The New Military: Proposing change

NORRISTOWN - Transformation is the guiding principle for today's U.S. military, and top Defense officials have mandated sweeping changes aimed to quicken the pace of warfare and streamline the Pentagon's cumbersome bureaucracy.

On Nov. 24, President Bush signed the $401 billion Defense Authorization Bill of 2004, the largest defense budget in history.

And though the military's fighting capability is second to none, officials warn that the time it takes to develop some weapons renders them obsolete by the time they are finally produced -often 15 to 20 years later.

Borrowing the best attributes of U.S. Special Operations Forces, the Defense Department envisions a faster, more agile, more lethal fighting force guided in battle by increasingly sophisticated digital technology.

What's Imperative for an Information Age fighting force, according to Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, Ret., director of the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation, is being connected to the military's Tactical Internet and wowing the enemy.

"We want our enemies, current and future, to look at us and say, 'Wow, how do they do that?'" He told an audience at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington recently.

With a continuously improving fighting capability, defeated enemy forces will be left to scratch their heads wondering what hit them. They will see an attack unfold before their eyes, Cebrowski said, but they won't understand how it happened and will be powerless to stop it.

Digital warfare came of age in Operation Iraqi Freedom in March. Functioning as the military's communications network, the Tactical Internet relayed command-and-control decisions from commanders to soldiers and Marines crammed inside armored vehicles rolling through the Iraqi desert.

The Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2) is the U.S. Army's main digital command-and-control system for highly mobile, real-time battle information.

Bradley Fighting Vehicles and M1A1 Abrams tanks equipped with FBCB2 gave the infantry a picture of the battlefield that included color-coded displays of friendly forces (blue icons) and enemy troop (red icons) locations. During the war, the system effectively replaced paper maps and radio voice communication.

The military's high-tech advantage needs to constantly change and improve, Cebrowski said, to keep enemies second guessing U.S. strategy. The Iraqi military, he said, likely studied the 1991 Gulf War strategy to gauge what coalition forces would do during the recent war.

"That's exactly what we want to happen," he said. "I like to see a lot of generals who want to fight the last war, (but) I just want them all to be on the other side." Not knowing precisely where geographically future threats will come from, defense officials say it's imperative to train troops jointly for rapid deployment to almost anywhere on earth.

The Transformation director and other Pentagon reformers are especially critical of the time it takes to produce weapons systems. Defense programs development cycles must be brought in line with those of commercial industry, Cebrowski said, which are typically measured in months and years - not decades.

The U.S. Army's Crusader artillery program was an early casualty of the transformation initiative. The $11 billion program was cancelled last year. According to Cebrowski, any weapons program is expendable if it doesn't meet the new transformation criteria.

"(Crusader) is a legacy of industrial age warfare born to satisfy the Army's indirect fire requirements in a strategic context that no longer exists," he said. In other words, Crusader is a relic of the Cold War: too heavy, too expensive and too long in development.

The main Crusader tracked vehicle, equipped with a 150 mm howitzer [I think they mean 155mm - Cannoneer], requires a companion vehicle to supply it with ammunition. The two vehicles weigh in at a whopping 81 tons - a lot of hardware to haul to a battle front.

The lightweight Stryker infantry vehicle is one of transformation's new kids on the block exemplifying a light, more mobile capability. The Stryker family of vehicles, 10 in all, includes a version equipped with 105 mm gun, and models that carry infantry, ammunition and wounded troops.

The "trim" 19-ton vehicle comes loaded with digital technology and has a top speed of 62 miles per hour - 21 miles per hour faster than the much heavier 35-ton Abrams tank. Because of its lighter weight, the Stryker would be easier to transport to faraway fronts, another top transformation goal.

In February, the army began testing the mobile gun Stryker at Aberdeen Proving Ground, near Baltimore, Md. The vehicle is expected to debut in Iraq early next year.[emphasis Cannoneer's]

While Cebrowski doesn't want to eliminate tanks altogether, he clearly believes Stryker is the centerpiece of the military's future, giving the forces necessary nimbleness and speed in urban areas such as Baghdad.

Though the tanks proved effective in protecting their crews from artillery or missile fire, for the transformation director, the new high-tech vehicles give troops better awareness of where the enemy is located so that troops can avoid danger - or speed out of harm's way.

"Anyone that doesn't like speed, or says that speed isn't required, has never been shot at," he said.

However, the Stryker has its share of critics. A report prepared for New Jersey Republican Rep. James Saxton, a member of the House Armed Service Committee, concluded the vehicle is ill suited for warfare.

The July report, written by consultant Victory O'Reilly, said that the vehicle was poorly armored and vulnerable to rocket-propelled grenade attacks.

Responding to the report's finding, the army said that Strykers headed for combat have recently been reinforced with additional armor.

But even armor has limits. In some situations armor is necessary; in other cases it isn't, Cebrowski said.

"(Steel) didn't help 17 dead sailors on board (U.S.S.) Cole, for example," he said. "This is a steel ship. And so you don't see the Navy talking about adding more steel to its destroyers (ships)."

The U.S.S. Cole was attacked in Yemen by terrorists in a bomb-laden boat in 2000. The explosion created a huge hole in the ship.

Instead of more steel, the director said, timely reconnaissance is crucial for safeguarding fighting units. Unmanned aerial vehicles were used effectively in Afghanistan and Iraq to spot enemy troops from the air.

Once the enemy was located on the ground, air power was called in to bomb their positions. This close relationship between the infantry and air support was one of the pluses to come out of Iraq's post-war analysis. The air-infantry teamwork also raises questions about the necessity of Crusader or other artillery programs.

"It is as if we will have discovered a new sweet spot in the relationship between land warfare and air warfare and a tighter integration of those," he said.

A newly formed Stryker Brigade Combat Team - a 2nd Infantry Division unit from Fort Lewis in Washington state - is currently in Kuwait. When the unit moves into Iraq next year [Next year?], defense officials will be watching closely to see how Stryker performs.

Overall, the Pentagon plan to replace 130,000 American troops in Iraq with a fresh contingent that will shrink the force by 20 percent, according to The Associated Press.

The National Guard and Reserve troops make up about 20 percent of the current force of 130,000. According to AP, after the rotation ends in April, nearly 40 percent of the 105,000 troops in the new force will be National Guard and Reserve forces.

Keith Phucas can be reached at kphucas@timesherald.com or at 610-272-2500, ext. 211.

How many times have we heard that?

It is the difference between breaking the speed of sound and breaking the speed of light. One is an engineering barrier, the other is a fundamental physical limit; savvy people know the difference. The physical limits of armor have been known for a long time, but designing a weapon that actually breaches these limits is not trivial.

There now exists anti-armor systems for which the only defense (barring exotic sci-fi tech), requires breaking a fundamental limit of molecular materials. Until now, they were only engineering limits, but the US has been trying to design anti-armor systems that functioned past the ability of physical armor to dissipate them for some time. Some of the currently deployed systems are very powerful, but we know that it is physically possible to design a system that will defeat them. It was a great coup for the anti-armor design teams to devise weapons that operated at parameters beyond the limits of physical materials to defeat them. We will be deploying unstoppable anti-armor systems over the next couple years. The rest of the world will follow in a decade or two.

Arms designers have always known this was possible, but it took many years (and US military design teams) to design real weapons with these capabilities that were capable of operating at these extreme parameters.

What Buck Rogers War Machine anti-armor weapons breach the physical limits of molecular materials?

It doesn't require any exotic tech, it requires achieving certain critical energy densities and profiles in the anti-armor weapon. It has been known for some time what these numbers were, but achieving them reliably is very hard. From a physics standpoint, normal molecular materials aren't all that tough. I don't believe they've ever been able to achieve this with a conventional gun-type device (not enough velocity) or usably with a shaped-charge explosive technology (which is too fragile functionally anyway).

The current technology platform of choice which can meet or exceed these limits reliably, which is showing up in a half-dozen forms in soon-to-be-deployed weapon systems, is "hyper-kinetic missile" technology. I am familiar with this class of weapons technology, and would point out that building them often requires some pretty exotic materials, as they themselves operate pretty close to the physical limits of what you can do with normal materials.

Fieldable lasers are years and generations away.
Microwave 'death rays' are still far in the future despite advances in emission.
It's power generation and sustanence that is the problem there.
Railguns are still out due to power generation.
X-ray lasers are out.
Kinetic projectiles can still be dealt with regardless how fast they go or how thick they are made.
Reactive armor had steel plates added to it to catch and break the tungsten rhenium dart.
The dart was made thicker, the plates were made thicker.
And that's the past generation way of doing it.
Besides.
Remember Chobham armor?
Laminated armor basically.
Hardened face steel or depleted uranium front, ceramic sandwich center, and softer steel backing n it's most basic form.
HEAT has a heck of a time cutting through it from the ceramic sheet, squash rounds can't spall anything, and the whole deal make kinetic penetration difficult at best.

It can still be developed further.
Ceramics have improved generations ahead of what they were when Chobham came out.
And making vented voids creates more trouble for the HEAT rounds.
Add an extra sheet of ceramic inside the void.

The main bugaboo recently about the M1A1 abrams is that it's engine is difficult and unreliable still.
Not as insurmountable as Shinseki bots would have everyone believe.
Gas turbine engines are used in naval vessels all the time.
A similar system can be scaled down as well.
A combined gas turbine and electric system doubles your effective range.
Add a fuel cell in there, and you've got added range and power should you need it.
Kinda like using electric motors to enhance acceleration, in the above theory.

But fuel cells are still in the future.

Obtaining data on Israels tank modifications is scetchy...intel sites offer some info with best *Gestimates as to the whyfore of certain mods.
Blazer reactve armor suites are now common..yet the idea played out well for IDF in Lebanon in 82 against whatever the Hamdi's could fire at them.
Merkava's have seen several turret configuation/add on armor suites incorporated..with Merkava 4 having gleaned info incorporated with emphasis on top attack ATGM's.

From whatever Hamdi has been able to sneak into Gaza or West Bank..to IDF's own R and D..it would seem Israel see's the ATGM as the poor guys answer to MBT and is unwilling to conceed the high ground to them.

Germany has offered several armor upgrade packages on her Leopard MBT series...Canada opting to follow this with their C2 mods but retaining the 105mm tube.

The debate would be if nations are stealing armor add on module data..or are infact working with one another.
Maybe Israel had to give a little somethin to get those Dolphin subs : )

I had seen an Internet video of one of these things fired and hitting a (stationary) tank. (Set to music no less).

I think it works it's magic by being made of a very hard material, being long, and having a very high velocity. The idea is that mass times velocity squared and you get enough (heat) energy so that it just burns through meters of any armor you have... A concept that I sure wish the person stating that heavy armor was obsolete would have explained early on...

More Info the concept:

LOSAT Kinetic Energy Missiles (KEM)

The KEM, a long rod tungsten penetrator, accelerates up to 5000 feet per second and has five times the kinetic energy of current tank rounds...

...The Kinetic Energy Missile weighs 174 pounds, is 113 inches long and 6.4 inches in diameter. The current system provides for a three-man crew, but a crew of two can also conduct engagements. With a missile speed of 5,000 feet per second, it reaches maximum range in less than five seconds. The LOSAT missile is a hit-to-kill missile with no explosive warhead. It carries a long-rod penetrator and destroys the target through the application of brute force.

--------------------

Hypervelocity Anti-Tank Missile (HATM)

A Raytheon-led team has successfully demonstrated a compact kinetic energy missile in flight...

...The HATM BTV successfully exited the launcher, deployed its tail fins, and exhibited a stable flight trajectory. The airframe also maintained integrity through the extreme forces encountered during launch transient and acceleration. Measured velocities closely matched theoretical predictions, validating lethality and range performance expectations.

...HATM, with a peak velocity greater than Mach 6.0, enables the user to engage four targets in 20 seconds with overwhelming kinetic energy lethality...

October 21, 2003: The U.S. Army has not given up on using very high speed (5,000 feet per second, twice the speed of a rifle bullet) missiles to take out tanks. The Compact Kinetic Energy Missile (CKEM), which will weigh about 90 pounds and be five feet long, is under development. CKEM is this about half the size and weight of the older, and now cancelled, Line-Of-Sight Anti-Tank (LOSAT) missile. CKEM will use the same guidance system and other LOSAT technology. The only problem is that the smaller warhead may have trouble doing what LOSAT promised to do; waste any tank in the world. A new design for the warhead (which in LOSAT was just plain old rod of hard metal--as is used in tank gun shells) might do it. Time will tell, and tests for CKEM are at least a year away.

November 18, 2003: Combat zones are excellent places to test new technologies, especially if it involves experimental items that will save lives. One example is a lightweight armored turret for Humvee vehicles in Iraq. Because of its light weight construction, you cannot put a turret on a Humvee that weighs more than 400 pounds. Armor, even Kevlar fiber armor, can only provide so much protection within the 400 pound limit. But an experimental (meaning expensive to manufacture) nanotech armor was used to construct a 200 pound armor turret that can stop 12.7mm (.50 caliber) bullets. The G-LAM fiber uses nanotecholgy (where magnetism or other forces create customized molecules with special properties.) The nanofiber in the Humvee turrets looks like fiberboard, but it is 17 times stronger than Kevlar (which is itself six times stronger than steel). At the moment, G-LAM costs nearly a thousand dollars per square yard, and it's going to be several years before the cost gets anywhere near Kevlar's levels (about $50 per square yard of fiber). The experimental turrets are being used to see how the material stands up to field conditions (heat, cold, moisture, vibration and so on.) Most Humvees in Iraq are not getting shot at, much less hit, and the Iraqi gunners are not using any heavy machine-guns (like 12.7mm.) But it's easier to test how bullet proof the stuff is on a rifle range, than it is to see what kind of damage day-to-day use in a combat zone will do.

The 87-year old seesaw between tank and anti-tank continues.

Reports of the death of the tank are greatly exaggerated.

Kinetic projectiles can still be dealt with regardless how fast they go or how thick they are made. Reactive armor had steel plates added to it to catch and break the tungsten rhenium dart. The dart was made thicker, the plates were made thicker. And that's the past generation way of doing it. Besides. Remember Chobham armor? Laminated armor basically. Hardened face steel or depleted uranium front, ceramic sandwich center, and softer steel backing n it's most basic form. HEAT has a heck of a time cutting through it from the ceramic sheet, squash rounds can't spall anything, and the whole deal make kinetic penetration difficult at best.

Everything you are describing is pretty dated kinetic energy tech. The state-of-the-art has qualitatively different properties because the energy is much higher. And who would use tungsten? Density is a few items down on the list of properties that matter for the selected material, and tungsten alloys tend to be pretty mediocre compared to, say, uranium (which has a much better crystalline structure to exploit), particularly when driven to high velocities.

It is more like a DU dart that is driven so fast that the outer shell of the dart instantaneously becomes a super-critical uranium fluid as it hits the armor, with a pencil of solid uranium core. The energy density is sufficiently high that no combination of physical materials can dissipate the energy without being multiple meters thick, and the uranium fluid protects the core. Toughness and conformation doesn't matter, because there does not exist a molecular bond strong enough to withstand this type of penetrator behavior. Period.

All armor functions by dissipating energy, both by absorption (e.g. laminate plates) and diffusion (reactive armor and conformation tricks). The latest generation of anti-armor has such a high energy density, velocity, and profile optimality that even the best laminate materials would need to be a multiple meters thick for absorption to work. On top of this, the particular properties of the weapon as it interacts with armor is such that diffusion methods only have marginal utility against it. As a consequence, the only real defense against this type of weapon is several meters of advanced composite armor, which is not practical on a mobile vehicle.

What you end up with is something that has the cross-section and a significant portion of the velocity of an explosively powered plasma jet, yet which has better density and superior structural integrity than a classic kinetic energy dart. In essence, you end up with a weapon that is impervious to both absorption (the weakness of classic KE) AND diffusion (the weakness of HE anti-armor), and multiplying the core lethality components of both. The only plausible mobile defense against this type of weapon is interception.

The nanofiber in the Humvee turrets looks like fiberboard, but it is 17 times stronger than Kevlar (which is itself six times stronger than steel).

Strength (per pound typically) is only somewhat related to efficacy as an armor material, otherwise we'd be using diamond plates (which the DoD can synthesize -- it has uses) for armor. The amount of energy armor can absorb is a function of the amount of energy required to break the molecular bounds that make up the armor. When they model the physical material limits of armor, they assume a dense material that is made up of nothing but the strongest (most energy absorbing) molecular bonds that exist (which not surprisingly, are somewhat common in aramid type polymers). By increasing the concentration of these bonds in a material matrix, you can increase the efficacy of the material as armor, assuming the other material properties are acceptable.

If they can design a weapon with the profile necessary to defeat several meters of armor built from this hypothetical perfect material, that meets the criteria of a weapon capable of defeating all possible non-exotic armor systems.

The new Guardian™ Antiballistic Replacement Door Skin (GARDS™) for the AM General HMMWVV (commonly pronounced Hum-Vee) are now available for shipment to authorized agencies and deployed units. GARDS are lightweight and flexible antiballistic panels designed to protect vehicle occupants in elevated-threat locations.

GARDS™ are attached in the field to the interior of the existing HMMWVV doorframe, upgrading threat level protection to NIJ Level IIIA, providing for a radical increase in protection from small arms fire, projectiles, fragmentation and shrapnel when compared to the original equipment fabric doors.

GARDS installs in fifteen minutes, weighs under six pounds per panel, requires no maintenance and as the original door structure and canvas cover remain intact is unnoticeable from the outside of the vehicle. GARDS' strength, durability and low weight is a result of US Global's G-Lam™ nano-fiber anti-ballistic material. G-Lam™ is created with a patent-pending process that results in mechanical properties far superior to common anti-ballistic composite materials. US Global has developed G-Lam™ nano-scale materials specifically for such applications and in GARDS will provide maximum protection against small arms fire, fragmentation and shrapnel. G-Lam™ is also impervious to petroleum distillates and maintains performance at temperatures in excess of 400 degrees Fahrenheit. GARDS is available immediately for export to allied forces. Photos are available at www.usgn.com/GARDS.html

Save-A Gunner (SAG) Hummvee Turret

The S.A.G.™ Turret has been designed as a lightweight shielded turret for the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle ("HMMWV", commonly pronounced Hum-Vee). US Global is designing similar units for NATO and Coalition Forces vehicles including Land Rover and Unimog vehicles.

The S.A.G.™ Turret weighs less than 200 pounds and offers rapid rotational capability. Traditional armored turrets are far too heavy and impede a gunner's ability to effectively and rapidly rotate the turret during battle situations.

The S.A.G.™ Turret is approximately 4 feet in diameter, is designed to interface precisely with military HMMWV rotating turret rings and can be installed by two people in less than one hour using common hand tools.

The S.A.G.™ Turret, made primarily of USGN's proprietary G-Lam™ nano-fiber material, is designed to be impervious to petroleum distillates and to maintain performance at temperatures in excess of 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

In one test using 7.62 cal ammunition, six successive strikes near the same spot did not penetrate the armor, outperforming ceramic faceplates in conventional composite systems. The S.A.G.™ Turret is available immediately for controlled export to allied countries with U.S. government approval.

The durability, strength and low weight of the S.A.G.™ Turret System comes from US Global Nanospace's G-Lam™ nano-fiber anti-ballistic material. G-Lam™ is created with a patent-pending computer-designed weaving process that results in a crimp-free material with tensile performance far superior to common anti-ballistic composite materials. US Global designs each G-Lam™ nano-scale weave to address specific threat characterizations.

This stuff will do to LOSAT what Interceptor vests do to 7.62mm x 39mm.

This stuff will do to LOSAT what Interceptor vests do to 7.62mm x 39mm.

I'm beginning to have serious doubts that you understand the physics and engineering of armor/anti-armor systems. Does conservation of energy not apply to armor? G-Lam is for light armor, and as effective on a hyper-kinetic uranium penetrator as anything else because it still does not meet the material requirements to be effective. You can dance around the subject all you want, but until you can show me where all the extra energy goes to in the equation, your position is dubious at best.

I have a simple project for you. Compute how much energy is required to bore a hole through a meter of diamond (which can absorb FAR more energy than G-Lam) with a bore diameter of 1 centimeter. Then compute the total sectional energy of the LOSAT penetrator. This is all that matters; it is a simple contest of energy density. Like magical economics, magical physics is the domain of the liberals and has no business in military R&D.

Just because you don't want to believe it doesn't mean it isn't so. Do the math. If the energy density of the penetrator exceeds the (negative) energy density of the armor column, it will be breached. The energy densities are all that matter, it is apparent that you do not grok the amount of energy we are talking about with ultra-dense hyper-velocity darts, nor do you understand how material properties change when you enter that envelope. It has been a few years since I was involved in military R&D, but the laws of physics haven't changed since then.

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