holoween
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Posts posted by holoween
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On 1/2/2024 at 6:42 PM, The_Capt said:
I think the issue is that people equate military ground vehicles to cars. This is not the case. They are closer to aircraft in complexity and sustainment. An FCS tech takes years to train to be able to keep the gun components in motion. We had a Leo crewman here and he pointed out that in Germany the entire system is designed around "plug and play". Pull out the broken part and slam in a new one. Well that works...in Germany...in peacetime. After a year of fighting Germany is likely reaching into war stocks for some parts. As an example, we had exactly two extra Leo power packs for an entire Brigade, back in the day...and that was before the reductions and budget slashing of the last ten years. Germany had something like 200 Leo 2, so this is roughly ten percent of the fleet likely eating up 50% of any 3rd and 4tf line maintenance.
Its a good concept if you have enough spare parts and the logistic capacity to bring them where needed. But spare parts like ammunition stocks have been where the last 30 years of saving on the military have been applied.
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Meh just be happy your oponent is playing. My first two didnt show up and my last one stopped sending turns curiously just as my t34s broke into his backfield when attacking and when i wiped his right flank company on the defense.
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6 hours ago, THH149 said:
The US pays for what 3/4 or 1/2 of this cost?
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34 minutes ago, Kraft said:
All this only works if the enemy is not reacting, its like a manual, easy to write and print. Reality is different often enough.
Which is btw why i dint quote a manual but linked a video showing it done in ukraine.
47 minutes ago, Kraft said:The moment a unit with resources spots these vehicles ATGM crews will move out, FPV drones will cause mobility kills and artillery will do the rest.
The typical sequence ive seen is Arty from approach til the end of the fight, ATGMs joining in in the main fight and FPV drones largely finishing off abandoned vehicles or harassing outside of the main fight.
50 minutes ago, Kraft said:Especially since the main fighting happens in areas direct fire vehicles have little effect, as the Russian Mobik is a creature of the earth, living deep below the surface
Which is why the tank in the video ive linked wasnt able to deal with the troops in the trench... except wiping them out.
51 minutes ago, Kraft said:Without good Intel that the enemy lacks certain assets or forcing conditions in which these are occupied/disabled beforehand, staying in the field is suicide.
Without setting conditions every attack is suicide.
52 minutes ago, Kraft said:Against AI in CM it'll work, against a competent opponent you will lose what you expose!
I only play against human oponents.
And you have to expose yourself eventually as the attacker. The trick is to do it in a way that maximises the combat power difference between you and your oponent at the point of contact.
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19 minutes ago, kluge said:
Kos's first conclusion from that video is "Ukraine still can't do combined arms"? Since when did he attend staff college?
No need to attend a staff college to see what theyre doing.
Tank, IFV and APC move in
Tank shoots up the general area of the enemy while the IFV and APC dismount their troops
And then they just leave the infantry alone.
So we have sequential rather than combined applications of the different arms. Its also lacking indirect fire entirely.
Though it varies quite a bit. Compare this posted a few pages ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fifpgIJkxXA
Smoke to isolate the attacked position, supression fire from the BMP while the tank moves in to shoot up a known position and in the end the BMP doesnt leave the infantry alone.
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1 hour ago, dan/california said:
The rest off China might or might not agree with him. Like any autocrat he is invincible right up until he gone. And there are clearly factions in the leadership, or senior cabinet officials and the equivalent of four star generals wouldn't keep disappearing. China looks shakier than Russia in that regard, and they haven't even started losing war yet.
Yes as experience tells us killing civillians breaks their morale and leads to regime change... oh wait no it does the exact opposite.
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4 minutes ago, Haiduk said:
Our tanker told Leo2 has strange thing with a center of mass and in couple with overweight design and insufficient engine power for this weight, the normal fast driving with forward facing of the gun can lead to such effect as on the photo with teared off turret and other mess.
Ok so please dont post things you clearly have no idea about.
This is an a4 which weighs around 55t basically still the initial design weight. Yet the 10t heavier a6 and a7v dont have issues related to the weight. Im not sure what exactly youre trying to say about its center of mass but ive yet to hear anyone having any issues ralated to it but please clarify what you mean. Insufficient engine power also seems entirely unfounded given its got a better power to weight ratio than any soviet legacy tanks. The photo also was of a training accident in poland where two tanks straight up collided which is simply a crew error.
Now to get to what is most likely actually happening
When the tank drives past pay attention to the gun just in front of the smoke extractor. You can see the barrel is clamped down so this is certainly nowhere near the frontline. For long road marches and driving without turret crew the turret is locked to the rear and the gun clamped down. This also lets the driver drive turned out.
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9 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Tank Fight!!! Steve already beat up on a lot of this. To which I would add:
- C-RAM. If technology becomes mature that allows a force to shield hundreds of small sub-munitions coming in at 100s of m/s then the tank will be long gone already. In fact with that level of resolution and precision targeting anything larger than a field mouse (with a little helmet on) above ground is dead. You may as well cite Gandalf and the League of White Wizards. C-RAM tech is currently big, heavy and effective against very few incoming at a time, largely in a COIN or low level conflict context. To upscale to what we are seeing in Ukraine is…well…just not happening anytime soon.
SHORAD is no longer optional because airpower cant keep low airspace clean. And giving those a C-RAM capability is trivial in the sense that all newly developed ones can already do it.
9 hours ago, The_Capt said:- ATGMs and RPGs are nowhere near the limits of lethality to weight. Do just a bit of reading on nano-treated explosives. https://www.army.mil/article/243587/army_argonne_scientists_explore_nanoparticles_for_future_weapon_systems. And that is not science fiction, prototypes are already in the works.
yea but thats quite a bit less growth potential than you can expect from an aps.
9 hours ago, The_Capt said:-Integrated APS at platoon level - I should freakin hope so! You mean we don’t have this already?! It will buy some time I am sure but as we have seen sticking a lot of tanks close to each other is not smart on this battlefield, let alone the next one. A whole platoon popping off APS is going to draw a lot of heat (tee hee) but hey if it get you to sleep at night.
See now you make me question how up to date you actually are on certain tech. APS are with the exception of Israel only deployed in homeopathic ammounts. The tanks deployed in Ukraine are all at least 2 generations behind the anti tank weapons deployed. Which is why the tank died when 1920s tanks got destroyed in the 10s of thousands at the start of ww2 and again when ATGMs got introduced... oh wait they didnt.
Integrated platoon APS arent a thing yet though id be surprised if it isnt being worked on. Alwso youve got it backwards. A platoon of tanks firing APS has alredy drawn the heat.
9 hours ago, The_Capt said:- Logistics. This will be the fight for the next decade at least. How does one protect logistics lines? Self loitering and longer more precise artillery is going to push fights over the horizon (well out of tank fire range) and protecting logistics is going to be really challenging. Guns have the advantage because they are already well back. As to tank “driving back”…see movement=spotted=dead on the modern battlefield. Right now in Ukraine the tanks are largely already back near the guns.
As said at the start of the post SHORAD is no loonger optional. Also hoe do the russsians and ukrainians manage to keep themselves supplied since its aparently impossible?
Yes tanks sit back with the arty which is why we see them shooting at other tanks sitting on the other side of a hedge 50m away... oh wait no they are sitting at the frontline.
10 hours ago, The_Capt said:- Mech infantry and their kit: “You are always creative unless it is stuff you don’t like”. So you think all those unmanned systems might take some of that load off. I mean you are ready to lean on freakin Iron Dome force fields to hold off DPICM but somehow having unmanned offset infantry loads is just science fiction?
No thats in active development but as a target profile its simply more infantry that cant take cover properly. It also doesnt speed up infantry and i really wouldnt want to be the infantry having to walk through 20km of arty covered terrain to get to the frontline.
10 hours ago, The_Capt said:-How have infantry been doing against ISR and artillery? Well better than armour but not by enough on the offensive, yet. But hey we get it infantry screwed, armour forever! Look everyone can go hug their stuffed tank while sporting their armoured corps pyjamas. I frankly don’t have a dog in this fight. What I am very interested in is ensuring we chart a military capability course based on reality and not culture or history.
Your approach to creating military capability is to throw everything out and start from scratch. Mine is to see where the failiure points are and if they can be fixed or need a different approach.
And Infantry from my view is far less replacable than any combat vehicle. There is a har cap on how many are available and tapping into the manpower pool directly reduces the productive capabilities of the nation theyre part of.
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1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
How does one provide cover from smart-DPICM raining from the sky?
C-RAM, mobility to make targeting problematic. How do you want infantry to deal with it?
1 hour ago, The_Capt said:1) The technology to defeat any counters is moving too fast. As Steve notes every time a solution is found, two more pop up. Ok, we layer APS on everything to counter those pokey and vulnerable ATGMs. Then someone builds an ATGM with sub-munitions, so Javelin 2030 (tm) splits into 6 smart attack vehicles and APS can't keep up. Oh wait there is more...standoff EFP. Worked very well for insurgents in Iraq and is aching for a comeback. Now you could have a ATGM that essentially explodes 50m out and drives a slug thru your tank. Now APS needs to push out even further. The trends of lighter, smaller, cheaper and smarter are accelerating anti-tank weaponry to the point that the tank is trending towards marginalization.
1 An APS allows protection to keep pace with attacking munitions development because it doesnt require fully redeveloping and building hulls.
2 ATGMs and RPGs are already close to the weight/size limit for infantry use. If they are pushed beyond that to be able to ko tanks youre changing the math dramatically. From 1 infantry squad theoretically able to destroy a companys worth of tanks to an infantry platoon able to ko maybe one or two.
3 Youre always creative unless it comes to stuff you dont like. Its not hard to imagine a tank platoons APS data linked to combine their sensors and coordinate their response.
1 hour ago, The_Capt said:2) The entire tank system is too damn fragile. Even the tank itself is pretty fragile. The thing need only take a few sub-munition hits and one can knock out the engine, or the gun, or the track. Then all of the support systems from forward repair, to recovery, to logistical support are also heavy, hot and easily spotted. So now one has to bubble wrap that entire system just to keep the tanks in motion - even assuming away all the threats to the tank itself. I am pretty sure our gas trucks burn as well as Russian ones
Yes tanks need more logistics support than infantry but nowhere near as much as artillery. And tanks can simply drive back some kilometers to resupply out of range of most arty while infantrys supplies have to be brought to the frontline.
1 hour ago, The_Capt said:The tank is being squeezed, along with the rest of mech. And it is also being replaced. If the job was to hurl energy at targets from 2kms+ back, well we kinda got that covered off without needing 50 ton behemoths to do it. Infantry support...this one is interesting especially in this war. Between ISR and UAS, infantry and artillery have formed an unholy union. Add in UAS attack capability and if infantry need something under cover to die there are ways to do it not involving a multi-million dollar vehicle that needs a Broadway production just to keep it rolling from A to B.
Yea tell me how well has infantry been doing against ISR and Arty?
And mech isnt going anywhere because infantry isnt going to carry all the equipment they need without vehicles.
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Also poles like to conveniently ignore this when discussion contributions.
But lets put this to rest. Polish military aid has been invaluable by being there early on and in quantity.
But polish rethoric quite often doesnt square with their actions especially if there is a chance to screw over germany.
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8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Every day forward this is less true than the day before. With the next generation of UGVs, UAVs, and lighter manned systems there will come a point when it isn't true at all.
We constantly try to keep in mind lessons from Ukraine that might not be applicable going forward. The Ukrainian and Russian reliance on tanks, today, is one of those things that I think is specific to this war. The next war? I don't see tanks being anything other than a liability (I am speaking strategically, operationally, as well as tactically).
Steve
I think youve misunderstood me.
So simple question is this a tank:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiesel_AWC
And currently the answer is a simple no. If it turns a corner and is suddenly faced with an MBT or IFV it will simply get destroyed.
But if you remove all heavier vehicles because they are too expensive it now can destroy whatever is around the corner. And at that point its a tank.
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27 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
For the last 30-40 years the West has spent trillions on trying to make the only threat to a tank another tank.
I wholly disagree with this idea. Weve spend this ammount of money to be able to destroy as many tanks/IFVs as quickly as we can because that has been the primary threat since NATO exists.
The current MBT generation very well reflects that. They are for all intents and purposes tank destroyers and entirely optimized for that and in the 500m to 2500m range they are unparalelled in that task. For the longest time most didnt even have a proper HE round and the primary rounds were KE and HEAT. The IFVs were the ones doing the infantry support.
27 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:What is needed now is for the Pentagon to get a bunch of people like us into a room and talk about what we see as the future of combined arms tactical warfare. Why a group like us? Because we are both open minded and opinionated. Based on past times of disruption it seems to me that a lot of the professionals paid to talk about this stuff are just opinionated
The discussion needs to start with examining tactics used in this and other recent (smaller, thankfully) wars. Look at trends, figure out what is more-or-less universal and what is conflict specific. That should provide a pretty solid base from which to design theoretical combined arms concepts. From there, make some suggestions about what "blank slate" capabilities, using existing and near future technologies, would be needed to fulfill this new tactical doctrine. Put it all together and game it out to see how it goes, adjust, try again, etc. Then, and only then, talk about what is needed. Maybe some form of tank survives all this rigor, though I doubt it. Almost lastly, figure out what in the existing forces are no longer needed and how much cutting them results in financial savings. Finally, take the savings from abandoning legacy systems and plow it into the replacements instead of trying to have those costs be on top of unnecessary legacy systems. Cutting out one type of tank, aircraft, and ship would likely free up enough capital to fund redoing the entire military.
Although I am a huge proponent of unmanned ground, air, and sea vehicles displacing a lot of what is currently in use, I do not rule out the possibility that we'd see something like the AMX-10 RC "make the cut" while something like the Abrams getting chucked.
Steve
The core and unique selling point of a tank is if a tank moves somewhere and encounters an enemy no matter what it is a tank stands a good chance to take it out without being taken out in return.
That capability is so valuable that it will get continuously replicated and id argue its the essence of what makes a tank. What exact form this takes remains to be seen and it could very well eventually become unmanned and at some point most likely will have to be fully automated for short reaction times.
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6 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Dude, c’mon. We know what tanks were for but nothing in this war aligns with our current doctrine. Armour has largely been relegated to a fire support role, and noted as no small amount of “indirect fire support”.
The internet is filled with invest “tank-people” explaining and complaining right now but I have yet to hear a single coherent theory as to why armour has not worked as it should in this war. In fact there is a long list of stuff that has not worked as it should in this war - airpower, cyber, and engineering are also on that list.
Sure tanks have been used as indirect fire support. But the continuous flow of video evidence of tanks used in the direct fire role supporting infantry, spearheading attacks and anchoring defenses is together with the fact that both sides specifically want tanks not just spgs is clear evidence they still very much have a role.
Tanks havent worked as effectively as expected for a variety of reasons.
- Tanks developed 40 years ago and last updated 20 years ago going up against current munitions
- An overall low training level
- Bad combined arms especially on the russian side
- Lack of short range air defense
That airpower hasnt worked as wed expect if NATO was involved also isnt exactly hard to explain.
- Both sides have fairly heavy air defenses
- Ukraine simply doesnt have many aircraft available
- Russia didnt really train and focus on SEAD which meant ukraines air defense stayed largely intact.
- So we have mutually denied airspace
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39 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
I wouldn’t say that. However, they probably have a better sense of what works and what doesn’t right now as they have been a lot more up close and personal than we have. I have seen too many posts and threads of “well why are they not just doing X” while completely ignoring the environment they are in. The UA, and even the RA have been learning and evolving with this war often while the west sits on the sidelines and critiques.
I am also interested in why they succeed or fail. However, my starting position is not “Western doctrine equals success” as I think we have move to far away from fundamentals that underpinned that doctrine.
Giving current NATO doctrine an honest reality check is absolutely essential. But taking it as a starting point seems entirely reasonable.
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36 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
No one reputatable ever will, because that's not why they were long. It's because they were smoothbore and need the barrel length for even the modicum of accuracy that they had. Even then they're not that long. I've held and Fired muskets, with the bayonet attached. They're a little unwieldy (more unbalanced than anything else) but perfectly workable.
Rifles at Waterloo were shorter because the rifling reduced the need for a longer barrel (and as the rifling increased the cost a shorter barrel was conveniently cheaper).
The length of early muskets has a lot more to do with getting velocity out of bad powder and bad barrel matallurgy.
smoothbore barrels dont stabilize the round so they cant gaign accuracy and rifling already wirks with very short barles (an inch is enough). But early musktes with shorter barrels would have even less range or would need far more powder and would still be as heavy to withstand the pressure anyways.
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6 hours ago, The_Capt said:
The role of the tank is becoming much narrower - currently a rapid, well protected indirect fire system.
And this is bigger than tanks. We are not seeing a lot of IFV/AFV success either. We do still see them in infantry support roles, however, they are also blunted. The entire mechanized portfolio is currently getting compressed into a capability with a much narrower role.
The role of a tank is direct fire. Its essentially a great sensor with a 0 time delay precision artillery attached. And ukraine and russia are using them in the direct fire role. If they werent they wouldnt be asking for tanks but spgs which do the whole indirect fire far better.
were also seeing successful use of even just mraps for assaults and for the charkiv offensive they have been essential in quickly taking lots of ground once the line had been broken.
1 hour ago, The_Capt said:Tanks look to me like they are in the beginnings of a death spiral, particularly if we are talking long term attritional warfare. They take too long to produce, and cost too much for what they are able to deliver right now. As Steve notes, they are also being supplanted by a lot of other things that are a lot cheaper to manufacture.
”Well infantry are easy to kill and have not gone obsolete”. Well 1) they are a lot cheaper than armour, 2) they are actually really hard to kill. They may be soft squishy humans but they are like sand and get into everything. Hard to find and fix, and extremely replaceable. 3) They are also nearly impossible to fully deny..see sand, and 4) they have not been supplanted, in fact they have been dramatically augmented with modern UAS and ATGMs.
Tanks on the other hand are really expensive, getting more so just trying to keep them alive. East to spot…big lump of hot metal and ceramic. Easy to deny. Hard to replace at scale. And now they are being supplanted. However, like a lot of military capabilities they will take some time to die. On could argue that have been dying since the 80s but I am not so sure. This war has definitely not been good news for amour or mech and everyone knows it. In fact it has not been good news for manoeuvre warfare itself.
Now modern militaries have a couple choices: adapt or hang onto legacy capability for “reasons”. We are really good at that last one.
Tanks have always taken heavy casualties in combat. But the alternative to using them has been firing artillery shells in such quantities that it wasnt sustainable with even the entire worlds production capacity dedicated to war and still taking infantry casualties at a rate unsustanable for most modern developed nations.
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2 minutes ago, dan/california said:
I don't think the Ukrainians are close to getting everything right. They are also understandably reluctant to just broadcast there problems on twitter, at least usually. The larger problem is that NATO has been way to standoffish about attaching observers to Ukrainian units. SO we are missing a lot of things we shouldn't be
Not sure how other nations are doing it but the german trained and equiped units keep constant lines of communication back to the german army.
3 minutes ago, dan/california said:There was a long post about this a month ago. Put on twitter by Constantine. I just can't seem to get back to it in the time I have to look. The thing I recall very specifically is that all of a certain Ukrainian unit's training had been for offense/assault. and that tis was huge problem when they had to go on the defensive. The other thing that has been brought numerous times is that drones are omnipresent on the Ukrainian battlefield, and that western training has not caught up with this fact. In particular learning how not to be spotted by drones is EXTREMELY important.
Ive seen it and it seems to me entirely a product of too short time to train and wrong expectations on what the trainees would be doing.
Usually if you train up units you go from simple to difficult. First you learn basic soldiering skills, then you learn your specific job, then you do defensive fighting then offensive fighting then delaying actions.
And i cant speak for whoever trained that bunch of ukrainians but i havent had an exercise since the war started where we didnt have drones overhead all the time.
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On 9/15/2023 at 4:34 PM, The_Capt said:
This whole NATO "everyone is doing it wrong except us" is a really bad way to go in my opinion.
So is ukraine does everything right.
What im interested in is what exactly causes their attacks to fail or succeed and how does it do that so i can draw conclusions on what needs to be done to be successful.
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delete please
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46 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Why UA is not massing? Well it may also be for the same reason the RA has avoided it, mass is dangerous. The few times last year the RA tried massing they got severely damaged doing so. We saw the UA go through the same thing earlier this summer. The reason is that massing dramatically increases ISR signatures and opens one up to counters. There has been a drive towards higher distribution of forces this entire war and I do not think it is a question of coordination or ability as much as it is that concentration of forces is a good way to lose them.
The UA’s current “small bites” is not that different from the RA’s over the winter, albeit delivered via different tactical capability. I suspect they are small-biting until the RA are eroded to a point that UA massing cannot be countered, then we may see a larger concentrated break out. For now I am not even sure traditional air superiority would do it as ISR is everywhere and unmanned/PGM cannot be countered by conventional air systems.
I have heard this “well why are they not just doing X?” from western military experts and the answer is likely “because they tried that and it does not work”. I also am starting to believe that “not working” is not due to UA shortfalls in C2 or training after 18 months of western support and lessons learned from this war. Instead it is likely due to shifts in warfare itself.
They dont need to actually mass in the sense of more troops per km of frontline.
Take their current company attack occupying maybe 2km of frontline. now add another 2 on each flank. the overall attack now occupies 10 km.
You now have reduced the enemys guns able to react to each individual attack significantly. Same goes for the own firesupport but massing your own guns in such an area is far faster than the enemys reaction.
Couple the attack with strikes on the hqs and you also dramatically reduce the reaction times when it matters.
Have reserve forces ready to push further oncr the first wave has taken the forward lines.
You never have forces more densely packed than currently, can dilute the defenders support and potentially cause a catastrophic failure of the defense.
Maybe ukraine is already doing this and were just not hearing it or they arent for some reason.
And i would be cautious with assuming ukrainians are doing everything as they should from a nato perspective. I wasnt particularly impressed with the performance of the ukrainians we trained so im skeptical their officers are generally much better.
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6 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
- Ok, the UA offensive of 2023 fails…now what? Well, we might have to start thinking about frozen lines and a much longer conflict. So what does that look like? How do we support that? There is no “cutting and running” on this one yet, our sunk costs are too high and the opportunity to continue to cripple Russia too good
Id say the biggest question regarding the war if the offensive fails is why it failed.
So far it seems ukraine does mostly company sized bite and hold attacks which are at best simultaniously done but not coordinated. (feel free to correct me if i have the wrong impression)
So why didnt they run larger attacks?
- lack of c&c?
- lack of support assets?
-too high russian force density?
Whatever the cause if ukraine can figure out how to scale up their attacks over the winter and implement it it stands a good chance to overrun the russian defenses next time.
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4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Hmmm... my guess is they drag on the ground in order to pop AP mines. That way the dismounted infantry don't potentially step out of the Marder and onto a mine.
If this isn't what they are for, I think it would sure be good to try something like that. I still can't get that video of the Ukrainian soldiers getting their feet and legs blown off when getting out of their Bradleys.
Steve
These are simple canvas sheets for camoflage. They remove the obvious shaddow line at the front and below the vehicle. Its standard practice for all german combat vehicles. Though the ones pictured are otherwise really low on camoflage.
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23 minutes ago, Haiduk said:
Rare footage of tank vs. tank fight. Reportedly this is June - the beginning of UKR offensive. One Leopard 2 against two Russian tanks. Distance 1500+ m. After Russian tank was hit and damaged, both Russian tanks rolled back.
UKR Leo likely used HE shell. But maybe ERA on Russian tank saved the vehicle from penetration
If i had to bet id say HEAT shell hit ERA and failed to pen.
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6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
However, I also think said NATO force would have taken casualties (men and equipment) far in excess of what it would consider acceptable under current doctrinal guidelines.
If my guess is correct, what this indicates is that there's a LOT that NATO can learn from UA, but that it's a process of reforming current NATO doctrine rather than chucking it out and starting fresh.
Steve
Do you have any specific documents you could point to for NATO doctrine?
Because non of the german documents ive read and nothing ive been taught leads me to believe there is anyone expeting not to take heavy casualties in a comparable war.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
And in which of those did the democracies not have a massive economic advantedge?
The only time this advantedge wasnt massive was early ww2 and that didnt exactly turn out well.