How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[LongLeftFlank]

13 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Agreed, its why I am a little confused why we dont see more remote sentry gun type arrangements outside of adhoc modifications in the conflict. 

 

 ̶M̶A̶R̶L̶O̶W̶ STEVE: "Oh sergeant, don't take it the wrong way. After all, it's only natural selection."

[sburke]

52 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yes, that is interesting.  I have absolutely no idea how that can be possible.  The_Capt has absolutely zero membership differences from anybody else.  Maybe there is some internal rule that you can't ignore someone with X number of posts?  I'll look into that.

Steve

 

@The_Capt has special powers.

Edited 5 hours ago by sburke

[LongLeftFlank]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

 

That's what Tennille said! [/rimshot]

[High fives @sburke, then returns to the peanut gallery]

Edited 5 hours ago by LongLeftFlank

[Lethaface]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

This is not what I have really been arguing. 

One last time in short so I can just refer to this post for the future every time someone continues to twist my words. 
 

• Tanks need design changes to improve utility in drone environments and mitigate constraints.
• Doctrine likely needs to change as well. Tanks are not the only battlefield platform suffering from constraints to mechanised warfare. 
• Tanks still have a role to play in combat, primarily due to having attributes that nothing else has on the battlefield.
• Just because a tank is relatively expensive does not mean its suddenly not worth having, even with a battlefield filled with cheap things (its not the only thing on the battlefield that's expensive)
• I personally look closely at what the two active combatant nations are saying about their tanks and believe they currently have the best understanding of the tank in this environment. Considering just about the worst thing either side says about tanks is that they are no longer front and centre like they would of been in the cold war yet will still be on the battlefield is telling. 
• UGVs if found to be sound and practical are very likely to potentially replace tanks in role, but this is at least a decade or two away at minimum.

From my perspective, given that I think the topic is interesting, you haven't really engaged with the counter arguments as far as I have been able to discern. Granted I missed/skipped parts of the discussions.

If I may be so free, @The_Capt , Steve and others are theorizing about the future of peer2peer warfare. What if you face an opponent like Ukraine in the current war, now extrapolate that 10years ahead to a country with the resources China has. How do you wage war against such a foe?

Now he can be, from my pov, a bit dramatic about all knowledge about war and doctrine can be thrown out the window directly. But his point is, as I like to understand it, that our Armed Forces are totally not up for such an eventuality. And that sticking to 'what is known', the path of least resistance, might be a fatal flaw. That is the default behavior of large organizations / ecosystems like DoDs / MIC. I feel that he has a point there.

Tanks are still useful, in this war and probably beyond. But, is investing in the tank the way to win the next war of attrition against a (near) peer who has gone the cheap AT-UAV route? 

Your answer seems to be, yes of course quit the yapping and face my schwerpunkt!

 

Edited 5 hours ago by Lethaface

[Carolus]

23 minutes ago, sburke said:

@The_Capt has special powers.

All forum users are equal, but some...

[LongLeftFlank]

5 minutes ago, Carolus said:

All forum users are equal, but some...

.... have published really cool wargames, at very limited profit to themselves?

[Carolus]

3 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

.... have published really cool wargames, at very limited profit to themselves?

That's not how Orwell said it, but it's also pretty good!

[Lethaface]

At least he was able to retire from the military and join the warmth of the commoner flock partly because of our humble CMCW contributions 

 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Agreed, its why I am a little confused why we dont see more remote sentry gun type arrangements outside of adhoc modifications in the conflict. I would have thought it would be far more prolific given you avoid a lot of the disadvantages of such a system by employing it in a static position. 

Having something remote to cover a manned position with enfilading fire from a flank for instance would strike me as very useful when the Russians make their next meat assault. 

I'm totally with you on this.  We saw improvised UGVs as early as 2022, so why have their use and variety not exploded like the UAVs have?  Even the remove mine layers seem to still be a novelty, but that's just an impression as there's no statistical information out there to draw from.

The simple answers seem to be that they are more expensive and complex to create, more difficult to deploy and employ.  As a simulations guy, I can tell you for sure that simulating a flying vehicle is WAY easier than simulating a ground vehicle.  By their very nature aerial vehicles have so many fewer real world elements working against them.

I do expect we will start seeing more of these genuine combat videos of UGVs in the future.  Their utility is not just theoretical, it's demonstrably real.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, acrashb said:

Like half track rushes and trucks being used to flush hidden locations.

Exactly   Or using bailed out tank crews for the same thing. It's really difficult for us to impose reality on everything in all circumstances all the time, but darn it... we have to try!

Steve

[dan/california]

I really can't figure out why everything bigger than a medium machine gun does not come with a set up like the Stugna's that lets the operators hide in the deepest hole they can physically dig. From there it is just a matter of setting up ever more secure coms, and maybe bigger ammo boxes.

[Battlefront.com]

33 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

From my perspective, given that I think the topic is interesting, you haven't really engaged with the counter arguments as far as I have been able to discern. Granted I missed/skipped parts of the discussions.

If I may be so free, @The_Capt , Steve and others are theorizing about the future of peer2peer warfare. What if you face an opponent like Ukraine in the current war, now extrapolate that 10years ahead to a country with the resources China has. How do you wage war against such a foe?

Now he can be, from my pov, a bit dramatic about all knowledge about war and doctrine can be thrown out the window directly. But his point is, as I like to understand it, that our Armed Forces are totally not up for such an eventuality. And that sticking to 'what is known', the path of least resistance, might be a fatal flaw. That is the default behavior of large organizations / ecosystems like DoDs / MIC. I feel that he has a point there.

Tanks are still useful, in this war and probably beyond. But, is investing in the tank the way to win the next war of attrition against a (near) peer who has gone the cheap AT-UAV route? 

Your answer seems to be, yes of course quit the yapping and face my schwerpunkt!

 

Add to that one other thing... the near future reality that The_Capt and I (along with others) are envisioning scares the fluids and solids out of us.  We look at what is going on now and think "if things don't change on our end soon, and rather radically, we're fooked".  So when we hear anybody arguing for tweaks rather than full on rethinking, that doesn't help with keeping bodily functions working as they should.  Advancing age is already a threat to that!!

Steve

[ArmouredTopHat]

50 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

From my perspective, given that I think the topic is interesting, you haven't really engaged with the counter arguments as far as I have been able to discern. Granted I missed/skipped parts of the discussions.

If I may be so free, @The_Capt , Steve and others are theorizing about the future of peer2peer warfare. What if you face an opponent like Ukraine in the current war, now extrapolate that 10years ahead to a country with the resources China has. How do you wage war against such a foe?

Now he can be, from my pov, a bit dramatic about all knowledge about war and doctrine can be thrown out the window directly. But his point is, as I like to understand it, that our Armed Forces are totally not up for such an eventuality. And that sticking to 'what is known', the path of least resistance, might be a fatal flaw. That is the default behavior of large organizations / ecosystems like DoDs / MIC. I feel that he has a point there.

Tanks are still useful, in this war and probably beyond. But, is investing in the tank the way to win the next war of attrition against a (near) peer who has gone the cheap AT-UAV route? 

Your answer seems to be, yes of course quit yapping!

 

A lot of the counter arguments got drowned in the last few hundred pages of posting sadly. 

But to reiterate while attempting avoiding the pitfall of repeating what has been said:

I actually agree with Steve and co about the need to adapt and have a hard think about force generation going forward. Failures of NATO MIC to have proper reserves of arty ammunition and such as an example is a major problem that needs both scrutiny and improvements asap. In that same vein we know there are procurement issues with western countries (though at least the hardware at least works most of the time, so its not exactly the worst when it comes to scandals)

Drone use in Ukraine should and is a wake up call that is only now finally stirring up serious CUAS efforts. It is certainly a failing point that this was not considered sooner given its implications, even if drones have a fair amount of shortcomings that have been talked about a lot here. They have radically changed the battlefield in undeniable ways. 

I personally think that massed tank use as a doctrine has effectively died at this point. (I am sure someone is going to engrave that and put it on a wall somewhere) Concentration kills as everyone seems to broadly agree upon. Certainly the AFU method of employing tanks in pairs at most seems to avoid attracting too much heat in that regard.

Massed tanks becoming a bad idea does not mean that the core premise of the tank and what it provides becomes irrelevant on the battlefield is my main argument, sided with the notion that perhaps we have people making somewhat premature conclusions based on a conflict that might not be all that applicable for other countries and their armoured forces and is more importantly not resolved yet. Hard questions should be asked but this conflict should not by the be all end all sign of how warfare is going to go down (though its certainly providing a lot of very useful data even before it concludes, however long that might take)

Essentially, we are seeing a conflict that's resembling a stalemate (though really its more a case of both sides being locked in their respective shaping operations) in terms of neither side having the ability to decisively knock each other out quickly, hence the long, bloody and drawn out results that entails as both sides chip at each other as best they can while trying to get the other to bleed out first. Its eerily similar to the middle phase of WW1 or the Iraq/Iran war in such a measure. Yet we know from the former that mobile warfare did in fact become quite relevant at the end quite suddenly, and in the case of the later...well desert storm happened not too long after...

I suppose I am on the side of wait and see before we making too drastic a call, a move that seems to be supported for the most part by most military procurements, for better or for worse. 
 

50 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

How do you wage war against such a foe?

To be clear, I think that the West in particular certainly needs to overhaul its approaches / institutions in several respects, but broadly I think the focus should still be on overmatch capability. China has plenty of strengths but also plenty of weaknesses that could domino in ways that would hurt them considerably in areas like air combat. Technology is still a force multiplier that can be applied even in peer to peer with the correct doctrine and investment. Just recently we saw the USA introduce the Aim-174 that has considerably shaken up the playing field in the pacific with some truly scary capability. The West still remains top dog when it comes to such force multiplier innovations, even with China closing in. 

As for tanks, its more difficult to say. Any pacific conflict is going to feature little of such combat simply due to the geography. MBTs do have the unfortunate downside of not being particularly good at swimming. I still think capability overmatch is what you want to go for, with appropriate design considerations that I have outlined before. Ultimately UGVs will likely at least contest roles that MBTs currently occupy, which might finally put the issue to bed but I am in no position to make such a prediction given its continent on a number of factors. Certainly a UGV the size of a tank is a fair way off, though as we saw today, smaller UGVs are in fact very real and have a role in my view to play in terms of aggressive recon / light combat patrol. 

I do not in fact, think tanks are a solution to everything!
 

Edited 4 hours ago by ArmouredTopHat

[dan/california]

13 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Exactly   Or using bailed out tank crews for the same thing. It's really difficult for us to impose reality on everything in all circumstances all the time, but darn it... we have to try!

Steve

In this specific case wouldn't it just make sense to have the crews retreat towards the friendly map edge under AI control. I am sure their is antecdote or three about crews that have bailed out doing something heroic, or at least trying. But 98% is good enough here, they should just be trying get off the map alive.

Edited 4 hours ago by dan/california

[Vlad]

On 9/18/2024 at 6:44 PM, dan/california said:

You cannot IMAGINE how much you don't want to see that...

"Some things sicken even jackals."

Sir Terry Pratchett

[ArmouredTopHat]

22 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I really can't figure out why everything bigger than a medium machine gun does not come with a set up like the Stugna's that lets the operators hide in the deepest hole they can physically dig. From there it is just a matter of setting up ever more secure coms, and maybe bigger ammo boxes.

I'm certainly with Steve here. It seems entirely worth it for a bit more cost to have something that can be remotely operated with none of the issues with signal jamming if its a wired connection on a battlefield filled with EWAR. I suppose it is an issue of cost and complexity as Steve suggested.

Systems with a Remote operating capability like Stugna are not even an especially new concept. Swingfire was very similar in that you could take the sight well away from the vehicle to use it in cover. Surprised its not a standard with ATGM teams at the very least given how exposed a crew is after firing. 

Edited 4 hours ago by ArmouredTopHat

[Butschi]

19 hours ago, sburke said:

in terms of masses of drones I am not sure I agree. The supplies and controlling equipment could be a huge distance away.  The controller could be connected via antenna, so I don't know what the limiting factor there is on when distance becomes an issue. The drones themselves are the only thing that needs to be near the breech.

So that is all more guesswork on my side.

I thought that availability of frequencies might be a problem. I seem to remember that we read about that being issue already. When having thousands of (consumer grade) drones in one place, the problem - if it is one - surely is has to be amplified.

The other thing about massing, something I've been wondering about for quite some time now: Is latency an issue? From my very limited and small scale experience, latency is much worse for e.g. wifi (air is a shared medium here) than via cable. In that case you could use an antenna but latency would suffer. Oh well, I'm certain someone here knows more about that stuff.

[holoween]

To quickly summarize the entire tank is dead discussion:

1. On the tactical level the tanks impact has been reduced from its all time hights but currently still remains reasonably usefull. Future designs and upgrades are not particularly likely to fundamentally change that.

2. On the operational level on the tanks side nothing changed about the supplies it needs but its supply columns are potentially under more stress from long range fires.

3. On the strategic level tanks are really expensive for what they can provide and the effects dont justify the expense.

So from a defense procurement and development view you really want to invest heavily into drones and drone defense for the land forces as that is likely what majorily decides the outcome of a land fight going forward.

[Kharnvor]

 

10 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

I'm certainly with Steve here. It seems entirely worth it for a bit more cost to have something that can be remotely operated with none of the issues with signal jamming if its a wired connection on a battlefield filled with EWAR. I suppose it is an issue of cost and complexity as Steve suggested.

Systems with a Remote operating capability like Stugna are not even an especially new concept. Swingfire was very similar in that you could take the sight well away from the vehicle to use it in cover. Surprised its not a standard with ATGM teams at the very least. 

Edited 4 hours ago by Kharnvor

[Butschi]

18 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The issue with mines able to relocate is that the enemy can put them anywhere, not just in a neatly marked minefield. Safe lanes can (and will) be monitored. Artillery delivered and now, drone delivered mine to reseed a safe lane will be a constant threat. But the problem with mobile mines is that they can be placed anywhere along an LOC. Now you don’t just have to monitor safe lanes but kms of LOC. Mines with legs are a much larger problem than a few hundred meters in a minefield. They are a minefield that can move. So now you need very high res ISR able to spot a small target on the ground just about everywhere.

And then we get into standoff smart mines. EFPs or able to fire smart submunitions. All those little cheap processors are going to make life miserable for everyone when it comes to mine warfare.

For certain but what you describe is a nightmare with or without a breaching operation. I'd think mobile mines are much worse when used where you don't expect them (or in a way that you have to expect them everywhere) instead of in the one place where you definitely do expect them (static (?) minefields) and have the capacity to monitor them. Delivered by artillery or carrier drones you don't "simply" have to monitor kms of LOC near the minefield you intend to breach but basically everywhere.

Edited 3 hours ago by Butschi

[Yet]

18 minutes ago, holoween said:

To quickly summarize the entire tank is dead discussion:

1. On the tactical level the tanks impact has been reduced from its all time hights but currently still remains reasonably usefull. Future designs and upgrades are not particularly likely to fundamentally change that.

2. On the operational level on the tanks side nothing changed about the supplies it needs but its supply columns are potentially under more stress from long range fires.

3. On the strategic level tanks are really expensive for what they can provide and the effects dont justify the expense.

So from a defense procurement and development view you really want to invest heavily into drones and drone defense for the land forces as that is likely what majorily decides the outcome of a land fight going forward.

4. The tank was, is and will be useful in a peer to n00b war in open terrain with air supremacy. You never know which country is gonna deliver the next Saddam.

However, it is on debate if the tank will be able fulfill a role here in the future that other platforms cannot do (almost) as good for the same cost.

also... this was not off chart last 30 years, but is this that you will prepare your military for in the coming decades?

Edited 4 hours ago by Yet

[Lethaface]

44 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

A lot of the counter arguments got drowned in the last few hundred pages of posting sadly. 

But to reiterate while attempting avoiding the pitfall of repeating what has been said:

I actually agree with Steve and co about the need to adapt and have a hard think about force generation going forward. Failures of NATO MIC to have proper reserves of arty ammunition and such as an example is a major problem that needs both scrutiny and improvements asap. In that same vein we know there are procurement issues with western countries (though at least the hardware at least works most of the time, so its not exactly the worst when it comes to scandals)

Drone use in Ukraine should and is a wake up call that is only now finally stirring up serious CUAS efforts. It is certainly a failing point that this was not considered sooner given its implications, even if drones have a fair amount of shortcomings that have been talked about a lot here. They have radically changed the battlefield in undeniable ways. 

I personally think that massed tank use as a doctrine has effectively died at this point. (I am sure someone is going to engrave that and put it on a wall somewhere) Concentration kills as everyone seems to broadly agree upon. Certainly the AFU method of employing tanks in pairs at most seems to avoid attracting too much heat in that regard.

Massed tanks becoming a bad idea does not mean that the core premise of the tank and what it provides becomes irrelevant on the battlefield is my main argument, sided with the notion that perhaps we have people making somewhat premature conclusions based on a conflict that might not be all that applicable for other countries and their armoured forces and is more importantly not resolved yet. Hard questions should be asked but this conflict should not by the be all end all sign of how warfare is going to go down (though its certainly providing a lot of very useful data even before it concludes, however long that might take)

Essentially, we are seeing a conflict that's resembling a stalemate (though really its more a case of both sides being locked in their respective shaping operations) in terms of neither side having the ability to decisively knock each other out quickly, hence the long, bloody and drawn out results that entails as both sides chip at each other as best they can while trying to get the other to bleed out first. Its eerily similar to the middle phase of WW1 or the Iraq/Iran war in such a measure. Yet we know from the former that mobile warfare did in fact become quite relevant at the end quite suddenly, and in the case of the later...well desert storm happened not too long after...

I suppose I am on the side of wait and see before we making too drastic a call, a move that seems to be supported for the most part by most military procurements, for better or for worse. 
 

To be clear, I think that the West in particular certainly needs to overhaul its approaches / institutions in several respects, but broadly I think the focus should still be on overmatch capability. China has plenty of strengths but also plenty of weaknesses that could domino in ways that would hurt them considerably in areas like air combat. Technology is still a force multiplier that can be applied even in peer to peer with the correct doctrine and investment. Just recently we saw the USA introduce the Aim-174 that has considerably shaken up the playing field in the pacific with some truly scary capability. The West still remains top dog when it comes to such force multiplier innovations, even with China closing in. 

As for tanks, its more difficult to say. Any pacific conflict is going to feature little of such combat simply due to the geography. MBTs do have the unfortunate downside of not being particularly good at swimming. I still think capability overmatch is what you want to go for, with appropriate design considerations that I have outlined before. Ultimately UGVs will likely at least contest roles that MBTs currently occupy, which might finally put the issue to bed but I am in no position to make such a prediction given its continent on a number of factors. Certainly a UGV the size of a tank is a fair way off, though as we saw today, smaller UGVs are in fact very real and have a role in my view to play in terms of aggressive recon / light combat patrol. 

I do not in fact, think tanks are a solution to everything!
 

Thanks for your detailed answer, for the Emperors beard glory I agree with the gist of most of it and don't think it's really that contrary with the tankIsDead vision. Great success?
The question is what/how effective and efficient / affordable overmatch capability will look like. 

Personally I think it will take quite a while, but then Skynet sumfink says hi, the movie variant. Although hopefully without access to strategic weapons. With some luck we won't have to witness such scary stuff large scale during our lifetimes. But it wouldn't surprise me at all if we do.

Not all nations are created equal though, most wars aren't actually peer on peer wars of the highest spectrum. So I wouldn't directly throw all the old shoes, although imo that's not necessarily what people here are actually arguing to do.

Edited 4 hours ago by Lethaface

[Butschi]

On 9/17/2024 at 9:23 PM, holoween said:

Not to necessairily disagree with your points but the core issue is that the armys budget kept getting smaller during the last 20 years and had to somehow pay for the afghanistan war through that budget. So the only choice given the budget was to keep stuff running by running down the ammo reserves, spare parts reserves, vehicle reserves and reducing troop numbers.

I don't disagree that the budget probably didn't grow proportionally with the expected capabilities (out of area missions, etc.) but looking at the numbers https://milex.sipri.org/sipri the budget did not get smaller in the last 20 years. In terms of absolute numbers the budget pretty much stagnated in the 1990s(with a small dip in the early 1990s) until the mid 2000s and afterwards steadily went up. In percentage of total government spending, German military went from 4.3% in 1990 to 2.7% in 1994 and then stayed between 2.6% and 2.8% with the late 1990s having up to 3.0%.

The latter number basically includes inflation in so far as that results in higher taxes.

[Lethaface]

45 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Add to that one other thing... the near future reality that The_Capt and I (along with others) are envisioning scares the fluids and solids out of us.  We look at what is going on now and think "if things don't change on our end soon, and rather radically, we're fooked".  So when we hear anybody arguing for tweaks rather than full on rethinking, that doesn't help with keeping bodily functions working as they should.  Advancing age is already a threat to that!!

Steve

I agree that things could get scary very fast, also outside nation state conflicts. Envision some criminal / terrorist organization connecting dots.

[holoween]

22 minutes ago, Yet said:

4. The tank was, is and will be useful in a peer to n00b war in open terrain with air supremacy. You never know which country is gonna deliver the next Saddam.

However, it is on debate if the tank will be able fulfill a role here in the future that other platforms cannot do (almost) as good for the same cost.

also... this was not off chart last 30 years, but is this that you will prepare your military for in the coming decades?

Yes when relieved of most of the strategic, operational and tactical pressures on it it will do great.

And winning against a peer opponent is the benchmark for a military. And if youre a smaller military youre looking to somehow come out ahead even if youre the underdog.

And as of today the tank appears to be more a win harder weapon rather than one causing you to win in the first place.