Monkey Models

[John Kettler]

JonS,

The way you operate on these boards when it comes to me reminds me of that great shot showing a snail gliding along the edge of an old fashioned straight razor. Why doesn't the snail get cut to ribbons? A thin film of mucus between itself and that blade. Why don't you get banned (already been warned once)? An even thinner layer of luck and BFC attention elsewhere that so far, has repeatedly let you slide by!

Were I to say the things you so casually and caustically say about me, you'd be up in arms and bent out of shape, yet you consistently opt to take anything I say, bend it beyond all recognition, then try to turn it into a Klein bottle. Using this, you then go after me personally. I'm trying to have a rational discussion about a matter which is a real issue in the context not just of the current game, but in what's to come. You are simply hijacking the thread to continue your ongoing campaign of vilification and character assassination against me. For you to be a) so reactive and so obsessive compulsive in pursuing me this way, I must be really under your skin. How sad for you to feel so threatened you act thus!

Regards,

John Kettler

[JonS]

Oh, shush John. I wasn't talking to you.

[jomni]

Would you prefer...

1) a brand new Monkey Model from Russia?

2) a refurbished weapons system from the US that's already beyond it's intended operational life?

[John Kettler]

jomni,

Not an easy or trivial question to answer. For starters, what are we talking about: a tactical missile, a tank, an aircraft, or something larger, say, a sub? Where are we situated geographically, who's the threat, how well equipped, with what and how well trained?

I ask this because ancient P-47s have helped topple governments in Latin America, but India's leased Russian nuclear attack sub hasn't harmed anyone, that I know of. We further need to ask what, if any, indigenous mods either side's applied, potentially completely changing the nature of the weapon acquired?

Consider India's Chakra/Akula II. Normally, it's an attack sub pure and simple, but as military analysts noted to their horror, everything can change in a hurry when you can fire a long range cruise missile from an ordinary torpedo tube. This is exactly the situation with the Indian boat.

http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/2007/08/india-to-lease-russian-nuclear-powered.html

Let's review. In order to be able to afford to build two even more modern AKULA boats,

the Russians are leasing an earlier, but still very advanced boat, to the Indians for ten years. The thing would be scary enough as an attack sub (SSN) if even competently handled, but India has instead turned it into a very quiet strategic strike platform.

Not only is it very quiet, hence hard to locate, but its Sunday punch will consist of indigenously produced 1000+ km. range nuclear-armed cruise missiles, a weapon we no longer have as a result of SALT 1 and 2. All U.S. naval Tomahawks are limited to 600 km range. The AS-15 KENT/GRANAT/Kh-55, think ALCM, won't be supplied, since this would violate the Missile Technology Control Regime.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/971.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raduga_Kh-55

India couldn't even begin to contemplate this had she not first leased a CHARLIE 1 SSN from the then Soviets in 1988 and built specialized training and support infrastructure.

This brings me to another important point. It does absolutely no good to supply advanced weapons to a country which lacks the skilled personnel, technical base, etc. to use and maintain them. For this reason, many countries prefer to buy the rugged, relatively primitive Russian gear, even if this means, say, frequent engine changes, shorter operational lives, and so on. Recall that Suvorov said the monkey model wasn't just to preserve technical secrets or gull western intelligence, but was also designed for rapid massive wartime production at a time when good, now and in the field, is far better than fantastic later, assuming the factory isn't vaporized.

Thus, while it's obvious to us that an F-16 has it all over, say, an F-5, the F-5 may be by far the better option in a country with a weak aerospace capability and poor electronics capability. The plane that works is always better than the one that can't be maintained,

and this as true for tanks as it is for planes.

In the Indo-Pakistani Conflict of 1965, for instance, the Indian assessment was that the more complicated American M48s were much harder to maintain and use than their AMX-13s, T-54s, T-55s and Centurions. One Indian divisional commander concluded that both sides, being composed of peasant soldiers, were overwhelmed by their armor technology and so, couldn't use it effectively. See Icks, FAMOUS TANK BATTLES, for details. Contrariwise, the South Vietnamese, well trained on U.S. supplied M41 Walker Bulldogs and M-47 Patton 1s, simply shot the North Vietnamese T-54s and T-55s to pieces, from ranges so extreme the North Vietnamese thought they'd hit an antitank minefield! Never forget the quality, training and motivation of the warrior in the fight.

Which is better is also a function of what it's going to cost, and I don't just mean money. Am I buying the weapon, a weapon kit, or the means to build it myself? How much help am I going to need, who's going to supply it, and what strings (always strings) does it come with? The thing may be dirt cheap on the front end, but a logistic nightmare in the long haul. And what if the political winds shift? Precisely this happened to any number of former Soviet allies, who found themselves with very large stockpiles of ever more useless military hardware, once Moscow stopped supplying parts and recalled its technical experts.

How many other places operate the same or similar gear Are they amenable to helping? What's my workaround?

Nor can you readily compare like to like, save in a few instances. The F-16 started out as the West's MiG-21 response, a lightweight highly maneuverable day fighter. Were you to compare them, the F-16 costs a fortune compared to the MiG, but blows it away in practically every performance category and is way more reliable, expressed as MMH/FH

(Maintenance Man Hours per Flight Hour), and the components are practically eternal in operating life compared to the MiG-21. But who has MiG-21s, MiG-21 equivalents, MiG-21 parts, as opposed to F-16s, and what restrictions were those supplied under? Russian gear wasn't designed to last very long, based on combat experience in WW II. Believe the life expectancy of a tank was 24 hours once in battle. U.S. gear is designed for very long service life, and a refurbished U.S. plane is typically zero timed (everything brought back to factory spec as new), much in the way Abrams tank carcasses are being rebuilt to better than new spec, incorporating the latest advances. The Israelis were using Shermans built in WW II as chassis for long range antiradiation missile launchers and SP guns in the 1980s!

Grumman S-2 Tracker ASW planes built in the 1950s are fighting wildfires in the U.S. in 2008! This isn't at all uncommon. Recall the battleships hauled out of mothballs and refurbished for Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Desert Storm and OIF? Do you realize that the General Belgrano that the British sank during the Falklands/Malvinas War was the light cruiser U.S.S. Phoenix at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941? I went to school with a girl whose father manned an antiaircraft gun that day on the Phoenix while stark naked!

I could go into a great many more details, but I'll answer this way. If I have the technologically skilled people as crews and for maintenance, together with the necessary tech base, can pass the political "smell" test in Congress, find/am given the funds, don't dislocate my country in the process and can deal with the often quickly yanked U.S. strings, including political, economic, military and intelligence intrusions, then I'd be well advised to buy refurbished U.S. gear, provided it meets/exceeds the threat. Otherwise, give me the new monkey model, training in Russia or some client state, some technicians to maintain it/teach my people, plus spares and some extra systems for use as war replacements, but preferably, everything I need to build it for myself. This is how India built both its military aerospace and tank manufacturing tech bases, starting first with completion from kits, then building subassemblies, finally, whole tanks and planes. It is now possible to buy Russian weapons without having the country overrun with Russians everywhere, many of them spooks, and being turned into a vassal state. Do I have something Russia wants? If yes, how badly? There are not just monkey models, but levels of monkey models, you see. There might be three SAM models of the same missile: one for homeland, one for close allies, and one for more iffy cases.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Yair Iny]

John,

In an unbiased reading of your latest post, and without taking into account any so-called attacks on your credibility, I wonder if you might shed some light on a couple of discrepancies I perceived.

1. What is the name of this anti-radiation missile platform used by the IDF in the 80s? Why would you mount an anti-radiation missile launcher on a land platform in the first place?

2. Are you familiar with the Achzarit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDF_Achzarit) APC, used by the Golani regiment of the IDF? If so, you surely know that it is built on the T55 chasis, which not only is quite old, but all instances of it have been captured from the Egyptians and Syrians, and have not even benefited from any support from the original manufacturers...

Cheers

[John Kettler]

Yair Iny,

1. Kilshon or Kachlilit. See Wiki entry here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postwar_Sherman_tanks

More info (and some great pics) from a source I think you'll find credible.

http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/vehicles/self_propelled_artillery/kilshon/Kilshon.html

The why's simple. It allows you to smash radar-directed defenses without exposing expensive aircraft and all but impossible to replace veteran pilots--while the integrated air defense is intact and therefore at its most dangerous. This is one of the means used to break the back of Syrian air defenses in the Bekaa Valley so thoroughly the Russians sent their Minister of Air Defense to find out what happened. The air defense network was provoked by sending in TALDs (Tactical Air Launched Decoy) from outside of the engagement envelope. When it "came up" to deal with the nonexistent threats, Israeli ELINT aircraft passed the radar locations to the ground based special missile unit, and the extended range AGM-45 Shrikes and later, AGM-78 Standard ARMs were then lobbed into the zone where the radars were busy dealing with faux intruders, presenting ideal, distracted targets to the incoming antiradiation missiles.

In the case of the SA-6 GAINFUL, killing the STRAIGHT FLUSH acquisition and tracking radar wipes out an entire battery's ability to function, clearing the way for air strikes once the pesky SA-8s are dealt with at one missile per, since each one has autonomous on carriage engagement capability. That's why the SA-6 launcher is called a TEL (Transporter Erector Launcher), but the SA-8 GECKO's is called a TELAR (Transporter Erector Launcher And Radar). The latter is a much more daunting SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) problem, in that it's inherently more mobile and has more fire units, ALL of which need to be dealt with. Believe you'll find this strange tank mod at the IDF Armor Museum at Latrun.

2. I know of the Achzarit and am quite aware it's built from a T-55 chassis. Do you realize a) how many Israel captured in both the 1967 War and the Yom Kippur War, how many countries still operate them, and c) how many there are who do that Israel works with? The T-54/T-55 series is the most produced tank since WW II, so much so it's practically ubiquitous. It's not hard to find parts for, and the tank is almost stupid simple, especially given Israel's highly educated work force and an underlying AFV manufacturing base building the state of the art, region specific tank that is the Merkava. Note, too, that the ones Israel converted to 105mm guns also received new American engines, and when these Tiran-5 tanks were retired, some of those became the Achzarit. It's even simpler to maintain since it has no complex, heavy revolving turret and all the associated drives and hydraulics. Should also add that Israel's been refurbishing, rebuilding and upgrading AFVs since before it was a country. Call it experienced in dealing with Russian AFVs, which tend to follow slow tech improvement curves, generally speaking. The T-54/T-55 series simply isn't all that different from the earlier T-44 and T-34/85. Israel captured a bunch of the last in 1956!

T-45/T-55 history and production

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-55

Worldwide operators

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-54/T-55_Operators_and_variants

Hope this answers your questions and clears up any apparent discrepancies.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Yair Iny]

Thanks John for clarifying that. I apologise for the tone of my previous reply, it was unwarranted.

Cheers,

Yair

[John Kettler]

Yair Iny,

You're welcome, and apology accepted! It's very easy to get swept into an Internet pile on, especially when you don't know the jumped and when what he's saying doesn't automatically click for you. The ARM firing Sherman is a very groggy, obscure bit of the history of warfare, one that shows Israel's tremendous ability to squeeze every possible use out of what it has. It also happens to be a brilliant tactical innovation tailored for that AO (Area of Operations).

I really wish BFC would do an Arab-Israeli game, with modules for each war. This would be a phenomenal course in AFV development, since both sides used the relics from past/way past wars. Believe one side had an FT-17 in service in 1948. In another, the Israelis repelled an attack using an old German 75mm WW I howitzer. Not to mention the wild force mixes on both sides.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Abbott]

I really wish BFC would do an Arab-Israeli game, with modules for each war.

That would be fun.