• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Bradley Replacement Competition

I like griffen but the cv90 has my heart. Its the lightest of the three and it has a 40mm gun which is more than enough for an IFV.
 
I like the CV-90 as well, but I have to wonder if the design is already at it's weight max and has no more growth in it? Whichever design they choose I hope it comes with a family of vehicles including a "boring armoured box" version to do all the jobs the M113 did so well.
 
Colin P said:
I like the CV-90 as well, but I have to wonder if the design is already at it's weight max and has no more growth in it? Whichever design they choose I hope it comes with a family of vehicles including a "boring armoured box" version to do all the jobs the M113 did so well.

Is being "at its weight" necessarily a bad thing? Or does a constant expectation of adding more and being able to add more just drive lazy engineering and bad tactics?  How about learning to exploit what is available?
 
Armata is a tank. While most armies don't require their IFV's to be air droppable we do. This lim its armor and weight. Being road bound is an invitation to get hit by a roadside bomb or mines. Any new IFV must reflect this reality,like a modified hull which would channel the blast away from the crew.
 
Colin P said:
I like the CV-90 as well, but I have to wonder if the design is already at it's weight max and has no more growth in it? Whichever design they choose I hope it comes with a family of vehicles including a "boring armoured box" version to do all the jobs the M113 did so well.

The CV90 is the basis for all kinds of real and projected vehicles, including a SPAAG, AMOS mortar carrier, engineering vehicle, light tanks with 105 and 120mm cannons and so on. From that perspective, a very long run of variants is entirely possible, and from a logistics POV, very doable with minimal R&D.

While there is no reason you could not do the same thing with the Lynx or any of the other entrants, the basic R&D work needs to be done, adding time and cost. One vehicle which should be worth looking at is the Korean K-21, which has a lightweight composite hull and is much lighter at 25.6 metric tons but has the sort of mobility and protection that the other entrants have.
 
Can't help but wonder what might have happened if horses could have been bred to new standards as fast as new vehicles can be created.

But they couldn't.

And for a few thousand years people had to manage with what was possible.
 
NavyShooter said:
This thread inspired me to watch Pentagon Wars last night...

I prefer 'Stalingrad'. 'Tis the season! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVvoo1qFPDo

 
Is there an obvious benefit to the 50mm versus 57mm other than smaller calibre/more ammo?
 
tomahawk6 said:
Armata is a tank. While most armies don't require their IFV's to be air droppable we do. This lim its armor and weight. Being road bound is an invitation to get hit by a roadside bomb or mines. Any new IFV must reflect this reality,like a modified hull which would channel the blast away from the crew.

I think we're all being limited by an unrealistic expectation of what we expect from our Infantry, especially with respect to the vehicles we mount them in. Infantry don't do their jobs from the equivalent of the light tank, at least 99% of the time. They do it on their bellies, with grenades, rifles and bayonets.

Sure, the vehicles from which we engage the enemy need to be survivable, and having a gun on it is a bonus, but the main 'enabler' we need to properly close with and destroy the enemy is armour and artillery, and mortars and anti-armour weapons and machine guns and pioneers, and close air support.

A huge focus on making the Infantry 'Junior Zipper Heads' is probably not the answer.

A better all arms battlefield team, kind of like the Germans' Blitzkrieg showed us in WW2 (or the Allies' last 100 days in WW1) is probably more like what we need to get better at. The equivalent of a Sherman Tank (in height anyways, as we seem to have already exceeded the weight) is probably putting the emPHASIS on the wrong syllABLE.

My $0.02 worth.
 
The US and Britain showed the world what modern mechanized war was all about in their destruction of Saddam's army with such legacy equipment as the Chieftain and Abrams,Bradley and Warrior IFV. Now after numerous upgrades its time for a modern IFV incorporating lessons learned and Trophy type armor protection. The new IFV should be selected with the IED threat environment as well as peer type combat.
 
tomahawk6 said:
Armata is a tank. While most armies don't require their IFV's to be air droppable we do. This lim its armor and weight. Being road bound is an invitation to get hit by a roadside bomb or mines. Any new IFV must reflect this reality,like a modified hull which would channel the blast away from the crew.

T-14 Armata is a tank.  T-15 Armata (which I linked) is an IFV.  CV90 is both a light tank and an IFV depending on the weapons load as the CV90 has carried 100mm and 120mm weapons with no dismounts.  Hence my comparison to a similar hull form with different weapons loadout which is a goal of the Armata program.

daftandbarmy said:
I think we're all being limited by an unrealistic expectation of what we expect from our Infantry, especially with respect to the vehicles we mount them in. Infantry don't do their jobs from the equivalent of the light tank, at least 99% of the time. They do it on their bellies, with grenades, rifles and bayonets.

Sure, the vehicles from which we engage the enemy need to be survivable, and having a gun on it is a bonus, but the main 'enabler' we need to properly close with and destroy the enemy is armour and artillery, and mortars and anti-armour weapons and machine guns and pioneers, and close air support.

A huge focus on making the Infantry 'Junior Zipper Heads' is probably not the answer.

A better all arms battlefield team, kind of like the Germans' Blitzkrieg showed us in WW2 (or the Allies' last 100 days in WW1) is probably more like what we need to get better at. The equivalent of a Sherman Tank (in height anyways, as we seem to have already exceeded the weight) is probably putting the emPHASIS on the wrong syllABLE.

My $0.02 worth.

Well the eternal question is does doctrine inform the technology choice or does the doctrine need to conform to the technology chosen?  US is reacting to the Armata development among other things.  They want a IFV that when it runs into a T-15 be able to kill it.  US doctrine is always leans towards firepower first.  Current IFV developments are to uparmour to the point where you can take a 30mm round and keep going.  US wants to be able to penetrate that armour no matter the enemy equivalent vehicle.

I suspect that the US Army is large enough that they will continue to have a mixed bag of infantry running the light through heavy types.  And will just refit their current heavy infantry units with this new vehicle.
 
daftandbarmy said:
I think we're all being limited by an unrealistic expectation of what we expect from our Infantry, especially with respect to the vehicles we mount them in. Infantry don't do their jobs from the equivalent of the light tank, at least 99% of the time. They do it on their bellies, with grenades, rifles and bayonets.

Sure, the vehicles from which we engage the enemy need to be survivable, and having a gun on it is a bonus, but the main 'enabler' we need to properly close with and destroy the enemy is armour and artillery, and mortars and anti-armour weapons and machine guns and pioneers, and close air support.

A huge focus on making the Infantry 'Junior Zipper Heads' is probably not the answer.

A better all arms battlefield team, kind of like the Germans' Blitzkrieg showed us in WW2 (or the Allies' last 100 days in WW1) is probably more like what we need to get better at. The equivalent of a Sherman Tank (in height anyways, as we seem to have already exceeded the weight) is probably putting the emPHASIS on the wrong syllABLE.

My $0.02 worth.

I'll buy that. When I left the Reg F artillery to head a Res F rifle company in a Winnipeg Highland Infantry battalion that shall remain nameless I found my platoon plus was really more interested in playing silly-b*gger in the woods wearing any uniform and webbing other than what the CF issued it than doing anything else. I started them back into basic battle-drills and, in order to build up some MCpl leadership and responsibility experience, broke out our four 106mm recoilless rifle jeeps assigned them crews. Well, you can probably imagine how well that went over.

I may be generalizing a bit much here but I don't think that your average infantryman is too inclined to get deeply into the finer points of vehicle manoeuvring and the anti-tank defence. Not that they can't do that but let's face it, some of the capabilities of IFVs these days are well beyond anything of decades ago and reach out beyond the company's. There was a time when artillery had the anti-tank role (and within the artillery there used to be specialization as between tube, anti-tank and anti-aircraft because they are very different specialized skills). What's left of that capability is now one more thing infantry have to learn and deal with.

I sometimes think that the crewing of IFV's (essentially the driver, gunner, commander and maybe the "LAV Capt") should be a wholly different career field which specializes in the intricacies of the care, feeding and employment of those vehicles (including the longer range anti-tank battle in all phases of war) while the infantry focus on the dismounted close-in aspect of the battle. Obviously both elements should be organic to the battalion, but not necessarily the same career field.

Just spit shootin' here.

:subbies:
 
FJAG said:
...
I sometimes think that the crewing of IFV's (essentially the driver, gunner, commander and maybe the "LAV Capt") should be a wholly different career field which specializes in the intricacies of the care, feeding and employment of those vehicles (including the longer range anti-tank battle in all phases of war) while the infantry focus on the dismounted close-in aspect of the battle. Obviously both elements should be organic to the battalion, but not necessarily the same career field.

Just spit shootin' here.

:subbies:

I heard somewhere that the Aussies use armoured crew to drive the IFV and the infantry perform the dismounted role.  Not sure if that's true or if it was a trial or not.
 
Underway said:
.....
Well the eternal question is does doctrine inform the technology choice or does the doctrine need to conform to the technology chosen?  US is reacting to the Armata development among other things.  ...

Why is the response to a more powerful tank a more powerful tank? 

Isn't the desired endstate an elimination of the threat that the more powerful tank provides?

Yes, it makes sense to me that a tank should be able to defeat the threats it encounters on the field and so a tank should be able to defeat a tank.  But what is the purpose of the tank?  Is it just an anti-tank weapon?  Or does it bring some other capabilities to the all-arms team?

And yes, the artillery did supply tubes with specialized targeting capabilities for General Support, Anti-Air and Anti-Tank but wasn't that more a function of the technology of the time requiring a gun to deliver enough energy to defeat the targets in question at the necessary ranges?  Guns big enough that they had to be transported on wheels and hauled by an internal combustion engine.

Now some of those targets can be defeated at useful ranges by weapons that can be carried on the backs of infanteers making it possible for the infanteers to eliminate threats they previously had to rely on supporting arms to manage.

I am still of the belief that the answer to a squadron of cavalry is not a squadron of cavalry but a well drilled and disciplined bunch of archers.

And while in the realm of silly buggers and good idea fairies it occurred to me some time ago that the Carl Gustav, the LAW and the ATGMs are single shot weapons.  We have drills for single shot weapons.  If you want a refresher head on down to Kingston and watch the Fort Henry Guard.  We might want to ditch the red coats and open up the spacing a bit  but volley fire, rolling fire, fire by ranks, by sections, platoons, fire and retire.... especially with PRRs available .... all seem to me to be worth exploring as infantry tactics for the anti-tank platoon.
 
Back
Top