How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Fenris]

Interesting. These quotes from the start and end of ISW's report from the 24th are more restrained than the tweet from Mr Barros above, even though his name is on the same report.

Quote

ISW is providing an assessment of a very dynamic situation in the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive near Orikhiv in western Zaporizhia Oblast. ISW emphasizes that the situation remains dynamic and unclear and that the tactical situation is likely changing rapidly. It is too early to forecast if Ukrainian forces will achieve an operational breakthrough in this sector of the front.

 

Quote

The Ukrainian counteroffensive is in an extremely dynamic phase and ISW is not prepared to offer any confident forecast of events despite recent positive indicators. Recent promising reports of Ukrainian tactical progress, including breaking through some Russian field fortifications, in the Orikhiv area should not be read as a guarantee that Ukraine is on the cusp of a significant operational success. Observers should be patient with Ukraine's campaign design and should expect Ukraine’s counteroffensive to continue through winter 2023 and into spring 2024. Ukraine does not need to achieve a sudden and dramatic deep penetration to achieve success.

 

Edited September 25, 2023 by Fenris

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Cmon. I'm specifically not saying, implying or inferring that. And you have to give a reason for why a heavy effect,  direct fire platform will have no use other than BECAUSE DRONES. 

Sure I have.  I've even posted pictures of the systems that exist RIGHT NOW that can fire everything from small arms to PGMs.  Companies are already working on new generations of larger UGVs that can take even heavier weaponry.

Your obsession with large caliber direct fire cannon is misguided (see what I did there? ).  We've watched tanks engage enemy trenches at point blank range with a full store of shells and cause almost no casualties (likely concussed many of the defenders).  Slow flying drones dropping grenades would have been vastly more effective and at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cost without exposing anybody to harm in doing so.

Sure, if I were in Ukraine right now I would welcome a large caliber HE chucker supporting me.  Why wouldn't I?  As long as I'm not near it when it burns up there's no downside for me.  Well, except if I were relying upon said HE chucker to provide mission critical support.  If I were, then it's likely mission over if the tank gets nailed.

As an infantryman I would prefer to have 4 smaller direct fire UGVs supporting me than 1 super easy to see and hit target.  I'd more likely have effective fire support, especially because I'd more likely have UGVs in support of me than tanks because tanks are hiding in fear KMs away from the front and can never be available in the numbers UGVs can be fielded.

Steve

[The_Capt]

26 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Sure I have.  I've even posted pictures of the systems that exist RIGHT NOW that can fire everything from small arms to PGMs.  Companies are already working on new generations of larger UGVs that can take even heavier weaponry.

Your obsession with large caliber direct fire cannon is misguided (see what I did there? ).  We've watched tanks engage enemy trenches at point blank range with a full store of shells and cause almost no casualties (likely concussed many of the defenders).  Slow flying drones dropping grenades would have been vastly more effective and at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cost without exposing anybody to harm in doing so.

Sure, if I were in Ukraine right now I would welcome a large caliber HE chucker supporting me.  Why wouldn't I?  As long as I'm not near it when it burns up there's no downside for me.

Steve

Ok, let me present The_Capt's theory of the trajectory of the tank.  And then maybe we can tie this one off and just wait and see.

1.  Denial - Western militaries will simply ignore the data from this war.  They will rest easily in the certainty that "we will do it better".  Then we will have a major failure.  If we are lucky it will be in training.  The idea of tanks and even heavy mech will hit a major and unavoidable wall that we cannot rationalize away.  This will likely be a long process after we spent billions on next gen tanks.

2.  Anger - We will try to protect the tank, just so we can keep it viable.  Layers upon layers of systems, R&D, new tank variants and just obscene amounts of money.  No one is going to tell us we can't use the tank!  Some may work for awhile but eventually the pressure against this capability will become too much.

3.  Bargaining - We will narrow the employment of the tank.  We will save it for very specific points in a campaign.  We will tie them to decision points in order to preserve the value of the tank.  Eventually pressure will continue to mount as someone else does what a tank is designed for, with something else for much less.

4.  Depression - We will push the tank back.  Someone will figure out how to put a big HE PGM round on a tank and we will employ the thing like we see in Ukraine today.  10kms back, a heavily armoured SPG lobbing shells in the space between infantry and artillery.  This weird work will continue until someone points out that we already have systems to do all this.  

5.  Acceptance - A sad vestige of another age, some bureaucrat is going to do the math on the cost/benefit of the old girl and time for museums. The worm will turn and every "visionary" will claim they knew the tank was done "way back in 2022".  Staff college papers will be written and the world will keep on spinning.

We gotta keep the rotation going.  I think we should have Canada bashing day based on that stunt we just pulled in Parliament as we hosted and celebrated a proud veteran of the Waffen SS.

Edited September 25, 2023 by The_Capt

[kimbosbread]

7 hours ago, hcrof said:

I wonder why we have not seen computer assisted targeting yet like how fighter pilots cab see where the bomb will fall or those new rifle sights that shoot automatically when you are pointing in the right direction? Maybe the control software is proprietary and needs to be rewritten? 

Because right now a fpv has a 15-30% pHit but it could be so much more with some software tweaks. (I know EW is also a thing but that is a harder problem to solve for the moment)

As was said, this is basically COTS and lacks those features. The evolution will look something like so:

First, The software on the base station (phone, or laptop, or whatever) will get some smarts: Target recognition, target tracking, speed/distance estimation etc. This is easy to do, and easy to scale (in terms of distributing the software across the military) and easy to update with the newest version. Slowly, the smarts will be shifted over to the drone (hardware + software). A beefier base station gives you better machine learning capabilities, of course.

Next, The drone will get a small amount of smarts, but still need the smarter base station. This allows the drone to negate some EW effects, and increase battery life. For example, it can follow a route and phone home when it sees interesting stuff. The problem is that updating the software on the drone (or a bunch of them) is marginally more involved than the phone or laptop software update.

Eventually, the drone will have software capable of doing everything on its own. Obviously this isn’t a stretch in the very near future. If you’ve ever played with OpenCV and your own drone, and it’s pretty easy to write a little program that tracks your face 90% reliably (and we’re talking minimal training data, like 30 images or so) and a bit more work to control your drone programmatically to follow the face and keep it a set scale (so constant distance). Hardware isn’t a problem; a modern smartphone has enough power to run your regular image recognition algorithms easily (but deep learning probably is relegated to the base station).

 

[Bearstronaut]

10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

 

1.  Denial - Western militaries will simply ignore the data from this war.  They will rest easily in the certainty that "we will do it better".  Then we will have a major failure.  If we are lucky it will be in training.  The idea of tanks and even heavy mech will hit a major and unavoidable wall that we cannot rationalize away.  This will likely be a long process after we spent billions on next gen tanks.

 

When I was active duty back in 2021 my brigade did a rotation at NTC. The SIGINT team I was in charge of was attached to a Stryker infantry company defending the mouth of a pass. We were attacked by an OPFOR armor battalion and we just straight up murdered them. They took like 70% casualties and the rest slinked away under a heavy smoke screen. I often wonder how that AAR went.

[Kinophile]

37 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Your obsession with large caliber direct fire cannon is misguided (see what I did there? ). 

Ok, in about two pages when everyone is groaning under the collatoral effects of weaponized humour, let it not be said that I fired the first pun...

Your over-distinction between UGVs and Tanks is unmanning me.

42 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Companies are already working on new generations of larger UGVs that can take even heavier weaponry.

So...tanks. You keep gliding past my equivalence of a tanks = UGVs. You're locked-on to the notion that a tank in the future implies a crewed vehicle. I'm stating it's not that black and white. We could have a manned future tank, equivalent in some aspects to a "modern" MBT but with slaved UGVs. Hell, I'm assuming the infantry would have slaved In/Direct Fire UGVs organic to each platoon. You get a UGV; And You get a UGV! EVERYONE gets a UGV!* 

43 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

We've watched tanks engage enemy trenches at point blank range with a full store of shells and cause almost no casualties (likely concussed many of the defenders).  Slow flying drones dropping grenades would have been vastly more effective and at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cost without exposing anybody to harm in doing so.

That's very literalist. Those tactical situations were born of the unavailabilty of drones in those moments (and some giant sweaty buffalo-sized balls on those UKR tank commanders!) and of airburst shells for the tanks. But damn, wasn't it useful to have a direct fire platform around? Until we have true battle-aware, common-sense loaded AI there will always be a  use for a manned heavy effects, direct fire platform. In the future, that could be a smaller machine, with say a 75mm gun, company level asset. It could be manned or unmanned, whichever is available there and then. Make the crew smaller, 1-2 ppl max and you can treat the machine as attritable, because its easier to replace its 35tons than 70 tonner.

 

_{*yeah yeah even engies (spit)}

[The_Capt]

17 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

When I was active duty back in 2021 my brigade did a rotation at NTC. The SIGINT team I was in charge of was attached to a Stryker infantry company defending the mouth of a pass. We were attacked by an OPFOR armor battalion and we just straight up murdered them. They took like 70% casualties and the rest slinked away under a heavy smoke screen. I often wonder how that AAR went.

"Be more combined armsy!"

There is only one way that I can think of to keep the tank in the game: win the ISR war.  If you can blind an opponent from strategic to tactical then all of the PGM interdiction systems that make the tank system so vulnerable start to fail.  Of course if I have won the ISR war to that extent, do I need heavy?  I mean a solid IFV with a lot of fast moving Light out front will likely be able to do the job because my PGM is still effective and will be hitting and killing before troops even arrive.  Hardpoints can die from PGM artillery or any number of ways and if you run into the one gold plated bunker, well then push a big old troll gun up and take it out.  This would push tanks basically back to being assault engineering vehicles - where they started.  

[Kinophile]

7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This would push tanks basically back to being [manned] assault engineering vehicles - where they started.  

Of all the back and forth, left and right here so far, that sentence makes the most sense to me so far. 

Edited September 25, 2023 by Kinophile

[danfrodo]

41 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

When I was active duty back in 2021 my brigade did a rotation at NTC. The SIGINT team I was in charge of was attached to a Stryker infantry company defending the mouth of a pass. We were attacked by an OPFOR armor battalion and we just straight up murdered them. They took like 70% casualties and the rest slinked away under a heavy smoke screen. I often wonder how that AAR went.

Some really good posts here lately.  But this one tops the charts, thanks for sharing that.  TheCapt's 'denial/anger..' post comes in 2nd.  

The main problem w drones is that they take all the fun out of tactical wargaming.  And make obsolete my beloved tanks.  So sad.  So very sad.

'Breakthrough' according to ISW.  This is good news but it shows how much we've moved the goal posts for the summer campaign.  I admit I have moved my goalposts all the way back to 'cut the rail & road lines east of Tokmak along a broad enough front to deploy artillery along that line'.  Then keep grinding away during the rasputitsa as much as possible, while hoping for a good solid freeze.  I suspect a long freeze, like 4 weeks, is somewhat unlikely, so might be 10 days of frozen ground at a stretch, which would make operations sketchy as once you get going you are suddenly back in mud.

[Bearstronaut]

4 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Some really good posts here lately.  But this one tops the charts, thanks for sharing that.  TheCapt's 'denial/anger..' post comes in 2nd.  

The main problem w drones is that they take all the fun out of tactical wargaming.  And make obsolete my beloved tanks.  So sad.  So very sad.

 

After the attack an infantryman came up to my MAT-V and asked "Hey s'arnt, you guys got any spare Javs?" I laughed and told him "nah dude, they don't give Javelins to intel nerds."

[dan/california]

6 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Russian missile (?) hitting Ukrainian military train. Reportedly region of Avdiivka but far away from frontline, ca.50kms ; date unknown. If it was indeed larger missile (unlikely Tornado or FAB), it means muscovites improved their target aquisition and overal killchain, at least in this region. Of course it is also possible that train stayed there simply too long.

 

They just barely got it close to do anything.

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Short answer seems to be a combination of ISR, PGM and Unmanned systems.  The actual job of a tank is to take a big gun, move it around the battlefield, point it at the enemy and hurl a slug/shell at them.  They carry a lot of armour and other system to allow them to survive.  Ok, so let’s just break it down:

- Mobility.  Small unmanned systems have already demonstrated extremely high mobility on the battlefield.  Even with the counters and their vulnerabilities the sheer volume of those systems combined with their small size and manoeuvrability basically positions them everywhere.  A tank has mobility but it is limited in comparison.  They can roll across the battlefield at 60-80 kph, but never really do for obvious reasons.

- Survivability.  Big heavy armour no longer equals Survivability.  Distributed, redundant  cheap systems equal survival.  A force can lose 10 drones a day and still sustain that entire system, tanks cannot.  Being small and many essentially means that entire unmannned system, plus ISR is more survivable than that of armour.

- Lethality.  That big old gun projected energy like no one else’s business…whammie.  Nothing else can put a slug down range at an opponent at over 2kms per second.  Thing is that big guns performance is not the only measure of lethality.  As far as Range is concerned, PGM have far out ranged the tank gun, in some cases by an order of magnitude.  As to actual energy transfer, well chemical energy on the target at point of impact is extremely portable and distributable.  In the past the only thing keeping chemical energy in place was accuracy.  A tank gun is extremely accurate and things like artillery were not - they were considered area weapons.  This war has demonstrated in spades what PGM can do - massed precision beats everything.

So basically we are seeing a distributed systems of chemical energy-based weapons able to move and survive -as a system- and kill with better precision and range than a tank gun, at a fraction of the cost.  How many times have we noted that it looks like the UA is maneuvering via Deep Strike?  We have seen massive trends of Denial based on the combination of ISR, PGM and unmanned.  

The tank has not been replaced by a single platform, it has been replaced by a swarm…at least for right now.  If we need to move death rapidly around the battlefield that can precisely kill, well we are seeing it. If technology shows up that can sweep unmanned systems for the sky or defeat PGM well then we are back to a new-old ballgame.

The proof of this has been building in this entire war.  How many time have we seen either side try to mass mech/armour and fail?  Tanks are noted right now as fire support.  They are either being pulled forward in 1 and 2s for sniping.  Or standing off 10kms and lobbing in shells.  Why do you suppose both the UA and RA are doing this?  Is it because both sides suddenly forgot how to put 16 tanks into a squadron and smash them at an opponent? (Btw, that is the working theory for some).  Or is it because they already tried that, multiple times, and it failed to deliver?

What PGM, ISR and unmanned has not been able to deliver is breakthrough in 2023…yet.  That suite of systems is not able to provide rapid break in, through and out of an opponents defensive.  But neither can the tank, which was its primary job.  So we seem stuck in a mutual Denial situation.  What I do not know is where it goes from here.  Are we looking at Denial/Defensive primacy in warfare? - we have been here before.  Or is this a blip until PGM, ISR and unmanned fully mature?  Can we actually build the counter-systems rapidly enough to regain a level of symmetry?

We do not know.  This entire back and forth about a single ground platform is in fact silly, but not a bad way to pass a weekend.  The reality is that land warfare, maybe all warfare is likely fundamentally shifting. This is an earthquake in military affairs.  We do not know if AirPower works the same.  We do not know if Offence works the same.  We do not know if combine arms as we knew it works anymore.  Manoeuvre Warfare, Mission Command, how we force develop and generate…they are all looking like they may be in the wind.  Hell based on the last week, I am not sure Naval Warfare as we knew it is going to survive.  Trying to figure out what still works, what does not and what will work is going to be the central challenge moving forward.  Unless we fall back on “Russia Sux” and “Poor UA just don’t get it”, which we will of course.  It won’t be until some NATO force gets crushed in some 3rd party nation that the lights will go off…or maybe we will buck the trend and get out in front of the change…we have managed it before.

Fingers crossed they run enough exercise with open eyes to figure it out. Post war we REALLY need to get the one the better Ukrainian units to the NTC, or equivalent

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

We want the one above “breakthrough”.  Ignore “encircled”.  Breakout, is regaining freedom of movement and therefore tempo, therefore creating decision superiority and expanding options spaces.  Last Fall we saw UA breakout battle, we want that.  Enough of these tactical breakthroughs adding up as the RA system erodes might just do it yet.

Among other things the seem to be in position to push northeast from Verbove and really widen their current breach of the first/main line of defense. That would greatly increase the are the length of line the Rusians have to defend with less help from mines and obstacles. I am just eagerly awaiting the first video of a Russian artillery battery  getting aquatinted with a Bradley's 25mm.

3 hours ago, FancyCat said:

 

This war consists of a near infinity of moments that any decent editor would have sent back for a rewrite in 2015. 

9 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

After the attack an infantryman came up to my MAT-V and asked "Hey s'arnt, you guys got any spare Javs?" I laughed and told him "nah dude, they don't give Javelins to intel nerds."

Could you give more details on the force structure of both sides in this little training engagement?

Edited September 25, 2023 by dan/california

[akd]

Said to be M1A2 in Ukraine.  Appears to have some of the latest upgrades, including the Low-Profile CROWS.

 

[The_Capt]

6 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

The main problem w drones is that they take all the fun out of tactical wargaming.  And make obsolete my beloved tanks.  So sad.  So very sad.

I think game developers need to really look hard at drone vs drone actions.  It won't solve for tanks as we can see very far and by other means but freedom of movement on the future battlefield is going to require an ability to achieve air-superiority below 2000 ft, even if temporarily.  I strongly suspect the best thing to kill a UAS, is another UAS.  UGVs will go the same way.  This will mean a combination of front edge unmanned swarm systems battling out, while manned forces are trying to kill each other over the horizon in the initial stages.  Then someone's unmanned cloud will collapse, ISR advantaged will slide violently and the losing sides manned systems will die very fast if they cannot run away.  Big, slow hot will be a liability in that environment.

Arquilla's three rules:

Many and small beats large and heavy
Finding always beats flanking
Swarming always beats surging

The_Capt's Axiom - Mass beats isolation, precision beats mass, mass precision beats everything.

[billbindc]

49 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

"Be more combined armsy!"

There is only one way that I can think of to keep the tank in the game: win the ISR war.  If you can blind an opponent from strategic to tactical then all of the PGM interdiction systems that make the tank system so vulnerable start to fail.  Of course if I have won the ISR war to that extent, do I need heavy?  I mean a solid IFV with a lot of fast moving Light out front will likely be able to do the job because my PGM is still effective and will be hitting and killing before troops even arrive.  Hardpoints can die from PGM artillery or any number of ways and if you run into the one gold plated bunker, well then push a big old troll gun up and take it out.  This would push tanks basically back to being assault engineering vehicles - where they started.  

Aren't your tanks still at the mercy of highly distributed man portable AAWS in a five mile radius from any tank asset? How is there ever going to be enough ISR for that? And how will there ever be enough to protect the logistical tail of those tanks? 

[danfrodo]

7 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I am just eagerly awaiting the first video of a Russian artillery battery  getting aquatinted with a Bradley's 25mm.

That's more like it!  Armor rampaging through enemy backfield! That's what I want!  

And blasting away at some surprised lancet units would be particularly satisfying.  

[Bearstronaut]

8 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Could you give more details on the force structure of both sides in this little training engagement?

Not really. I was a signals intelligence NCO with little access to higher level force structure. Friendly side was a standard Stryker infantry company and the OPFOR as far as I could tell was a normal Donovian (Russian) armor heavy BTG. 

[The_Capt]

22 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Aren't your tanks still at the mercy of highly distributed man portable AAWS in a five mile radius from any tank asset? How is there ever going to be enough ISR for that? And how will there ever be enough to protect the logistical tail of those tanks? 

The most dangerous thing Ukraine has done with ATGMs and MANPADs is link them into an integrated C4ISR complex.  An ATGM is point defence in the grand scheme, even at 5kms.  The team on the ground needs to see the tanks coming and know where to put that point defence .  Linking point defenses together is how one creates enough massed precision to defeat massed threats.  If you kill an opponents ISR, it won't kill the ATGMs but it will blind the brain that knows where to put them.  At that point surprise and mobility are back on the table for tanks.  Dangerous, oh my yes, but unless an opponent can lay out and sustain these systems over operational distances you could definitely have a ball game.  (Hey kids I can argue both sides!).  Also if you can effectively blind an opponent armed to the gunnels with UAS, then you have achieved air superiority below 2000 ft, which is not going to solve for small 2-man teams in bushes but it definitely gives one a better shot.  Add in APS and counter-systems and you may stand a decent chance. 

Sustaining freedom of manoeuvre is never about eliminating all threats, it is about eliminating dilemma.  If you break an opponents ISR, their ability to project dilemma on your forces goes down pretty dramatically - how does PGM artillery know where to shoot.  Their UAS is already degraded.  So poor shivering infantry are pretty much it, even with next-gen ATGMs the odds get better for the old beasts of the Red God.

Logistics.  Again, ISR.  Degrade an opponents ISR and they cannot see that long tail as easily, so they cannot hit it.

The very big question is "how do you blind a monster of a million eyes?"  We put sensors in everything.  That story of the early days of the war where an artillery commander brought in a strike via a gas station security cam blew my mind.  I am not even sure it can be done...but that appears to be the game now.

Edited September 25, 2023 by The_Capt

[danfrodo]

21 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think game developers need to really look hard at drone vs drone actions.  It won't solve for tanks as we can see very far and by other means but freedom of movement on the future battlefield is going to require an ability to achieve air-superiority below 2000 ft, even if temporarily.  I strongly suspect the best thing to kill a UAS, is another UAS.  UGVs will go the same way.  This will mean a combination of front edge unmanned swarm systems battling out, while manned forces are trying to kill each other over the horizon in the initial stages.  Then someone's unmanned cloud will collapse, ISR advantaged will slide violently and the losing sides manned systems will die very fast if they cannot run away.  Big, slow hot will be a liability in that environment.

Arquilla's three rules:

Many and small beats large and heavy
Finding always beats flanking
Swarming always beats surging

The_Capt's Axiom - Mass beats isolation, precision beats mass, mass precision beats everything.

soooooo..... you are saying tactical war games can still be fun?

[kimbosbread]

33 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I strongly suspect the best thing to kill a UAS, is another UAS. 

I was thinking about during the morning coffee, poo and run.

In principle I like something like a modern Gepard: 25-50mm airburst ammo, a few thousand rounds, and some sort of passive, networkable sensor system. Future version with a laser, possibly better. However, I think this system within two decades will no longer be able to keep pace with the offensive capability of a drone swarm.

The other thing in the near-term I like is a short-range anti-radiation drone, something like a fast little quadcopter with a series of antennas (900mhz, 1300mhz, 2.4ghz and 5.8ghz) to cover the common drone video + control frequencies that can basically be slaved to a soldier-carried drone detection system (which I think would be an interesting commerical product, is easy to build and I might discuss with rich friends to commercialized). You could carry 10 of these things in the place of one stinger, and the cooler thing is if you had an UGV (atv-sized), it could carry 100 of these and automatically launch at any drone it detects in the area. A small racing quad is going to be able to outmaneuver any sort of larger quad dropping grenades or mortar bombs, easily.

For a drone swarm, yeah, no counter other than your own swarm, or a Halliburton weather machine!

Edited September 25, 2023 by kimbosbread

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

soooooo..... you are saying tactical war games can still be fun?

Check out CMCW kids, copies available in the lobby!!

[dan/california]

Pretty sure this is good news.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Bearstronaut said:

When I was active duty back in 2021 my brigade did a rotation at NTC. The SIGINT team I was in charge of was attached to a Stryker infantry company defending the mouth of a pass. We were attacked by an OPFOR armor battalion and we just straight up murdered them. They took like 70% casualties and the rest slinked away under a heavy smoke screen. I often wonder how that AAR went.

Heh.

In 2003 I started paying a lot of attention to Strykers and the concepts behind them.  It was, in fact, the genesis of CM2 and CMSF.  Little known fact, we wanted the original title for Shock Force to be "Combat Mission - Stryker Brigade".  But the Pentagon copyrighted that, so we went with Shock Force.

Anybody who was paying attention to near-future warfare was forced to take sides; heavy, medium, or light forces.  The heavy proponents stated that there was no way it would ever be challenged on the battlefield.  I was a strong proponent of the Medium concept and argued against the heavy guys all day long about how expensive, vulnerable, and clumsy their forces were (the deployment debacle to Kosovo was very recent).  With Javelins, TOW mounts, and RWS I argued that along with "net centric" (that was the buzzword of the day) and wheels made them a far more useful force.  All the arguments that the heavy supporters came up with were proven wrong in the years since.

Your example of a Stryker Brigade laying waste a heavy force is not surprising to me.

Now we find ourselves having the same argument, except this time both heavy and medium are on the receiving end.

To summarize, 20 years ago I argued that heavy should be emphasized in favor of medium.  The wars of the last 20 years proved me far more right than wrong.  Looking ahead 20 years I see heavy gone and medium turned into a heavily protected taxi service.  Light... well... they are going to look a lot more like medium, but will likely still be a bit lighter.

Steve

[MSBoxer]

48 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think game developers need to really look hard at drone vs drone actions.

I am envisioning a game like CM where anything out of LOS is blurred except a radius around drones you control.  This would allow you to plot movement or call-in strikes based upon the limited view you have from the drones.  Of course, you could also layer in occasional updates from satellite or other overhead sources.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

Ok, in about two pages when everyone is groaning under the collatoral effects of weaponized humour, let it not be said that I fired the first pun...

Your over-distinction between UGVs and Tanks is unmanning me.

I think we should declare a ceasefire and save everybody from escalation to puns of mass destruction.

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

So...tanks. You keep gliding past my equivalence of a tanks = UGVs. You're locked-on to the notion that a tank in the future implies a crewed vehicle. I'm stating it's not that black and white. We could have a manned future tank, equivalent in some aspects to a "modern" MBT but with slaved UGVs. Hell, I'm assuming the infantry would have slaved In/Direct Fire UGVs organic to each platoon. You get a UGV; And You get a UGV! EVERYONE gets a UGV!*

Except the UGVs that are going to come about will not be heavy, which is why I keep saying "heavy armored vehicles".  Which the MBT is the heaviest of all.  Because lighter and more plentiful at a lower per unit cost to manufacture and maintain is the way things should go, not making $5m chunks of metal with remote controls.

Which is to say that what people think of and conceive of as a "tank" today is horribly outdated.  A new vehicle, which is *NOT* a tank, will likely emerge to fulfill part of its role (direct fire) while a bunch of things which bear no resemblance to a tank (UAVs, PGMs, etc.) will take on the rest.

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

That's very literalist. Those tactical situations were born of the unavailabilty of drones in those moments (and some giant sweaty buffalo-sized balls on those UKR tank commanders!) and of airburst shells for the tanks. But damn, wasn't it useful to have a direct fire platform around?

You are making the same mistake again and again, which is that you are looking at the situation today and not imagine anything different.  If a force makes good and sound decisions to be rid of MBTs, that same situation in the battlefield situation would find the attackers with a light and nimble dismounted force fighting with an array of deadly weapons, including direct fire with airburst munitions.  They will not miss the MBT because the job will get done BETTER than with the MBT.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, FancyCat said:

 

 

Even if this report is off by a factor of 2, Ukraine scored big.  Credit to the Russians for volunteering the opportunity.

Steve