Strykers Part II

[JasonC]

Just running ads for it...

[Blackhorse]

Originally posted by JasonC:

"CM:SF shows that no matter what you have for armor, the bad guys can field something that will take it out. We're in a new era of anti-armor warfare and it is making even the heaviest AFVs look like big, expensive coffins."

Can you find the argument that tanks are obsolete now?

I didn;t interpret it as meaning armor was obsolete. I saw it as reflecting the nature of armor development since the beginning. It doesn't mean tanks are obsolete any more than it meant tanks were obsolete when we fielded the Abrams or when the Germans fielded the Tiger.

If Steve meant tanks were obsolete, then I disagree with him.

Originally posted by JasonC:

...But the attempt to claim that heavy is technologically obsolete, combined with the attempt to claim that Strkyers are their super cool modern replacement, is the editorial content of the official party line.

Again, I didn't read anywhere that the STRYKER was replacing the HBCTs.

[ August 15, 2007, 06:13 PM: Message edited by: Blackhorse ]

[JonS]

So? Seriously; you're running ads too, just for a different policy.

38 x HBCTs is enough for ... what? 9 Hy Divs? 3 Hy Corps?

7 x SBCTs is almost enough for ... almost 2 Mdm Divs?

What are you afraid of?

Edit: my bad - four BCTs in a Div, not two

[ August 15, 2007, 06:11 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[Blackhorse]

Originally posted by James Bailey:

[Good post Chris and nice summary of the BCT TO&Es - I enjoyed reading these. I can see why the SBCTs in Iraq is in such demand. That is a lot of rolling thunder.

Do you have any info on the logistical requirements of a deployed SBCT? How does it compare to a HBCT and IBCT?

Thanks. I don't have any info on the log tail. Maybe the STRYKER 1SG can shed some light (if he's still around).

[Blackhorse]

James,

Going back to log, I would venture that the SBCT sustainment is between the HBCT and BCT sustainment. The HBCTs use significant amounts of CL III,CL V, and CL IX($$) while the SBCT wll use less. On the low end of the spectrum will be the BCTs.

[JasonC]

JonS - just this. Do buy BTS's game, because whatever bugs remain to be worked out, it is fun. Don't buy their policy, because it is unsound. And unsound policy is considerably less pleasant.

[JasonC]

So we have pak on record supporting Iran's drive for nuclear weapons. And the blood that results on his hands. I won't even bother to tell him to be careful what he wishes for, since he will find out himself what that is.

I am perfectly willing to accept responsibility for the results in Iraq. I think the execution has been incompetent, but I supported the policy beforehand so some of it is indeed mine. I think the political attacks on it have been a disgrace, not being directed at improving it but at scuttling it, and the consequences be darned.

In fact, playing blame games without regard to consequences is the leading sport at this hour.

[RT North Dakota]

Gentelman,

RE: China.

I have meetings with PLA officers on a fairly regular basis. - They do actually believe heavy armour is obsolete!! I can't read Chinese languages but people on my staff can. There are some PLA doctrinal paper on the net but I warn you, they have dubious provenance.

RE: Light Heavy.

NO serious students/analysts of Land Warfare are having this debate. You can all choose to act like 8 year olds discussing sex and marriage, or attempt to make yourselves better informed. EG: "Tanks" - such as the M1A1/2 are highly effective but also very inefficent. A core area of military thought is the need for the effective use of resources. - so there is merit is studying how to gain "Heavy effect" from lighter platforms, but no one wishes to die for efficency.

Clausewitz:

If you want to quote Von C, tell me which translation you studied, and which edition you currently hold. - I spend my life listening to people tell me what the old Prussian said and meant - and bending it their own beliefs.

I apologise for my somewhat abrasive tone, but I signed up here, because I enjoy CM CM/SF, and wish to see it improve. Let's get back to that shall we?

[JasonC]

JonS -

Here is the actual planned replacement for the M-1.

http://www.army.mil/fcs/mcs.html

Active interception of incoming rounds is supposed to replace armor. Oh and you are never supposed to get that close in the first place.

Even though "It is a virtual certainty that future conflicts in the 2025-era will find US forces opposing traditional massed heavy armor. There will be occasions where the MCS will encounter such enemy forces and direct fire engagements will be unavoidable."

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/fcs-blos.htm

20 tons. 2 man crew. But no, nobody is trying to get rid of heavy armor, it is all blown smoke. Sure.

[JasonC]

Note that wonderful line about precise insertion by parasail. That is the key to future heavy armor combat, yes indeed!

[JasonC]

Now if they said it was going to be 40 tons and based on the S-tank idea, with interception and over horizon fires as extra abilities, I'd pay attention. But when they say they want to float them in on parachutes, I know the maneuver fantasy nutjobs are still running the show. And I expect, shall we say, complications...

[JonS]

Jason - you're boxing shadows now.

Crusader. Liquid propellant. Flying cars. etc.

Those aren't policy. They're ideas, that seemed to have some merit, were tried out, and discarded.

[JasonC]

It's alive...

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/ic/fcs/bia/news/2007/q3/070718a_nr.html

Funding slowed certainly, and the first thing they are rolling out is sensor upgrade kits for existing vehicles (which is sensible enough).

First system to actually build is the Crusader replacement 155mm howitzer, with 18 funded so far.

Boeing still plans 8 different variants of the main ground vehicle. The army is still budgeting $230 billion for this full set, over 7 years or more. It is the largest single pentagon program (clarification - planned acquisition) after the Joint Strike Fighter.

They may not have settled on just how they want to make M-1s go away, but they still want them to go away. "Want" to the tune of 11 figures. I'd call that slightly serious.

[JonS]

Of course "they" want the M1 to "go away". "They" wanted the M-60 to "go away", and that turned out ok. "They" wanted the M-48 to "go away", and that turned out ok. "They" wanted the M-4 to "go away", and that turned out ok too.

Equipment gets old and is superceded. That is pretty uncontrovesial, I would have thought.

But I thought this thread was about how **** the Stryker was, not how wonderful the Abrams or its successor is?

[RT North Dakota]

Originally posted by JasonC:

JonS -

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/fcs-blos.htm

20 tons. 2 man crew. But no, nobody is trying to get rid of heavy armor, it is all blown smoke. Sure.

Attempting to replace the MBT is as valid an exercise as replacing the Sopwith Camel, as long as you suffer no overall reduction in capability. Trade offs are inherent to understanding that capability.

It appears to me that you WISH to believe that there is some merit in supporting "Heavy Armour" against a non-existant conspriacy.

I assume you are well aware of the considerable vulnerabilities and limitations of MBT based formations, despite your advocacy of their potential.

[RT North Dakota]

Well said Jon S.

[JasonC]

Since I already mentioned that I'd be all ears for an S-tank based middle weight up sensored replacement for the M-1, you are both already pounding straw (again). Also, a few hours ago I was being told that no one wanted to replace heavy, and now that of course people want to replace, at least, key heavy systems. Not consistent. Not straight talk. Evasive spin.

The issue is whether armor protection is properly appreciated as a system capability, along with firepower, and considered well worthy of some (not any possible amount, but some) incremental weight - or whether instead, a mantra of "light and new is DoublePlusGood" will get us inferior replacements instead of superior ones.

"Oh, they'd never put people in inferior replacements". See 2nd ACR above - they put a monster successful formation in glorified jeeps, neutering most of its capability, in search of deployability as an extreme focus. So yes it can happen. (I understand experiments are sometimes useful, but the prior plan for a medium deployable ACR was vastly superior to what was actually done. You can argue that a third course was better still, not the issue). Therefore, it is a legitimate concern.

It'd be kinda nice for anyone arguing the other side, to acknowledge that it is a legitimate concern, stemming from a possible force mix error, and one for which there is some precedent in the recent past. But we can't expect miracles, can we?

[JasonC]

Oh, and I was boxing shadows claiming anything like it because the whole idea was purely experimental and had already been dropped, and two posts later of course the army is seriously pursuing (and seriously funding) ways to get rid of major existing systems. Any acknowledgement of error?

I know, I know, miracles...

To be fair, on reflection he may have only been refering to the absurd parasail air-landing "requirement". If that was all, disregard (and laugh).

[ August 15, 2007, 09:28 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[RMC]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Shinseki was indeed the main promoter of the Stryker. He did not invent "transformation", however. The army planners had been designing "force XXI" since the 1992 drawdown, including the whole theme of up-comm-ing and up sensoring. A lot of that planning was perfectly sensible and retained in later programs, and formed the basis he drew from for the army's version of transformation.

Um, Shinseki did start the ball rolling on transformation. There was no Army Transformation Office before his tenure. There was no Unit of Action Maneuver Battle Lab before him.

Force XXI was about using information technology as a force multiplier, not transforming the Army into something new. The infantry and tank battalions were reduced from 4 line companies to 3, but otherwise it was the same old Army. Combat Power was supposed to be the same or better. In typical Army "harvesting the efficiencies" fashion, other heavy divisions had their complements reduced in anticipation of the coming "enabler" applique packages which were still years away.

Shinseki came on board saying we could not afford for the normal slow, evolutionary development process to get the Army where he thought it should be. We needed to transform. He said we need a quick, off-the-shelf solution to the deployability problem and then a generational leap ahead. The quick solution, the interim solution is the Stryker and the leap ahead is the FCS.

But transformation is about much more than buying new toys. It's about organic combined arms at the company level. It's about breaking down the parochial rice bowls in the centers and schools, remaking infantry, artillery, and armor officers into maneuver arms officers. It's about rexamining our assumptions and upsetting the apple cart.

I don't understand all the hatred for the Stryker. It's an interim system. If you want to hate something, hate the FCS. That's the wunderkind that's supposed to replace everything.

[StrykerPSG]

JasonC, you're not comparing the FCS to the Stryker are you? They are very different platforms indeed. The FCS is a bunch of pipe dream stuff that may come to fruition in , oh say about 20 years.

I have been to some of their briefs and while they brief well, the future purported capabilites, tecnology just isn't there yet. Though, as computer technology becomes lighter and more robust, it's certainly possible.

I too sneered at the Land warrior concept as a young starry eyed infantry private many years ago. Back then, it was demonstrated inside an ALICE ruck sack and weighed as much as a patrol ruck, this was without ammo and water. Enter today's Land Warrior, a techno marvel, just not ready yet. Not to say it's un-useable, still a work in progress.

What is my point you ask? Just this, FCS, I believe, is something brought from the reality of the 90's BRAC and military drawdowns, where the armor MTOE was changed from a 4 tank platoon to a 3 tank platoon and we (US) were considering the possibility of an autoloader to make the tanks 3 man crews. The 90's were a very trying time for the military, so we had to struggle with less money, less people but an unstable post cold war world that is far more dangerous then the cold war was.

So, contractors being capitalists at heart, looked for a way to sell a new weapon that would catch the attention of a cash starved defense industry.

The Stryker was, from inception, designed to utlilize off the shelf technology and be implemented right away. Of course, contractors again, in a capitalist society, looked for ways to add their own extras, to again, absorb the disappearing defense dollars.

Anyway, this thread has brought some wonderful stuff to the table that too has broadened my perspective of how our SBCT's are viewed. I truly had no idea there were so many opposed to the vehicle. I have also seen many false perceptions and certainly many with valid arguement. Thanks JasonC for not being someone humming the politically supportive tune, but bringing thought to the forum. I initially held you in a guarded opinion, but am seeing some thought to your process. I do not necessarily agree with it all, but there is some thought put into your counter points versus the initiator of this thread.

[JasonC]

The interim system is viewed as symptomatic of the priorities that will govern the major changes later on. And the process by which it was settled on is viewed as symptomatic of the probable process that will determine what we fight in next.

The army most certainly did believe that the review it went through at the end of the cold war, and the revised and much smaller force it moved to, was a transformation. It also believed that it thought quite carefully about what key capabilities needed to be retained.

Force XXI was not simply about use of modern comms and sensors - that is what the later processes took from it, sure, but it was more than that. It was also a whole institutional learning set up involving tradedoc, the schools, new experimental "labs" and field tests. Some of that work continued, some was frankly thrown out by two waves of Shinseki and Rumsfeld. Heck, some had been thrown out "on arrival" in 1992-3, as the army was pushed lighter than it planned to be, etc.

When people who understand the power of armor and notice the outstanding services it has rendered for us recently, review the above, they see determined mindless prejudice. They see it because it is there. The objective results of units in the field are not driving the assessments, nor are the army's own prior analyses. Instead, ideological cant is driving the assessed relative importance of the abilities being traded off.

Reversals are taken by critics as signs of this. Very poorly armored forces having to uparmor to deal with Iraq are an example. When they are not accompanied by acknowledgements of prior error or predictions, it is resented.

Now, when a Blackhorse says he knows tanks are not obsolete, that is fair and useful. When others point out that heavy is planned to be a large portion of the force and should be, that is fair and useful. Both are better than the let's pretend tales that armor is obsolete because anything can be KOed, or that we will never fight another major war against an opponent where it will be useful, or that medium plus air can do everything and does not need heavy.

It'd be great if those making such reasonable, fair points noticed that not everyone is making them (and are instead making the latter sort), and that therefore there is a legitimate beef directed at those employing the second sort of arguments.

When I see sincere proposals for replacements for MBTs that think they can be 20 tons, armored only against 30mm fire, and that it should be considered important that they can be dropped by parachute - then somebody does not "grok" armor.

And it'd be nice if people noticed that it is probably a remarkably bad idea to put the replacement of a keystone weapon system of our actual dominance in the field, in the hands of people who have no realistic idea what it is about, and are in fact determinately hostile to its importance. When the whole point is firepower and protection, which are not maneuverist mantras, the proposal should reflect those critical missions and preserve those critical capabilities.

What does any of that have to do with Stryker? Well, some of the critical missions and capabilities of heavy were sacrificed for others to make the Stryker idea. Please don't tell me that a 105mm gun system clone is a replacement for MBTs - for example. It isn't. A S-tank might replace an M-1, but not that. Not in the same league, weight class, tactical animal. If light, on the same chassis, maximally deployable - are the mission criticals, then you are not going to preserve the true capabilties of an MBT.

It'd be nice to record about a dozen simple "sure"s to that elementary proposition. Is that hard?

[ August 15, 2007, 09:56 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[JasonC]

StrykerPSG - thanks, it is sincerely appreciated. I too have found the discussion fruitful.

[JonS]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Since I already mentioned that I'd be all ears for an S-tank based middle weight up sensored replacement for the M-1, you are both already pounding straw (again). Also, a few hours ago I was being told that no one wanted to replace heavy, and now that of course people want to replace, at least, key heavy systems. Not consistent. Not straight talk. Evasive spin.

Well, if you want to 'talk straight', wrap your mind around this concept:

There are now two conversations going on here.

1} On the one hand, there is in some quarters a belief that in the short term SBCTs are going to replace the HBCTs in toto.

2} On the other hand, there is a new element - introduced by your good self, that *gasp* the Abrams is going to be replaced by the next generation of MBT (not by Strykers, note), whatever that turns out to be. In the long term.

1} is bogus.

2} is both obvious and overblown.

1} has largely been the basis of this, and some of the previous, thread. That everyone else is talking about 1} and the shortterm doesn't allow you - if this is to be an honest debate - to suddenly and evasively introduce 2} and start dismissing replys to 1} as if they were addressing 2} and the longterm .

Yes, the Abrams will eventually be replaced. *golfclap* We agree on that. We also agree that the Abrams will be replaced in the HBCTs by an MBT of some type. You think the new MBT will be a disaster, or sumfink. Maybe, maybe not. It's too soon to say, really. [aside]An active defence system (swatting incoming rounds in flight) - which you mocked - makes a some sense. Just how heavy would the next generation of MBTs have to be in order to provide comparable protection to the current gen of MBTs, based purely on putting large slabs of metal and ceramics between the incoming round and the crew?[/aside]

It has become clear, to me at least, that you don't really have a problem with the Stryker per se. Rather you have a problem with

* Maneauvre doctrine (which SBCTs may or may not be used to support, and vice versa)

* Restrictive ROEs (which SBCTs have zilch to do with)

* Dodgy US Military procurement practices (which SBCTs have zilch to do with, although they may have been the benefactor in one example)

* Fantasy projects regarding future systems and capabilities (which have zilch to do with Stryker or the SBCTs)

* Some other stuff. (Which has little or nothing to do with Stryker and/or the SBCTs)

That the same money spent on the SBCTs could have been spent on something else is - to a large degree - neither here nor there. The SBCTs exist, and eventually there'll be a whopping seven of them. Against 38 HBCTs. I mean ... really. If the HBCTs are so great then that, the simple maths of them outnumbering the SBCTs by better than 5:1, ought to prove overwhelming.

That the SBCTs will be outnumbered 5:1 should be fairly clear evidence that firepower and protection won out over maneauvre and razzle dazzle.

[StrykerPSG]

Originally posted by JasonC:

[QB]

What does any of that have to do with Stryker? Well, some of the critical missions and capabilities of heavy were sacrificed for others to make the Stryker idea. Please don't tell me that a 105mm gun system clone is a replacement for MBTs - for example. It isn't. A S-tank might replace an M-1, but not that. Not in the same league, weight class, tactical animal. If light, on the same chassis, maximally deployable - are the mission criticals, then you are not going to preserve the true capabilties of an MBT. You're not referring to the MGS variant now, are you? If the case, the MGS was designed as a dismounted infantry support weapon, with a secondary, limited, anti-tank role. The 105mm was chosen because of the immense stockpile of 105mm NATO rounds left over from the 80's. It was intended to blast holes in mud walls, devastate the al qaeda masses with beehive and destroy some limited armored threats.

[JonS]

Originally posted by JasonC:

It'd be great if those making such reasonable, fair points noticed that not everyone is making them (and are instead making the latter sort), and that therefore there is a legitimate beef directed at those employing the second sort of arguments.

Um, what? I thought it was fairly well understood that Guardsman11B (or whatever his handle is) was out to lunch?

Most people make posts that are a combination of valid points mixed with misunderstanding and outright outlandishnesses. Including you.

Surely there is no need to have a popularity contest after each post in which we all break down the post and say "yes, I agree with that. That's a good point. No, that one's rubbish" etc?