were required, refueling each other, then refueling the Vulcan six times on the outbound leg and once on the return trip.

Refueling is hard. Not only is it difficult mechanically, not only does it require specialized aircraft (or limited refueling performance, for buddy stores), it also gets you into a vicious cycle in the same vein as rocket design. When you have to carry your fuel, you need more fuel to carry your fuel to where it’s needed, and so on and so forth. The United States has an enormous advantage in that it already operates refueling assets worldwide; much of its fuel is already where it needs to be. This may not always be the case, hence our advocacy for aircraft designs with legs built in.

I hope you enjoyed the inaugural Sunday puzzle. There may be others.

HK 433 First Look

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HK has released a new rifle!

Okay, it’s for armies. More specifically, it’s for the Bundeswehr. It seems a lot like a G36 version 2.0. Let’s take a look.

hk 433

It’s a 5.56 rifle, with an adjustable folding stock. The stock looks an awful lot like what was on the canceled XM-8. Or the SCAR. It’s got a charging handle mounted forward like on a G3. There’s a negative mounting system, which is HKlok1. Mag release is available in a G36 type paddle or the AR-15 type button. Bolt release is at the front of the trigger guard, again like the XM-8.

Larry Vickers has a source saying this rifle was designed for the Bundeswehr because the HK 416 was too expensive.2 Or something.3 And, I guess it’ll be cheaper to make than a 416. But let’s break it down.

Does this change our choice to go with the HK 416 in the Borgundy Procurement Games? Nein. To be honest, other than being the cheap version of the 416, the 433 does not impress me. The HK 416 is HK’s take on the AR-15 platform. It’s got some ambidextrous controls, a heavier barrel, nicer handguard, and that short-stroke gas piston system, but it’s still mostly AR-15. And I’m really not seeing improvements anywhere over the basic AR-15 design, unless you start with exotic ammo or require a bullpup layout.

A charging handle out front is going to get in the way of lights and lasers that you might mount. Which are increasingly popular for night operations. Frankly, there’s no good place for the charging handle. The AR’s might not be ideal to get to easily, but it’s out of your way the rest of the time, and the rifle is designed to minimize the number of times you have to run the AR-15 charging handle in the absence of a malfunction. And when you do, you won’t smash your knuckles on an optic or have to fish around your laser/IR illuminator unit.

The choice of HKlok is increasingly suspect. First, I’d still support picatinny rails, for most military applications, because there are so many picatinny-compatible accessories in the inventory. And if you were going to go with a newer, lighter ‘negative mounting’ method, the right answer is Mlok. Because it’s gotten more industry support faster, and it’s also available as an option on a number of Colt Canada’s latest rifle offerings. Plus, it’s also used on the HK CSASS handguard that won the latest US Army semiautomatic sniper rifle competition. Unless they want to lock themselves out of a ton of future aftermarket offerings, HKlok doesn’t make sense to me.

The other thing that’s bothered me is that this looks an awful lot like HK’s take on the FN SCAR design. Which is fine, I guess, except that the HK 416 keeps beating the FN SCAR in procurement competitions. So why bother trying to compete again with a loser? You’re winning with the 416. Don’t split the baby. Don’t split the production capacity. Stick with the 416 everyone likes.

I guess it’s an upgrade on the G36. But I still don’t see why it’s worth the bother. I suppose being a freaking special snowflake and wanting a Different Gun Because It’s Different transcends national borders.

  1. It’s like Keymod, but backwards. ↩
  2. No really. Too expensive. Nevermind that the French bought it. Seriously, the Bundeswehr is just sad and pathetic these days. ↩
  3. Maybe it looked too American? Maybe they couldn’t stand using the same rifle as the French? Even if it’s made in Germany and actually good. ↩

Resurrected Weapons: A-6E Intruder

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If my father’s generation wanted precision strike from the sea, they’d call up the ugly but effective Grumman A-6E Intruder. Looking like a drumstick with wings, the Intruder had a two-man crew, a radar-navigation system for night/all-weather guidance, and a FLIR system in a small turret under the nose for target identification. It was subsonic, had an approximately 600 nautical mile (a bit over 1,100 km) striking radius, and it could carry up to 18,000 lbs of bombs.

The long strike radius was a direct consequence of optimizations and the choice of subsonic speed. Grumman opted for subsonic speed, because even the big F-4 Phantom was subsonic when heavily laden with bombs. Accepting a lack of supersonic speed meant that more fuel efficient engines could be used, providing a long strike radius.

In the Intruder’s day, there were no smart weapons. The delivery vehicle was responsible for all of the precision (or lack thereof). This alternative is a lot easier, since the plane is a lot bigger and easier to fit sensors and targeting computers into. As a brief aside, this sort of precision-on-aircraft delivery of dumb munitions is still used by Russia, and was the delivery method of choice for the airstrikes in Syria.

The Intruder proved very effective in Vietnam, where it was the Navy’s most accurate bomber. It was also the primary Navy delivery platform for dropping laser guided bombs in Desert Storm, since the -E models had a laser designator in their FLIR turret.

Despite the Intruder fleet getting new wings in the early 90s and having a solid combat record, the Intruders were taken out of service in 1996. There really wasn’t a perfect replacement. It was supposed to be replaced by the A-12 Intruder II, a poster child for bad project management. This project was cancelled1 without anything new being proposed in its stead. In the late 90s, the Intruder’s role was supposed to be filled by F-14 Tomcats with LANTIRN pods, which could not match the payload capacity of the Intruder. In 2005, the Tomcats were also removed from naval service, and their roles were taken over by F/A-18E/F Super Hornets. These could not match the range of the Tomcat or Intruder (both of which have a strike radius of about 600 nautical miles).

I really don’t like the loss of strike radius in the newer platforms. Super Hornets are nice otherwise, but they could really use longer legs. Yes, I know tankers have worked in recent conflicts, but the Navy shouldn’t rely on them. Or else what’s the point of naval aviation? If you can make tankers work, you can probably make land-based strike work. The whole point of naval strike is to be deployable quickly, and to come from additional vectors. In Vietnam, carriers at Yankee Station brought strikes from the east, in addition to the USAF strikes from the west out of bases in Thailand. If they required tankers, that makes life a lot more difficult for the planners, since tankers are fat and vulnerable.

The Intruder was cancelled to reduce the number of airframe types in the fleet. Understandable, but likely premature. The limited wars of the 2000s and 2010s would have been a good match for the capabilities of the Intruder. The A-6E isn’t very survivable in a high-threat environment, but Al Qaeda doesn’t have any serious SAMs. Long range would also make for long loiter time, and adapting a plane for JDAMs isn’t exactly hard.

On the one hand, restarting A-6 production would be silly. On the other, they were taken out of service way too early, and there’s no real replacement out there.

  1. The A-12 is a program that even I think deserved to get cancelled. ↩

Extra: MHS comes with JHPs

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I don’t usually do this, but this is worthy of an Extra edition.

The MHS contract, won by SIG, also includes a contract for ammo. Ordinarily I would yawn. Okay, great, the US Military has a new ammo supplier. To paraphrase The Who, here comes the new ammo, just like the old ammo.

Nope. Nope nope nope.

The MHS contract with SIG is not only for P320s and associated parts, not only for plain old 9×19 mm FMJ rounds, but also for 9×19 mm jacketed hollow points.

HOLLOW POINTS.

Can I get an ‘amen’ from the people of the gun?

Hollow points are significantly more effective than FMJ rounds at stopping people. It’s still a pistol bullet, so it’s still a lousy choice. But it’s much better with hollow points.

No sane pistol trainer recommends FMJ rounds for carry.

No police department that I’ve heard of in the United States still issues FMJ. They all issue hollow points.

It’s about damn time our army followed suit.

Okay, peanut gallery. I hear you. You’re probably yelling something about the Geneva Conventions. And you’d be wrong. It was the Hague Convention of 1899 that outlawed hollow points, not the Geneva Conventions.. Specifically, the third additional declaration of the Hague convention of 1899. Which was not signed by the United States. And we’ve been using “Open Tipped Match” ammunition for a while now, which are hollow points, except they say something else on the box, and are Totally Not designed to expand when they hit people. Or so says the Office of the Judge Advocate General. Any expansion is, incidental. Also shut up, because terrorists didn’t sign the Hague Convention either, so we’re not fighting a signatory power. I love lawyers.

Oh, and it’s not like any of the high and mighty European powers cared about the second additional declaration in the Hague Convention of 1899. You know, the one banning the use of projectiles that spread poisonous or asphyxiating gasses? In a war between signatory powers? Well, I’m pretty sure World War I counts as a “War Between Signatory Powers”, and you all were totally using projectiles designed to gas people. Phosgene shells, chlorine shells, lewisite shells. Hypocrites!

And I don’t understand the prohibition anyway. War is hell, said William T. Sherman.

Borgundy Modular Aerial Bomb Family

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And now, time to develop some native industry. Our specific impetus is that we think cluster bombs are highly useful things. While the Dublin Convention bans them for signatories, plenty of nations didn’t sign on. Including arch-nemesis Russia. And likely troublemaker China. And frankly, why should they? Yes, war is horrible. Yes, the effect on the civilian population really sucks. But there are tons of unexploded shells in Northern France from World War I and tons of unexploded bombs throughout Europe from World War II. Let’s ban those too! Really, let’s just ban war. Oh wait, we tried that. Didn’t work1. Additionally, the Obama administration wouldn’t sell new customers any cluster munitions. So, we really can’t trust the United States to supply our needs, though Trump might change that in the near term. And neither can all of those middle eastern countries who have bought western aircraft/artillery. Time to fill a market void. And if we’re building cluster bombs, why not build some regular unitary-warhead bombs too?

Our goal is to reduce costs as much as possible by building a complete modular family. We’re going to have two sizes of cluster bomb dispensers: one in the 500ish kg size class, and one in the 1,000ish kg size class. We’ll then have various submunitions packages that we can put in the dispensers. We’ll review these packages first, then go over what we can attach to a dispenser (or a unitary warhead for that matter).

Package one is a bit of a mouthful, because it’s our analogue for the BLU-97/B. It’s a triple-threat, HEAT/Frag/Incendiary submunition. It’s got a shaped charge warhead to provide some anti-armor effect. This will necessitate an integral ballute to orient the shaped charge correctly so it will work if it hits armor. We don’t need a ton of penetration, since we’re hitting the roof. So we can make the charge rather small. This shaped charge warhead has a fragmentation casing to provide anti-infantry capability. It is also equipped with incendiary sustainer: material that burns hot for a while like magnesium that can be scattered by the explosion of the shaped charge to start fires. Three ways to do its job. Very cool. Total weight is about 1.55 kg, with explosive content of 290 g of cyclotol. These are cylindrical, with a diameter of 64 mm and a length of 17 cm. Really nice general purpose munitions.

Our second package is somewhat larger. These are thermobaric submunitions, also known as fuel-air explosives. For maximum safety, it actually uses a solid fuel air explosive warhead, weighing 33 kg. The idea here is to create a massive firestorm, which has a significant pressure wave secondary effect. It’s about 70 cm long and 34 cm in diameter, with an overall weight of 58 kg. It works with a dual fuse mechanism: the first releases the SFAE at an altitude of about 9 m and extends a probe, the second detonates everything when the probe hits the ground. The significant overpressure wave can be used for mine clearing, in addition to the obvious destructive uses.

Package three is a dual purpose mine. It uses an explosively-formed penetrator to provide anti armor capability, and it’s also equipped with a fragmentation casing for antipersonnel work. It has a parachute to slow it’s fall and a spring-loaded mechanism to right itself once it lands. This part is important since the explosively-formed penetrator must be pointing up to work. The self righting mechanism triggers after impact plus a time delay. There’s an additional delay before the mine is armed. It contains about 0.6 kg of explosive, has an overall weight of 2.4 kg, a diameter of 10 cm and a height of 15 cm.

Since the mines from package three are so small, they can be used alone or combined with other things. One such example is package four, which combines a bunch of our dual purpose mines with runway-destroying boosted penetrators. These are about 1.1 meters long and 10.2 cm wide, with a weight of 20.4 kg. A parachute delays the fall and orients them downward, at which point the parachute is jettisoned and a rocket drives them deep into the runway before a 3 kg warhead detonates. The mines are added to complicate reopening the runway.

Package five is some more dedicated anti-armor kit. These are submunitions, again equipped with an explosively-formed penetrator warhead, plus a ranging laser and an infrared sensor to determine if a tank is below the submunition. There’s also a self destruct mechanism so that if the submunition hits the ground without finding a tank, it will detonate anyway. There are drag flaps to induce a bit of oscillation in the fall so that the submunition can scan an area, while keeping the warhead pointed earthward. Diameter of the submunition is 13 cm, height is 9.5 cm, and weight is 3.4 kg. This is an analogue of the BLU-109. While in the 80s this was state of the art, by now the electronics industry has caught up, and the result isn’t too hard to duplicate. Offhand, Germany and Sweden both make similar submunitions.

That should cover most submunition needs that we can think of right now, but more can be added later. We also have a series of unitary bomb bodies. These are low-drag bodies in the 250, 500, 1,000, 1,500, and 2,000 kg size classes. There are also 1,000 and 2,000 kg class reinforced-case penetrator bodies. All unitary bombs have nose and tail fuse wells, and can accept a bunch of fuses, including contact, mechanical delay, and radar altimeter.

Both the unitary bomb bodies and the cluster bomb canisters can interface with a comprehensive set of accessory kits. There’s a basic tailfin kit for stability. A variant of this kit allows fin angles to be adjusted, in order to scatter bomblets for the cluster bombs by means of rotational inertia. There are a couple different fall delaying options, including parachute kits and ballute kits. In terms of guidance packages, there’s a GPS/INS equipped tail kit. This can be used alone or with a nose guidance kit. Laser guidance and IIR guidance nose kits are available. These may also be used with a conventional tail kit if a laser-guided bomb is desired, for example, instead of a Laser/GPS guided bomb. The IIR guidance kits are capable of transmitting back to a human operator or performing stand-alone automatic target recognition on a preloaded target. We can also add a wing kit if a standoff glide capability is desired.

  1. No really. Cf. the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928. If you think any such notion can actually work, or that this war will actually be the last war, then I have some bridges to sell you. ↩

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. ↩

Swedish Strike Saturday: the AJS-37 Viggen

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The AJS-37 Viggen is a modernized classic: a 1990s update of the 1971 AJ-37 Viggen.

Why is it a classic, though? You may be forgiven for not knowing. In fact, I did not know until I saw that Leatherneck Simulations1 are making a DCS AJS-37. So, on this first Swedish Strike Saturday, let’s take a look at why the Viggen is such an icon, and why you ought to be excited for it.

In doing so, we first have to take a trip back in history, back to Sweden circa 1961. The enemy du jour is the Soviet Bear. Although the Saab 35 Draken matches up well against Soviet fighters of the day, the Saab 32 Lansen, a late first-generation jet which handles the attack role, is looking a little long in the tooth. It’s time to make something better.

Much better. The Swedes had a history of pioneering aircraft designs out of Saab, and the Viggen was no exception.

It was the first canard aircraft to enter front-line service, and featured the first afterburning turbofan in a strike fighter. By date of start of development, the Viggen’s computer was the first integrated-circuit computer designed for use on an aircraft. For a time in the early 1960s, while development work was under way on the computer, Saab was the world’s largest buyer of integrated circuits. It was the first single-seat third-generation jet strike fighter to enter development, and the second to enter service2.

As one of the two first digital attack aircraft to enter service, it is, then, an object of some historical interest. Similarly, its computer is one of the first in the aviation world, and that makes it interesting to me (a computers guy). The CK37 (CK for Central Kalkylator) flight computer does just about everything data-related in the aircraft: it runs both of the cockpit displays (the HUD and the Central Indicator—think radar screen, but with navigational information, too), does navigational calculations, and handles weapon aiming.

Saab built the prototype, using individual transistors, in the 1960. It was table-sized, featured about 5,000 transistors, and ran at about 100,000 cycles per second. Total weight was about 450 pounds. Obviously, it wasn’t altogether suitable for aerial usage. Redesign efforts in 1961 used the newly-available ‘integrated circuit’.

Enter Fairchild, who beat Texas Instruments (!) for the contract. Their integrated circuits featured a whopping two transistors per square millimeter, ten times the density of discrete components. Some few years later, in 1964, Saab’s computing division delivered the final CK37 prototypes. This final version could run about 200,000 instructions per second, with about 28 kilobytes of magnetic core memory, with core density of about one core per millimeter3. It weighed about 150 pounds, comprised five computer units, and drew about 550 watts of power.

And, going by everything I’ve seen, it made for a tremendously effective aircraft. On seven hardpoints, the original Viggen could carry a combination of weapons: 135mm rockets, 120kg bombs, the RB-05A MCLOS missile, and the RB-04 anti-ship missile. Between the radar and the advanced (for its day) navigation system, the Viggen could fly in ugly weather, dropping unguided bombs precisely on any target it could see by radar. Although its air search capabilities were rudimentary, the radar could still cue Sidewinder seekers; on those grounds, it was not altogether ineffective as a fighter.

It did so without a navigator; the autopilot and navigation systems are sufficient to permit the pilot alone to fly and fight. By all accounts, the Viggen gave excellent service from its introduction date in 1971 to its retirement thirty-odd years later. Along the way, it gained the RB-75 missile4, and a variant called the JA-37. A fighter first and striker second, the JA-37 gained a better computer, a lookdown-shootdown radar, and support for the Skyflash5 missile. Much later, both the JA and the AJ Viggens saw some upgrades. The JA-37 became the JA-37D, with a glass cockpit and the ability to sling AMRAAMs6. The AJ-37 became the AJS-37, and that’s the plane we’re interested in today.

Development of the JAS-39 Gripen7, the follow-on to the Viggen and the Draken, began in 1979. It didn’t fly until 1988, and it didn’t enter service until 1997. In the interim, Swedish military planners began to get a little nervous about the state of their ground attack force. Though the Viggen was a solid workhorse, its armaments were outmoded, and its navigation system was fiddly.

Some of the Gripen’s weaponry was already available in the early 1990s, though, including the BK-90 submunitions dispenser8 and the RBS-15 anti-ship missile. The S-modification allows the Viggen to launch both, giving it access to modern smart weapons. At the same time, Saab’s designers added a data cartridge, greatly simplifying pre-mission preparation. The extra data capacity in the cartridge also allowed for a terrain contour matching function. The data cartridge contains information about the elevation contours expected during the mission and their locations; in flight, the computer correlates the expected contours to the actual, observed contours from the radar altimeter. This allows the computer to update the INS with true positions, correcting to some degree for drift during flight.

With those upgrades, the AJS-37 soldiered on until 2005, flying alongside the Gripen for eight years, at which point it was finally retired. An airplane of many firsts, it was also a notable last: the last of the great 1970s low-altitude strike fighters to fly its original mission profile. The Tornado, the F-111, and all the Viggen’s other contemporaries were upgraded to fly more modern, middle-altitude missions. The Viggen never lost its focus as a low-altitude interdictor.

Is the Viggen a good interdictor in its original threat environment? Do the upgrades make it better? Is it suitable for the modern world? How good is the Leatherneck recreation? This paragraph is where I had hoped to tell you that we would soon be finding out. Unfortunately, it’ll be a little longer than I had hoped; Leatherneck’s Viggen releases on January 27, and it isn’t looking like the Soapbox is big enough for a preview key. No matter—that just gives me more time to prep for the articles down the road. In February, you can expect two or three of them, touching on the answers to the questions posed at the start of this paragraph.

Stay tuned!

  1. Makers of the DCS MiG-21. ↩
  2. The A-7 Corsair came first, entering service in the late 1960s to the Viggen’s 1971 ↩
  3. The CK37 divides its memory into 8192 words of 28 bits in length, with 1536 words as working space and the remainder write-protected data. ↩
  4. The AGM-65A Maverick; the Swedes have a thing about keeping American names for missiles. ↩
  5. Or RB-71. ↩
  6. Surprisingly, they call this one the AIM-120. ↩
  7. The Gripen is a longtime favorite of mine. ↩
  8. The Swedes are anti-cluster-bomb, so a weapon which drops explosive bomblets is called a ‘submunitions dispenser’. ↩

Borgundian Mechanized Infantry Loadout

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Let’s get this started. I’m following my own challenge rules, which you can find here. We’ve made a bunch of decisions so far, so let’s get those out of the way. Oh, and all weights are going to be in pounds, because I’m an American. Divide by 2.2 to get weights in commie kilos.

Carbine: HK 416. I didn’t specify a barrel length preference then, but we’ll go with 14.5 inches. Comes to 7.69 lbs empty. We’ll also need ammo in that gun. Thirty rounds of 62 grain M855A1 or similar in an aluminum, 30 round magazine comes to 1.06 lbs. Per doctrine, we’ll need a suppressor and an optic. We’ll take an Aimpoint Comp M4 red dot (0.74 lbs with mount and killflash) and a Surefire 556RC2 suppressor (1.06 lbs.). Also, we’ll need an IR laser/illuminator, because battles don’t stop at night. My choice there would be the B.E. Meyers MAWL-DA. I don’t have a weight for this, so I’m going to guesstimate 0.5 lbs based on other, similar devices. Plus a sling, which is going to set us back about another quarter pound. All of that adds up to 11.3 lbs, which is kinda sucky, actually. Oh well. Lots of capability there, not much to be done about it. Quit complaining and drop and give me thirty.

Armor time. See here for why I picked what I picked. IOTV (and we’ll add the deltoid (fragmentation) protectors, but not the side plates) is 26.69 lbs for a size medium. Size medium ECH is three pounds. Ballistic Eyewear adds 0.15 lbs, foam earplugs add 0.1 lbs, and knee and elbow pads add another 0.4 lbs. An FM50 gas mask rounds out the protective equipment list, adding another 1.85 lbs. Total weight for protective gear is 32.19 lbs.

Ammo. Pretty straightforward. Six spare thirty round magazines. Two M67 frag grenades. And two smoke grenades. Something like the M18, but with added thermal obscurants. Six mags comes to 6.36 lbs, two M67s comes to 1.76 lbs, and two M18s comes to 2.38 lbs, for a total ammo load of 10.5 lbs. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, but remember the vehicle holds more.

On to comestibles. I’ll go into more detail on this elsewhere. Since these are mechanized infantrymen, they have a big armored vehicle to move them around and carry stuff like food and water in reasonable quantities. Only the essentials need to be carried. For the standard, temperate European operating environment, we think two liters of water is an adequate amount to carry on the person, and we can top this off as needed from the vehicle stores or resupply. For food, we really only expect the soldier to carry an iron ration with him. This will take the form of something like the US military’s First Strike Ration, which is a hot-pocket-like sandwich that supplies the calorie and nutritional needs for one battle day. A full two-liter camelbak-type1 bladder is 4.88 lbs, and a First Strike Ration is 1.95 lbs, bringing total comestible weight to 6.83 lbs.

There are a few other items we need to list out. There’s the IFAK, the Individual First Aid Kit. This is for two reasons. First, it means a soldier can perform some first aid on his buddy. Second, a medic can always find some basic supplies (tourniquet, pressure bandage, sterile gloves) when he needs them in a pinch. Add a pound. We also need to issue a knife. For knife fighting duties, I’d like a double-edged knife, like the Gerber Mk. II. However, most knife tasks are utility tasks for the modern soldier. For these, a tough single-edge knife will work better. Something like a Ka-Bar. Tough, effective, legendary. I have one and love it. Add another 1.23 lbs for a Ka-bar and sheath. And we’ll need some night vision kit. I’ve been going for the high-end, feature-rich stuff. No sense in stopping now. We’ll take the PSQ-20B, which gives us third generation image intensifying optics plus thermal optics in one rugged, two pound unit. At least the battery pack is detachable and can be affixed to the back of the helmet for balance. Finally, we’ll need a radio. The PRC-159 from Harris should do nicely. Compatible with the once and future frequencies, plenty of encryption, good battery life. With battery, it weighs 1.72 lbs.

Almost done, I swear. The standard poncho with liner is a really great piece of kit. It’s waterproof, surprisingly warm, and extremely packable. That’s my one concession to weather that might crop up unexpectedly. Obviously, coats are worn when you can expect bad weather, like say in the winter. 1.5 lbs for the poncho and liner. And we’ll add a multitool, because they are ridiculously useful little things. 0.6 lbs for that.

Let’s wrap up by looking at what we’re not issuing. Recall that this is a regular rifleman. He is not a squad leader. Therefore, he does not usually need navigation equipment so he does not have a lensatic compass, maps, or a portable GPS receiver as a matter of course. He might be given these things as part of a specific mission, and that’s fine. Spare batteries for the various electronic devices mentioned are carried aboard the vehicle normally. As a side note, just about all the devices here take AA batteries. Logistical commonality strikes again!2 Similarly, cleaning kits are generally expected to be carried aboard the vehicle. as are entrenching tools. Further, since they aren’t on soldier’s backs, we can issue full size picks and spades, not the lame folding versions.

All-up weight for our kit is 68.87 lbs. Which is on the heavy side, but about on par with other modern armies. Remember, the pack is normally left in the vehicle, so it’s not counted in the fighting load.

1.) I actually prefer the Source brand bladders.
2.) Did you expect anything different from me?