holoween

Im not sure i fully agree with you. In that specific instance at least it would have ment almost certain death for whoever stays behind as the next round lands just a few seconds later. And at 2:35 you can see them draging a guy to safety until they get hit.

I think youre making an assumption without realizing. You assume its impossible to defend against fires. To go with your comparison to naval war why hasnt the surface fleet been made obsolete even though long range anti ship missile exist and why do they still move as formations rather than far dispersed over the entire ocean? Simply put because their ability to shoot down incoming munitions especially with layered mutually supporting defensive fires. 1 Surprise on the strategic level has been dead since before ww1 yet it continues to happen even if its just because decision makers dont want to see it. On the operational level it equally should be dead but it continues to not be because while you can track where a formation is you cant know what its intentions are (you can make assumtions but they can be wrong) and that is when youre not being fed wrong informations via decoys etc. and on the tactical level its not even an argument. Even in afghanistan and iraq ambushes kept happening while almost perfect drone cover was available. And thats against troops that arent trained to expect and equipped to deal with constant themal imaging hangin above looking for them. 3 Id argue the exact opposite. Mass will become far more important. A dispersed infantry unit is easy pickings for weapons like switchblade. Sure you might need one weapon per soldier but thats not too difficult. If youre talking about a platoon of ifvs with aps that can cover each other the effort required to take them out increases massively. Its also easyer to defend this with air defense to reduce an oponents recon asstes effectiveness. 2 Manouver warfare is even more important than before. Because with both sides being able to see where the oponent is roughly the one that is able to move faster can create strength vs weakness engagements or avoid being put into them on the defense. Again id say the exact opposite is true at least for terrain. Anyone moving in the open better have serious defensive capabilities or they will get quickly eliminated because they will be seen. Get into a city and suddenly not being seen from drones becomes trivial. For forests the drones have to come a whole lot closer and with proper camo it might still be impossible to detect stationary targets.

Ok i see where the communications issue was. I apologize for not being clear and for not quoting well. I was commenting more on the currently and near future use of UAVs and counters. But to generalize for the future i dont think the mass drones armies are going to materialize. All promo ideas ive ever seen posted basically ignore countermeasures and assume ideal circumstances but ill have to write up a far larger post to cover that and im too tired atm so ill do that tomorrow.

Where am i loosing you? I think the distinction between munitions and carrier systems is quite warranted as they have quite different characteristics in dealing with them. Since even the US army considers the Switchblade a munition rather than a drone i dont see myself beeing way off on this either.

Id define it as a drone if its supposed to survive and as a munition if its supposed to explode on a target.

well lets compare to a us build drone so we dont need to do currency conversions etc to reach a comparable price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper#Variants somewhere around 25m so not actually that much cheaper. For the drone vs apache comparison i mostly agree except the profile part. the drone doesnt have much lower wingspan but more importantly the apache can fly below treetop level masking it entirely from enemy observation while the drones will have to fly quite a bit higher making it easier to observe. And still for pure combat performance the apache is miles ahead which is quite important for a weapon intended to be used at the point of main effort. But thats not an manned vs unmanned equal system comparison. for that wed have to compare drones with something similar but manned like:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano#Specifications_(EMB_314_Super_Tucano) It practically costs the same and brings the same capabilities. With the big difference of endurance and having a crew. So less time spend circling overhead but able to operate in an ew environment. This brings me back to a poin that i think everyone keeps ignoring. These drones are at best as difficult to shoot down as a ww2 attack aircraft and at worst actually quite a bit easier as they are a lot slower. Now dont get me wrong i dont think that drones wont make a difference. They do require an adjustment of tactics and a buildup of short range air defense but the drones that most affect combat are not the medium to large sized drones carrying weapons. These can be neutralized with good tactics and equipment. The small and tiny drones used to recon and guide artillery are making a far bigger impact and ar far more difficult to counter.

I think itw quite indicative that the massive supply collumn north west of kiev never got attacked with drones even though it should have been an easy target. So at least the ukrainians are still keeping out of aa coverage with their drones and i dont see why this should be any different for any other nation. Also drones only really have a capability advantedge over manned systems in staying power. An apache can do everything an attack drone can except stay over the battlefield for 24 hours. A drone can also be risked more but a drone shot down is still a weapons system out of action even if it doesnt cost a soldiers life.

A tank can hold more aps charges than an entire infantry platoon can carry at weapons.

It certainly could be jammed if you get a large enough emitter close enough but thats a stationary soft target advertising itself to everyone so its going to get artied quite early on. And you could possibly get radar homing missiles against aps that constantly transmitt but theyre already starting to get "sleepmodes" where the radar is cued by passive sensors and only then activated to intercept the threat. And yes its expensive but youre making afvs practically immune to infantry at fire so thats quite a bit of value

I dont buy the cant shoot down drones argument. Autocannons with airburst rounds are quite capable in dealing with small drones. And short/medium range anti air missile are very easily capable of dealing with medium drones. The core of this threat is exactly the same as light ground attack aircraft during the cold war. Yes their weapons are more accurate but for aa they are a far easier target because the weapons carrying ones are big enough to easily spot with radar and unlike manned aircraft are far slower and less manouverable.

Heard of the Spike ATGM? You can simply fire it from behind a hill when told there are targets and then guide them onto the target. And the swingfire has basically the same idea. The big issue with atgms is that while they currently dominate active protection systems are starting to be fielded and once they arrive in numbers it will make current atgms largely obsolete at least against vehicle targets.

Except you cant do a proper berm drill because your tank wont see the target so you have to pop up and down hoping the tank will spot and shoot in time.

I havent noticed Soviet tanks to be particularly blind though somewhat less attentive. However the randomness of CM spotting is far more noticable so id say most issues being brought up is people expecting far more than reasonable.

Are we talking about the same Wehrmacht and Bundeswehr? Because the Wehrmacht i know was quite enthusiastically giving out panzerfaust and panzerschreck to its units. The Bundeswehr following it did the same with the Carl Gustav and Pzf44 so them not expecting it would require some incredible institutional blindness. Being a stopgap and not as good as wanted doesnt prevent it from being seen and employed as an IFV and drawing conclusions from its use. The wehrmacht proved quite capable of invading Poland and France with stopgap tanks. In 1956 te Bundeswehr had barely started to exist, in 1967 it had IFVs in use for 7 years and in 1973 it was on its second generation IFV. That BMPs werent following the tanks says more about the combined arms coordination than the vehicle used. It actually shows a quite bleak picture for Syrian officers competence and therefore calls taking the lessons lerned by Israel at face value into question. During the second gulf war the initial Iraqi positions were well prepared but mostly destroyed by artillery. The 2008 and 2014 wars saw russian troops mostly counterattacking units on the offensive. I find the assertion that fighting into a well-prepared and well-defended position is a flawed metric for judging an IFVs value. They enable highly mobile operations which are far more effective in winning fights. No matter how well prepared and defended your positions are they can be broken as evidenced during WW2. Also some interesting loss statistics from those middle eastern wars: Second gulf war 1,487 tanks, 1,384 infantry fighting vehicles Employed by US troops resulting in 31 tanks destroyed/disabled and 28 Bradley IFVs destroyed/damaged indicating an equal chance of being knocked out. For the 1982 Lebanon war For Israel its 1,240 tanks and 1,500 armoured personnel carriers employed 130 tanks destroyed/damaged and 175 APCs destroyed/damaged. This suggests that on a large scale tanks arent much more survivable than IFVs. Primary threat are IEDs, light anti tank weapons, far heavier and less mobile than their immediate laternative, used primarily in very rough ground or cities against oponents that reach at best western light infantry standards. Biggest difference is that the Namer weighs 60tons and is supposed to also be usable in conventional war. Also my initial statement was somewhat exagerated so this isnt the hill ill die on. Here is my main problem though and where i wonder why you didnt adress my first post at all. I pointed out issues i have with your method of reaching your conclusion specifically possible weaknesses in the ruleset you used based on your description of what happened. I dont know the ruleset but when my irl experience clashes with my wargaming experience i first question if my wargaming experience has any possible flaws causing the results. You take the results as is without examining the ruleset for possible issues. Your conclusion might very well be correct but it contradicts practically all modern armies with all their combined experience so the burden of proof is on your end to show youre right and everyone else is wrong and you present very little hard evidence. What you present is wargaming under one specific ruleset modified by yourself against the same oponent and to validate you use one military not using IFVs where there might be other reasons involved as i pointed out. At least for me that is not enough so id be quite happy if you could actually clarify. Thank you for the replies so far. Its highly unusual to be able to discuss a book like this with its author so its much apreciated.

This is 100% true and the right thing to do... in 1944 Normandies bocage. In simple terms this is an infantry centric aproach. The infantry carries the battle supported by artillery and tanks. Its a low casualtie high munitions aproach that takes a lot of time. If youre the Soviets in an attack through germany or any Nato country counterattacking you dont have that time. By the time you scouted a hill across the enemy has broken through and is rampaging in your backfield destroying your arty and supplies. The cold war gone hot is a tank war. The tank forms the centerpiece of the battle. All other arms exist to maximise the tanks effect. Your recon is motorized to not slow the tank down. If that means the recon is recon by death then so be it as long as it shows where the enemy is (obviously its preferable to not die but its acceptable in the grand sceme). The Infantry is driving in AFVs to cover the areas tanks arent great in. Clear small villages, patches of forrest, etc. Artillery fire denies positions where ATGMs could be employed to disrupt the attack. Any strong resistance is simply bypassed and only cleared out by followon forces.

Now the Next interesting topic is how you chose to validate your results namely with the one exception among major armies that doesnt use IFVs Israel. "The only army to have much experience of APC operations in regular war did not adopt IFVs." p.122 Historically its actually exactly the opposite. The army with the most experience using APCs being the wehrmacht with the SdKfz 251 literally starting ww2 with an APC. And as soon as the Bundeswehr formed they went for getting an IFV with the HS 30 8 years ahead of the BMP1. Out of all major militaries Israel is actually the exception in not having an IFV. So lets examine what could have lead to this and what they are using instead. The area Israel has to fight in has generally quite rough terrain and a fairly high number of highly build up areas. This generally puts a higher emphasis on the dismounts. It also decreases the value of the added speed of advance IFVs can give formations. Israel also had a fairly long history of Insurgency fighting where IFVs also tend to not excel (compare Iraq occupation) though htats straying away from the regular war narative. Interestingly as much as the Arab Israeli wars were studied by Soviets and Nato alike neither abandoned their IFVs. The biggest influence being the development of BMP2. Curiously with 1 fewer dismounts compared to BMP1 so lack of dismounted infantry wasnt the takeaway. What seems to be far more influential is that Israel maintains an army of a size it can only afford due to extensive military aid and during the cold war the same was true of its oponents. Its main aid contributor was the US which for the time of Israels major wars simply didnt own IFVs and so couldnt sell them but istead sold APCs. At that point Israel also had very limited AFV production capability so the combination of essentially free APCs and production of IFVs eating into the tank numbers its obviously the better choice to not produce IFVs. To feed into this the heavy APCs build were primarily captured or outdaatet tank chassis repurposed and only with the Namer did they produce them from the ground up resulting in far lower numbers than they would like. These heavy APCs also face primarily Insurgents not a regular army so are in purpose closer to the modern US MRAP. IFVs have also been used in several regular wars (2nd and 3rd gulf war, 2008 Georgian war and 2014 in Ukraine). So far they all seem to have accounted quite well for themselves seeing as no unser advocated to stop using them.

Jim Storr ive gotten the book a few weeks ago and have read through it a few times now. Generally i found it easy to read though somewhat heavy on opinions rather than analysis. You might have found a quite critical audience here as i as several before me take issue with a certain aspect of the book. In my case ill focus on the chapter Infantry and Antitank Forces specifically your discussion of IFVs. I think wargaming is a valuable source if information but always needs to be cross referenced with rl data. However the IFV section is entirely at odds with the vast majority of modern armies and from reading it seemed inherently at odds with what was being said. It is also at odds with my personal experience so i was trying to wrap my head around it until i started collecting quotes from it to make a rebuttal ten i realized where the issue comes from. "Ground-mounted cannon, such as the French and German 20mm, would have beenhighly effectivea gainst enemy APCs." p.116 "Cannon and ATGMs could be very effective [...] Once dismounted in cover, they could be very difficult to locate" p.123 So the Weapons the IFVs carried were effective so why not the IFV itself? Lets see the defense: "IFVs located in a defensive position [...] tended to be knocked out by artillery fire, or neutralized and then easy prey to the attackers, be it tanks or shoulder-fired antitank weapons." p.124 "If IFVs were sited outside defensive positions [...] being quite large vehicles, they attrackted fire from the attackers Tanks and ATGMs." p.124 This implies that either a dismounted 20mm cannon is more resistant to artillery bombardement or its position wont be spotted and so not bombarded. That is strange in two ways. The IFV should be more resistant to artillery and given its mobility should be sitting outside of view only to move into its firing position when targets are called my the infantry and so actually harder to spot. Or dug in and just have its turret exposed in which case it should be equally difficult to spot but still be more resistant to artillery fire. Now looking at the offense "vehicle-mounted cannon and MGs did not help. [...] difficulty in locating the defenders, who were invariably concealed and often dug in." p.123 "Conversely they made the [...] IFVs obvious and high-priority targets for the defender´s fire." p.123 This is strange in two ways. First for supressing defenders and assisting the own infantry exact locations of the defenders need not be known. Simply supressing areas that could be dangerous to the own infantry if occupied by enemy infantry will do the majority of work since 20mm cannons firing he at 1000rpm cyclic into the defenders general area is going to keep their heads down. Even more if there is a full platoon doing this. Second is that in the game even with their aparently ineffective fire they were still the priority target and not the supporting tanks (and if there werent any why?) But what about using their ATGMs? "Where IFVs used [...] ATGMs [...] they were highly vulnerable to enemy ATGM fire, from either dismounted launchers or specialist antitank vehicles. In both cases the enemy were much harder to locate" p.123 This is again somewhat strange. An IFVs turret is certainly larger than an atgm launcher alone but for the ATGM vehicle that is only the case if it can go hulldown in which case an IFVs turret still wouldnt be much bigger and far more importantly the main way an ATGM will get located is dust and smoke kicked up from the weapons launch which will be the same in either case. These contradictions between observed results and expected results indicate to me that: 1. There is a spotting mechanic in the ruleset used and IFVs are at a higher disadvantedge as a result 2. Improper defensive doctrine at least for western vehicles who should have several fighting positions and frequently switch. Possibly combined with the ruleset not giving the bonus for a defensive position when employing such a strategy 3. Strange targeting priorities or improper support. A defending unit should prioritize supporting tanks when employing anti tank weapons as they are the biggest threat to the individual unit. In wargaming its easy to always target the unit that will result in the greatest chance of overall success but for the actual troops individual survival is key. A tank will given the choice between an IFV or a tank first shoot the tank because that is the bigger threat. If Tanks simply werent involved the quewstion becomes why not? IFVs are combined arms weapons and suffer when left alone just like any other weapon.

If we strip away WW2 credit id say this is what you end up with making the difference (if there actually is any). Just because the doctrine is the same in theory doesnt mean its the same in practice. Because if you give 3 people the same doctrine to solve a problem you end up with 4 different ways to fight. So if you wanted to find an apreciable difference youd have to look at how they each ended up working in exercises. Another difference could come from different training standards for the units.

You could smoke the hedge and then move up to it. You can easily place 2 squads on that hedge and they should easily overwhelm anything inside the buildings once the smoke clears.

For scenarios pints practically dont matter only in qb. So arguing with scenarios isnt relevant to the discussion.

Yes and the point were making is that whatever way theyre currently doing it leads to the stug being too expensive. That isnt exclusive to the sherman. Every tank works best when given spotting information be it from the platoon or supporting units and afvs always work best when massed. If i have to be better than the oponent to have equal chances my kit is worse and should therefore cost less. I havent been able to observe an accuracy difference between pz4 and stug.

None of this is stug specific but simple afv tactics. So basing pricing on the german side simply always outplaying the oponents is strange. So There youre admitting to a stugs disadvvantedge over other (turreted) afvs. Until it got the long 75mm. Yes afvs combined with inf works better nothing in favour of the stug specifically. Do you have anything to back that up? Anything that gets a slight modification to fit inside a tank gets the designatiok kwk even if the actual gun barrel and the rounds fired are identical. How is any of that relevant to the discussion? This petition comes from members of a forum playing hvh with capable commanders on both sides. So basic tricks are usually used by everyone. What has come out of it is that noone ever picks stugs if they want to win. They are far more expensive than their combat performance warrants.

In german army service which is currently the only ore relevant to cm there is only one bolt weight and spring with a cyclic rate of fire of 1150+-50rpm. Note that only applied when the gunner has a break to change the barrel. The barrel can absorb quite a few more rounds through it but that is starting to degrate its lifetime. Also after 1000 rounds youre supposed to swap bolt but that is never actually adhered to. Its usually simply switch bolt at the end of the day or when stoppages occur that could be atributed to the bolt. How long a burst you fire depends entirely on the situation. If youre trying to keep the oponents heads down youll fire multiple 3-5 round bursts shifting aim point between each. If you have a squad in the open multiple 20-30 round bursts are called for. And for final protective fires cyclic until the gunner until the gunner runs out of ammo or has to readjust aim.

That is simply wrong. Mg3 has 1200RPM.

su 76 is better compared to the wespe.