Peter Cairns

Less expensive or not I doubt a XM25 round can be put in a window first time at a range of 1,000m, or if it can they have improved it out of all recognition since last i looked at it. For the sniper task I think the thing to watch will be micro UAV,s or at least hand launched but capable of carrying a 40mm grenade on a one way trip.... Peter.

Firstly my mistake I got Sunni and shia mixed up the south is of course Shia, Given that Iraq itself is an artifical construct less than 100 years old, I think the option of partition should have been looked at. I know the US was dead against it as it wanted a strong stable iraq as a buffer against Iran, but a seperate Kurdish state in the North and handing the ground up to North of Basra to Kuwait to form an oil rich "Greater Kuwait", Leaving a Sunni "mini- Iraq", would probably have been a lot more stable. Of course we may end up with that pretty soon anyway.

Steve, I agree but part of the issue for CAS is the ability of the ground forces not only to identify targets for aircraft, but also to assess the level of air defence. In terrain like Bosnia or Kosovo, it is much easier for a decent defender to coceal and use close in weapons against aircraft, particularly if the nature of the targeting precludes high or medium level bombing. In some respects thats why I thik things like "smart" mortar rounds and Hellfire on a MLRS are in some respects a better way to go, and cheaper. Though If you've got CAS by all means use it. Peter.

NO NO NO to Compressed Nitrogen... Nitrogen is inert but it is also one of the biggest killers in the chemical indusrty . it's heavier than air, and if you breath in pure nitrogen, you die.... it's a quick clean death, but an absolutely certain one. The last thing you want in an enclosed space like an APC is lots and lots of nitrogen and very little air. J Ruddy, If SUV air bags did that in anything more than 1 in 10,000 cases or more, the law suits in the US would drive them off the road. People being regularly beheaded by airbags is an urban myth. Peter.

The BBc carried a report on the Iraqi army tonight with them saying that they thought they would be ready to fully take over in about two years. I'll make three predictions, 1) Within about two years the Iraqi army will take over most of the fighting (fairly sure). 2) Regardless of what the Iraqi army says , they won't be ready ( really sure) 3) Within two years of taking over the Iraqi army will be the government (less sure). Peter.

MT-LB Mangy Tractor - Loosy Body. Other versions please, best one wins a prize. Peter.

The IFV concept was different than the APC, being designed to allow troops to fight from the vehicle and get in close, as opposed to just a troop transport with better armour than a truck. Problem was that in use, particularly for the soviet block, against a half decent opponent the loss of IFV were high, with their armour not really up to the task. The theory that they would role up close and disembark after suppressing the enemy just didn't work in practice. Therefore what you end up with is a better armed APC that can give better fire support to advancing infantry and better protection when they are in it. In many respect the tactical doctrine differences between IFV's and APC's are a thing of the past and modern so called IFV's are used like APCs, they are just better armed and armoured. For me, tactically, they should be treated like helicopters, where ever possible you should get the guys out and dispersed before you start to directly engage an enemy. One of the big conciderations of course, should be the amount of artillery fire your opponent can bring down on your men as they advance, as the IFV's can't directly suppress that and it can cause heavy casualties. Peter.

Steve, On the other hand the Serbs were doing there best to avoid detection and ehgagement. The extent to swich the Cobras or Apache's would have been able to do what they did with an effective AD system is difficult to judge, Peter.

Couple of points. 1) Single use LAWs have been around since WW2, and are issued to troops world wide, so the idea that antitank is the preroggitive of repeat weapons is false. 2) The charge in a mortar round is substantially lighter than an ATGM, because like a 155mm round compared to a MLRS in can be a small single charge over a long burn rocket, so weight per round is higher for rockets. 3) a large part of the weight of mortars comes from the need for a stable long range platform that can fire hundreds, indeed thousands of rounds. just compare a LAW with an RPG-7 for weight. 4) for seeker size, you are assuming universal diameter, as I recall an RPG-7 round has about a 90mm warhead, but a 30mm tube. Look at rifle grenades, they can be fired what 250mm are about 30mm in diameter, but are launched by a 6mm cartridge. 5) Multiuse direct fire weapons relay on staying in the line of fire to repeated use them which is fine in some circumstances but not in others. Which has the best chance of taking out four BMP-3's at 400m ( you can't always rely on getting use of the full 2,00om range), an eight man squad with a Javelin with six rounds, or an eight man squad with sixteen LAWs. Peter.

MikeyD, But like I said Mikey, you get airbags is SUV's and they don't go off when they are going cross country. As to the compressed air I think the amount used is tiny and pretty secure inside the unit, if an RPG comes through the side I think the equivelent of a palm sized aerosol adding to it is the last of your worries. Lets face it if I had to choose between the hot plasma hittting an airbag or a javelin round I know what I would pick. Hell we could make it a lot safer in the troop compartment if we just got rid of all that live ammo in their. Which is more dangerous in a confined space if it accidentally goes off, an airbag or a hand grenade. Peter.

Colin, I am with bigduke, I am afraid, as Richard Attenbourgh said in Jurassic park ( in a particularly bad Scottish accent), " I don't punish people for their mistakes, but I expect them to put them right. The idea that the Un has some kind of duty to clean up the mess left by people who start wars without it's authority is just a non starter. Hell why not have Hitler asking the US to send the National guard to police occupied France while he gets on with invading Russia. If you really want help to clean up Iraq all the US has to do is present a proposal to the security council asking for a UN mandate form 100,000 Iranian troops to cross the border to replace the British and take over the policing of the oil rich south. They're local, their Sunni, their friendly to the local population, on the face of it they seem the ideal people to help out, if that is your objective is to stabalise the country for it's people as opposed to securing it as an ally. Peter.

Well I like "Exit" as in " when exiting the aircraft use the door on the right hand side". Peter.

Cpl Steiner, I am with you 100% on this one. The notion that you should keep sending men uselessly over the top in memory of those that you sent uselessly over the top in the last big push should have been left where it belongs in WW1. Splinty reminds me of the anonomus quote from WW2, " Having lost sight of our objectives we must redouble or efforts". The tail shouldn't be allowed to wag the dog, forces are their to carry out political objectives not to dictate them. Once you allow the fact that you have paid a high price to start to influence and change your original objectives you end up fighting a different war from the one you started. probably the best example I can think of this is the way in which the right in france tried to get rid of DeGaul, because he was thinking of pulling out of Algeria. Politically the price was to high but the army wanted to fight on because they had paid a high price. Result France came close to having a military government..... Peter.

The UK used Milan against Argentinians in the falklands, it wasn't so much doctrine as necessity. I think it was a Goose Green that they came across HMGs in bunkers. The Milan let them take them out at long range before they chewed up the paras. It wasn't what it was designed or issued for but as it did the job that needed done they used it for it. Pretty much the smart thing to do in the situation. I've heard something like this described as the "School Run Ferrari". If your car won't strt in the morning to get your kid to school you ask your rich neighbour to drop thenm off in their Ferrari. He agrees because he has a spare front seat, so he can do it. But if you were going to buy a second car as a run around to drop the kids off at school or get the shopping, you wouldn't spend $200,000 on a ferrari. So if you have something very expensive in a crisis you use it to do a simple job, but you wouldn't buy something that expensive specifically to do that job. Take SSN's, they can be used to drop of special forces but that's not their primary purpose, that is hunting other subs and surface ships. They can do it if needs be but you wuldn't build a $1 billion sub just to drop off commando. So modern or not given their cost ATGM's were designed to take out Tanks and other high value dangerous targets, not bunkers, but if you've got one and a bunker has you pinned down, you use it. The Apache wasn't designed for CSAR, but it can carry a single man pod that can retrieve a downed pilot, so if it is all you have you use it. Peter.

Drusus, It depends what you mean by imagination, I'd call it extrapolation. I am not suggesting a form of portable "Black hole" generator that lets a soldier swallow a village. We have light mortars, we now have termanally guide mortar rounds, we have light disposable anti tank weapons, we now have man portable ATGM's like javelin that used to need three men and a tripod. So almost all of the components for a fire and forget disposable mortar are there. As John Cleese said about Shakespear, " It's all in their all you need to do is get it in the right order". Anyway, how do you think new weapons come about, accidents in munition factories where random components fall in to a vat and new weapons just emerge. Peter

Well just through circumstances I've never played anything but hotseat or against the AI. When it came out I didn't have internet accss, and by the time I got it in and then got broadband, I had moved on to OSX so I couldn't play it. Fact is indeed stranger than fiction. Peter.

Michael, Actually I don't think you should criticise Splinty for his 100% comment, after all he could well be right, if you rated the situation as 1 out of a hundred when you got their and now it's 2, well thats a 100% improvement isnt it. Peter.

Colin, So basically what your saying is that if your ally is going to start what you think is a stupid and needless war and you can't talk them out of it, you should volunteer to fight the stupid needless war for them. Just as a matter of interest, if you were walking down the street with your mate on a Friday night and he said " I am going to cross the street amd start a fight with those Hells Angels over there just for the hell of it", and you thought he was serious, you would say " Hell no, you stay here pal, and I'll go over and do it for you". Peter.

SSgt Viljuri, How is it done, is it a special type of fabric, and how does it adapt to different backgound and day and night tempretures. Peter.

It's just odd how much things have changed since WW2, then we not only left the dead where the lay time and time again, and not just in actions like D-day, but we also in certain circumstances shot our own people. True shooting wounded comrades tended to be in extreme situations quite literally to put them out of their misery, when there was no morphine or chance of help, but it happened. I wonder if we are in real danger of finding ourselves in a situation where our concern for casualties will become a liability. I remember seeing an interview with an ex Vietcong, who said they were trained to fire a single aimed shot and then switch to automatic. If you hit a GI with the first round by the time you switched there were three or four others around him, and with luck you could get two or three of them two. Okay one buddy is better than two or three, but I think you should leave the guy down till the firer is taken out. Peter.

I wear thermals in winter and I don't smoke, is that off topic... Peter.

Drusus, sgtgoody, A couple of issues, On the base plate, what about a two tube system , one shorter than the other, with a spring?piston at the bottom. When the round is launched some of the force is absorbed by that before it reaches the base plate, which is made up of a hex of fold out legs from the side of the tube. Another ( might be daft) idea would be to have water instead of a spring, the falling main tude would force it out of the top as a spray on firing, this would dampen two things, the force hitting the ground, and the IR signature of the launching round. The whole point of "Fire and Forget" is that the firer doesn't have to sight or track the target, If the target or it's support have laser detectors and or jammers you rik being exposed detected and engaged. Sure you might get on target lased for a five shot weapon but five without getting pasted, I doubt it. Then there is counter battery fire, the track to locate to response time is already under 60secs, how quickly will you get these things off. Even if you've moved what then. At the moment the millimetre seeker on a hellfire can identify different tank types from their radar signiture. How long till an optical tracker can do the same. I've no doubt that a Tv seeker that can be fired blind over a hill and which can "recognise" a T-72 and tell it from a tractor is pretty close. So why risk dspmeone in direct LOS of the target. Better that the targeter if their is one uses a stereoscopic rangefinder with a compass and GPS, that way he gives an accurate postition passively without designating (though he still needs to send a burst signal). Partly because we are on the CM:SF site people tend to assume that the next war will be against another technically inferior opponent, but that might not be the case, and besides there's "high Street" technology. Lets say a Syrian type force has access to some form of GPS or pre surveyed network, with good communications ( possibly fibre optics). Now add to that digital microphones and laptops and you have 21st century sound ranging. Traditionally sound ranging to locate artillery was a slow complicate and imprecise art ( which is why it has all but given way to radar for artillery location). But if GPS and digital audio (this is probably Madmat'S field), networked let you do it quickly and passively then sound ranging becomes an effective and cheap option for relatively low tech armies. We tend to assume that we will detect detect their artillery and paste it while they won't detect ours because we'll have blitzed or jammed their radars. For me the days of manned conventional towed artillery are all but over, as they take to many crew and are just to slow and vulnerable with modern response times. A 120mm in a Stryker can shoot and scoot, and when networked they can consentrate fire on a target while being spread over a large area. However evne they will start to become vulnerable soon if the sit for more than a couple of minutes firing from the same spot, so a couple of rounds and move will become more common. In this context the idea of a squad firing six rounds from six different positions and then getting the hell out before splattered by incomming is for me a good option. Peter.

olduvai_again, I don't see why, just because the object causing the impact is differnt doesn't mean the physics cahnge, an airbag doesn't go off why a windscreen shatters, so why should it go off when a 7.62mm hits the side of a Stryker. Every day of the week in ever developed country in the world, cars drive safely without airbags going off at random. They are in cars, SUV's trucks, If you can drive a Landrover with airbags at 50mph across rough ground without the airbag going off I doubt that hitting armoured plate would be a problem. As to an RPG, well as its not a kinetic penetrator I doubt if the force would be enough to rock the vehicle, and even if it was and set the airbags off for the crew, is that a bad thing, lets face it which is best the crew on the opposite side getting a n airbag in the face, or flying forward and headbutting the inside of an armoured hull. Airbags are remarkable things, they are incredibly effective and incredibly reliable. One of the reasons that so much military kit is so expensive is that they keep reinventing the wheel rather than lifting a tried and tested solution off the shelf. Look at Drops vehicles, they have revolutionised artillery logistics and they're over glorified skips. Peter.

cassh, Thanks mate that's the most positive response I've ever had to a post. As most of you know I've had some stinkers. Peter.

Michael, If I break hard my airbag doesn't go off, nor does it in a low speed bump like in a car park, If I get hit mid left (UK right hand drive) my side air bag goes off to protect the passenger, but my driver airbag doesn't. Anti roll or impact airbags would be set either to only go off at a major impact ( put the sensor internally, or if the vehicle pitched beyond a certain limit at a certain speed. also they would be detachable, so that if one did go off, you just unhooked it threw it out and plugged in anew one. At the end of the day the most important, valueable and effective piece of equipment in a Stryker, are the guys inside it. Peter.