Tag Archives: militariana

Terminated Weapons: XM-25

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The keen reader may accuse me of cheating here, since the XM-25 is still, well, experimental. To that reader I would say that the US Army has placed an order for a lot of the damned things, which is close enough for government work. And this stupid “wondergun” is in dire need of killing. Let’s talk a little bit about the history, and then see why I think it should get taken out with the trash.

The XM-25 is an outgrowth of the failed XM29 OICW. The OICW was an attempt to increase the lethality of the infantryman by combining a short-barreled1 5.56 carbine with a detachable box magazine fed 20mm airburst grenade launcher. Sort of a next-generation M4/M203 combo. Of course, there were many problems. The resulting weapon was bulky, expensive, and heavy. Loaded, it weighs 8.2 kg, or a trifle over 18 pounds, if you live in a country that’s put men on the moon. This is about as much as a BAR weighed, and is absolutely ridiculous for a non-support weapon. This is not a weapon that is going to allow you to assault alongside your M4-equipped squadmates. What’s even worse is that it didn’t work.

More specifically, 20mm airburst grenades weren’t meeting lethality requirements. Duh. They were tiny. There’s only so much explosive content you can pack in there. Not enough explosive, and the system was already stupidly overweight. In a burst of wisdom at the Pentagon, the XM29 program was cancelled. But the wisdom didn’t last and the two components were split into new weapons.

I’m going to take a brief moment to talk about the XM8, which still has its fanboys, despite looking like a fish. This was the 5.56 carbine portion of the XM29. But there were problems. Every other gunmaker cried foul at this becoming the new carbine of choice without a competition. And they were right, though they needn’t have worried. The XM8 was crap. Garbage. It was significantly heavier than the M4 that it was supposed to replace, fundamentally is no more lethal since it was still a 14.5″-barreled 5.56mm carbine, was compatible with exactly zero accessories currently in the US Army inventory because it somehow had no picatinny rails, and had a tendency to melt under sustained fire. Since it had no picatinny rails, it was wedded to a brand new optic that was supposed to be a magnified red dot with laser sight, which also had problems. The XM8 was also cancelled, much to the chagrin of HK fanbois and M4 haterz everywhere. Good riddance to a lousy gun.

The XM25 is the split off grenade launcher portion, now it’s own weapon. In an effort to increase lethality, the caliber was increased to 25mm. Spoiler alert: they still don’t have the sort of lethality they want. It’s got plenty of shock value, but that mostly comes from the fact that it’s a bang near your head. I am aware of exactly zero confirmed kills for the XM25 on deployment in Afghanistan. Ze-ro. None. Nada. Yeah, it’s a “game changer”.

But wait, it gets worse. The XM25 weighs 14 lbs. (6.4 kg), costs $35,000 a unit2, and fires rounds that cost $55 a piece. It still uses a detachable box magazine, but that magazine only holds five rounds. So a soldier’s individual load is tiny. Also, note that standard doctrine for IFVs with airburst autocannons is to fire a burst of three to five rounds to neutralize an enemy position. That’s basically a magload, and those rounds are bigger (and hold more HE, duh) than the rounds on the XM-25. We’ll never see great lethality out of this system, and it means taking a carbine (or two!) out of the squad.

We’re already back in the land of small professional armies rather than big conscript ones. Infantry are scarce, and taking the always-useful rifles out for a heavy system with a small combat load of carried rounds that is only sometimes useful is a bad idea. We need all the riflemen we can find. Even though our riflemen are much more effective man-for-man than their grandfathers in the Second World War thanks to optics, modern carbines, night vision equipment, and ceramic body armor, each man can only engage one point or area target at a time. We don’t need to cram more support weapons into an eight or nine man infantry squad, and we certainly shouldn’t issue such limited-persistence things as the XM-25 generally. It can’t replace the M4/M203 combo, since that still lets you bring a carbine to the close fight.

We also shouldn’t bother issuing them at higher levels (e.g. at the platoon level). At this level, we’re competing with proven weapon systems: mortars. In terms of support systems, a 60mm mortar is better in every possible way than the XM25. It’s significantly cheaper, can be broken into smaller loads and distributed so that light infantrymen can carry it and still have carbines for close-in fighting, and has larger, more effective rounds. It does require some training, but what weapon system doesn’t.3 Mortars work, and provide better range and true indirect-fire capability. What’s not to like?

On the other hand, that XM25 has also had consistent development problems, and it eats batteries. More logistics burden, hooray. It’s also seriously injured at least one tester in a nasty malfunction. This system is not ready for prime time. It needs to go. Somebody call the NKVD, see if we can get someone over here to give this thing a quick show-trial and a bullet in the back of the head.

So there you have it. Don’t bother with a new, expensive, heavy system that doesn’t work. Buy proven systems, like mortars, and save!

1.) About 9 inches long, which is pretty darn short.
2.) Supposedly this is after cost savings in production. Supposedly. It’s still too damn much.
3.) Yes, the XM25 also requires training. Duh.

The Namer

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I’m usually the conservative one when it comes to military technology. I like my two-seat attack helicopters, my F-16s, my tanks that have a four-man crew. But, as Fishbreath will point out, even I have my quirky favorites.

Enter the Namer.

I adore the Namer, and would seriously consider buying them en masse instead of any sort of IFV, which is decidedly unconventional thinking. Let’s review a bit of IFV history, and then how the Israelis came up with something entirely different.

The first IFV was the BMP-1. The Soviets expected the Modern Battlefield (TM) to be loaded with radiation from tactical nuclear weapons, with snazzy new chemical weapons like VX in addition to old favorites like Lewisite, and maybe even some biological threats for good measure. So they conceived of a vehicle that could hold a squad’s worth of men and transport them in NBC-protected style. The BMP-1 had a crew of three plus eight dismounts. The dismounts could fire out the sides through firing ports. Protection was relatively light, but was rated against heavy machine guns (i.e. .50 BMG) from the front. The BMP-1 was easily moved and amphibious. It’s armament was a 73mm gun-missile hybrid unit that was relatively short ranged, with a coaxial 7.62x54R machine gun. It was designed to provide the equivalent of the squad support weapons, a PKM and an RPG-7 in the turret.

Of course, when the Soviets bought lots of BMP-1s, NATO reckoned that Something Must Be Done, and here we get things like the Marder 1 IFV. The primary armament of this first generation of vehicles was a 20mm autocannon. This gave some amount of HE infantry support, but more importantly, it could penetrate the armor of the BMP-1. And it outranged the 73mm gun on the BMP-1. The Soviets countered with the BMP-2, which had a little more armor, fewer dismounts, and a 30mm cannon to give it the ability to punch through the armor on the heavily armored NATO IFVs.

Here we can note that we’ve moved away from the raison d’etre of the original BMP. We’ve actually gotten worse at supporting the infantry, because 20mm and 30mm autocannons hold a lot less HE than the 73mm rounds. 73mm rounds are capable of demolishing some field fortifications, but the autocannons are not. From a historical perspective, .30 and .50 caliber machine guns were considered perfectly adequate direct-fire infantry support weapons in World War II as far as antipersonnel work was considered, and a 75mm short barreled tank gun was an excellent round for attacking bunkers and fortifications. Even though the 20mm autocannon was well-developed (see the excellent 20mm Oerlikon), nobody ever moved to use this to support infantry. It doesn’t add much to the mission of supporting infantry mission, which we’ll revisit more later.

Of course, as the IFV continued to evolve, more changes happened. Amphibiousness and firing ports went away. More armor was wanted to protect against increasingly powerful enemy weapons, and firing ports get in the way of that. Plus, the firing ports weren’t all that useful. It was very difficult for soldiers to hit anything firing out of them in testing, so they were deleted in the Bradley and never put into the Warrior. Increasing autocannon sizes led to fewer troops per vehicle, with most now only capable of holding six or seven men. And that’s the listed, ‘on paper’ capacity. Once you factor in body armor and all the other stuff that makes up full battle rattle, IFVs often max out well below what their designers said they could hold.

That’s more or less where we are today. There’s an arms/armor race, complicated by the fact that you have to put a few troops somewhere in the vehicle, so we get very small ready loads of ammunition. The CV9035 has two feeds of thirty five rounds a piece. These are big 35x228mm rounds, but they’re still shot in bursts to maximize hit probability, so combat persistence is pretty lousy. Troops can’t fight from inside the IFV, and the IFVs aren’t amphibious.

Let’s look at the Israeli case instead. The Israelis have more recent experience in a proper, full-scale conventional war than NATO in 1973. So they have faced enemies who have modern, man-portable ATGMs. These are reasonably easy to use and relatively cheap. They weren’t a factor in the original BMP-1 calculus, but they were in October 1973 in the Yom Kippur War. ATGMs did not make tanks obsolete. The IDF tank corps racked up a large number of kills, and both the Israelis and Arabs used infantry screens to help cover their armor. After the war, the Israelis increased the armor on their tanks and bought more tanks. So clearly they were not seen as obsolete. What the Israelis did discover was that more lightly armored combat vehicles like their M-113 APCs were extremely vulnerable to ATGMs. So they proceeded to create a series of tank-conversion APCs that eventually culminated in the Namer, which although based on the Merkava, is actually a new design.

It will be helpful to take a brief interlude to look at the operating environment of the IDF, specifically the the Golan Heights, a plateau on the Israeli-Syrian border that was the site of fierce armored fighting. The Golan is rocky, barely developed, and lacks trees. Here, the sightlines are long and unobstructed. It is an ideal environment for the employment of ATGMs. Smoke, suppressive fires, and heavy armor are the order of the day; there is nowhere to hide and no cover to be found. If they can see you, they can hit you. To counter the threat, both the Israelis and the Syrians made heavy use of infantry screens and smoke. APCs were used to leapfrog infantry to cover armored advances.

The Namer is the heaviest APC in the world, weighing in at 60 metric tons. Or possibly more; I don’t entirely trust IDF-reported numbers to be completely accurate. It is loaded with armor, and even without active protection systems has been proven to be able to withstand the latest Russian ATGMs in the Lebanon campaigns. It has three crew and is rated for eight or nine dismounts, depending on seat configuration. Looking at the interior, for once I think a manufacturer is understating capacity. Or accounting for gear. By Soviet standards, the Namer could hold a motor rifle platoon.

The Namer is armed with a heavy machine gun (the Ma Deuce) and a GPMG, like an M-113. The Israelis never really thought that their APCs were underarmed. And they did encounter Syran BMP-1s on the Golan, so they saw the firepower of the BMP-1. But they never felt the need to increase the firepower of their APCs, either to kill BMPs or to lob HE rounds. The Israelis felt that their tanks were better at killing vehicles than an IFV like the BMP-1 could ever be, and APCs worked better at the primary job of actually carrying infantry. This worked just fine for them on the Golan.

And this brings up an interesting point. In a world where new IFVs are starting around 33 tonnes, and top out around 42 tonnes (the Puma), what sort of circumstances are we expecting that would mean that these IFVs are going out alone and have to confront vehicles of their weight class and below? Is there some vehicle MMA where things are broken out by weight? Because if IFVs encounter MBTs alone, they’re in trouble. Well, unless the tank crews are poorly trained idiots. And a non-amphibious vehicle in the 33-43 tonne weight class isn’t substantively easier to deploy than an MBT. You still need at least a C-17 for air deployment, and those are expensive and in short supply. So deploying an actual force is going to require rails or ships. It will be slow. And if you’re already going to suffer through a slow cargo ship deployment, might as well bring the tanks too.

We’ve already talked about the problems with autocannons. Increasing size for increasingly marginal ability to kill a small subset of threats. They still can’t kill an MBT from the front, they’re increasingly unlikely to kill an IFV from the front, and they’re overkill for everything lesser. Don’t think the Bradley is exempt because it has ATGMs. The TOW on the Bradley basically requires it to stop moving while it’s guiding, so the wire doesn’t get snapped accidentally. Which means that unless the tank crew is unaware or massively stupid,1 the tank is going to hit the Bradley if the Bradley takes the shot. At longer ranges, the TOW has a flight time of about thirty seconds, which isn’t short enough to score a mutual kill, even if we assume the TOW is good enough to penetrate the tank’s armor.

Let’s take a moment to think about infantry support. We need three things to support the infantry: direct fire with a suppression component,
indirect fire HE to hit dug-in enemies, and direct fire HE to smash fortifications. Of course, autocannons have a direct fire HE capability. It is, however, a very small HE capability. It is not sufficient to reliably punch holes in adobe-type structures, let alone the reinforced concrete ones that you would find in a modern city. The fundamentals of direct fire HE support haven’t changed much since World War 2, when the minimum acceptable caliber for supporting infantry with explosives was 75mm. Smaller guns, like 40 and 50mm were tried and found wanting. So what voodoo makes you think you can do more with the smaller 30mm?

Some of you might be thinking about those specialized rounds that claim to be able to penetrate wall and kill what’s on the other side. There are several issues with these. Assumptions about knowing the locations of hostiles, getting them to stay there, and the composition of the wall may not hold in actual combat zones. Wall construction techniques vary, and the high velocity of the autocannon rounds tend to make placing timed explosions difficult. These specialized rounds still can’t actually demolish things or create an improvised entry point.2 Plus, an autocannon is not like a howitzer or tank cannon that has a loader you can order to “Load Exotic Goofy Shit”. Autocannons have two belt feeds, and given the size of the belts and how cramped3 the turrets are, swapping belts is an enormous pain. And, as we’ll see, there are a few kinds of exotic rounds that you might want, plus regular HE-Frag and APFSDS-T. So what are you going to load? And what will you do when neither belt contains the right boutique round for the target in front of you? You’d call for support like a smart person. Or die.

If you, or that support you called for, had a big ol’ HE-thrower, you could blast the daylights out of that wall with no trouble at all. Once again, if we look at the Combined Arms Team, we might notice that once again there’s an obvious choice here. You guessed it, the MBT. Bigger HE is better HE, and it’s easy to throw a couple of speculative 120mm HE rounds into the ammo rack of an MBT without compromising its primary, vehicle-slaying mission.

Clearly, the IFV and the Namer lack proper indirect fire capability. No, 40mm underbarrel grenade launchers issued to the squad aren’t a solution. And no, airburst autocannon rounds aren’t a replacement either. For one, timing the airburst for effect over a known-range target is made really difficult by the high velocity of an autocannon round. Plus, we really aren’t starting with a lot of explosive in a 30 or 35mm round, and we need the frag pattern to work from a variety of angles, since it still needs to work with more traditional contact fuzing. Again, most armies in World War 2 found the 50 and 60mm mortars inadequate for high-angle support, and preferred systems with a caliber of at least 80mm. Again, airburst is expensive, unproven, and eats into the already tiny ammo load. For indirect support, stick to dedicated systems like mortar carriers. With the range on modern 81mm or 120mm mortars, there’s no reason for such systems to be at the front line anyway, and not having to have the magazine and troops share space is excellent. So don’t think about putting such a system into an IFV.

Let’s now examine the direct fire mission. For supporting infantry, an autocannon doesn’t get you a ton of things. Machine guns allow for larger ammo loadouts, and the small HE rounds of the autocannon don’t really kill people any deader. More ammo means more time suppressing. The belts are less awkward to handle, and provide a significantly lower secondary explosion hazard in the event the armor is penetrated. Plus, not having a massive turret and basket means there’s more room for infantry and their stuff. Going MG-only is a tradeoff of some shock effect for more combat persistence and vehicle survivability.

No big autocannon also means we can forgo the big turret and fancy optics and targeting systems. For modern tanks, this is a significant cost driver. And since IFVs increasingly have optics that are every bit as fancy as what’s on an MBT, and often fancier targeting systems, we’ve eliminated a large source of cost growth. Which is good. A standard problem for armies is what do do when you’ve got a seven to ten million dollar IFV platform, and can’t afford to put all your soldiers in them. So you buy some other APC for second line duties. And you write some horseshit whitepapers on ‘information warfare’ and the ‘way of the future,’ and you ‘prove’ your conclusions in a bunch of rigged exercises until you run into some dudes with RPG-7s that blow holes in your pretty theories and your cheap APCs, and there’s egg all over everyone’s face on CNN. Those insurgents probably just didn’t get the memo about rolling over and dying in the face of your ‘fourth generation warfare’. Did you use the new coversheet when you emailed it to them?

Infantry are the primary purpose of this vehicle. The infantry. The gun should be secondary at most, so it’s best if it’s not eating large amounts of internal volume. If you want an autocannon-carrier, build one. With the Namer, we’re trading vehicle capability for superior infantry carrying capability and effectiveness. It’s a trade I’m happy to make. And regardless of what a bunch of eggheads will tell you, there’s no substitute for armor when you want survivability. Ask the IDF how many computers it takes to stop a Kornet.

Overall, the Namer takes the crown for Most Survivable armored vehicle, with an obscene amount of armor, active protection systems, and basically nothing inside to cook off and cause secondary explosions in the case of a penetration. Which also makes it a winner in that fourth dimension of all things procurement: politics. A vote to buy the Namer is a vote to bring someone’s little boy home safe. Are you going to be able to look those mothers in the eye and tell them that their boys burned to death in some crappy thin-skinned vehicle? Do you want to testify at that hearing?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. SOLD.

1.) See the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991. An ideal case for the attackers, because the Iraqis couldn’t find their own ass with two hands and a map.
2.) Also known as a man-sized hole in the wall.
3.) Yes, Virginia, even western IFVs have cramped turrets. The monster CV90, which is roughly as big as a PzKpfW VI Tiger I tank, has a turret which has been described as “a tighter fit than a T-72.”

Procurement successes

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I gripe a lot about the sorry state of American defense procurement, and sometimes about the even sorrier state of Western European defense procurement. But there have been successes. In thinking about a few of the recent ones, namely the Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, the M1 Abrams tank, and the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, I noticed something: all had followed a gross failure.

First let’s define terms. The obvious: failure. A program is a failure when it is cancelled while the need remains. If an army decided it needed no more tanks and cancelled its latest tank design program, that would make sense. At least from a logical standpoint. It follows. If you don’t need a thing, you shouldn’t be buying a thing. But sometimes a program is such a massive overbudget clusterfuck of mismanagement, it gets cancelled even though the service still needs it. And that usually forces some ranking officers to be “forced into retirement” and a lot of soul searching. We’ll see that this is important later.

Next, let’s talk success. I’m going to be mean and set the bar high. A successful program delivers a quality product at a reasonable price. On time. On budget. But it must also be a product that compares well to its peers, regardless of how much gold-plated nonsense is baked into them. Each of our aforementioned projects fulfills both criteria. They are seen as good by both the bean-counters and the warriors. All designs are compromises, and these appear to have made the right ones. Why?

Almost certainly, because the need was great, and the service in question had already tried an “everything and the kitchen sink” gold plated design that failed. Each predecessor was super expensive. Two of the three were cancelled outright. The third just barely made it out of the gate before being terminated unceremoniously. Let’s look at these failed programs.

The Abrams was preceded by the MBT-70, a case study in multinational mismanagement. It was a joint German-American tank project, but the Germans and Americans couldn’t agree on anything. Rather than actually make hard decisions, the project team let each country do its own thing. Since work was duplicated and the project had to work with both, costs skyrocketed. The Germans wanted a 120mm smoothbore gun. The Americans wanted a 152mm short-barrel gun/missile system. So they compromised. Both were developed and integrated. The Americans wanted a gas turbine. The Germans wanted a diesel. So they compromised. American versions had a gas turbine; German versions had a diesel. The design teams couldn’t even agree on whether to use metric or SAE measurements on bolts and nuts. You guessed it, both were used. Plus, they wanted to integrate an autoloader, which had never been done in the West. They also wanted an active hydropneumatic suspension that could “lean” and “kneel”, another novelty. Costs spiraled out of control, and eventually, Congress and the Bundestag agreed on something: the MBT-70 had to go.

The Super Hornet had an ill-fated predecessor in the A-12 Avenger II. The Navy wanted to replace the A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair II attack aircraft with a cool new stealth attack aircraft. Stealth was cool. The USAF had the awesome F-117A and B-2A. Stealth meant you could go anywhere, and the pesky Soviet air defense systems could do nothing to stop you. But stealth was expensive. Very expensive. And the A-12 program was probably the worst-managed aircraft program in history. Composites were new, and screwups led to the plane coming in overweight, and the weight growth never stopped. The multifunction radar had development problems as well and started to rapidly consume the navy’s budget. Delays in the prototype design pushed back early flights, and added to the cost. Then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney cancelled the program in 1990.

Finally we come to the Seawolf class, the predecessor of the Virginias. At first, you might object. Seawolfs were commissioned! And yes, they were. But only three of them ever put to sea. THREE. They were supposed to replace the Los Angeles class attack submarines. But how can they do this when there are more than twenty times as many of the Los Angeles class boats? Yes, it failed. Get over it. Loaded with everything from a fancy new sonar with battle management system and newer hull construction techniques, and even new steels, it came in overbudget and at the wrong time. Even though they’re really great boats, there’s only so much you can do with three hulls instead of sixty two.

After failure, each service went back to the drawing board. They thought long and hard about compromising to get the price down. What did they really need now, what could they add later, and what could they do without. They relearned that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and a piece of hardware that you have is infinitely better than a cancelled project. It’s a pity this lesson is so very hard to remember. The results are excellent vehicles that have received a large number of upgrades.

Armata Response 2: Hoplon IFV

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Okay, so we’ve got our new MBT to meet the T-14 Armata anytime, anywhere. What about the IFV? Well, last year’s Victory Day parade showcased both the T-15 Heavy IFV and the Kurganets regular IFV. Which leaves us with a lot of questions. I’ve already vetoed the family nonsense, and talked a little bit about heavy IFVs, but now is a good time to elaborate on that as we look to design our new IFV, the Hoplon.

We can see that regular IFVs have been steadily increasing in weight. BMP-1, BMP-2, and early models of Bradley were all at least sort of amphibious, and under 25 tonnes. Bradley has grown into the 33-35 tonne range, which is about where CV9035 is. And the big Puma gets all the way up to 42 tonnes once you kit it out. How heavy should our IFV be? In Syria and Lebanon, the Israelis discovered that if your enemy has modern ATGMs, like Hezbollah does, then you really need heavy armor on your vehicles for them to be survivable. Before fighting all of these ATGMs, the Israelis thought the relatively lightweight M113 was more than enough for infantry transport purposes. Afterwards, they sought tank-level protection and got it in a number of conversions of old tanks, finally culminating in the purpose-built Namer HAPC.

The Russians reached a similar conclusion after their experiences in Chechnya. BMPs are all under 20 tonnes, all amphibious, and all lightly protected. In Chechnya, they were found to be extremely vulnerable to the Soviet-era weapons used by the separatists. These separatists had often served in the Soviet Army, and they tended to target the known weaknesses in the BMPs: the sides and roof, inflicting heavy casualties. The Russians came to the same conclusion as the Israelis, and the T-15 Armata IFV is big, heavy, and well armored.

What about the experiences of the Bradley in the Iraq wars? Well, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Bradleys were seldom used in cities. The primary threat was IEDs, and even the M2A3 Bradley didn’t have much protection against IEDs. They were roughly equivalent to an up-armored humvee in terms of IED resistance. Instead, coalition forces in Iraq used MRAPs, which were much more protected against IEDs than either humvees or Bradleys. Also, the GCV, which was intended to replace the Bradley was very heavily protected. Interestingly, and possibly due to asinine rules of engagement, the absence of the 25mm cannon on the Bradley was not felt much on the streets of Iraq.

So, it will be a heavy vehicle. I can hear Fishbreath groaning already. The price, Parvusimperator! Yes yes, I’m aware. And I haven’t forgotten. And a massive vehicle is going to be more expensive. Now, we’ll talk about some ways to reduce costs as we discuss the configuration. Clearly, we’re going to put the engine and transmission up front, and a ramp at the back for ingress and egress. We’ll use the same LV100-5 engine and associated transmission system that we deployed on the Myrmidon. We’re trying to reduce logistical complexity here. The LV100-5 gas turbine is our standard heavy vehicle engine, and we don’t have to worry about stocking parts for another engine.

Let’s talk armament for a bit. This might also be a place to save, since MBT-grade fire control systems and optics are rather expensive. The gun armament is for supporting infantry. Fix that firmly in your mind, and say it with me. The gun armament on an IFV is for supporting infantry. This is important because of the armor race I mentioned earlier. IFVs are getting tougher. MBTs are already super tough. This demands a bigger and bigger gun. But the IFV must also carry troops. So we end up with a partial squad and not a lot of ammo. And for what? Is a 40mm gun all that much better than a 30mm gun? You still have to run from tanks. You may or may not be able to kill other armored vehicles. And then we’re getting into the classic question of quantity of rounds or quality of rounds.

Let us consider some more combat experience. Specifically, the First Persian Gulf war. Operation Desert Storm. This is quite possibly the best argument in favor of a heavy IFV armament, where the Bradleys racked up tremendous numbers of kills with their 25mm M242 cannons and TOW missiles. Bradleys killed more tanks than the Abramses. Of course, the Iraqi tanks and other armored vehicles were used incompetently. But we should be careful about drawing too strong a conclusion here. Recall that the Bradley cannot fire missiles on the move. It also cannot guide those missiles on the move for fear of fouling the wires. So the Bradley must remain stationary for the entire flight time of the missile, which can be up to twenty seconds at longer ranges. Against a reasonably competent tank crew, their only chance is if the tank fails to spot them or the launch. It’s also good to consider what the Bradley had that made it effective, namely a stabilized gun. The sights on the earlier Bradleys are not particularly advanced, but they were good enough, and a stabilized gun made shooting on the move doable. This was considered an overly expensive luxury by just about everyone else until they saw the results of Desert Storm.

Let’s also look at the Bradley use in Operation Iraqi Freedom. There, as I’ve mentioned before, the quantity of 25mm ammunition available proved invaluable in the engagements where it was permitted. 300 rounds of autocannon fire is quite a lot, and allows the Bradley to support troops for quite some time.

So, proven uses for the autocannon include supporting an infantry assault on fortifications and shooting up lightly armored vehicles.1 What we don’t want to do is to get caught up in an arms race with other medium armored vehicles, and certainly not the heavy armored vehicles. An excess of fancy electrics is a significant portion of what drove the Puma’s high cost. So to hell with that. We’re going to mount an autocannon in a relatively simple remote weapon station and call it a day. We’ll have night vision capability, some limited zoom, and stabilization. But we needn’t spend too much on this. It’s for supporting the infantry and striking targets of opportunity, and maybe taking potshots at attack helicopters. Elbit makes a nice autocannon turret that comes with all of the above, plus a Mk. 44 Bushmaster II 30mm chaingun and 200 rounds of ammunition.

Why 30mm? Wouldn’t 25mm be better? At least, better from a “more rounds” and “good enough” perspective? Perhaps. We can get about half again as many 25mm rounds as 30mm rounds in a given volume. On the face of it, probably. Depleted Uranium 25mm rounds are about as good at armor penetration as 30mm ones. But, the 25mm round isn’t getting any more development effort. Much as I hate it, the move is to bigger rounds with airburst capability, and 25mm is too small for this. Plus, there’s still some growth left in the 30mm round, seeing as it doesn’t have a depleted uranium APFSDS round yet. Both rounds are currently popular, but the 25mm guns are increasingly being replaced. A pity.

A few other notes on our turret. The Elbit remote turret comes with a coaxial 7.62mm machine gun mount, which is fine by us. It’s also capable of high-angle fire, which is perfect for those urban scenarios, or wandering helicopters. It isn’t well protected, and that’s okay too. This weapon system is not critical, and it keeps cost down. We’ll add a second, smaller remote weapon system that will double as the commander’s sight. Again, modest zoom, thermal camera, stabilization are all we need. This will add a second 7.62mm machine gun. More suppression and will give the commander every reason to keep his head down. Both machine guns are heavy-barreled FN MAGs.

The commander will have eight periscopes, with optional night-vision attachments, around his hatch for observation. We expect his primary observing to be either through his sight/RWS or the gunner’s sight/RWS, which he can also view on his monitor. Again, we’re trying to keep costs down, so these aren’t super fancy sights, but they should be good enough. We will have to put in some fancy electrics, specifically the fancy force tracking datalink systems mentioned in the Myrmidon write up2 and the radios to get data. Radios are also fitted to allow communication with other vehicles, aircraft, and nearby troops on the various frequencies that they might use. There’s a repeater display for the troops in the back to see the force tracking information as well so they don’t all have to huddle around the commander’s station.

The gunner has five vision blocks for auxiliary observation, again, with night-viewing options. The driver, who is on the left side of the hull, has five vision blocks, as well as a forward 1x/4x thermal camera, side cameras, and a rear camera. We’re using the same displays and cameras that we used on the Myrmidon, so we can get them in (greater) bulk, and so we only need to stock one set of spares.

The crew sit at the front of the main compartment, with the driver on the left, commander in the middle, and gunner on the right. The commander’s and gunner’s stations are further back from the driver to accommodate the engine compartment. Behind the crew is the space for dismounts. There are seats for nine dismounts, plus space for a stretcher case or a lot of kit. Remember, this is a roughly tank-sized chassis. Additional storage space is available behind the seats and under the floor panels. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have explosive stuff in the passenger compartment, but then we’d have to put it out where the armor is, and the armor would get in the way of accessing the stuff. Armor is heavy. So, the stuff has to be mostly inside. There is external provision for attaching packs and earthmoving tools (picks, mattocks, spades, etc) to the outside of the vehicle.

The crew compartment is provided with a spall liner all around. It’s also NBC protected (assuming hatches are closed), and has heating and air conditioning. Provision is made for an electric kettle for boiling water and assisting in cooking meals. There are also battery rechargers to keep electrical devices going.

We’ve already mentioned that the Hoplon is one heavy beast, having tank-grade armor. It also is fitted with the Trophy active protection system, and a number of hull-mounted smoke grenade dischargers. The commander has a hatch, as does the driver. Another, larger hatch is provided to allow roof egress if needed, or access to the primary remote weapons station for reloading. Normally, the crew and use a door-ramp at the back for entry and exit. The door-ramp, as well as all roof hatches, have power-assisted opening, due to the great weight of the roof armor.

The Hoplon’s suspension system is hydropneumatic, but not adjustable like that of the Myrmidon. This will keep costs down, but also maximize common spares/tools/training. There are seven road wheels per side, and tracks are protected with heavy composite skirts. Like on the Myrmidon, the skirts of the Hoplon can be detached to facilitate transport. This is as good a time as any to talk transportability. The Hoplon is big, and has similar mobility characteristics as the Myrmidon, as far as ground-pressure and bridging requirements go. While this makes them more difficult to deploy on some damn-fool peacekeeping exercise, it also means that some idiot general is less likely to commit his IFVs alone without tank support. That’s not how this is supposed to work, so the size of the Hoplon ends up being an advantage from a doctrinal perspective.

Now, let’s do a little bit of reckoning. The Hoplon is 7.97 meters long, 3.657 meters wide without the skirts, and about 2 meters tall (to the top of the hull, not counting the RWSes). It weighs about 60 tonnes. With a good large order, we reckon we’ll have a unit cost of about $4 million.

1.) Yes, I’m including BMP-1s in the “lightly armored” category .
2.) Heavily influenced by the US Army’s FBCB2 system

Borgundy Mechanized Rifle Company

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So we have a platoon, and a squad. At the small levels, we would expect organization to be fluid, based on situation and how many people are around to be organized. But we have to organize something administratively, so there it is. As we get further up on the organization table, structures become somewhat more regimented.

Philosophically, people like to debate between the square organization and the triangular organization, i.e. whether there should be three or four main component elements. Triangular units are smaller, so you get more of them. More importantly, they’re easier to command and easier to keep supplied. Square units can do more (since they have more) and are more casualty resistant. The Russians are big fans of the triangular-type organization. NATO uses the square. Or sometimes the triangular. Or some other weird things. The typical rifle company for the West is three rifle platoons and a heavy weapons platoon. The weapons platoon brings things like rocket launchers and GPMGs for added firepower. For a mechanized infantry company, the weapons platoon is pretty redundant, given that you have a bunch of IFVs already included in your platoons.

We’ve established a lean and mean 33-man rifle platoon with three CV90s. We’ll put three in our company. We could add a fourth, but it’s not strictly necessary, and it’s best to try to keep units as simple as we can. We’re also trying to keep things manageable by a Captain with a minimum of staff. Smaller units are easier to command, and Captains aren’t the most experienced officers. Besides, we’re also introducing some support units as part of the headquarters. We do not have an embedded headquarters at this level, unlike at the platoon or squad levels.

Our headquarters contains a CO and his very small staff. More specifically, there’s a CO, an XO, and a first sergeant. This isn’t much of a staff, but most of the HQ section is devoted to support personnel. Supportwise, we have a supply sergeant, a gunnery sergeant2, an armorer’s assistant, three medics, and a senior medic to lead the medical group. We’re also going to add some supply and maintenance personnel. There are a lot of good reasons to have some of these guys. Vehicles need maintenance, and more hands to do that is always good. Supplies often need some physical manhandling, and again, more hands is better. In terms of vehicles, the two officers each have a CV9035 at their disposal. The first sergeant has a Boxer MRAV at his disposal. Additionally, there are two light trucks3 and two medium trucks.4 Also allotted are two trailers: one 600 gallon water trailer and one field kitchen trailer. In terms of additional personnel, the IFVs are each allotted a driver and a gunner, and the APC is allotted a driver. Our supply and maintenance section is eight men, giving a total of 21 men and two officers in the headquarters. As always, everyone is issued a carbine. This way officers don’t stand out as much, and just about anyone can defend himself or be pressed into service as an ersatz rifleman as needed.

For those of you who like a touch of accounting in your TO&Es, this brings our total for the mechanized infantry company to 122 officers and men, and eleven CV9035s. It’s small and agile, and it comes with some limited organic supply and support assets. Overall though, it shouldn’t be too hard for a captain to command effectively. Interestingly, both the Russians, with their centrally-managed tactics and the Israelis, who are the strictest devotees of Aufttragstaktik5 orthodoxy favor smaller organization patterns. They are easier to manage, and this is an advantage for either the central commander or the independent local commander.

1. Cf. the Pentomic division. It’s as bad an idea as it sounds.
2. I have a lot of sergeants floating around here. I should probably make a rank table.
3. Something in the HMMWV or JLTV size class. I haven’t picked one yet, as the reader will note.
4. Something in the FMTV or MTVR size class. Again, choice pending.
5. For those of you who don’t speak German, “mission tactics”. The commander gives the subordinate in charge of a mission the goal, the forces he has at his disposal, and the timeframe required. The subordinate is expected to come up with and execute a plan, and react to complications along the way. Requires good training of one’s subordinates.

Pereh Missile Carrier

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The Israelis have finally allowed details of one of their weapon systems to become public. Let’s take a look.

To understand the weapon system, we need to go back to the Yom Kippur War in 1973. During that war, the Israelis were fighting (and mostly losing, though it worked out ok in the end) a war on two fronts: against Egypt in the South and Syria in the north. There were considerable fears that the two Arab armies, with their new Soviet hardware, would overrun the Israelis.

While the Israelis got plenty of support from the Americans, they were also deeply aware of how fickle allies could be. France and Britain had abandoned Israel after the Six-Day war in 1967. So Israel decided to do a lot of indigenous work. You can always rely on yourself. One such bit was the development of an indigenously produced tank, the famed Merkava.

But, what to do with the old tanks? They’re not suitable for frontline service, but throwing them out would be wasteful. And, more anti-tank firepower was needed. The Israelis had already put quite a bit of effort into upgrading their outmoded M48 and M60 tanks. These were called the Magach series, but eventually the Soviet tanks were too good.

There’s a long history of converting old tank chassis into support vehicles. The Germans did this in the Second World War, making the well-regarded StuG III off of surplus PzKpfW III hulls. The Israelis went a similar direction with their old Magachs. Time had marched on, though, and the Israelis installed Spike-NLOS ATGMs instead of a gun. The result is called Pereh, which is probably a terrible transliteration. It means Onager in Hebrew.

Let’s talk about the missile: Spike-NLOS. These are big, long-ranged missiles. They’ve been around since the 80s, so quite a bit longer than the small Spike that’s a Javelin competitor. They’ve got a range of about 25 km, and weigh in at 70 kg or so. Spike is, uh, well, I would say SACLOS, but the wireless datalink doesn’t require line of sight to work. So, SACLOS-like, I guess. You can also provide midcourse updates via the wireless datalink, or even program target coordinates for the missile to hit. Maybe we should call it SACLOS++ or SACLOS# guidance. Bad programmer jokes aside, the Pereh carries twelve of them.

Structurally, the Pereh is rather interesting. The Israelis went to great lengths to disguise it as a tank. It has a dummy turret, complete with dummy gun, built around the box launcher for the Spike missiles. The box launcher retracts into the turret bustle, and the antenna can fold down. The turret has a pretty serious looking array of explosive reactive armor on it. Remember, the Israelis came up with this stuff first, and they’re pretty good at making it. It would not surprise me if the Pereh kept a bunch of the turret armor of the parent M48/M60/Magach.

So what are the uses? Well, the enemy will see a second-line tank, sitting in the second line, just where they would expect to find it. But from there the Spike missiles can still reduce an approaching tank assault force. The Spike missiles can also be used as precision, short-range artillery against fixed positions, and the IDF has used the Pereh this way to great effect in conflicts in Lebanon. So it’s got shades of the classic M18 Hellcat tank destroyer, but also the StuG III assault gun. And all that ERA will make it more resistant to enemy rockets and ATGMs that might come after it.

We think these are great. And Borgundy would like them too. I wonder if we have any M60s lying around.

Resurrected Weapons: GPU-5/A Gunpod and the GAU-13/A

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The US Air Force has hated the A-10 with a burning fiery passion, and has been doing their best to kill it since they got it. I guess they think of it like that ugly sweater you get at Christmas from your crazy relative that your parents make you not throw in the trash. This is because it takes pilots and money away from glorious aerial combat and nuclear weapons delivery and puts them to work moving mud for the ground pounders. One of their schemes from the late 80s to oust the Warthog centered around making an F-16 variant that could handle hardcore ground attack actions.

On paper, this seems easy. The F-16 can carry anything the Warthog can. The F-16 can sling Mavericks just as well as the A-10 can. And it would get precision guided bomb integration first. And it can carry regular iron bombs too. Perfect, right? Well, not quite. The A-10 has a massive gun, the aptly named GAU-8/A Avenger. This beast of a gatling gun is chambered for the 30x173mm round, and is absolutely massive. The A-10 was built around this beast, and it’s an accurate, powerful tank killer. It also has a terrifying buzz saw sound. This gun is sweet.

So, the USAF decided to try to put that gun on the F-16, since the F-16 had only a regular 20mm Vulcan cannon. The answer was the GPU-5/A gunpod. To work in a pod, they decided to scale back the Avenger a bit into the GAU-13/A. The GAU-13/A has four barrels instead of seven on the Avenger, and has the rate of fire reduced to about half that of the Avenger (2,400 rounds per minute instead of 4,200 rounds per minute). From a technical standpoint, the GAU-13/A is driven pneumatically using bleed air, instead of being driven by the A-10’s hydraulic system.

The pod held 353 rounds of ammunition, which isn’t a lot at 2,400 rounds per minute. But fully loaded it only weighs 862 kg, and it can be mounted on any NATO-standard large bomb rack. It was tested on the F-16, F-15, F-4, A-7, and even the small F-5.

What could be better? Well, they got tested during the first Gulf War, and all the illusions were shattered. The GPU-5/A pods were mounted on F-16s, but the accuracy was appalling. While a bomb mount can easily handle the weight, it was never designed to deal with the stresses of firing a massive gun like the GAU-13/A. Additionally, the integration with the F-16’s targeting systems was poor. It was used for all of a day and then removed and replaced with more effective stores. The A-10 can deliver accurate bursts from the Avenger; the F-16 just wasn’t able to match it. You’d need specialized pylons at least, which takes away some of the attraction of the GPU-5/A pod.

This is to be expected. These days, we’ve grown accustomed to multirole types and forgotten some things about dedicated designs. The F-16 was never designed to be a CAS plane, and it has a bunch of issues that are way more important than whether or not it carries a giant gun. The F-16 is fast, and burns fuel quickly. It can’t hang around low and slow for hours like the A-10 can. Slow is good for the A-10 because it helps the pilot spot targets visually. Fast is good for the F-16 because it needs to be able to catch MiGs. The F-16 can be tasked with short order CAS missions, but it can’t hang around without refueling. And that’s ok, it’s just silly to try to make it do something that it can’t. The Air Force scrapped the project shortly afterward.

For once I agree with them. Interestingly, if the US Air Force wanted to be rid of the A-10, they should just let the US Army operate fixed wing aircraft. Or even make a specific exemption for the A-10; the Army would love them. Were A-10s available in the procurement games, we would be all over them. As things are, we’ll make do with attack helicopters, like the US Army.

Verdict: Funding Request Denied by the Borgundy Air Ordnance Procurement Board

Armata Response 1: Myrmidon MBT

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Usually, the Russians tend to make things that are rugged, ugly, and simple. See, the AK-47, the Mosin-Nagant, and the T-34. They work. But they are hardly innovative. Every so often though, they surprise everyone and come up with something new. In the 60s, it was the T-64, which introduced a production tank with composite armor and an autoloader. Last year, they did it again with the T-14 Armata, the first production1 tank where the crew are all in the hull and the turret is unmanned.

Why would they do this? Well, we’ve got some fancy electrics now, and if we physically isolate the crew from the ammo, then we maximize safety and survivability in the event of a catastrophic penetration of the ammo compartment. It also means that we can minimize the protected volume for the turret, so we can reduce overall tank weight. Much as I hate to admit it, tank experts in West Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union all agreed that this was the way forward, even if it meant sacrificing visibility from the top of the turret with the Mark I Eyeball. Guess it’s time to suck it up and embrace the future.

So, the Russians have unveiled their fancy new Armata armored vehicle family, and it seems to be a pretty good one. We could upgrade existing hardware to match, or discuss the use of attack helicopters as tank destroyers. But the Tank Destroyer Doctine was a failure in World War II, and Fishbreath would never let me hear the end of writing up attack helicopters so darn much. Plus, it’s much more fun to write up a symmetrical counter, a new MBT of our own: the Myrmidon.

The Russians are trying to make the Armata a family of heavy combat vehicles. However, I don’t think this is a good idea. While commonality of spares is great, commonality of chassis is irrelevant and useless from a maintenance cost perspective (which is by far the bigger cost over the lifetime). Plus, it’s a false economy, since the HIFV and probably the SPH will be front-engined, but the T-14 MBT is rear engined, so that’s going to drive up design costs and force compromises. And Heavy IFVs are expensive–too expensive to buy in the desired quantity. The GCV was cancelled for cost reasons. The US Army also looked into the heavy IFV/heavy APC concept when they were designing the Bradley, but felt it was too costly. And the basically-unarmed Namer is almost as expensive as the Merkava IV. Further, giant vehicle families encourage gold plating, which leads to cost overruns, which leads to a budget kill of the project. So we’re just going to make a new tank. We’ll have other designs for IFVs and SPHs and the like forthcoming as separate designs.

In terms of engine, we’re going to put it at the back like normal people, but otherwise we’re going to be a little different. This is a bit of a throwback in that we’re going to build the ultimate combat tank, not some excessively tall MRAP thing for COIN. Which means we need the best possible engine performance. We oughtn’t neglect the mobility part of the firepower/protection/mobility triad. So we’re going to take a gas turbine engine design, because nothing beats the acceleration of a turbine. Nothing. Specifically, we’re going with the Honeywell LV100-5, originally intended for the cancelled XM2001 Crusader program, and an M1 Abrams re-engine project. This little engine weighs just 1,043 kg, develops 1,500 horsepower, is 25% more fuel efficient than the Abrams’ AGT-1500 at speed, and is 50% more fuel efficient than the AGT-1500 at idle. It also has 43% fewer parts than the AGT-1500, which already has many fewer parts than a comparable diesel engine. It also requires much less cooling volume than a diesel. With the newer high-temperature ceramic turbine blades and the full authority digital engine controls, we can get the gas turbine down to diesel-ish fuel consumption levels. At least for older diesels, or diesels that care about performance. We still get unholy amounts of torque, easy cold starts, and the ability to run on just about any flammable liquid that you can run through the injectors. We could probably get an even smaller engine, but I try to keep these designs at least a bit grounded so that Fishbreath doesn’t complain too much.

I guess we’re moving from back to front on this design walkaround. We next come to the turret section, right in the middle. The turret is completely unmanned, but still has plenty of modular armor. We can’t get away from that, since we’re not stupid. An unarmored gun is vulnerable to mission kills from machine gun fire and shell splinters, plus just about anything heavier. It does no good to put the crew in perfect protection if the tank can’t do its job. So, we still have turret armor, we just have a lot less armored volume to worry about. We have the main gun, the coax gun and its ammo supply, the autoloader assembly, which is mostly behind and below the main gun, a bunch of data cables for targeting systems, and the electric motors needed to move everything. That’s it. So we can make our turret pretty freaking small. Most of its mass will be composite armor modules. The main gun is a 120 mm L/55 smoothbore, that wonderful Nato standard. A few changes from what you might see on your bog standard Leopard 2A6 though. First, there’s no bore evacuator, because the autoloader doesn’t care about fumes, and Cylon-OSHA isn’t a thing we have to deal with in Borgundy. Second, the chamber and recoil system are designed with future, higher-pressure rounds in mind, just in case upgrades to ammunition are needed. Third, we’ve got the necessary data interfaces built in to let us use smart rounds like the Israeli LAHAT gun-launched ATGM or the KSTAM top-attack round from South Korea. It has the usual muzzle reference sensor, muzzle cant sensor, crosswind sensor, and muzzle velocity sensor. It’s stabilized in two axes, with an active damping system to reduce barrel vibrations.

The autoloader is worth discussing here, since it’s a good part of how we’re keeping armored volume down. Rounds are stored in a vertical carousel, point-down. The carousel has a capacity of 60 rounds. The autoloader can load at a rate of about twelve rounds per minute, it can extract unfired shells, and it can eject duds (or spent case bases) out a rear hatch in the turret. This is also used for reloading the carousel. There’s no other access to the carousel without removing the turret. It’s a pain, but there’s nothing to be done about it. The autoloader scans a barcode on each round as it’s loaded in the carousel, so that the stores management system can keep track of how many rounds of each type are loaded and where they are in the carousel. Each round is stored in its own canister to minimize the chance of a catastrophic explosion. Finally, the carousel is designed to safely vent such an explosion away from the crew compartment.

The coaxial machine gun is the usual FN GPMG in 7.62×51 mm, with 4,500 ready rounds and a heavy barrel, since it’s not easily accessible without pulling armor modules. The magazine for the coax gun is accessible through a roof hatch for reloading.

Now, we come to the crew compartment. Here, we have the driver, tank commander and gunner, sitting at their stations. The driver is seated on the vehicle’s left, the gunner is seated in the middle, and the commander is seated on the vehicle’s right. All crewmen have their own hatch to allow for a rapid exit. Hatches are very thick, and are power-opening. The gunner has a single vision block for emergency uses; he does not have the option to operate turned out. The driver and commander have five vision blocks with associated thermal viewing units, and may perform their duties when turned out. The driver has a separate hull mounted thermal viewing unit, capable of 1x and 4x magnification for searching or resolving obstacles. He also has thermal-capable cameras to provide view to the sides and rear. He can cycle through these views on his internal monitors.

The commander can also view through the driver’s thermal cameras on his monitors. In addition, he controls an independent thermal sight mounted atop the turret. This sight is capable of 3x, 6x, 13x, 25x or 50x magnification, and is a third generation3 imaging system. The commander’s independent sight has an Nd:YAG laser rangefinder. The commander can match gun bearing to his sight bearing automatically with the push of a button, and he can fire the main gun (or the coax gun for that matter) himself if he wishes. The commander’s sight is, of course, fully stabilized. Slaved to the sight is a biaxially-stabilized remote weapons station, mounting a 12.7mm M2A1 HMG with 400 ready rounds.

The gunner’s sight is a copy of the commander’s; he has the same 3x/6x/13x/25x/50x magnification options, the same Nd:YAG laser rangefinder, and the same third generation thermal imager. His fire control computer is capable of automatically tracking targets. The gunner’s sight is biaxially stabilized like the main gun. The gunner’s computer can select round types and display remaining quantities of available ammunition by type. The gunner’s sight also integrates the laser guidance system for gun-launched ATGMs with semi-active laser homing guidance like the LAHAT. There’s a second, backup, sight mounted just below the main gun with fixed, 8x magnification and a stadiametric rangefinding reticle, and the gunner can also pull this view into his displays.

Hull armor is necessarily sturdy. Around the crew compartment and ammo stowage area, the sponsons contain only armor, and the thick glacis is sloped 82 degrees4 to maximize effective thickness. This is also the minimum angle for long rod penetrators to have a reasonably significant chance of ricochet, which further enhances survivability. The crew compartment has a thick bulkhead aft to divide it off from the ammo compartment. It also has a thick spall liner to minimize damage in the event of a penetration. NBC protection, plus heating and air conditioning, are provided.

In terms of electrics, the fire control system can do automatic target tracking, and can pull in information from encrypted line-of-sight, frequency-hopping, tactical radios as well as satellite tracking data if available. Information includes the vehicle’s position, positions of other friendly vehicles, information on known or suspected enemy positions, and information on terrain and obstacles. Information from ground surveillance aircraft5 can also be pulled into the network. For more traditional means of data gathering, there’s an external telephone provided on the hull to allow nearby infantry to talk directly to the crew.

Looking to the flanks, we come to the suspension. There are seven roadwheels per side. The suspension is a controllable hydropneumatic system, so the Myrmidon can lean and adjust ride height. Ground clearance is adjustable from 14 cm to 74 cm. I would love an actively damped suspension like the early-90s Williams F1 cars used to have, but the heaviest things those have been put on is a CV90, which, as we’ll soon see, is quite a bit lighter than the Myrmidon. We do have a dynamic track tension system though to keep the optimal tension on the tracks without requiring manual adjustment. The flanks are protected with heavy side skirts that contain composite armor. These can be supplemented with reactive armor cassettes, especially useful for operations in built-up areas.

Let’s talk active protection. Alas, it will drive the cost up, but all the cool kids have one on their tanks, so we should too. Plus, it saves us the trouble of trying to protect the sides and top of the tank from something like a Hellfire missile. The first part is seeing the missile coming, and the easiest way to do that is with small radars. Naturally, we locate these around the turret to provide an all-around view, like the systems on the Merkava Mark IV or the K2. This data will also be available for the crew so they can counterattack. If a launch is detected, the crew has the option to swing the turret towards the launch, presenting the thickest armor and simplifying return fire. The crew can also trigger smoke grenade dischargers to throw up a smoke screen that contains thermal obscurants. We will also integrate the Israeli Trophy hard-kill system. Trophy has successfully intercepted a number of high-end Russian anti-tank weapons, including the Kornet, the RPG-29, and the Konkurs. Field tested is excellent. We’ll be keenly interested in Rafael’s follow-on system.

Now let’s get down to the figures for dimensions and a cost guesstimate. The hull is 8.7 meters long, and is 3.657 meters wide with the skirts detached. We’re constrained in width by the need to fit on road and rail transporters. Fuel is stored in the aft section of the sponsons, on either side of the engine compartment, below the engine in an “inverted saddle” arrangement, and around the ammunition carousel. The fuel tanks are built with a heavy internal baffle structure to increase their protective value. 1,500 L of fuel are carried internally. A pair of 200 L fuel drums can be carried, one on either side of the turret, in quick-release brackets. Obviously, these shouldn’t be mounted in areas where heavy combat is expected. We reckon the Myrmidon would tip the scales at about 57 tonnes.

Let’s talk cost. How bad will this tank be? Well, we’ve kept it simple above. Hull construction is of welded steel; unlike on my Thunderbolt design workup, the Myrmidon uses no special techniques to reduce weight. Armor does have wonderful things like super-hard steel and depleted uranium, which is going to up the cost a bit. We’ve got plenty of nice electrics, but nothing that hasn’t been done before. Even the autoloader was done before in the late 80s as part of the M1 TTB project, and the LV100-5 engine was worked up for the Crusader artillery project. Uralvagonzavod claims that the Armata will come in at about $4 million, but we’ll see how that works out for them. Russia also claims they’ll order 2,300 T-14s. Again, color me skeptical. To be frank, I don’t believe a figure of $4 million dollars for the T-14, and some analysts reckon a rather higher figure, something more like $8 million. So, we can’t use a direct comparison. The K2 Black Panther is pretty similar to the Myrmidon in terms of complexity and electronics fit. The configuration is somewhat different in that the K2 is traditionally configured. On the other hand, the South Koreans aren’t ordering a lot, and we plan6 a big, Russian-sized order to equip our armored divisions. The K2 comes in at a bit over $9 million per unit. We reckon we can come in under $8 million.

1.) Well, production-ish. Like many other projects in Putin’s Russia, there’s a lot of question as to how many of these are actually going to get made. They’re not making many PAK FAs for example, and they may or may not make many T-14s. That said, the one in the Great Patriotic War Victory Parade was a pretty complete pre-production or low-rate initial production model, which is a lot farther than anyone else has gone with this.
2.) More precisely, tactical “idle”, which is actually 60% of max RPM, because throttle response on a gas turbine is terrible. The torques are outrageous though, again because turbine.
3.) i.e. it’s a dual band (MWIR and LWIR) imaging unit.
4.) From the vertical. Duh. Measuring armor angle from the vertical makes more intuitive sense to me, since a measure of 0 degrees–completely vertical–conveniently equates to a line of sight thickness multiplier of 0.
5.) e.g. JSTARS
6.) If the Russians can do it, so can we. We’re totally ordering something like 2,300 Myrmidons.

Issue Kit Thoughts

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Pondering my AR builds, both extant and forthcoming, as well as modern combat trends has given me some ideas on how one ought to kit out an infantry force. A couple of them aren’t very revolutionary, and one is pretty different. We’ll start with the least controversial, and go on towards things that will require a bit more arguing.

Premise 1: Issue body armor all around.
This one’s a pretty easy sell. Frontline troops have been widely issued body armor since (at least) the Vietnam war. That body armor was a flak jacket, which is designed to provide protection from fragmentation weapons. Body armor saves lives, and that protects the investment in soldier training, plus looks better to the civilians at home. The trick with body armor is to balance weight and protection, which will be the focus of another article. It’s important to not forget to include load bearing equipment in the body armor system. The vest should be designed to distribute the weight of the armor already, and PALS webbing (or similar) saves having to deal with yet another wearable. This is not only awkward, but it makes it harder for medics to get to an injured soldier to provide care.

Premise 2: Every longarm should have an optic
Once again, this one’s pretty simple. Optics are way better than iron sights. The trick has always been getting them rugged enough and cheap enough to issue generally, and we’ve been nailing that since the 90s (maybe earlier). With modular picatinny rail mounts, we needn’t specify which optic to the weapon designer. There are a lot of options here, and we’ll have a future article devoted to the choice. In brief though, there’s the red dot optic, the low-magnification, fixed-power scope, and the low magnification, variable-power scope. Magnification gives the ability to identify targets at range if they’re hiding (maybe insurgents in a crowd, or maybe soldiers in the brush), but the dot is simpler and faster to use. A well designed low power variable scope gives the best of both worlds, but the variable power adds weight and complexity, and they’re not as rugged.

Premise 3: Pistols suck. Therefore, issue carbines
This one’s pretty easy to argue. Happily, it also hurts the feelings of idiots. But a carbine is a much more lethal weapon than a pistol. It shoots a more powerful round, holds more ammo, and is easier to shoot well. Carbines rock. Issuing carbines generally to officers has the fringe benefit of making them stand out less in a sniper’s scope. Pistols are historically a badge of authority. Or, a ‘Shoot Me’ indicator, depending on which side of the scope you are. So there’s a benefit there. The issue, of course, is that carbines are bigger and heavier than pistols. In a highly mechanized force though, this isn’t a huge problem since one’s base vehicle can carry that carbine backup weapon. Even light infantry type forces can go this route: the US Marines issue M4s to just about everybody. Even officers as high as Lieutenant Colonel get M4s. We should follow suit. About the only role I can think of that can’t is fighter pilots. Maybe if I break the weapon down I can get it into a survival kit.

Premise 4: Every carbine, rifle, and man-portable machine gun should have a suppressor
Okay, here’s the one that’s a little out there, mostly because I no longer have a real world force to lean on. SOCOM does this, but they’re all special forces guys. So why would we do it generally? Like optics in the 90s, we’ve got suppressors that are mature enough to minimize the disadvantages. Modern suppressors are reasonably lightweight and quite durable. The Surefire SOCOM RC2 (5.56) suppressors, for example, weigh just over a pound and the Surefire SOCOM-556MG suppressors weigh just under a pound and a half. Great! But, as well-educated firearms enthusiasts, we know that suppressors don’t actually silence firearms like you see in lame action movies. That’s fine. We actually get many benefits from the suppressor anyway, even if it can’t turn a bunch of grunts into ninjas.

The first and most obvious benefit is that a suppressed gun is easier on one’s hearing. This is most noticeable indoors, and is why so many special forces and SWAT guys run suppressors. The suppressor might be thought of as taking the edge off of a gunshot, and this is great if you train a lot indoors, or find yourself indoors. It takes the edge off outside too, which is helpful when you and your buddies are engaging some enemy scumbags. Suppressors also eliminate flash. This brings two more advantages: first, this helps mask a soldier’s position. There’s no big obvious flash to pinpoint his position. Second, in a low-light setting where a soldier might be using night vision equipment, a suppressor prevents flash from washing out the light amplification systems in the goggles. Finally, that ‘taking the edge off’ of the report of weapons also helps obscure the soldier and make his position less obvious in a quick engagement or ambush. It’s not about completely eliminating sound, it’s just about managing it and making it harder to track.

There we go. Four ways to maximize the effectiveness of soldiers. And one of them is even pretty aggressive and forward-looking.

Edit to add: Since it’s come up a few times in the comments, and I’d hate to leave conclusions there to fester, let’s talk prices and make some comparisons. Currently, SOCOM has tested and approved Surefire suppressors for deployment in the field. The MSRP of one of these models is $1,375.00. Let’s look at the MSRP of some other pieces of equipment commonly issued. The USMC’s standard issue optic has been the Trijicon ACOG. The current model of choice is the TA31RCO-A4CP which has an MSRP of $1,724.00. Aimpoint doesn’t list MSRPs on their website, but their Comp M4, used by the US Army, the Norwegian Army, and a whole bunch of others, seems to have an MSRP of about $850.00 or so. Oh, and while not being sold to civilians, the price of one of the super awesome GPNVG-18 Panoramic Night Vision goggle sets used in the Bin Laden raid is about $65,000.00. All prices given in US Dollars and are current to the best of my knowledge as of April 10, 2018.

Borgundy Army Organization: Tank Platoon

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The tank platoon is the basic unit of armored organization. How you structure it will shape tactics and has a direct bearing on costs. One might think that tank tactics are an extension of infantry tactics. And that a tank platoon should have subelements that the platoon leader can use to perform fire and maneuver organically, i.e. without attached elements, just like an infantry platoon does. To facilitate this, the traditional tank platoon consists of five tanks: two maneuver elements of two tanks and one tank for the leader. This formation works. It was the standard formation for both the US Army and the Wehrmacht Heer in World War 2. If it’s good enough for Heinz Guderian and George Patton, it’s good enough for me.

Only kidding. That would make for a very short post. Almost invariably, the girly-men in accounting start objecting as tanks get pricey, and cut the leader-tank, reducing the platoon to four. It happened to the German heavy tank platoons near the end of the Second World War, which only had four tigers instead of five. When the US Army moved from the old M60 to the big, expensive M1, it too lost the leader-tank. And for once the bean counters appear to be right. There doesn’t appear to be much lost effectiveness in the four tank platoon. Certainly it wasn’t an impediment for the tiger platoons, and the US Army doesn’t appear to complain overmuch. Fine. So, four tanks per platoon. The platoon is cheaper that way. Don’t tell the bean counters that I agree with them though. They’ll just demand more cuts.

The clever reader will no doubt note that I haven’t mentioned the Russians yet. They have a three-tank platoon, and have used it since the Great Patriotic War. Three is a natural alternative to four, and was easier for novice Russian tankers to command, especially as they lacked radios. Of course, our tanks have radios. In the air, the finger four formation has proven superior to the three-plane vic formation. But the Russians haven’t complained, despite spending an awful lot of time fighting the Germans with the four- and five-tank platoon. The Russians do use a finger-four type formation in the air presently. Of course, tanks are not fighter planes, and we should beware too many comparisons without adequate backing.

Interestingly, the army with the most post-World War II tank combat experience, the Israeli Defense Force, has moved from the old Western standard five-tank platoon to the Russian standard three-tank platoon, and are quite happy with the change. The Americans, British, and Germans have all studied the three-tank platoon, and the British and Germans have both taken steps toward adopting it. Generals Balck and von Mellenthin, formerly of the Wehrmacht and with extensive experience on the Eastern front, were also big fans of the three-tank platoon for being easier to command. They have written somewhat extensively on the subject, and have used it to good effect in NATO war games. This is a trend, and the trend is your friend, as several of my old professors used to say.

One might ask “Why?” More is usually better, not worse. Why should tank platoons follow the example of taxes and not money? Fascinatingly, the US Army may have the answer, even though they presently stick with the four-tank platoon. In simulated combat studies in both the late seventies and early 2000s, the three tank platoon is as good as or better than the four or five tank platoon in any reasonable metric you care to name, and these benefits seem to derive from the fact that it is easier to maneuver and direct the fire of a three-tank platoon. It’s about as survivable and is generally able to more effectively kill enemy armor. The exception comes in urban areas, when the effectiveness is not statistically different. As a bonus, it appeases the bean counters. And it is easier for a young lieutenant to command, even if that lieutenant has modern radios.

Thus there shall be three tanks in a platoon, and the number of tanks in a tank platoon shall be three. Four is right out.