Posted on 02/16/2014 11:52:44 AM PST by null and void
Good point, and the guys recommending the move away from armor won’t be riding in the vehicles taking fire.
Now, you're talking about actually attaining victory over a named enemy. This is about the circle of life inside the DoD and defense industry church of procurement. These two things only incidentally match up on rare occasion, like a giant asteroid hitting the earth.
Jutland
On the actual battlefield they will, like the HUMVs be uparmored with whatever shielding can be fastened on by the troops and will be found to be terribly underpowered..
Really? Please elaborate.
Once the lead starts flying, you don't want "light" separating you from the hot lead, and the "lethal lite" doesn't break the other guy's heavy so well. In the end, it will get you killed.
People want "light and lethal" because they don't want to deal with heavy air and sea lift required to the get the heavy stuff to where the bad guys are. But heavy lift ultimately wins wars.
An official from “The Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Ga.”
See paragraph 2...
“Maneuver Center of Excellence” once known as the Armor School and was at Ft. Knox. Now thanks to what I suspect was bureaucratic infighting among Army generals, we now have the Armor School renamed and moved to Ft. Benning, GA; home of the Infantry. Artillery is now called “Fires”.....I guess some genius figured for his Six Sigma project we would rename and move Combat schools and say we saved money. In 20 years the circle will be complete and that “1 D 10 T” will be the general authorizing the moving and renaming of the “MCE” back to Armor School and it’s movement back to Ft. Knox.
Waste of time and money, but he got his Black Belt and promotion.
( I D 10 T = idiot )
Use google...It is a search engine
This is what happens when stupid people are elected
I’m glad you posted the pictures. I was going to mention how light trucks are being used in the Mid East in that fashion.
As I see it an “ultra-light” combat vehicle would need several things to survive as a fighting force. First off Numbers, ie. quantity vs. quality. Second an extremely low profile that conversely would need high ground clearance capability. (Look to low-riders for such technology.)
Third, an added reconnaissance advantage. (Look at the pneumatic towers News Vans use to push Cameras and Communication dishes to heights over forty-five feet.)
Fourth, a moderately heavy punch per vehicle. Look at M2 .50 Cal machine guns or 7.62 miniguns. Relatively lightweight with a good punch.
Selected vehicles could have a heavier Punch, Javelins or Tow Missiles.
In any case their small size would necessarily mean that there can be no one size fits all category for such a vehicle. And that alone will cause the brass to have a heart attack. They want do-all be-all vehicles, planes, ships and that’s just the nature of that beast.
read post 30 and 34. interested in your thoughts.
TANKS are vulnerable without accompanying infantry!
“IEDs” (Booby traps, mines, whatever) can be made more powerful quicker and at less cost than armor can be improved. The USS Cole was taken out with a Zodiac inflatable, the Murrah Building with a Ryder rental box van.
Politically Correct Rules of Engagement do as much harm as too light an armor. Make the enemy HURT, make his leadership HURT, make it very costly for him to place IEDs in your sector and then things will improve. Ask the ROK Marines about Vietnam.
Realistically, we do not have the resolve to wage war to win. We make our troops respond as if they were Mall Cops dealing with a looting flash mob.
As much as I despise that ^@^%%^*& Yankee, I must say that Gen. William T. Sherman understood this very well.
In WW-II the US fielded the M18 “Hellcat” which was a lightly armored but fast tank destroyer.
"Highly transportable, all-terrain vehicle..., travel 75 percent of the time across country and on rough trails, ...light enough to be sling-loaded by a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter"
Hmmmm, I think I might know of such a vehicle...
/bonus: it's inexpensive as hell
And then only because we knew where they were operating because Bletchley Park cracked the Engima code.
bump!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.