How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Fernando]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ok and here we separate the amateurs from the pros.  You have to create two parts of your soul to do this work, that is something very few people really understand.  In one part there is the value of a human being, in the other the value of a human fighting system.  Don’t mix them together or you can’t do this work.

Infantry is incredibly cheap to produce and sustain from a military value point of view.  We have 8 billion human beings on this planet.  Ukraine has around 44 million.  Even at 10% fighting capable, that is 4 million troops they can put into action.  Training and equipping those troops is not cheap but is can be done relatively quickly.  You can turn a civilian into a soldier in about 6 weeks (or less).  Right now Russia can produce about 200 tanks per year.  We in the west are not much better.  We don’t have 8 billion “civilianized tanks” to pull from.  Production wise tanks are extremely expensive and very low density.  It is disingenuous to try and link their battlefield vulnerabilities as a metric and ignore their sustainment realities.  It is also really poor to try and play a “oh the humanity” card in defence of freakin tanks.

The idea that we should somehow “send tanks and AFVs to war not people” is ridiculous, and I honestly hope I am misunderstanding.  The reality is that losses of armour and AFVs are demonstrating that as capability they are unsustainable in their current employment.  Basic dog-faced infantry are, and frankly are about the only thing holding either side together on the ground right now.  Tanks and AFVs are not staying alive long enough to get value out of them, infantry are.

I have been reading this forum and just about everything I can find on this war and have not seen that sentiment at all. Infantry seem far more worried about artillery and UAS in this war.  Tanks are a threat, right up until they are dead and they got pushed back, with helicopters in this war very early on.  If you remove all the systems to kill/oppose the tank?  Sure then we are back in time and the tank has a central role.  But we cannot “unsee” the events of this war.

Look you guys love tanks and still see a core role for them.  That is great.  I disagree and argue that the trend is towards marginalization and narrowing of what armour is going to be able to do for us.  As with the last iterations we have seen the usual arguments - Shield systems will preserve the role of the tank, infantry are vulnerable but we still use them, can’t get rid of the tank because nothing else can do its job, tanks is still dangerous, the role of the tank still needs to be filled, we have been here before and a new one, “think of the people”.

Can’t speak for everyone but I am still not sold.  Too much evidence against, not enough for.  Too big, too expensive, too slow to reproduce for the environment it finds itself in.  The recipe for extinction on this planet for millions of years.

 

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ok and here we separate the amateurs from the pros.  You have to create two parts of your soul to do this work, that is something very few people really understand.  In one part there is the value of a human being, in the other the value of a human fighting system.  Don’t mix them together or you can’t do this work.

Infantry is incredibly cheap to produce and sustain from a military value point of view.  We have 8 billion human beings on this planet.  Ukraine has around 44 million.  Even at 10% fighting capable, that is 4 million troops they can put into action.  Training and equipping those troops is not cheap but is can be done relatively quickly.  You can turn a civilian into a soldier in about 6 weeks (or less).  Right now Russia can produce about 200 tanks per year.  We in the west are not much better.  We don’t have 8 billion “civilianized tanks” to pull from.  Production wise tanks are extremely expensive and very low density.  It is disingenuous to try and link their battlefield vulnerabilities as a metric and ignore their sustainment realities.  It is also really poor to try and play a “oh the humanity” card in defence of freakin tanks.

The idea that we should somehow “send tanks and AFVs to war not people” is ridiculous, and I honestly hope I am misunderstanding.  The reality is that losses of armour and AFVs are demonstrating that as capability they are unsustainable in their current employment.  Basic dog-faced infantry are, and frankly are about the only thing holding either side together on the ground right now.  Tanks and AFVs are not staying alive long enough to get value out of them, infantry are.

I have been reading this forum and just about everything I can find on this war and have not seen that sentiment at all. Infantry seem far more worried about artillery and UAS in this war.  Tanks are a threat, right up until they are dead and they got pushed back, with helicopters in this war very early on.  If you remove all the systems to kill/oppose the tank?  Sure then we are back in time and the tank has a central role.  But we cannot “unsee” the events of this war.

Look you guys love tanks and still see a core role for them.  That is great.  I disagree and argue that the trend is towards marginalization and narrowing of what armour is going to be able to do for us.  As with the last iterations we have seen the usual arguments - Shield systems will preserve the role of the tank, infantry are vulnerable but we still use them, can’t get rid of the tank because nothing else can do its job, tanks is still dangerous, the role of the tank still needs to be filled, we have been here before and a new one, “think of the people”.

Can’t speak for everyone but I am still not sold.  Too much evidence against, not enough for.  Too big, too expensive, too slow to reproduce for the environment it finds itself in.  The recipe for extinction on this planet for millions of years.

1. I think I have said in other messages that the infantry is the heart of any army and that the rest of the arms (artillery, armored forces, engineers, tactical air force, etc.) are at their service. They have to act in a coordinated manner with it, so that the infantry reaches the final objective.

2. What I am saying is that the infantry cannot fight alone but in the midst of a set of weapons and systems that must act in a combined manner. The composition of each set of weapons is different for each war and for each theater of that war. You do not need the same type of weapons or combination of them in the jungle, in the desert, in urban combat, in a high intensity war, or in a guerrilla war. Therefore, dispensing with weapons that have worked in the past and that we do not know if we will need in the future, seems absurd to me, even if today they don't work as we expected

3. I know you are Canadian, but I get the impression that the American military tends to think in terms of pure brute force. Unfortunately, an infantryman is not a "machine", he is a living being with feelings, and what is more important from a military point of view, with morale, which is what sustains him in combat. Napoleon said that "The moral is to the physical as three is to one." If NATO were fighting a Russian-style infantry war with huge casualties, I don't think it would end well. I have been a 1st lieutenant in the reserve and it is one thing to fight and die in defense of your country, and another to be used as cannon fodder because you are cheaper and more expendable tan a given weapon, no matter irt is a tank or another weapon.

3. I am not advocating an army focused on purely armored units. I am advocating that the infantry could count on tanks (and artillery, and engineering vehicles, and drones, and UGVs, etc.) when necessary, which may be in the next war (which we do not know where it will be or when or how ), or in a later one. For that, you have to have tanks (and drones and whatever it takes) first of all. If you don't have them, if you give them up because they didn't work well in a previous war, you will have to design them for the next war, but the war in which the tanks were missing, and which turned out to be necessary, will have been irretrievably lost.

Edited September 24, 2023 by Fernando

[Battlefront.com]

9 hours ago, Kinophile said:

The modern MBT is the current iteration of whatever it is that needs to be fast, hard to kill and dangerous at long ranges. Current war is proving they're very vulnerable to UAS,  but is that a failure of tactics and thought,  or of the platform as a tactical concept. 

The need for something with those traits won't go away.

I (mostly) agree.  But who of us is saying this?  Certainly not I.

What the "tank is dead" people are saying is that heavy armor is rapidly becoming a liability in providing these capabilities and they need to be replaced with the emerging replacements.

JonS' good analogy of evolution of things like horsed cavalry and pikemen reinforces my point.  Many military roles haven't changed much in a thousand or two thousand years, but the means of fulfilling those rolls has dramatically changed.  Cavalry, for example, does not consist of a horse because they tried putting armor on them to defeat arrows and solid shot only to find it was impractical AND there was a practical alternative... things powered by internal combustion engines.

Think about ISR.  Do we still have 2 legged, 2 eyed, flesh and bones moving around to try and gather intelligence about the enemy?  Do they still scout out paths for larger forces?  Do they conduct surprise ambushes on unsuspecting enemy positions?  Yup.  But that's because they provide some degree of capability that isn't duplicated by satellites, drones, IR sensors, communication intercepts, etc.  And most importantly, Human recon is relatively cheap and easy resource to have, therefore it is viable to retain.  If a single recon soldier cost $35 Billion to field, you'd see a lot less HUMINT on the battlefield

Steve

[hcrof]

5 minutes ago, Fernando said:

 

1. I think I have said in other messages that the infantry is the heart of any army and that the rest of the arms (artillery, armored forces, engineers, tactical air force, etc.) are at their service. They have to act in a coordinated manner. coordinated manner with it so that the infantry reaches the final objective.

2. What I am saying is that the infantry cannot fight alone but in the midst of a set of weapons and systems that must act in a combined manner. The composition of each set of weapons is different for each war and for each theater of that war. You do not need the same type of weapons or combination of them in the jungle, in the desert, in urban combat, in a high intensity war, or in a guerrilla war. Therefore, dispensing with weapons that have worked in the past and that we do not know if we will need in the future, seems absurd to me, even if today they don't work as we expected

3. I know you are Canadian, but I get the impression that the American military tends to think in terms of pure brute force. Unfortunately, an infantryman is not a "machine", he is a living being with feelings, and what is more important from a military point of view, with morale, which is what sustains him in combat. Napoleon said that "The moral is to the physical as three is to one." If NATO were fighting a Russian-style infantry war with huge casualties, I don't think it would end well. I have been a 1st lieutenant in the reserve and it is one thing to fight and die in defense of your country, and another to be used as cannon fodder because you are cheaper and more expendable tan a given weapon, no matter irt is a tank or another weapon.

3. I am not advocating an army focused on purely armored units. I am advocating that the infantry could count on tanks (and artillery, and engineering vehicles, and drones, and UGVs, etc.) when necessary, which may be in the next war (which we do not know where it will be or when or how ), or in a later one. For that, you have to have tanks (and drones and whatever it takes) first of all. If you don't have them, if you give them up because they didn't work well in a previous war, you will have to design them for the next war, but the war in which the tanks were missing, and which turned out to be necessary, will have been irretrievably lost.

I think many armies are including tanks in the future because they are hedging their bets and also because a low intensity war might require tanks. The US has the luxury of having lots of everything, but I think many European armies should consider ditching tanks altogether and spending that money on something else. 

What is that something else? I am not sure but I think it will involve compact armoured UGVs, APCs for the infantry and UGV "mules" for last mile logistics. And a lot of artillery and drones for fires. Infantry won't go away but may be supplemented by small UGVs that act as team served weapons and drones as expendable scouts. Infantry will become "managers" of a team of robots more than trigger pullers. 

[hcrof]

On "humans are cheap". They are not. But they are cheap to have "in reserve" since there is such a large pool to draw from. So any peer on peer conflict will always involve large numbers of humans simply because they can be mobilised quickly and in huge numbers. Armies should seek to avoid risk to human life but at the same time take advantage of the huge potential of mass mobilisation if it is required. 

[cesmonkey]

3 hours ago, FancyCat said:

Manpower is probably the most valuable resource among Western nations (cause I prefer not venturing into other countries beyond) and the most politically vulnerable to lose. Nothing cheap about that. I mean review Ukraine's own political and social concerns around their soldiers. Consider how that is a clear marker of difference between Russia and Ukraine, and how the ensuring pleading from Ukraine has been for what keeps their soldiers alive. Artillery, western tanks, IFVs, APCs, despite the amounts of Soviet hardware given, it has always been Ukrainian preference for Western hardware and vehicles.

Also, ATVs, quad-bikes? I haven't seen one video of Ukrainians on a ATV or quad-bike. Are these armored popemobiles? I fail to see how anyone would willingly take a IFV or APC to the front instead of a ATV or quadbike.

At least 80 quad bikes donated to Ukraine from Latvia:
https://jalopnik.com/latvia-donates-electric-scooters-quads-to-ukraine-war-1850161897
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Armed_Forces_of_Ukraine#Utility_vehicles

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, Fernando said:

 

1. I think I have said in other messages that the infantry is the heart of any army and that the rest of the arms (artillery, armored forces, engineers, tactical air force, etc.) are at their service. They have to act in a coordinated manner with it, so that the infantry reaches the final objective.

2. What I am saying is that the infantry cannot fight alone but in the midst of a set of weapons and systems that must act in a combined manner. The composition of each set of weapons is different for each war and for each theater of that war. You do not need the same type of weapons or combination of them in the jungle, in the desert, in urban combat, in a high intensity war, or in a guerrilla war. Therefore, dispensing with weapons that have worked in the past and that we do not know if we will need in the future, seems absurd to me, even if today they don't work as we expected

3. I know you are Canadian, but I get the impression that the American military tends to think in terms of pure brute force. Unfortunately, an infantryman is not a "machine", he is a living being with feelings, and what is more important from a military point of view, with morale, which is what sustains him in combat. Napoleon said that "The moral is to the physical as three is to one." If NATO were fighting a Russian-style infantry war with huge casualties, I don't think it would end well. I have been a 1st lieutenant in the reserve and it is one thing to fight and die in defense of your country, and another to be used as cannon fodder because you are cheaper and more expendable tan a given weapon, no matter irt is a tank or another weapon.

3. I am not advocating an army focused on purely armored units. I am advocating that the infantry could count on tanks (and artillery, and engineering vehicles, and drones, and UGVs, etc.) when necessary, which may be in the next war (which we do not know where it will be or when or how ), or in a later one. For that, you have to have tanks (and drones and whatever it takes) first of all. If you don't have them, if you give them up because they didn't work well in a previous war, you will have to design them for the next war, but the war in which the tanks were missing, and which turned out to be necessary, will have been irretrievably lost.

Both of you are missing each others' points, I think.

Nobody is saying that the West should, or ever will, adopt Russia's "disposable heroes" mentality where lives are used to compensate for deficiencies in the larger military structure (of which tanks are the least of Russia's problems!).  While the West might be willing to sacrifice more of its citizens for certain circumstances, by and large it will seek to avoid conflicts it should engage in out of concern for losses.  That is the history of the West for as long as I've been alive for sure.

What The_Capt and I are arguing is that given a choice between having 1000 soldiers manning a variety of fairly inexpensive (relative to tanks) capabilities is vastly preferable to having 1000 soldiers relying upon a couple dozen tanks that require a large percentage of those 1000 soldiers just to keep in the field.

In CM's tactical terms I can see a force of 500 soldiers with an array of existing unmanned vehicles coming way, way, way ahead of a 1000 soldiers armed with an array of existing heavy manned vehicles.  I can know that unmanned centric force will cost a gazillion less, can be deployed faster, sustained easier, and redeployed quicker than the heavy centric force.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, FancyCat said:

Also, ATVs, quad-bikes? I haven't seen one video of Ukrainians on a ATV or quad-bike. Are these armored popemobiles? I fail to see how anyone would willingly take a IFV or APC to the front instead of a ATV or quadbike.

Both sides have been using quad bikes.  Ukraine started using them right at the start with special forces units doing hit-and-run attacks on the infamous Russian stalled column heading down to Kyiv.  Ukraine has also employed Western style "dune buggies" as well.

For sure the use of these is not as extensive as one might think, but there is ample evidence (including videos that have been posted here) that they are in use to some degree.

Steve

[Harmon Rabb]

Has the potential of becoming an iconic photograph of this war. Showcasing the bravery of individual members of the AFU, back when much of the world already wrote them off as having no chance of defending their country.

 

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Harmon Rabb

[Battlefront.com]

10 minutes ago, hcrof said:

On "humans are cheap". They are not. But they are cheap to have "in reserve" since there is such a large pool to draw from. So any peer on peer conflict will always involve large numbers of humans simply because they can be mobilised quickly and in huge numbers. Armies should seek to avoid risk to human life but at the same time take advantage of the huge potential of mass mobilisation if it is required. 

Humans have a huge "cost advantage" built into them.  A single truck needed to supply fuel for a platoon of tanks can "power" a company of Soldiers.  Soldiers can forage and source their own supplies, tanks can only do a little of that in theory and not so much in practice.  The weaponry that soldiers field are many and the operators are flexible with them.  A soldier can jump into an enemy trench and rearm itself within seconds, a tank requires expensive and coordinated logistics to rearm, so no can do.  A soldier can change roles at very little expense and difficulty, a tank is whatever it was when it rolled out of the factory.  Upgrading a soldier is stupidly simple, upgrading a tank is ungodly expensive even for fairly minor changes.  The cost of moving 100 soldiers and their primary equipment is about the same as 1 tank.

And, on top of this, soldiers can be realistically replaced within weeks or months (hell, hours if you're Russia!) and they can be replaced on a large scale.  Tanks can not do either of these things.

Anyway, the list of these advantages goes on and on and on.  As I've already pointed out, pro-tank arguments never, ever address any of this because if they try they just undermine their position and reinforce the tank-is-dead argument.

Steve

[Fernando]

25 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Humans have a huge "cost advantage" built into them.  A single truck needed to supply fuel for a platoon of tanks can "power" a company of Soldiers.  Soldiers can forage and source their own supplies, tanks can only do a little of that in theory and not so much in practice.  The weaponry that soldiers field are many and the operators are flexible with them.  A soldier can jump into an enemy trench and rearm itself within seconds, a tank requires expensive and coordinated logistics to rearm, so no can do.  A soldier can change roles at very little expense and difficulty, a tank is whatever it was when it rolled out of the factory.  Upgrading a soldier is stupidly simple, upgrading a tank is ungodly expensive even for fairly minor changes.  The cost of moving 100 soldiers and their primary equipment is about the same as 1 tank.

And, on top of this, soldiers can be realistically replaced within weeks or months (hell, hours if you're Russia!) and they can be replaced on a large scale.  Tanks can not do either of these things.

Anyway, the list of these advantages goes on and on and on.  As I've already pointed out, pro-tank arguments never, ever address any of this because if they try they just undermine their position and reinforce the tank-is-dead argument.

Steve

Please, Steve, review what you have written. I agree with you on many things, and you are  one of the few  people with the most vision and capability to analyze this war I have ever seen, but right now, in this response, it seems to me that you are almost speaking like a French general might have spoken on May 9, 1940, the day before the German Blitzkrieg 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Fernando

[hcrof]

14 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Humans have a huge "cost advantage" built into them.  A single truck needed to supply fuel for a platoon of tanks can "power" a company of Soldiers.  Soldiers can forage and source their own supplies, tanks can only do a little of that in theory and not so much in practice.  The weaponry that soldiers field are many and the operators are flexible with them.  A soldier can jump into an enemy trench and rearm itself within seconds, a tank requires expensive and coordinated logistics to rearm, so no can do.  A soldier can change roles at very little expense and difficulty, a tank is whatever it was when it rolled out of the factory.  Upgrading a soldier is stupidly simple, upgrading a tank is ungodly expensive even for fairly minor changes.  The cost of moving 100 soldiers and their primary equipment is about the same as 1 tank.

And, on top of this, soldiers can be realistically replaced within weeks or months (hell, hours if you're Russia!) and they can be replaced on a large scale.  Tanks can not do either of these things.

Anyway, the list of these advantages goes on and on and on.  As I've already pointed out, pro-tank arguments never, ever address any of this because if they try they just undermine their position and reinforce the tank-is-dead argument.

Steve

I see your point there but humans are only cheap if they don't die. The lost productivity of a healthy 18 year old is enormous. 

But it is beside the point - we are agreed that a tank is a huge investment that can be more effectively spent on other platforms. The benefits gained from a tank have largely been denied by effective long range observation and fires. 

[FancyCat]

I stand corrected on the quadbikes. Now, are we talking tanks or tanks and IFVs? (Saw AFV referenced) I can get behind tanks being less useful, nothing I've seen applies to IFVs, and if ISR means everything is seen, better to use a Western IFV to reach the front lines and assault.

[pintere]

Never thought I’d live to see the day when a Waffen SS veteran would receive a standing ovation in the parliament of a western country! 

For context, the man is 98 yr old Yaroslav Hunk, a former member of the 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division of the SS "Galicia".

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by pintere

[hcrof]

Since I have nothing better to do, here is a thought experiment: 

The latest western tanks cost $10m and weigh 70t. They have a crew of 4 and at least half that again in dedicated sustainers so say 6 soldiers. They have an annual operating cost of $1m (according to Google, don't quote me on that!), and fire rounds that cost $3k each.

Will that system defeat 6 infantry soldiers armed with $1k fpv drones with a range of 5-10km? Or a UGV with a smart mortar, some drone scouts and 6 maintainers/operators? 

[FancyCat]

5 minutes ago, pintere said:

Never thought I’d live to see the day when a Waffen SS veteran would receive a standing ovation in the parliament of a western country! 

For context, the man is 98 yr old Yaroslav Hunk, a former member of the 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division of the SS "Galicia".

 

Tbh pretty sure that's occurred in quite a few countries in the West already.

Problematic, but hey, if your American, we still have Confederate statues. And holidays in a few states. Personally, as much problematic stuff I see in Ukraine, the same applies to my own country, and certainly applies to Russia.

And luckily, Russia is very kind to emphasize they go beyond problematic.

Quote

Saratov students from #Russia came to the occupied territory of the Kherson region to teach Ukrainian children "the history of a great and powerful country" as part of the "Pedagogical desant (landing)" project.  The young lady from the video claims Ukrainian are uneducated and have no discipline, but they will change it.   Fascist Russian Federation should be kicked out of Ukraine as soon as possible.

 

[Kraft]

53 minutes ago, hcrof said:

Since I have nothing better to do, here is a thought experiment: 

The latest western tanks cost $10m and weigh 70t. They have a crew of 4 and at least half that again in dedicated sustainers so say 6 soldiers. They have an annual operating cost of $1m (according to Google, don't quote me on that!), and fire rounds that cost $3k each.

Will that system defeat 6 infantry soldiers armed with $1k fpv drones with a range of 5-10km? Or a UGV with a smart mortar, some drone scouts and 6 maintainers/operators? 

and yet the countries at war do everything in their power to aquire new tanks, build tank factories and restore old and damaged tanks.

Enough evidence of FPV drones hitting a tank several times and it remains operational. Those 6 guys wont cross a field and blast through defences with their drone. They'll wound or kill a conscript, or lose the drone to EW and the front changes not by a single meter.

Imagine desert storm but with FPV drones?? Every tool has its use - and the men inside the systems put efforts into getting both, not either. Nobody is calling for Ukrainian battleships.

Had the Leopard/Abrams debacle been solved at Day1 of the war, we'd have seen Tanks rolling in a thunder down south to the coast last autumn blasting through conscript positions like they did up north. Wasting a year on political tip toeing for the biggest defensive line since ww2 to be build does not make the tank dead.

Its like claiming the role of attack choppers is dead, in the current situation, they are limited, reduce density of AA coverage and it'll turn back into the Afghanistan / Iraq turkey shoot videos where 2 guys in the air do what several companies would be needed for, with casulties.

Edited September 24, 2023 by Kraft

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I (mostly) agree.  But who of us is saying this?  Certainly not I.

What the "tank is dead" people are saying is that heavy armor is rapidly becoming a liability in providing these capabilities and they need to be replaced with the emerging replacements.

JonS' good analogy of evolution of things like horsed cavalry and pikemen reinforces my point.  Many military roles haven't changed much in a thousand or two thousand years, but the means of fulfilling those rolls has dramatically changed.  Cavalry, for example, does not consist of a horse because they tried putting armor on them to defeat arrows and solid shot only to find it was impractical AND there was a practical alternative... things powered by internal combustion engines.

Think about ISR.  Do we still have 2 legged, 2 eyed, flesh and bones moving around to try and gather intelligence about the enemy?  Do they still scout out paths for larger forces?  Do they conduct surprise ambushes on unsuspecting enemy positions?  Yup.  But that's because they provide some degree of capability that isn't duplicated by satellites, drones, IR sensors, communication intercepts, etc.  And most importantly, Human recon is relatively cheap and easy resource to have, therefore it is viable to retain.  If a single recon soldier cost $35 Billion to field, you'd see a lot less HUMINT on the battlefield

Steve

The tank is dead.  Long live the the tank. :Shrug:

To reiterate, I'm fully in agreement that 60 ton armored monsters are not going to operate as they have been in the past. The long range sniper role of Challenger 2s in Ukraine is established. The only kill we've seen was when a C2 advanced closer to the lines,  but my impression is it was a helo/air kill rather than ATGM/Arty. Happy to be corrected. So is the C2 doomed? 

A heavy-effect, mobile, direct fire weapon will always exist. For want of a better word,  we're stuck with "tank". 

A UGV is just too broad a term,  like saying Mobile Machine. In this case it's an  (unscrewed) Mobile Machine, and it feels like we're rooting around in a Lego box of semantics and acronyms. 

Perhaps we can move thus a step further along and discuss what type and formatting of UGS would fill that role? How heavy is too heavy?

I'm personally in huge favour of treating it as a platform with a plug n play ability, shifting from a lighter mobile config to a heavier direct support. In theory customize your force for each action. 

I don't think one can interchange the roles of real arty v tank/IFV/APc-types,  the physics of the weapons and job are vastly different. 

But within a category, it could be very useful to physically adapt what you have to the task assigned. If an attack is ongoing over a week or so then you could be adjusting your vehicle formatting "on the fly",  relatively speaking. 

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Kinophile

[chrisl]

16 minutes ago, hcrof said:

I see your point there but humans are only cheap if they don't die. The lost productivity of a healthy 18 year old is enormous. 

But it is beside the point - we are agreed that a tank is a huge investment that can be more effectively spent on other platforms. The benefits gained from a tank have largely been denied by effective long range observation and fires. 

Even that lost productivity has been quantified by the actuaries.  I don't keep close track, but it's in the few $M range - that's what an insurer will pay out to compensate a family for the loss of a person.  Last I knew (quite a while ago) it was about $3M.  Call it $5M today, and that's the lifetime earning value + loss of companionship.  Figure that the economic value to the economy is maybe 3x that because their employer is on the exploitive side, and it's about the cost of one MBT.

Coming from the POV of someone who develops technology that is MilTech adjacent, it's not necessarily the direct fire high velocity gun on a moving platform that's dead (although I think its role is going to change), it's the huge pile of junk that you have to pile onto that platform to protect it that's dead.  We're at a point that modern infantry-carried AT weapons have a range to the horizon (or at least to the next treeline for NLAW) and the warheads can penetrate *any* amount of armor that you can reasonably slap on, including ERA and maybe APS.  If your APS is firing, you probably need to hope you have a fast enough reverse gear, because the cheap AT weapons are going to come in fast enough to overload it.  

So that pile of armor/era/electronics/CIWS that you're hauling around is mostly just sucking up resources (fuel, maintenance) and not helping you offensively because things are at a point where "If you're seen, one shot will kill you".  If you want a high velocity gun on a mobile platform, the system to protect it probably needs to revolve more around keeping it invisible and in motion more than protecting it from things that go boom.  Maybe light armor for protection from small arms/shrapnel, but anything more is just reducing mobility.  Which is the AMX-10, or the CAESAR for indirect fire.  Remove the need to put people in it and you have Steve's UGV mini-tank.  Way smaller logistics tail, way less energy consumption, and you can make it electric or PHEV so that its idle power consumption (and waste heat signature) is close to nothing.

Back to the high velocity direct fire guns.  We're already seeing how direct fire isn't that great against guys in holes - the flat trajectory limits you to hitting the edge of the hole, which is a tough target and doesn't distribute the boom very well.  So indirect fire or drones are better there.  Trench clearing really seems like it should be done by LandShark Mk I or CandyGram drones that can fly in and go around the corners or blow the doors to the dugouts.  Those can be cheap and autonomous and even launched from close outside the trench.  Like hand delivered DPICM with some minimal brains.  And why send a guy when you can send a grenade with wings?  But  if you need to hit a vehicle near the front lines, direct HV is effective and harder to defend against than a slow rocket.  But in an environment where the average infantryman can hit a vehicle out to his LOS (even at the horizon) you don't want to expose that gun.  "Direct fire" will start to include flat trajectory indirect fire slightly over the horizon, like a tank version of the Apache longbow.  And to avoid radiating a "send your precision guided arty here" signal with the radar system, it will be directed by targeting systems (drones or radars) that are physically separated and may have at most a minimal two-way connection to keep the radiated signals down.

[MikeyD]

Its an odd turnabout that criticism of Leopard 2 appears to be they don't have the general purpose utility and protection levels of a late model T64. That may not be what's being said but the implication is Ukraine's T64 is a workhorse while Leopard 2 is a racehorse. 

[JonS]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

and a new one, “think of the people”.

It's not really that new though? "Think of the people" was pretty much the genesis of the tank in the first place, and the core of US and UK doctrine throughout WWII, and the central plank of NATO doctrine for the last 70-odd years.

[dan/california]

5 minutes ago, JonS said:

It's not really that new though? "Think of the people" was pretty much the genesis of the tank in the first place, and the core of US and UK doctrine throughout WWII, and the central plank of NATO doctrine for the last 70-odd years.

Well yes, but the revised version of "think of the people", at least our people, is too bury the bad guys in robotic things that go bang until no one can hear them scream. There is a decision point coming up, very quickly, where we will have to decide how many casualties we want to take to keep a man in the loop. My guess is very few.

[G.I. Joe]

5 hours ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Has the potential of becoming an iconic photograph of this war. Showcasing the bravery of individual members of the AFU, back when much of the world already wrote them off as having no chance of defending their country.

 

 

That is an incredibly powerful image, sometimes one picture can convey raw courage better than words ever can.

Personally, I get "Last of the Breed" by Dos Gringos stuck in my head when I see this.

 

 

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(PSA regarding Dos Gringos... fighter pilot bands can be an acquired taste, and that is one of the few of their songs that does not contain NSFW lyrics...)

[kimbosbread]

2 hours ago, dan/california said:

There is a decision point coming up, very quickly, where we will have to decide how many casualties we want to take to keep a man in the loop. My guess is very few.

If your population is on a downward trend, and you have way more old people, and it’s too expensive for young people to start families, is a major war really that likely? Or, following Russia’s example, are wars even more likely as older voters are often more nationalistic (ex China, Russia, USA, etc) and there are more of them?

Also, besides casualties, what if you simply cannot field enough men in the loop, due to not having enough men for logistics, etc.?

[Beleg85]

Russian surces claims somebody beat up old friend of this board- Griking Strelkov, while he was in detention center waiting for his trial...reportedly, done by far-right inmate from Ukraine.

Also, from ISW...he seems to be way over-optimistic calling it a breaktrough.

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Beleg85

[Harmon Rabb]

23 minutes ago, G.I. Joe said:

That is an incredibly powerful image, sometimes one picture can convey raw courage better than words ever can.

Personally, I get "Last of the Breed" by Dos Gringos stuck in my head when I see this.

 

 

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(PSA regarding Dos Gringos... fighter pilot bands can be an acquired taste, and that is one of the few of their songs that does not contain NSFW lyrics...)

Never heard of that band before, but I really enjoyed that song, thanks for sharing.

When I saw the image I immediately thought of some 80s heavy metal music.

Apparently the pilot in the image is this handsome gentlemen named Vadym Voroshylov with the call sign Karaya. Who holds the rank of Major in the Ukrainian Air Force.

I don't have an Instagram account so I can't confirm any of this, I would like to hear what our local expert, @Haiduk on all things AFU has to say about this