Hale's crazy little plan

[Trooper Hale]

I was chatting with my boss the other day and were talking about OP FOR for armoured exercises and the way that SHQ's lav's will one minute be friendly, and the next we're being criticized for not picking up on the "BTR" in the tree's.
Back in the 90's the School of Armour in Puckapunyal used a couple of M113 MRV's with red star's painted on them. The MRV at that stage was obviously an (almost) obsolete vehicle but the use of it meant that the crew's of vehicles had a definite enemy vehicle to look out for and this (apparently) greatly aided training value for all involved.
He mentioned an idea, or perhaps more a theory, that what with our military being over in Iraq and Afghanistan, the purchase of a troop's worth of BTR's or BMP's wouldn't be a totally unfeasible idea. While a fairly radical move, the purchase is more then possible and at least over here has a little bit of precedence in that the Army has brought over a T-72, BMP-1 and a host of Iraqi Chinese made AFV's.
What do you Armoured chap's here think? Is it a crazy idea? Or, with the political situation with Iran especially, a decent idea?
I love the thought of being posted to Enemy force troop at the school and crewing eastern bloc AFV's and i also love the idea of not having to worry about being bumped by the ASLAV that 5 minutes ago was friendly. At the same time, qual-ing on these vehicles and manning them is a HUGE issue.
I'd love to hear some feed back.
Ta blokes,
Hales

 

[George Wallace]

Good idea.  The Americans do it.  They have actual Warsaw Pact vehicles at some locations, and mockups at other locations.  The factor that will not make it possible for you, however, is the funding for those vehicles, spare parts and maint.  I doubt the Austrailian Government, like the Canadian Government, is willing to budget part of their Defence Dollars towards the purchase and operation of Enemy Force Vehicles for realistic training. 

[Edit to add:]

They will, however, spend billions on electronic simulators, that are great for the video game generation.  Then they will spend billions to improve those 'games' to make them more realistic.  No need to go out into the Field and get cold, wet and dirty, breaking equipment and vehicles, destroying the landscape, when you can sit in a nice clean air conditioned SIM Center and fight your battles.    ;D

 

[geo]

Years ago, the German gov't was getting rid of most of their east German armour... tons of T-72s were let go.  Canada took a few - I can see one in East German grey out of my office window.
There is no doubt that dedicating a fleet of vehicles to OPFOR is a good thing - while being a manpoower and maintenance nightmare.  Short of inviting other nations over to act as OPFOR, not sure what you can do... unless you want to invade someone - jsut for the experience >

 

[Wookilar]

I know that Ft Irwin out in the middle of the Mojave has a crap load of "enemy" vehicles  ;D (or at least they did back in....crap, that was a while ago now... ). I never got the chance to play around with them, but there sure was a lot of vehicles in compounds down there baking in the sun.

I think it's a spectacular idea, but probably cost prohibitive and could/would get shot down by any penny pinching bureaucrat pretty darn quick. All they would have to do is call us "Cold Warriors" longing for the good old days and no political party would go near such a plan.

Just getting the troops to actually look for something that IS different instead of something with a different colour on it would lead to a better training environment.

I wonder if such training could reduce the chance of blue on blue incidences? Maybe????

Wook

 

[Trooper Hale]

Your definately right, our government find it hard enough to budget for LAV tyre's and our own calibre's of ammo! Let alone 14.7 etc.
Could you tell me anything about what the Yank's do? I've never heard of that before and it sounds fascinating.
And would the spare parts and vehicles really cost that much?
Cheers

I wonder if such training could reduce the chance of blue on blue incidences? Maybe????

How do you figure? Your referring to muscle memory or something like that? "Thats a LAV, i shot one last ex so i'll shoot it now" kind of thing?

 

[George Wallace]

Your definately right, our government find it hard enough to budget for LAV tyre's and our own calibre's of ammo! Let alone 14.7 etc.
Could you tell me anything about what the Yank's do? I've never heard of that before and it sounds fascinating.
And would the spare parts and vehicles really cost that much?
Cheers

They have modified Sheridans and APCs to look like Soviet equipment from a distance. 

They have also gone into Electronic Simulators big time.  We have also, but not quite to the extent that they have, with whole complexes that can fight complete Battle Gps.

 

[ironduke57]

Maybe you should just build something like this for the beginning:

Regards,
ironduke57

 

[Danjanou]

Ironduke, where did you get a picture of the CFs new proposed MBT if the NDP get into power?  ;D

 

[Nfld Sapper]

He hacked their secured server  ;D

 

[PuckChaser]

Ironduke, where did you get a picture of the CFs new proposed MBT if the NDP get into power?  ;D

You're assuming we'd have a CF if they got in power.  ;D

 

[CEEBEE501]

What about inflatables?
http://englishrussia.com/?p=2025   

 

[geo]

What about inflatables?
http://englishrussia.com/?p=2025   

The allies used a lot of those in the days leading up to DDay... and beyond - as needed.
Cheap technology BUT, excluding the compressors, not much in the way of heat generation

 

[Colin Parkinson]

As much as i like the idea, I think it makes more sense using M113's with vis mod on them.