Aircraft Armor Systems
Posted on 02/04/2004 10:37:30 AM PST by joesnuffy
Maybe they have things shaped up enough now so that vehicles are where the problem is now. And that gets more complex.
FM 55-30 Appendix O VEHICLE HARDENING
SURVIVABILITY FIXES FOR HUMMER 4x4 and FMTV 6x6 Trucks This site isn't always available, but lots of good ideas on it when it is. Scan through the histrionics to the good parts.
Tell your trooper to give 'em hell.
Would you care to comment on Army Seeks Short-Term Payoff From Future Combat Systems Posts 177 and 183?
Outstanding point about congresscritters being the people that turned procurement into the Chinese fire drill it is in the first place. All these politicians have researchable records. I would challenge the veracity and sincerity of those who have spent their careers gutting our intelligence capabilites, cancelling programs, opposing our military operations, voting against military pay raises, but now are oh, so soliticitous of our soldier's body armor and armored vehicles. They never gave a < expletive deleted > before. But now they do?
Chapter 8: Counter-mine preparations and tactics
Tactically, basically two mine categories exist; those that threaten your forward vehicles most and the usually command-detonated, camouflaged mines that can hit any element of the convoy. Sometimes, it won't be possible to leave the road, and two command-detonated heavy mines can block both directions effectively.
The primary improvisation against the mine threat is the use of sandbags and flak vests. Sandbags should be on driver's cab floors (especially under the seats) and on flatbeds that are used by personnel. If there’s not enough space for sandbags, use flak vests or steel or aluminium plates. Occupied flatbeds should also have sidewalls of sandbags to protect against pipe bombs and alike. Tires can be filled with water partially to absorb some mine explosion effects. This is probably not necessary for the rear wheels of heavy and medium trucks. While sandbags are the primary improvised measure against mines, there are also vehicles with built-in mine protection available, usually with light anti-bullet armour. Pray for these and mention your wish to have them as often as acceptable. If every officer did so, your branch would have enough.
Some trucks are better protected than others against mines by their design. Characteristic features are the applicability of sandbag protection and how much the front wheels are in front of the driver's cab. Trucks with wheels below their driver's cab will trigger mines exactly where you don't want them to go off. The better-protected trucks should be in the front section of the main convoy body.
The drivers can reduce the risk of mines by not driving on the shoulder of the road. It’s probably not possible to follow the tracks of the earlier vehicle, but it’s desirable for small, homogenous convoys (especially for patrols).
The advance guard should include mine-clearance equipment (including MADs and probably a MICLIC). Recently dug in mines leave visible traces on soft ground, and thermal sensors are best at detecting them. Anyway, you need EOD personnel in the advance guard to deal with mines. Ask these experts what they want in that special environment.
Never put many men (including civilians) in or on one single vehicle. I believe that driver, vehicle commander, gunner and a fire team of four to seven men should be the absolute maximum. Exceptions are armoured vehicles like IFV’s.
Your specialized vehicles might be primary targets for command-detonated mines; therefore you should try to let them look as common as possible. Except tarps, there’s another opportunity for this; you could attach long antennas (or something which looks like long antennas) to several vehicles and make the identification of the command vehicle(s) harder by this.
Looking like what they’re not is also good for kerosene-transporting trucks.
Don’t use flags or other tell-tale signs to mark your key personnel! (This was a contradiction to existing doctrine.) Instead, vehicles can be named and a colour code be used for this to make leader vehicles identifiable for loyal convoy personnel. These measures might save your life.
A threat similar to mines is the wire, which can be spread across the road to cut personnel in the point vehicle. As early as WW2, poles were mounted on jeeps to cut such wires, and this improvised protection is still highly advisable today.
One problem of a mine detonation is that it’s impossible to be sure that it’s not the initialisation of an ambush.
Chapter 9: Counter-ambush preparations and tactics
The best you can do against ambushes is to deter the potential ambushers. This can be very well done by adding each one borrowed IFV (Bradleys, for example) to advance guard and rearguard. There's little that the mediocre ambush party can do against them - even RPG-7 will will have only limited effect if the crews are vigilant. An RPG-7 won't have more than a 50% hit chance against a moving tank at 200m, and most users aren't trained enough to achieve such ‘precision’. Altitude differences even complicate aiming. In some terrains, an IFV will effectively eliminate the ambush threat. But remove the reserve TOW missiles from the hull, they're a secondary explosion risk and won't be of much use anyway. The next best thing against an ambush is not to enter the kill zone. If road-bound, you can only avoid this by reconnaissance. Being unpredictable helps, but reconnaissance is the true solution.
The “Rat Patrol” (a jeep with a vigilant, autonomous crew in advance of the convoy) is the most famous solution, but itself very much in danger. Anyway, since the field of vision is more important for Rat patrols than protection (from the officer’s point of view), the vehicle modifications should reflect this. I consider Rat Patrols as the method of choice in total war, while their personnel are too much in danger for limited war conditions. In total war, mission success is regarded more and casualties less critical than in limited war.
For stronger convoy escorts, a true advance guard should be possible – but even this won’t help much if it isn’t vigilant or isn’t scanning with thermal sights.
The third best measure is passive protection coupled with firepower – the usual thing.
To have something strong in the bullet’s trajectory does often help, and weight vs. protection considerations are often difficult.
Some authors see the need for ATGM firepower - this is probably unnecessary for all but those enemies behind walls / in robust buildings. But even such ambushers need to expose themselves to realise their dangerousness.
Ambushes are most effective within assault rifle range because most ambushers won't have longer-ranging weapons. This means that some light anti-tank weapons (M136 for example) will do the job. The probably best weapon in the Western inventory for ATGM substitution in counter-ambush fights is the M3 Carl Gustav (RAAWS) - having an SPH in the convoy is unrealistic since western forces abandoned the 105mm SPH and won't attach a 155mm SPH to a convoy. If the threat includes tanks, TOWs will probably be useless while Javelins might be more useful due to better survivability.
Think about periscopes for your heavy weapons (M2, M240, M60, Mk-19) - perhaps you have or can get reflex/scope sights or even thermal sights for them; they work great with periscopes. Further, machineguns can also be operated by periscope by tracking their tracers.
Thermal sights are a definitive requirement for at least the point vehicle(s) and the forward observer(s).
Indirect fire attacks can be dealt with by taking cover or by movement - most shells will be primitive contact-fused mortar shells while rocket fire (including RPG's), howitzer shells, heavy machine gun and automatic grenade launcher fire is also possible. Shortstop jammers will only reduce the threat of radio proximity fused shells and you will most probably not get enough (several of the larger ones) such jammers for your dispersed convoy anyway. There are no sufficiently mobile counter-mortar radars available, so you'll depend on aggressive counter-attacks, speed and/or air support when you're under indirect fire attack.
Artillery support was underestimated in its importance by American authors in the past; the ability to call in artillery fire was a cornerstone of Russian anti-ambush procedures in their Afghan War and light/medium mortars would fail as fire support if the enemies were firing from inside a high wood or village because of premature fusing. They're also too weak to knock out well-prepared fighting positions. Such fighting positions are described in all famous Guerrilla Warfare manuals that I have read, so don't underestimate the preparations of ambushing guerrillas. BTW, artillery has the same problem like air support; they cannot engage anything that's very close to friendly troops without a fratricide problem.
Using tracers is a good idea for intimidating the enemy in combat, but those with the best sensors/eyes should use a special tracer colour because otherwise the whole element might be lead to shoot into a wrong direction.
This tracer colour could also be used for the "communication by tracers" technique (which will probably also be your best method to control attack helicopters).
Sunglasses will be valuable especially when the ambushers try to exploit the dazzling effect of the sun to their advantage.
Broken vehicles pose a great problem to the convoy commander, and he or his battalion headquarters needs to decide how to act in such situations. Recovery is one option, leaving the quickly stripped vehicle behind is another. The threat of an ambush is important for this decision, and any vehicle that was immobilized by enemy action (or by its local driver) was probably immobilized to stop the convoy in preparation of an ambush.
Again: Nr. 1 priority is to deter ambushes. This requires time and resources that are probably not available. Maybe you're allowed to do some live-fire testing in sight of civilians; if it's impressing, it'll help. In general, the soldiers should appear as vigilant, professional, ready and competent as possible but should never provoke the civilians or show signs of weakness.
Nr. 2 priority is to detect ambushes before it's too late. Your point vehicle needs to dismount (as much unpredictable as possible) two to four men at every bridge, crossing, road bend and other suspicious sites. Some infantrymen on motorcycles or all-terrain vehicles could parallel the point vehicle and search next to the road for problems. Air surveillance won't detect all ambushes - especially not mines below bridges and ambushes in forest or built-up areas.
Nr. 3 priority is to react with effective counter fire as quickly as possible to any ambush - once the fire superiority is won, the worst is over (don't run out of ammo!).
Nr. 4 priority is to use forward observers to direct effective air and artillery strikes and to use the mortar section that should be in the main body of the convoy.
Forward controllers should be spread approx. every 10-15 vehicles in the convoy (maybe each one in advance guard and rearguard or one per command vehicle).
Nr. 5 priority is to counter-attack. While this is often considered to be the best action against an ambush, mines, artificial obstacles, enemy reserves and difficult terrain can make a counter-attack bloody or even impossible.
Pursuit should end when contact is broken – the mission is escort, not pursuit. A quick reaction force should take over.
At least when a deployment into a crisis region becomes probable, every logistics unit should make up for earlier training (especially basic combat training) deficiencies. Train the shooting skills, create intensity and stress in training and enforce discipline. Things will get serious.
Maybe the enemy coordinates his actions with simple cell phones. It's possible to detect and jam them. With two receivers, you could even find out their position by direction finding. The maths can be done with an Excel table (written within minutes) and COTS equipment (including laptop and table calculation software). Even if you haven't good radio operators in your company, there are surely some in the next local FM radio community that can help you with this. The hardware (two scanners, two directional antennas, one high-power emitter) should cost only few thousand dollars, but could reduce the C3 efficacy of your opponents to 19th century levels.
One big question is whether the convoy should stop, only the trucks should continue movement or whether all vehicles should maintain movement. This cannot be decided for all situations with one rule, I believe. The problem is that the road is probably not wide enough to let only some vehicles continue movement. Any immobilized vehicles could stop others even when continued movement is ordered. This would result in a disadvantageous concentration of stopped vehicles behind the immobilized one or even crashes. Civilian (and uniformed) drivers might react different than ordered. Moving vehicles cannot employ their heavy weapons effectively over significant ranges due to lack of stabilisation (except IFVs). The Russians in Afghanistan and the U.S. troops in Vietnam seemed to have preferred to let the armed, armoured vehicles stop and return fire while the soft-skinned trucks fled. That's probably best when there's a safe escape route for the trucks. It’s probably worst if there’s a minefield ahead…
Aircraft Armor Systems
: ^D
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.
