Posted on 07/24/2018 7:32:29 AM PDT by FreeAtlanta
The U.S. Army is concentrating its efforts on fielding a new infantry fighting vehicle. The new vehicle will replace the M2 Bradley, first fielded in 1981. The vehicle will incorporate new technologies that the Army has increasingly had to bolt onto the older vehicle, as well as be more lethal and survivable against modern threats.
The M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle was introduced in 1981 as a new type of vehicle, the infantry fighting vehicle (IFV). Unlike the earlier armored personnel carrier, a lightly armored and lightly armed vehicle which merely dropped off infantry troops at the edge of the battlefield, the infantry fighting vehicle was meant to carry troops into combat. Keeping soldiers onboard preserved a units mobility, making mechanized units more agile and better able to respond to the fast-moving battlefield....
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
...and that just scratches the surface. Men are men and women are women. Biology, testosterone and hormones wreak havoc on the level of discipline it takes to function as a team in combat.
And I should add that I’ve never served — but I’m paraphrasing statements made to me by pretty much every infantry vet I know.
Your #19: Spot on comments.
“The Israelis tried this experiment and it failed”
I didn’t know that. I just heard once upon a time that they started using women.
You say interesting things. I don’t think women are a good idea out on the frontline unless they are doing something like preparing food.
A vee-hull is fine for mine resistance, but when you’re looking for mobility in the soft terrain that vee-hull is a liability.
“Women are in submarines now. Guess why. Because there arent enough eligible men volunteering.”
Studies have shown that when women enter a profession, they tend to drive men out because they change the culture. So putting a few women on submarines guarantees that a percentage of men aren’t going to consider subs in the future. Heck the ones that are already in catch he’ll from their wives over it.
Ditto with gay men.
Do you actually believe that? That there are not enough men volunteering?
You always see people posting that “The Israelis do it” and “Women make the best snipers” and so on. They never drill down to the bedrock of fact that says that the Israelis tried and discarded women in combat roles, or that a female sniper may have individually been an outlier, or anything else specific about it.
Point is, to plan and execute, the military works off of average or median supply and performance expectations over a population, not how well one individual or a small group might do within the larger one.
Sensible people like you and I have fought a losing battle on this, and we are going to pay dearly for that lost battle as a military, and a country.
We have (apparently) as a society done the calculus (or just accepted the risk without actually doing the calculus) decided that the risk of having a female firefighter or a female police officer outweighs the possibility that a civilian in peril may lose their life or suffer greater injury due to the inability of a firefighter or police officer to perform a given physical task.
If that is what it is, that is what it is. If my house is on fire and I am incapacitated, either I am not getting carried down a ladder by a female firefighter, or the firefighting team is going to send a man up to get me instead of a woman.
But in combat, I am not, as a US citizen, willing to make that trade-off of capability in battle to open up advancement opportunities for someone simply because they are female. And as a soldier, I would not willingly make that trade-off unless it was forced on me...which it apparently is.
I think it is a crime. And when the piper comes looking for payment in actual future combat, the people who have pushed this most aggressively are going to either be screaming the loudest to hang someone for the military casualties or failure, or they are going to be long gone and never called to account.
We are trying to do too many things with one vehicle.
We want a vehicle that can:
1. Serve as a home for an Infantry squad.
2. Transport that squad anywhere cheaply.
3. Protect the squad from artillery and small arms.
4. Be a tank and bunker killer.
5. Serve as a close combat assault carrier.
6. Be hard to see and hit.
7. Can be transported by aircraft like the C-130.
8. Protect from chemical attack.
9. Protect from mine and IED attack.
10. Amphibious.
11. Cheap to manufacture.
12. Easy to repair.
Ideally, we would also like a vehicle that:
1. Can stand up to tank main gun and antitank missile fire.
2. Defend against air attack
Yep.
Aint gonna happen.
Unless its made from unobtainium.
Make a cheap assault vehicle.
No driver.
Robotic controlled by wire by Infantry..
Mobile shield.
Only travels short distances.
No weapons.
Protect the Infantry the last 300 yards.
Um, that's not the reason.
FR is not the place for silly gender warfare arguments.
A trailer, once detached, would
be a sitting duck in combat
situations. It will also limit
the towing vehicles’ maneuverability
due to the armor needed to protect
troops inside, making the trailer
very heavy.
Trailers in the military are almost
exclusively used in logistics and
are confined to rear areas, or well
escorted convoys.
Shoot, move, communicate. The three
actions rule for successful combat
missions.
The Bradley:
“One specific design requirement was that it should be as fast as the new M1 Abrams main battle tank so that they could maintain formations while moving.”
The M1 Abrams tank is capable of speeds
of up to 45mph in rough terrain.
“Um, that’s not the reason. FR is not the place for silly gender warfare arguments.”
Holy cow then tell us the reason.
By “gender warfare” do you mean women fighting wars or do you mean women’s rights stuff?
If you mean the latter, I don’t see any gender warfare in that post.
Can we have gender warfare arguments on FR, just not silly ones?
I’m pretty sure this is what Strykers are for, so I’m not sure what need is being fulfilled here.
Bradley weighs in at 27 tons, dry.
The M-113 weighed in at 12 tons.
Going to be hard to find ‘something better’ to replace the Bradley....
“Fairness is irrelevant in warfare” is a very good point.
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