shift8

Also this would also make a good stryker replacement!

Yes that will solve the problem of having to buy so many APCs. With a single Land Battle ship, no, Battle Station, we will be able to finally conquer the Galaxy, I mean Russians.

Fortunately, there is a solution! Replaces both the Apache and the Star Destroyer for ground combat missions.

Oh yes I forgot. And it was also a design flaw that the M3 Half Track couldn't take on the Panther. A disaster one might say. Us poor fools for thinking a 21st century APC didn't also need to be a tank. Another system with this problem is the 688 class submarines. They cannot carry enough airplanes to fight aircraft carriers! What will we do! Also the aircraft carriers cant dive deep enough! EVEN WORSE: Neither of them can fly!

We buy APC's and make them are they are because we need a cheap better-than-a-truck method of moving around infantry. Key abilities are capacity and being cheap. It need to be cheap because you dont want your hauler being 9 gazillion dollars. If I wanted a hauler that cost as much as a bradley: I would just build a Bradley. You keep making the assumption that the budget exists to make some kind of super stryker. Except that the specific reason we dont just make a ALL-IFV force is because this is too expensive for the number of mangs you need to haul. IF that kind of money existed, we would just make more Abrams and Bradleys.

Since when Lucas do we not use APC's in conventional wars vs near-peer threats? What do you think the M3 Halftrack, M113, and BTR are? The Stryker is not a "asymmetrical" weapons system. It is a battle taxi. The only reason anyone has ever referred to the Strkyer in the fashion you seem to think it was "meant for" is due to the fact that a unit equipped with lighter vehicles is easy to move and deploy quickly. For various reasons, it is SOMETIMES beneficial to deploy a light unit when other units cannot be there. The vehicle is meant for major wars. It just so happens that APC's are really good a people moving, which incidentally is what you end up doing alot of when you are fighting and insurgency in Afghanistan or Iraq. No one has ever suggested that the Stryker is some kind of tank replacement. What was suggested is that Strkyer BCT's are sometimes ideal to deploy when you cannot get anything else there fast enough, and getting something there is beneficial. GUESS WHAT: we would do the same thing with M113 Battalions or any other mech units form any other era. TL:DR The Stryker is just a APC. Just like anything else. It is not a new type of vehicle. It is not a small war specific machine. It is literally just a 113 replacement.

What I find it hard to fathom is that no one has mentioned how **** the abrams is. I mean, if the stryker is too light, surely the abrams is. The T-90 will kill us all. I propose this as an upgrade to the abrams. Then we will have a decent tank for once. Plus all you need for this is a bike pump and privates to pump it.

This could just be the standard APC

Entered IOC 5 hours ago. Turns out all the F-16 needed to be decent was a SAM strapped to it. Come to think of it, that is what the stryker needs. Its far too vulnerable to ground attack. A stryker with a Patriot on top would be ideal.

This is the sort of upgrade we should actually invest in gentlemen. High on benefit, low on cost.

Sdkfz 7 Half Tracks pour off the assembly lines with the new upgrades ordered by Hitler after the disaster in Normandy.

Studebaker trucks in 1944 after receiving the "combat enhancement package" upgrade. http://images.realclear.com/266637_5_.jpg

The Jeep after the army fixed its horrid firepower problem: t27-gun-motor-carriage-01.png

The problem with the BTR though is that they sacrificed armor and firepower to increase troop capacity and make it cheap. The BTR is no match for the Abrams or the Iowa class Battleship. The BTR needs K5 ERA and a 125mm main gun. Then it will be good.

This thread reminds me of another woefully bad vehicle, the ww2 era Studebaker truck. Like the stryker, the army claimed the studebaker would enhance mobility of infantry and this would enhance the combat ability of the infantry. But in actual combat the studebaker was no match for the Panther and Panzer 4 tanks! What was really needed was a studebaker on tracks with 64mm of armor at 47 degrees and a 75mm AT gun. Then it would have been a vehicle that they army could have been proud of. History repeats itself.

I also heard that Somalia is soon to be a world power.

Negative Shiftsworth? Wut lol? You posted a loaded question back at Miller that implied in typical "holier than thou" fashion that anyone with opinion contrary to a certain reading of documents is a fool. Your reply here only confirms without doubt that you were disagreeing with him. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Right but this doesn't mean much. If you read the hard data later in the document, the number of perforations per shell per square foot are measured in the .01 and similar. The chances of a penetration is so low as to be more or less assured for practical purposes.

Ah here we go with the pseudo appeals to authority in the absence of an actual arguement. I've read the pdf you posted years ago. It says nothing remarkable, or out of line with my opinion. But that does not stop people from reading into it what they want. Additionally, said document was at least in part notable because of a perceived difference in its opinion from previous army standard opinion. Hence, clearly army opinion is not set in stone and subject to criticism. You accuse me of making a nonsensical argument, but you typed several paragraphs of arrogant drivel that essentially just spouted "shut up I'm artillery " without actually much else. What else you did say, I am not even certain what you meant. Some nonsense about multi layered perspectives to war. What? I have no issue with the contents of the data. I take issue with the incorrect interpretation which is being used, as has been argued before, that arty in this game should be some kind of AOE anti tank doom barrage.

Let's not play dumb please. You made your opinion rather clear when you chastised Miller for having and opinion contrary to what you perceive as correct.

No. The exception would be exceptionally large explosions, but at that point your entering the realm of something powerful enough to actually kill the vehicle outright. Like a near miss from a 1000lb bomb or battleship gun.

Well the problem here isnt the reports, it is the generally inaccurate reading you guys are getting out of it. If you actually read the first report, the one on shrapnel, you will find that even 155 HE produced almost no penetrations of even relatively thin steel. That report is nothing but damning to this ridiculous notion that HE is especially effective against armor, in particular tanks. The only type of hit that "kills" a tank outright from artillery is a direct hit. Artillery fire can track tanks or otherwise cause external damage, but you need very large quantities of explosives to actually kill one. Tanks and other armored vehicles are designed specifically to be relatively immune to non-direct hits from HE. They would otherwise be completely pointless. Even direct he require large calibers in most cases.

Your right, I exaggerated the Russians. They would be even worse off.

The bottom line here is that the both sides received gear they do not have, or do not have in large numbers. But the most far fetched of these upgrades went to the Russians. Period. There is nothing to complain about here. BFC has already stretched the Russian equipment to the limits of what can be justified and still be somewhat representative of realistic of force structures. The US was FAR LESS stretched. The Russians also got big advantages in how cheap their units are to offset their general inferiority. In reality Russian ground forces would be out gunned, and out numbered once US and NATO forces moved en mass. How much fantasy do you want? And arguing off the basis of "fictional units" is pure folly. If you really want to push the ball here, and insist on getting T-14s, the USA should star destroyers and mecha suits. We must be somewhat proportional after all, and it would seem like that nation with 5 times the GDP, two times the population, and 8 times the military budget should at least get a little more. And if you don't like that, fight the Ukraine. Balance issue solved.

Well lets take the vehicle that has been the main issue of this thread, the T-90AM. It is not in service at all. It uses Relikt ERA which is not available on other Russian vehicles. And on top of this gets Sabot ammo in game that is not generally available to other vehicles. The Current M829A3 was quite capable of dealing with kontakt5 armored tanks like the T-72B3. The Russian ammo that was in service at game release, and mainly in use now, is not capable of dealing with the Abrams from the front reliably. The upgrades to the abrams in game keep the Abrams relatively superior. The Russian upgrades in game elevate their equipment from "will be curb stomped" to "has a fighting chance." A totally different margin of scale.