Strykers Part II

[JasonC]

On (1), well you can't. Is it fun being under multiple MRL strikes? No. Can antennas be fragged and such? Sure. Will this allow 20 T-72s and 10 BMPs to overrun 8 M-1s and 8 Brads in a defensive deployment? Not remotely, they still get turned into scrap iron. (And for counterbattery a M109 unit can be set up elsewhere and firing in 10 minutes, the M198 unit will remain suppressed).

On (2), you were arguing that the Stryker brigade was superior to the heavy in ATGMs because Javelins are supposedly better than TOW. Heavy has Javelins and TOW, and Javelins plus TOW beat Javelins alone every day and twice on Sundays. 50% more range, fired from under armor, you know just little things like that.

On (3), the minimum range of a TOW missile is 65 meters. This is slightly inside typical engagement ranges, and when it isn't (a street e.g.) it is relatively easy to move the 'track until it is. Within 65m, 25mm can penetrate. AT4 also work just fine, enemy cannot show only front aspect, etc, etc. Now, there were some early model TOWs that had minimum range of 200m, but modern ones do not. Incidentally, the minimum range of the Javelin is the same. Within that distance, AT4s are supposed to be used instead.

So yeah, the minimum range of the TOW is not important.

On (4), the fact that water is wet is a matter of empirical analysis!

Irrelevant and hyperbolic. 20% of 500 is still larger than 20% of 36. It is absurd to pretend the number of major weapon systems capable of role X or Y is not relevant to the performance of a unit in combat. If you use 10% of the weapons now, it is because you deployed the whole unit to face multiple threats and one of them materialized. If you have to face the same threats and have 1/15th the weapons then you get far fewer weapons engaged, or you do not succeed in facing all the threats, or both.

If you use 10% of the weapons now, you will use another 10% of them tomorrow. You aren't taking them all into the field and then leaving 80% in a motor pool to inventory. If you were, then you could just send fewer units to the field. Not what happens. Larger units with more weapon systems and more capable ones, have more teeth, and unsurprisingly fight better.

Do you realize how absurd this is? Rather than admit that there are some metrics (firepower remaining under artillery suppression, in heavy combat against a capital intensive opponent) in which an HBCT is flat out superior to a SBCT, a man is seriously posting (nay, hyperventilating with exclamation points) that "empirical operations research" shows that the number of deployed weapon systems is irrelevant and more of them cannot be considered useful.

Is this because the M-1s are less able to move shoot or communicate? No. Is it because they do these things worse under a fully described context, which you claim is so relevant, which was - an enemy heavy battalion is attacking under supporting MRL fire? No.

As for (5), infantry includes mech infantry in Bradleys, and no, Strykers do not "own" the infantry moniker. In fact every BCT type has infantry. I deny it is making infantry more capable to take them out of Brads and put them in Strykers. Anybody who thinks that hasn't happened can consult the 2nd ACR, which whoops, wasn't infantry.

And to reverse it, what do you have against keeping heavy? If nothing, why are you spinning like a top every time I point out the jobs heavy is better at, instead of simply admitting those points?

On the close, you can question my grasp of the operational art or tactics, but then you'd be wrong. I can teach them. The question is, can you learn anything?

[JasonC]

James - yes an M198 is nicer than a M102. Marines have been using them effectively for ages, exploiting their air transportability. I think the main firepower of the SBCT, however, comes from all the Javelins on the one hand, and from the 120s on the other. More mobile, and if used with modern smart rounds, quite capable (though much shorter range etc). They are just more suppressible forms of firepower.

If the air part of the escalation chain can remove enemy suppression ability from the equation, I don't doubt they have enough firepower to beat unsupported enemy armor, in a defensive deployment. It is less obvious you can easily attack with Javelin main armament, against defending heavies. Probably you stand off and call for air in that case.

Again, works against the weak, but involves putting all our combined arms eggs into a small number of baskets, which have counters (widespread use of manpads vs. overreliance on air, arty vs. overreliance on dismounted ATGMs).

On the practical deployability of SBCT, one of my first points was that the wars we actually fight are not the 2-4 day notice affairs stressed at the testing and selection stage. Instead we have months to prepare for wars that can last years. And we naturally therefore send heavy equipment by ship, to save the extra expense of airlift.

It is undoubtedly useful to be more airliftable for landlocked places like Afghanistan. Nothing in the force is not airliftable, it is just that the heaviest stuff needs the big planes and those cost more per flight - $350,000 for one C-17 flight from Germany to Afghanistan e.g. So if you can take 4 each rather than 2, you get more there or save money or both. Personally I think the Marine style LAVs are fine for that role (Marines are not going away), but since now we have Strykers too, of course we can use them that way.

[RT North Dakota]

Originally posted by JasonC:

On (2), you were arguing that the Stryker brigade was superior to the heavy in ATGMs because Javelins are supposedly better than TOW. Heavy has Javelins and TOW, and Javelins plus TOW beat Javelins alone every day and twice on Sundays. 50% more range, fired from under armor, you know just little things like that.

?

A. No I did not. I never claimed a Stryker Brigade was superior to anything. To state that I did, is false and misleading. - in your words "why is that?" - I statedd Javelin had capabilities that TOW did not.

B. Sorry son, but talking to you is like, as I have said before, " discussing love and marriage with an 8 -year old". EG _ "TOW and Javelin beats Javelin alone "everyday and twice on Sundays" - you clearly have little experience/knowledge of either system, either in terms of thier employment, or the logistical and/or the training debts they incur. - so you might want to read up on the differences in the guidance systems and the implications that has!! - I'll conceede you talk a good game, but that's about it.

C. To put it bluntly, you've brought into this whole false transformation debate, promoted by sites like combatreform or airmechstrike, or whoever, which are so far off base, it's just not funny.

D. NOW - I think Stryker is ****, but making that known - in my proffession - is obscured by all the well meaning folks buying into this false HBCT / SBCT debate - armoured car conspiracy!! If it's such a serious debate, find me the RAND paper that compares the two as outright alternatives to each other, in terms other than that of rapid deployment. - The paper that actually studies if SBCT can REPLACE HBCT, as an expression of intent and not a simulation study!

[JasonC]

"TOW cannot be effectively dismounted, so you loose (sic) any ability to leverage the terrain advantage that that (sic) systems like Javelin give you."

See, you were arguing that having TOW means not having Javelin and giving up the capability they bring, to e.g. dismount and peek over a crest or what have you. But heavy forces have dismounts armed with Javelins. That was in your first. In your last, you first claim you weren't trying to compare Javelins with mixed Javelin and TOW but only with TOW, and then (now) that having both is worse than having just Javelin (because it is easier to use or to train on).

But nothing on earth forces a Brad crew to use their TOW instead of having the team get out and use a Javelin. They do anyway, because it is transparently much better to remain under armor and reach out half again as far, in many real circumstances. It is really quite hopeless to pretend getting rid of the longer range weapon is an increase in capability.

I think the Javelin is a great weapon, but Mech has it, that is all.

You then asked "what's TOW's min range versus Jav min range?", and the answer is 65m vs 65m, not exactly making one confident you have any idea of the real capabilities of TOW. In case everybody forget, in gulf war I Brads with TOW outscored even M-1 tanks in total armor destroyed, and were the single most effective weapon system fielded. More effective than A-10s with Maverick, more effective than F-111s with laser guided bombs, more effective than Apaches with Hellfire.

You continue to wreck your case by simultaneously pretending you aren't against heavy and then advancing clearly baseless arguments against it and its component systems.

As for whether the army intends to replace heavy, see FCS discussion above. They want same platform, light, deployable first of all, and the technically competing goals of equal firepower and protection to M-1s are likely to be sacrificed to get them. At least, interim proposals clearly did sacrifice them, while claiming the result was sufficient. In this respect, Stryker and the MGS are portents. Meanwhile out in the field, heavy continues to perform well above spec and well above every competing form, whenever it is a matter of serious fighting.

So we are left looking at a modernization process that proposes to get us to fight with fewer (compare ACR analysis above) and less capable weapon systems in the name of economy and deployability. When we could just as easily be headed in the other direction, toward more capable individual systems and units rather than less.

I've already explained I'd be willing to see some protection sacrificed for deployability, especially if well thought out and if other wiz-bang technologies are fielded concurrently (e.g. S-tank like plus active defense). But here is what I am not willing to let pass without argument - the claim that 20 ton everythings do everything better than heavy is currently doing them, or that heavy has no important capabilities beyond what such economy-motivated solutions can offer.

Heavy has rocked throughout our recent experience and continues to rock, and instead of acknowledging it and being grateful, everybody and his brother are out for its scalp. And this is stupid, all the way down.

[JasonC]

As for the claim that anything I am arguing is based on some website, it is hopelessly unfounded. My arguments are based on what is actually working and not working in the field and the actual proposals and force restructurings the army is putting into practice, and on analysis of the tactical and operational abilities of the resulting forces, and their roles in the likely wars we face. The analysis is mine, not taken from somebody's sales literature.

[Guest Guest]

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[JasonC]

In theory it could go several ways. If we look at what has happened to losers in recent high intensity wars, whole units evaporate without remainder. On the other hand if we look at occasions of larger loss to winning sides, less than perfectly knife edge outcomes, it appears the losses taken depend on the tactics and unit types involved. E.g. Fallujah II involved significant infantry losses, mostly wounded, and few vehicles disabled. Lebanon had many vehicles damaged but few TWO, and low personnel losses by comparison. The former reflected light to medium forces using dismount tactics and the latter mostly heavy using mounted tactics.

On those bits of evidence, there is little reason to expect faster wasting of the supporting infantry in heavy. You might lose whole units or you might see lots of tracks in the shop with various levels of damage, but few crew losses per vehicle hurt.

But it is not obvious the evidence is conclusive. Better combined arms than e.g. the Israelis showed in Lebanon might lead to more like Fallujah rates of loss among the dismounts. Although I personally think the Israeli failing on that occasion was poor armor arty coordination to suppress ATGMs, more than underreliance on dismounts. (Occasions when dismounts were employed more aggressively were not conspicuously successful).

Remember it is not the scale of loss that matters for the loss or maintenance of combined arms, but whether one part of the team wastes away faster than the others. If it is the dominant arm that is most stressed, that is sustainable. A unit may lose combat power to losses of course, but does so by punching its full weight but being spent. The thing to avoid, instead, is lots of potentially useful combat power hobbled by lack of combined arms, because a critical but numerically smaller component of their team evaporated too quickly and left the rest without a critical capability.

(The same might happen to a medium unit that loses too much of its mobile gun firepower, say, or to air cav that loses its attack helos to manpads with the infantry largely unscathed).

[Broken]

Isn't this thread just the heavy-but-slow force vs the swift-but-light force argument?

Toe-to-toe, with both units 0% attrition and fully stocked, in reasonably open terrain, the Heavy Brigades beat the SBCT.

The SBCT shines in mobility and much smaller logistics tail. For the same amount of fuel, you can move 10 Stryker MGS the same distance as one M1. For the same amount of fuel you can move four Stryker vs one Bradley. The practical Stryker road speed is 50% higher than either the M1 or M2. The Heavys also need a much larger maintainence tail than the SBCT.

The Stryker BCT would also appear to be better suited for MOUT and other dense terrain combat.

So, these two brigade types address different environments. A logistics-rich open-terrain theatre favors the Heavys, especially if air support is thin. A logistics poor environment, dense terrain, or heavy air support favor the SBCT.

[molotov_billy]

Originally posted by JasonC:

But it is not obvious the evidence is conclusive. Better combined arms than e.g. the Israelis showed in Lebanon might lead to more like Fallujah rates of loss among the dismounts. Although I personally think the Israeli failing on that occasion was poor armor arty coordination to suppress ATGMs, more than underreliance on dismounts. (Occasions when dismounts were employed more aggressively were not conspicuously successful).

Somewhat offtopic - but where have you found source material for this information? I've been looking for good AAR/debriefing stuff on the conflict, but haven't seen much.

[Caesar]

Interesting thread.

In this debate, there are occasional suggestions that MBTs are obsolete. These are quickly shot down by the heavy armour proponents. However, MBTs (that I have played with in the game) are only coming up against obsolete RPGs. Their armour shrugs off most hits (so long as you or the AI does not do something stupid like present the side or rear armour). But what is going to happen when your opponents get Javelins or the Russian/Chinese/whoever's equivalent. How well are they going to survive then. With the MGS providing direct fire support, Javelins providing AT support and the MBTs vulnerable, are they becoming obsolete - not just yetm but over the next few years?

I must try some Blue on Blue games and see how this all pans out.

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[RT North Dakota]

Originally posted by JasonC:

But it is not obvious the evidence is conclusive. Better combined arms than e.g. the Israelis showed in Lebanon might lead to more like Fallujah rates of loss among the dismounts. Although I personally think the Israeli failing on that occasion was poor armor arty coordination to suppress ATGMs, more than underreliance on dismounts. (Occasions when dismounts were employed more aggressively were not conspicuously successful).

Really? I'm in Israel as I write this - and I have been conducting post Lebanon interviews for the last year.

1. How do you use artillery to suppress ATGMs located in populated villages? - or solitary ATGM shoots from within your own formation areas?

2. Fallujah loss rates - What were the loss rates? - because the data I have seems to show approx 50 KIA across 9 units and about 12 days fighting.

3. I know of at least 11 dismounted infiltrations which where successful, and captured large amounts of equipment. Those that failed where usually compromised by civilians or abandoned once the element of surprise was lost. - thus no point in pushing a bad situation.

[JasonC]

Adam - Xactly. The Israelis re-learned all this in 1973. They had become sloppy about combined arms because armor was so dominant, then they ran into ATGMs. They relearned their combined arms lessons, and mastered them again, in the space of a week. They only attacked Sagger positions after air and arty worked them over. It was enough, armor instantly became effective again.

[JasonC]

Caesar - besides contemporary accounts for the Israelis, there have also been good analysis of bits of the Lebanon war from the Russians, interested in how their equipment performed in Hezbollah hands, and against Merkava in particular. Can't point you to a monograph, picked up here and there.

[JasonC]

RT - on Fallujah losses, there were over 500 wounded reported during the fighting itself, and this probably understates the WIA. Wounded for the month as a whole for the whole theater came to over 1400, which was 800 above trend. The main force involved was 4 battalions of Marine infantry and they took the bulk of the losses. I consider that meaningful attrition to units that size and over a period that short.

On dealing with ATGM fire from villages, you can fire a leaflet shoot first if you like, while your maneuver force is passive-defensive. Then you blow the place to kingdom come while actually moving your forces. On dealing with ATGM fire from within your own lines, obviously security sweeping is a good idea and sure, dismounts can help do it. Sensor tech helps too.

On dismount infiltrations sometimes working, I don't doubt it. Stealth is what dismounts are best at, and especially if one faces an enemy deficient in night vision gear, you can get a lot done with stealthy night patrols by dismounts, to gather intel or position eyes, etc. Intel oriented dismount ops are not "numbers intensive", however.

There were several other occasions during the fighting in which the Israelis tried to send dismounts first to scout for armor, in daylight, and got well and truly shot up by heavy machineguns, mortars, MRLs, and occasionally friendly arty. The Lebanon war had its share of outright CFs on the Israeli side...

The biggest problem in my opinion was politics dictating tactics and secondarily, poor coordination of tactics. For long periods, the firepower arms were seen as an alternative to ground forces, not an aid to them. Meaning air raids and artillery fire were sent over the border while the ground forces were passive or holding what they already had. This was ineffective because the enemy could just disperse front to back go deep in his shelters, in the absence of a ground threat.

Then when ground was used, too often the firepower arms were turned off for fear of friendly fire incidents and coordination problems. Or they lifted fires very deep into the country (air in particular). This let the enemy adapt once by manning forward positions again, without being under artillery fire while doing so or while in direct contact. And their MRL units displaced, avoiding limited depth incursions. Which were of course limited by political considerations and very sensitive reactions to personnel losses.

As a result of these sequential (and weakly pushed) rather that properly combined tactics, Hezbollah got a series of one arm vs. one arm match ups that favored them. Israeli armor still reduced own-side personnel losses, and superior Israeli firepower arms especially air pushed Hezbollah losses higher than Israeli military losses. But it can't be considered a combined arms success.

[RT North Dakota]

Originally posted by JasonC:

"

You continue to wreck your case by simultaneously pretending you aren't against heavy and then advancing clearly baseless arguments against it and its component systems.

Stay off the drugs kid. - I never said or implied anything of the sort.

You can mount TOW on a Hummer can't you. Not against TOW or any so called "heavy system." Love TOW. Cheap, simple and effective viable fire support asset.

The only thing "I'm against" is the gross over simplifcations of complex military issues that get dressed up with unqualified factoids - so I would not take GW1 2 ACR data and extrapolate it into operations in the Lebanon in 2006. I hope you wouldn't either

[RT North Dakota]

Originally posted by JasonC:

1. RT - on Fallujah losses

2. On dealing with ATGM fire from villages, you can fire a leaflet shoot first if you like, while your maneuver force is passive-defensive. Then you blow the place to kingdom come while actually moving your forces. O.

1. So are there any unit by unit collated figures or not?

2. Sounds like war crime in the making. Just for a start, how do you confirm the village in empty. It just isn't that simple.

[JasonC]

RT - there are detailed public figures for KIA, and there are definite figures with less breakdown for different periods, but different definitions lead to different totals. The named military operation involved stretches into December and includes over 900 WIA (and 95 KIA rather than around 50), but is broader than the period you and I are talking about, in time. For the month and the theater, there is a precise figure, but it is broader in scope rather than time. If one wants these 11 days for these 6 units, WIA rather than KIA, I am sure the military has it, but I have not seen it. We know the scale, though - 550 to 800 wounded.

On "war crimes", sorry that is poppycock. If Hezbollah used coercion to keep civilians in a combat area then yes that would be a war crime. But simply targeting enemy forces in a populated area is not, especially if warning is given.

Non combatants are expected to leave areas of active military operations. If they can't or won't, they take the consequences. Israel routinely used artillery in counterbattery fires in that war and they undoubtedly caused some civilian causalties, but it is not any crime. Air raids much farther north undoubtedly caused many times more, because there were more civilians around and no way for them to get clear, even if they wanted to. But since they were targeting Hezbollah forces not the civilians themselves, that wasn't any crime either.

ROE creep these days is obviously absurd, and absurdly one sided of course. (Hezbollah fired more than 10000 projectiles at mass civilian targets deliberately etc). But determinately hostile political actors spinning madly do not make common sense actions into war crimes, and actual law in the matter is entirely sensible, about who is responsible for what.

[JasonC]

On TOW, there is revising spin about how much you love it, and then there is "loose (sic) any ability to leverage the terrain advantage" and "you clearly have little experience/knowledge of either system" aka what you actually said, against it. You can formally retract such distortions (and the minimum range mistake) at any time. Until then, you are just spinning crazily and looking foolish.

[Tarquelne]

Non combatants are expected to leave areas of active military operations. If they can't or won't, they take the consequences.

The really _brilliant_ thing about that is that arty/air use can also serve to "pin" populations by messing over the transport network. Even completely inadvertently. And the faster air or arty responds to a threat the less time anyone has to get out of the way. As artillery's effectiveness increases, so does the likelihood that the civilians are there to "take the consequences"... unless additional ROE restrictions are in place.

Here we see another of the major problems with the "Medium Force" concept: It's a ticket to genocide. The quicker the fighting moves, the more likely the civilian population is to be caught up in it. A ponderous - excuse me, "stately and unfaltering" - Heavy or slow Light force is simply more humane. (Though see the note below.)

Israel routinely used artillery in counterbattery fires in that war and they undoubtedly caused some civilian causalties, but it is not any crime.

Ah. You seem to be putting forth "some civilian casualties" (and a multiple of "some") on equal footing with "blowing the place to kingdom come." Very good. You've outlined a set of principles that make large-scale destruction of the civilian population not just ordinary collateral damage, but nothing more than they deserve!

It's exactly that sort of thinking we need to pave the way for the casual use of pre-emptive nuclear strikes, the only really affordable way to wage war.

In the same vein I have to point out to Broken that a sufficiently Heavy force can transform any terrain to "open terrain." Nothing but overly-restrictive ROE restrictions stand between the modern MBT and its ideal operating environment.

[ August 22, 2007, 12:43 PM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

[dan/california]

While I by no means agree with all of JasonC's points, he has one thing absolutely right. Fighting a war with ROEs that essentially guarantee defeat is just STUPID. We need to either accept the consequences of ROEs that give some chance of actual success or not fight. But ^$&^^**%%#$@* we need to decide, and soon. The new book by that Navy SEAL who was the only survivor of that mission in Afghanistan makes that point rather eloquently.

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by dan/california:

[QB] While I by no means agree with all of JasonC's points, he has one thing absolutely right. Fighting a war with ROEs that essentially guarantee defeat is just STUPID.

Well, yeah. But beyond the question of whether or not any given ROE really guarantees defeat or not, there's a larger question.

Which is the stupid thing? The ROE, or fighting the war?

Factions - people, nations, groups, whatever - always have things they can give up, and things they can't. Things they want and things they need. A reasonable faction will know the difference.

A reasonable faction will also think seriously about how much they really have to gain from waging "unrestricted" warfare compared to what such warfare inevitably sacrifices. A false sense of security - to pick an example at random - isn't worth fighting for at all IMO and bad ROEs - one way or the other - would just make it worse.

Too many people aren't "reasonable" by my definition above. I'd point to any terrorist as the classic example, and anyone who desires adopting terrorist-style methods in fighting them as the common example.

[ August 22, 2007, 01:35 PM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

[JonS]

On ROEs (grossly paraphrasing) ...

Is 1) "war the continuation of politics by other means"?

Or

Is 2) "politics the continuation of war by other means"?

If you think 1), then ROEs make sense. If you think 2), then ROEs don't make sense.

I've always been taught that any given war (or armed conflict) is a temporary aberation*, and that peace is the ultimate goal. So I fall into 1).

Jon

* "war" - in the general sense, as in "there is always someone fighting somewhere in the world" - on the other hand is a rather permanent feature of the global landscape.

[JasonC]

JonS - I definitely side with (1). But I don't think indecisiveness that gives people endless war in which they are continually targeted by lawless men without the slightest restraint, is beneficial to them. In other words, many attempts to achieve greater humanity by more restrictive ROEs are directly self defeating - it is not that their object is not choiceworthy, but that they directly fail to secure it.

As for the previous poster's comments a couple above, once again anyone facing the most elementary facts is painted as butcher, in favor of fantasies with absolutely no reality. But I am all for notice, and restraint where it can be exercised. I am also all for only fighting when the game is worth the candle, in moral terms. I probably disagree with that poster about when that is, but not with the principle.

[JasonC]

Since we are on page 8 of a second thread on this subject, are wandering deep into red herring and change the subject territory, and I've had my say at great length, I will rest. Others, continue at will, I'll listen.