Will we see future tank projects such as the Leopard 3 emerging?
- Thread starter M1Brams
- Start date
Would it be accurate to say that the only or the main advantage HAPCs like Namer and Achzarit, when they were introduced, provided over IFVs are that they are much more heavily protected?
In your opinion what are the main disadvantages in operating HAPCs over IFVs or in operating HAPC alongside MBTs, like you would with IFVs?
Apologies, I'm a bit lost here. Is this why Namer and Achzarit are armed only with an MG fitted to an OWS and nothing heavier? Wouldn't this be a bit risky if both types of vehicles found themselves in a position where they were faced with other IFVs that could not be penetrated by their on board MGs, and they did not have MBTs to support them?
IIRC didnt the WW2 QF 25lber field gun have a direct fire AT capability?
Here's a video of an AS90 doing some direct fire missions (although I have to say, for me there seems like too much of a time delay between firing/visual impact on some occasions, at least too me it seems pretty long when looking at the distance - or my depth perception could just be 'naff)
[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNt7ZgAEeL8"]AS90 - YouTube[/nomedia]
Seems like a pretty handy ace up the sleeve for any SPGs caught unaware.
Armoured Recce
Banned Member
Nice footage...
Looks alot like BATUS ( British Army Training Unit Suffield) located in Alberta Canada....
The Brits keep a decent amount of armour and equipment here all the time ...they rotate units in as "Home Unit" as well as rotating units for training.
Cheers for sharing....
Looks alot like BATUS ( British Army Training Unit Suffield) located in Alberta Canada....
The Brits keep a decent amount of armour and equipment here all the time ...they rotate units in as "Home Unit" as well as rotating units for training.
Cheers for sharing....
Several things made the idea of converting tanks into HAPCs a viable idea for the Israelis. The tanks used were models which the IDF didn't want to integrate into their armoured corps, converting them did cost less than designing a new vehicle or ordering one abroad.
As for the Israeli ideas behind HAPCs. The IDF sees the MBT as the main delivery plattform for direct fire. The HAPC needs to bring the infantry to their dismount point and while doing so protect them as much as possible.
The problem I have with this is that during the mobile mounted combat phase the MechInf is largely passive. To add their firepower to the battle the infantry needs to dismount and disperse which costs time and slows down the whole combined arms group. An advantage is that a HAPC usually carries more dismounts.
My problem is the lack of firepower while being on the move as well as the lack of general firepower compared to a mechinf unit equipped with IFVs. The two Iraq wars are good examples of how the firepower of IFVs was important for the success of several combined arms units.
A Heavy IFV would resolve that problem, wouldn't it? Russia is currently developing one on the Armata platform. It would have the necessary mobile fire support, while still delivering dismounts.
Jup, it would.
Protection is one thing with which I agree wholeheary with the Israelis. There is no reason why the MechInf should be much less well protected than their tank brothers. But I think we are also seeing a trend here. The Puma is 43 tons which is alot. The CV90 also got much heavier with the years.
IMO the russians are actually doing it right and the Israelis would do it right, too, if they would make a proper IFV out of it. Ideas about SAMPSON 30mm/Spike weapons stations are circulating, though.
Protection is one thing with which I agree wholeheary with the Israelis. There is no reason why the MechInf should be much less well protected than their tank brothers. But I think we are also seeing a trend here. The Puma is 43 tons which is alot. The CV90 also got much heavier with the years.
IMO the russians are actually doing it right and the Israelis would do it right, too, if they would make a proper IFV out of it. Ideas about SAMPSON 30mm/Spike weapons stations are circulating, though.
@kato: Indeed. It also shows just how the focus shifted in the last twentyfive years. Of course such a movie tries to tick allmost all the boxes, so you tend to see quite some different options.
1) The importance of the tank-infantry team and not just for break-throughs (perhaps even less there) but also when encountering prepared or hasty enemy blocking positions or strongpoints in depth was quite clear after the last war. However the infantry and the artillery had a hard time to achieve the desired operational tempo and to keep up with the tanks.
2) A tracked and armored battle taxis made it considerably harder for the enemy artillery and infantry weapons (mortars, MG, etc) to seperate the own infantry from the tanks and allowed on suited terrain for far greater tactical and operational mobility. It could also offer various ABC protection, something would make mobility and survival of leg infantry an even bigger issue then before.
3) A low-velocity gun/machine cannon (BMP-2) could greatly increase the firepower of the section against
a) enemy infantry in the open or in cover
b) enemy AFV in particular those lighter then a MBT.
A missile launcher go do the same at greater range but with a far lower rate of fire and ammunition load.
Of course things have changed a lot, but one can still say that an IFV adds firepower at some cost of infantry support and money. Others might argue for more infantry and a couple more of the real hard-hitters.
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A modern IFV has shown it's worth in the recent conflicts for mostly the same key components. It can quickly move under armor a small section of infantry and support the latter with a very considerable amount of firepower. For example in Afghanistan IFVs like the LAV-25 and the Marder have shown the importance of 'organic' firepower in situations where small groups of lightly AFV are without tank support. In this sense a 20 or 25mm on your AFV is much better then a 120mm gun at home, and this should hold truth also in similar situations in an 'conventional' war.
It is of course much harder to fully gauge the effect of such weapon system in an conventional war against a strong enemy.
The discussion IFV/APC is a rather big one and contains so much ifs, but is interesting to see how and under which circumstances such designs were chosen and operated. The BMP-1 was IMHO a early Cold War design with a WWII take.
1) The importance of the tank-infantry team and not just for break-throughs (perhaps even less there) but also when encountering prepared or hasty enemy blocking positions or strongpoints in depth was quite clear after the last war. However the infantry and the artillery had a hard time to achieve the desired operational tempo and to keep up with the tanks.
2) A tracked and armored battle taxis made it considerably harder for the enemy artillery and infantry weapons (mortars, MG, etc) to seperate the own infantry from the tanks and allowed on suited terrain for far greater tactical and operational mobility. It could also offer various ABC protection, something would make mobility and survival of leg infantry an even bigger issue then before.
3) A low-velocity gun/machine cannon (BMP-2) could greatly increase the firepower of the section against
a) enemy infantry in the open or in cover
b) enemy AFV in particular those lighter then a MBT.
A missile launcher go do the same at greater range but with a far lower rate of fire and ammunition load.
Of course things have changed a lot, but one can still say that an IFV adds firepower at some cost of infantry support and money. Others might argue for more infantry and a couple more of the real hard-hitters.
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A modern IFV has shown it's worth in the recent conflicts for mostly the same key components. It can quickly move under armor a small section of infantry and support the latter with a very considerable amount of firepower. For example in Afghanistan IFVs like the LAV-25 and the Marder have shown the importance of 'organic' firepower in situations where small groups of lightly AFV are without tank support. In this sense a 20 or 25mm on your AFV is much better then a 120mm gun at home, and this should hold truth also in similar situations in an 'conventional' war.
It is of course much harder to fully gauge the effect of such weapon system in an conventional war against a strong enemy.
If the US plans on mothballing the Lima plant for 4 years, then spooling back up for the M1A3 upgrades...then what are all those tank construction specialists (a pretty niche and obscure skill I imagine) going to do for 4 years? Work at Walmart?
"Hey we need to not pay you for 4 years, but don't go anywhere since we'll need you later and no-one else in the US has your skill sets".
There seems to be a logical flaw here....
Adrian
"Hey we need to not pay you for 4 years, but don't go anywhere since we'll need you later and no-one else in the US has your skill sets".
There seems to be a logical flaw here....
Adrian
Well, during Desert Storm the US Bradleys accounted for alot of kills and added alot of firepower during the fast flowing mechanized battles of the ground campaign. MechInf equipped with an APC wouldn't have played quite such a role.
The same goes for Iraqi Freedom. The first and second thunders runs showed their ability to overcome the passivity of APC born MechInf during mounted operations as well as providing heavy fire in support for it's dismounts while being in the defence like when infantry teams secured critical intersections during the second thunder run.
As one said, one may have not enough dismounts as one might want in some situations due to the lower dismount capability but that's also a question of intend. If you are short on infantry numbers attach additional light/mot infantry to your battlegroup and don't try to make the MechInf even more jack of all trades than they already are.
No sane person wouldd use light infantry against heavy forces in the open so one shouldn't frown onto an armoured battlegroup that it can't operate effectively in restricted terrain because it's MechInfBn doesn't have enough dismounts.
The same goes for Iraqi Freedom. The first and second thunders runs showed their ability to overcome the passivity of APC born MechInf during mounted operations as well as providing heavy fire in support for it's dismounts while being in the defence like when infantry teams secured critical intersections during the second thunder run.
As one said, one may have not enough dismounts as one might want in some situations due to the lower dismount capability but that's also a question of intend. If you are short on infantry numbers attach additional light/mot infantry to your battlegroup and don't try to make the MechInf even more jack of all trades than they already are.
No sane person wouldd use light infantry against heavy forces in the open so one shouldn't frown onto an armoured battlegroup that it can't operate effectively in restricted terrain because it's MechInfBn doesn't have enough dismounts.
A medium caliber 35mm to 40mm high velocity autocannon may be a better choice, particularly if the vehicle is operating with the tanks. A HE round with a multi-option fuse allowing time/distance airbursts, impact, and impact plus delay is a better choice for a) than a heavy shell, and the APDSFS can penetrate anything except the frontal armor of a MBT. It also allows a much larger number of sowed kills.
Put it in a high angle mount, add the proper sensor and aiming equipment, and AHEAD ammunition would allow it to also perform in CRAM (Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Missile), adding significantly to the defense of the combined force.
I know nothing about such plans, however I find it interesting to compare the peace-time defense industry to some extent to a peace-time army. How to manage it in times of little demand and how do plan a potential rapid expansion in times of need? A great degree of useful skill set is found in the rest of the industry/economy, and a broad and deep base is incredible important for a war industry, but a robust, experienced and specialized core is needed to expand quickly or to just keep things going. (This is also one of the reason why procurments are often quite inefficient, as they are mostly seen as keeping the national base intact and people employed)
In this sense you can not just switch a factory on and off, as Adrian wrote.
Actually the reasons procurement in the US is so inefficient is because they do switch off factories, and especially development projects on and off, and designate their personnel for layoff, nearly every year because of funding delays from the (non)budget cycle. The personnel, needless to say, find new jobs elsewhere and when that years funding finally gets decided and released they have to hire new people and get them up to speed. Then, just as they are hitting their stride, the funding runs out at the end of the year because the budget is delayed and the whole cycle starts over again.
Pretty much been that way since the end of WWII. :unknown
The trend has been of course towards such cannons, with an increase in calibre complimented by ATGM and MGs.
The integration of CRAM in an AFV with an already wide array of task should rather costly and complex further increasing the already very high costs. I have little doubt that active defense systems, hard kill and soft kill have an ever increasing utility, possibly ending in an broader intergration. One has however be aware that such active systems based on radar can telegraph their location for capable conventional enemies with receivers. And a heavy artillery concentration with 'dumb' shells, be it with bomblets or conventional can still cause neutralization and partial destruction.
You only need radar to provide warning and cuing. For actual targeting LADAR is more precise, compact, and difficult to backtrack.
Yes it will be costly. Yes, it can be overwhelmed, any system can, so what? Any bombard that can overwhelm the system to ‘cause neutralization and partial destruction’ will probably be capable of slaughter the protected units without the CRAM systems.
But probably not with conventional shells without either massing a huge number of guns or a sustained bombardment – the former leaves the rest of the front unsupported, the later is vulnerable to counter battery. Based on all available IFVs any such bombardment would almost certainly be against multiple overlapping systems. The system would of course be programmed to ignore shells that will not land near friendly units, similar to the Israeli Iron Dome, which would reduce the effective bombardment strength to be stopped by 60% to 80%.
ICM Cluster rounds would saturate the CRAM systems with fewer rounds, of course. But the small cluster munitions require a direct hit instead of a near miss to be effective against even lightly armored vehicles.
How would you handle the ammunition capacity necessary for a CRAM system in an IFV, though? Particularly if you're talking about a calibre of 35-40mm, which I believe was mentioned in the original post. Wouldn't CRAM duties necessitate an impractically large amount of ammunition carried/ready to fire? Seems like it'd get very cramped if you're trying to fit this in addition to passenger capacity, crew protection, etc etc...
The Phalanx based system uses a lot of ammo because it fires in bursts to establish a pattern similar to a shotgun. The large 35-40mm guns use AHEAD ammunition or time fused projectiles to achieve the same effect with only 1-3 rounds. It can still call for a good amount of ammo, but a platoon of IFVs will distribute the work load between them, so it won't be as bad.
But if you are going up against a peer opponent with massive artillery support you may want to keep the ammo resupply close at hand. (Actually, in that situation you might want to find another axis of attack.)
There is quite a long list of practical difficulties which I will perhaps post later. I will thus just focus on the viability of such very expensive and complex systems on IFV against artillery concentration. On has to keep in mind that CIWS systems were devoloped as the last layer of defense against a small number of big missiles. Hard-kill suites on AFV rely almost all on radar detection and targeting and destroy the relative slow incoming threats within a certain range band with light launchers which can rotated very quickly. A IFV turret is by a magnitude slower and thus only able to react against threats which allow for a longer reaction time.
A modern SPG section/half-battery of 4 guns can deliver with target information permitting with great accuracy within 10 sec. a burst of 3 shells each with can reach the area, range permitting through MRSI, at virtually the same time +/- 1 sec.
With bomblets they are able to saturate the area with almost 1000 submunitions. Not to talk about rocket artillery. Both can scoot away to a new FP. The effects of even simple conventional artillery shells are discussed in this link.
Even Iron Dome, an extremely expensive system with long range warning was unable to intercept all 7 missiles fired allmost at the same time into a city in northern Israel with their expensive interceptors. An those rockets are bigger, softer and likely more slower targets then artillery shells. Every gun CIWS fires long bursts against the targets to increase the success probability. This does include the guns with heavier calibler and AHEAD like the following link shows.
[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnBFbGyKjLg"]FlaWaSys MANTIS - YouTube[/nomedia]
Post 1 of 3 posts due to length limits :lam
Apples and oranges. CRAM is not a replacement for a hard kill suites. Nor is it for stopping an RPG. Probably be effective against an antitank missile, which have 10x to 20x the range, but only 3x the speed, but the real target is artillery shells, rockets, and mortars.
An intercept efficiency of 86%, not bad. Or are you one of those that argues that if the system is not perfect it is worthless? Also, if it is the attack I think it was there were 21 rockets in the salvo, but they ignored the other 14 because they weren’t going near a populated area. Any practical system of this type needs between worthwhile targets and ones that can be ignored.
Sounds like 6 round bursts to me.
Post 2 of 3 due to length limits
- Per the article, 54 rounds will destroy one or more tanks, they don’t say 2 so let’s call it 1-1/2, 36 rounds each, or 1 per 3 (12 round) salvoes. Doesn’t indicate what position they are in, but the rest of the article seems to assume dug in positions.
- The article indicates that DPICM will strip external most fittings (mission kill), but does not indicate how many are required to do so, probably several dozen within a short distance, nor does it indicate any vehicle kills vs. tanks. So the DPICM option cannot be adequately addressed. Dispersion is likely to depend on release altitude, and the range of the CRAM system intercepts has not been released. But the higher the release the greater the percentage of the bomblets will be wasted on areas without targets, probably as the square of the release altitude.
- Rocket artillery with unitary warheads should be about as effective per hit, but their higher dispersion means a lower hit rate. Rate of fire is highly dependent on type. Again, not enough data to evaluate. Toss out some scenarios and we can evaluate them.