Or maybe not so small:
BOLO Mk 28
Posted on 06/25/2002 10:47:09 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Army leaders around the world put great stock in the power a tank brings to the battlefield, but with few new sales expected, industry officials say modernization is the lone bright spot in the main battle tank’s uncertain future."To talk about the death of the tank brings to mind Mark Twain’s famous quote, ‘The news of my death is greatly exaggerated,’ " said N.S. Sridharan, vice president of the General Dynamics propulsion unit in Muskegon, Mich.
Sridharan was among thousands of executives in land forces materiel manufacturing worldwide who gathered here in Paris from June 17-21 for the Eurosatory 2002 International Exposition of Land Forces Equipment and Land-Air Defense.
While the market for lighter armored vehicles is robust, prospects for the main battle tank remain dim, but not completely dead, according to analysts and executives here.
"No one in Europe is going to build a new 70-ton tank," Alexander Giles, an analyst with Defence Analysis in London, said June 19. "The U.K. said it will not seek a Challenger 3; they are clear about that. We will not see a new LeClerc from France. And the Germans have no plans to replace the Leopard 2. There may be some bolt-on special editions for existing battle tanks, but nothing new is planned anywhere."
Retired French Army Gen. Marc Waymel, former deputy commander with the Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina who now is a consultant with GIAT Industries, Satory, France, is a die-hard fan of the main battle tank.
"The ground trembles when the tank arrives," he said. "People are frightened. The tank tells them that the army is here and can be a useful effect for a commander to employ to bring an area of conflict under control. An armored vehicle does not say the same thing, it is not intimidating."
Tank tactics employed by Israel in its latest confrontations with Palestinians often are cited by supporters of the tank.
"Turn on CNN and you can see that the tank is not dead," a colonel with the French Army said June 19.
In a June 19 interview, retired Israel Army Brig. Gen. Yehuda Admon said, "This is not a normal way of using the tank for a low-intensive conflict. If we had something else to use, we would use it. Tanks are for mass fights."
Admon, now a vice president with Elbit Systems Ltd., Haifa, Israel, said that for countries where an enemy has tanks, "the only way to fight is with a tank. Helicopters and missiles are a serious menace, but they cannot take the place of the mass of the tank.
"Look at the gulf war, where [U.S.] Gen. [Norman] Schwartzkopf in three weeks delivered from the air more firepower than was used during World War II," he said. "Yet the general was careful not to move one centimeter over the border from Kuwait until the ships arrived with the tanks. For major wars, the tank will remain the main factor, at least as far out as I can see, which is 30 to 40 years."
Giles agreed.
"The people who want tanks are those countries faced with neighbors who have massive numbers of tanks. India is receiving new Ukrainian T-80Us, so Pakistan will want new tanks, possibly from the Chinese. Greece has bought the Leopard 2, so Turkey is running its competition, probably looking at the M1A2 Abrams," Giles said.
Indian Army Lt. Gen. A.S. Khana said in a June 19 interview, "Our situation is very different than Europe, and the tank is very, very important for us. And it will remain so for a long time to come."
Gregg Fetter, a land forces expert with Forecast International, Newtown, Conn., released a controversial analysis during the Eurosatory show stating that in the confrontation between India and Pakistan, where India holds a nearly 2-1 superiority with 4,880 tanks, "the superiority is questionable."
"These tanks need a major overhaul," Fetter said June 18. "At least 70 percent of the inventory is not considered fully battle worthy." Fetter concluded that Pakistan’s attention to maintenance and upgrading would prove decisive if India attacked.
The market for modernization of existing tank fleets is one bright spot for manufacturers, said General Dynamics’ Sridharan, who said that, for the propulsion unit, "we expect at least 50 percent of revenues to come from support of the [U.S.] Army’s legacy force."
The U.S. Army is conducting a recapitalization program for Abrams tanks "to put into the vehicles over the next few years the key improvements we have learned over the last 15 years of service," he said. "The policy is for zero-mile condition for modernization of systems."
Calling the tank a "system" rather than a vehicle, Khana said India seeks "more capabilities, and this is the key, because there are more possibilities today with technology than there were even 10 years ago."
Luc Vigneron, GIAT chief executive officer, said revenues for maintenance work on the LeClerc would be the only bright spot in the near term for his company’s financial picture.
At the same time, he complained that to remain a strategic capability for any country, a tank manufacturer needs engineers. "And how do you keep engineers? You keep them with programs, not with maintenance.
"Just assume for one second that in a country, the government on one day stops using a company for new technologies. It will progressively kill the engineering skills of its own industry."
The troubles at the Volgograd Tractor Plant in Volgograd, Russia, which manufactures armored fighting vehicles, is a more advanced case than at GIAT.
"Yes, the tank is dead," said Sergey Romanenko, the general-director of Volgograd armor operations. "One of the specific features of our plant is that it is very large and we produce the tank from making the steel to the finished product. If the future is wheeled vehicles, this will be a problem for us."
Romanenko said there will be modernization work, especially for Russian tanks in Asian markets. But "long term, it is a question for us."
Why should they when the US does their fighting for them?
Or maybe not so small:
BOLO Mk 28
My forty-seven pairs of flint-steel roadwheels are in depot condition. Their tires of spun beryllium monocrystal, woven to deform rather than compress, all have 97% or better of their fabric unbroken. The immediate terrain is semi-arid. The briefing files inform me this is typical of the planet. My track links purr among themselves as they grind through scrub vegetation and the friable soil, carrying me to my assigned mission.
There is a cataclysmic fuel-air explosion to the east behind me. The glare is visible for 5.3 seconds, and the ground will shake for many minutes as shock waves echo through the planetary mantle.
Had my human superiors so chosen, I could be replacing Saratoga at the spearhead of the attack.
The rear elements of the infantry are in sight now. They look like dung beetles in their hard suits, crawling backward beneath a rain of shrapnel. I am within range of their low-power communications net. "Hold what you got, troops," orders the unit's acting commander. "Big Brother's come to help!" I am not Big Brother. I am Maldon, a Mark XXX Bolo of the 3rd Battalion, Dinochrome Brigade. The lineage of our unit goes back to the 2nd South Wessex Dragoons. In 1944, we broke the last German resistance on the path to Falaise—though we traded our flimsy Cromwells against the Tigers at a ration of six to one to do it.
The citizens do not need to know what the cost is. They need only to know that the mission has been accomplished. The battle honors welded to my turret prove that I have always accomplished my mission
Think amphibious, if only for river crossings, if not beachhead invasions and landings. And that capability keeps total weight down to within reasonable air transportable limits, and can help with fuel consumption figures.
-archy-/-
Probably more to the point, they scored many of them very early in the war, sending the enemy back to regroup in enclaves well protected by mobile SAM batteries which the hogs had no business in attacking...since that could be much more elegantly done by the B52s once their targets were helpfully clustered together. That made for nice psywar alternatives: bunch up and the BUFFS get ya, spread out and the warties eat you up one-by-one. Decisions like that drive commanders and troops to indecision, despair, suicide...and surrender, which is the idea.
And then other tanks and tankers roll in to police up what's left. The practice is not so neat as the theory, but it can indeed be done with an artistic flair. Nathan Bedford Forrest would have recognized the moves immediately.
-archy-/-
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