We learnt that lesson during the Nargano Karabkh war. The Russians also thought us that by their very effective employment of UASs, as part of a very effective strike/recce capability in the Donbass. If reports emerging are accurate we are seeing increased use of UASs in the Ukraine.
cdxbow
Well-Known Member
ASPI has an article by an Army analyst, Willian Leben Redesigning the Australian Army for an uncertain future | The Strategist (aspistrategist.org.au) suggesting a construct somewhat similar to the USMC expeditionary advanced base operations. Mobile platoon to company sized groups with a range of extended capabilities.
Which I guess is great when you have the entire US Army, Navy and Airforce behind you, so what would be the proposed force structure and Conops in an Australian perspective that makes that viable ? They seem to pump out the ideas, but not a lot of thought in the background for how is would actually apply to Australia.
It sounds similar to the force structure that saw so many Australian troops captured and slaughtered on the islands to our north in 1942.
Plucky groups of poorly supported infantry sounds cool but leads to lots of dead troops.
Just watched utube by The Chieftain on drawing conclusions about the future of armor based on the information coming from the war in Ukraine.
Makes many good points.
Aussie optimist
Member
Really good insight. I think it completely hits the proverbial nail on the head.
Thanks for sharing your find MickB, it has been proving hard to get unbiased information and insight lately.
The jury maybe out and lessons will be learned, but I feel the key point is to have some perspective of the actual scale of this conflict.
Now is not the time to buy lots of heavy armoured vehicles | The Strategist
It’s disturbing to see $18–27 billion of Australian government money about to be spent on more than 400 heavily armoured ‘infantry fighting vehicles’ when we’re busily watching yet another conflict in which military vehicles like ...www.aspistrategist.org.au
Seems like a lot of people are questioning the viability of armoured vehicles in the modern combat environment. I am yet to form an opinion but seeing multi-million dollar tanks being destroyed by relatively cheap anti-tank weapons is certainly does raise questions. Having said that I wouldn't get too carried away with the Russian experience.
Having an immobile armoured vehicle sitting out in the open because it ran out of fuel is really inviting disaster. However a formation of armoured vehicles in conjunction with proper logistics, air cover and ground troops would still be a pretty terrifying prospect.
The jury is out in my opinion.
This is a large peer on peer conflict the likes of which are seldom seen.
The result was always going to be carnage made worse be the large numbers employed.
Sure there are many destroyed armored vehicles, but have they fared any worse than the dismounted infantry, supporting arms and the logistic train that supports them. When this bloody mess is over someone will do a stock take and army's will evolve accordingly, but in the mean time it is saddening to see such loss.
Regards S
MARKMILES77
Active Member
I note the ASPI article.
Can I ask one question, since to argue against heavy armour for the Australian Army seems to be considered trolling?
Do you accept that the question of the utility of heavy armoured vehicles on the future battlefield is a matter of legitimate debate in Defence circles?
If you do, then surely you accept that arguments both for AND against are legitimate points of view.
Enough is enough. You have not listened and are attempting to continue a pointless conversation. You are not a Subject Matter Expert therefore the subject is closed as far as you are concerned.
If you try to push it the Moderators will take action against you without further warning. Take this as a final warning WRT this topic. This is non negotiable.
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I read some declassified papers regarding the failed attempt to replace the Carrier Melbourne in the early 80s. What astounded me was not what the RAAF had to say on the matter, or the navy for that matter but the opinion, stated as fact by the assistant chief scientist, It was complete, delusional crap. What was even worse was the papers straddled the Falklands war, where everything this bloke had said about carriers and Sea harriers being useless was disproven and he still stuck to his guns.
Basically the Sea harrier is useless and would be swept from the skies by aircraft such as the F-5 and A-4 prevalent in our region. Sea Kings and their dunking sonars were useless when compared to sonar buoys dropped by Orions and it was quite clear to him that the Barra Sonar buoy had made helicopter sonars totally obsolete.
His recommendation, replace the 10 P-3Bs with an extra 10 P-3Cs because not to do so would seriously compromise Australia's defence as Orions offered more ASW capability than the entire RAN.
This was a defence scientist, a bloke who cut his teeth on guided missiles in the 50s, advising politicians who had no idea and relied on advice from experts. Not even the RAAF was as arrogant and anti FAA as this bloke, he seemed to see the navy as obsolete.
The reason I bring this up is you need to understand even defence "experts" have biases and sometimes the better they are at their specialty the more blinkered they are in regards to things they don't know or understand.
Australia has never deployed massed armor. We have only ever used it as a much smaller component of combined arms operations or not at all. These "experts" make it sound like we trading other critical capabilities to turn the army into one giant armoured division, the truth of the matter is, after hard lessons learnt, we are finally acquiring enough vehicles to equip the force structure we have had in one form or another since the 50s. That is, three, not ten, not thirty, not one hundred, but three, tank squadrons and enough AIFVs to lift three battalions, not six, not nine, three. This is basically the minimum required level to actually deploy a balanced force to contribute to the kind of limited conflict we have been involved in for the last two decades.
Once everything has been delivered do you know how many armoured Brigades we will have, not divisions, brigades? None! We are not acquiring sufficient vehicle to equip a single armoured Brigade. So reality check here, we do not have enough tanks to depoly them the way the Russians have, we only have enough to support our understrength Infantry brigades in limited combined arms operations. Our tanks will not be taken out like the Russian tanks were, because they will be operating in support of the infantry and screened by CAV and aviation, because that is what our force structure is, and that's the amount of equipment we are getting.
I really wish Raven or Takao would drop in, they are far more across all of this than me.
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I for one don’t. Are you proposing instead to send troops in non-armoured vehicles, which are every bit as vulnerable to drones as some heavy armour, as well as every single OTHER threat in a battlespace?
Because the lessons learned from this conflict seem a bit lopsided…
Why is 300 odd tanks being captured or destroyed an important fact that needs to be debated in our context with half the argument being ‘get rid of them entirely’ when we have upwards of 20,000 infantry (on both sides) killed?
If stats are important, than switching force structures to a light infantry based force for a peer on peer fight for national survival, based on those stats, would be absolutely disastrous for us...
ASPI’s argument basically boils down to buying more missiles (than we are already) instead of tanks, to defend our air-sea gap and use the Army for little more than mopping up operations… Honestly if it turned out to be a long range plot by Paul Dibb, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest…
But such a plan completely ignores reality and history, that the best way to fight is to go and fight this threat where it may be, rather than waiting for it to come here and to do so you require expeditionary warfare capabilities and in the land domain, those include close combat capability.
Vesting yourself in ATGW and loitering munitions may work reasonably well in the defence, when it is basically all you can do, but as I said earlier, I would hope our defence planners can do just a tad better, when you see what the real world results are. A possible victory (of sorts) maybe, but a completely ruined country in the process…
Thinking on it further, and I will have to try and dig this out, I read a paper on the differing doctrine between US and Russian combined arms battle groups. Basically the US is quite heavy on heavy armour and direct fire, while the Russians use a much smaller armour / infantry element to find and fix the enemy so it can then be destroyed by massed in direct fire. So the US looks to use maneuver to smash the enemy, think Battle of 73 Easting in the 91 Gulf war, while the Russians a more about reconnaissance by force then raining down hell.
The US BG has a platoon of mortars as their heaviest indirect fire, the equivalent Russian unit has batteries SPGs and MRLS.
Thinking back to WWII, I think everyone has heard of the STUG, the Assault Gun that became a Tank Destroyer. German doctrine was to directly support each STUG with a platoon of infantry. Think about it, a platoon (Battery?) of STUGs was supported by over a company of infantry. The post war Australian army, at it greatest strength, had one Tank Regiment to nine Infantry Battalions, that is one troop of three tanks per Battalion.
The US BG has a platoon of mortars as their heaviest indirect fire, the equivalent Russian unit has batteries SPGs and MRLS.
Thinking back to WWII, I think everyone has heard of the STUG, the Assault Gun that became a Tank Destroyer. German doctrine was to directly support each STUG with a platoon of infantry. Think about it, a platoon (Battery?) of STUGs was supported by over a company of infantry. The post war Australian army, at it greatest strength, had one Tank Regiment to nine Infantry Battalions, that is one troop of three tanks per Battalion.
They supported each StuG wih a platoon of infantry, but that doesn't mean every platoon of infantry was supported by a StuG. Three tanks per battalion would probably have seemed like luxury to them.
Germany had about 100 infantry divisions in 1939, & notionally 3472 tanks - but that included 1445 Pz I (5 tons, 2 MGs), 1223 Pz II (9 tons, 1 20mm) & 215 Pz I based Pz Befehl. If you count the Pz Is I think you have to count M113s for Australia.
With Pz IIs there were 1675 tanks. Without, just 452. That's between 0.5 & 1.8 'tanks' per battalion, & ASLAV & Boxer are both more heavily armed than Pz II was.
Germany had about 100 infantry divisions in 1939, & notionally 3472 tanks - but that included 1445 Pz I (5 tons, 2 MGs), 1223 Pz II (9 tons, 1 20mm) & 215 Pz I based Pz Befehl. If you count the Pz Is I think you have to count M113s for Australia.
With Pz IIs there were 1675 tanks. Without, just 452. That's between 0.5 & 1.8 'tanks' per battalion, & ASLAV & Boxer are both more heavily armed than Pz II was.
This article provides some current history of the tank defensive systems against missiles and the missile systems used to attack the tank,I believe this article is in context to the tank debate raised by events in the Ukraine war
mwi.usma.edu
On Killing Tanks - Modern War Institute
I would rather be the hammer than the anvil. — Erwin Rommel Ever since modern tanks’ first appearance on the twentieth-century battlefield, infantry forces and their armored counterparts have […]
mwi.usma.edu
Exactly, sorry I didn't make that clear.
Armchair experts seem to see armour as all or nothing, either the army is all tanks or all infantry. They don't realise that even small amounts of armour can deliver effects out of all proportion to their numbers, but that small numbers, in particular, are extremely valuable and need to be protected.
Thanks Volk for some perspective
I'm all for the armored purchases planned.
The financial outlay certainly looks scary, but it is what it is.
Capability costs money.
The ADF does need an armored option and what we are getting is really very modest in size.
Realistically a deplorable force of one Sqn of tanks, three of IFV's supported by a one or two Cav Sqns and some SPG's.
While seemingly small on numbers and to some not worth the effort, this force package still represents a very potent force.
It will punch above it's weight!
Why?
Because it is balanced and fully equipped for it's intended size.
Something we have not had in the past.
Add to this force, the fact it is operating within the much larger framework of a modern and balanced ADF.
That's an Army with all it's own land / air and maritime assets, which in turn is supported with the very potent assets of the RAAF and the RAN.
Putting it all together gives us the ability to successfully close with an enemy in a highly contested environment.
Something not to be underestimated!
We are not about conquering nations, just limiting the options of any aggressor.
Hopefully this capability provides enough deterrence never to be tested.
Regards S
Redlands18
Well-Known Member
I take it you meant Deplo-Y-able force, amazing how a one letter typo can completely change the meaning of a sentence.
Ha Ha Ha
Oops!
Well I think it would be "deplorable" if you were on the receiving end of such a potent force.
Good pickup.
Enjoy your day
Humiliated S
Redlands18
Well-Known Member
No dramas Mate, I'm sure we are all guilty of the occasional Typo.Ha Ha Ha
Oops!
Well I think it would be "deplorable" if you were on the receiving end of such a potent force.
Good pickup.
Enjoy your day
Humiliated S