Bradley Replacement - XM30 MICV

jsport said:
breakingdefense.com

Is the Army about to shake up its Bradley replacement, XM30? Sources see major signs. - Breaking Defense

Sources told Breaking Defense a new RFI may be a backdoor effort to speed up, or potentially revamp entirely, the Bradley replacement competition.
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com
AMPV may still be considered.
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If they want delivery speed, a better position to be in would be manufacturing the hulls while selecting vendors for mission modules and equipment, like protection kits, C-UAS kits, armaments, etc.
AMPV is already manufactured, so yeah I hope it gets chosen.
 
So here we are, another month later and still no Milestone B. Is the assumption now that the GDLS and American Rheinmetall offerings are DOA and the Army is going to go in the direction of an AMPV-derived offering?
 
Plan to procure 19 vehicles in 2027? Is that plan to procure 19 of the winning design, or 19 each of the two remaining competitors?
 
whatismoo said:
What makes you say that? I'm partial to Lynx but haven't seen anything on it.
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There has been no announced down-select. It would make no sense to go into EMF with two designs, so I guess they expect to pick one before they obligated these funds.

Wuthout a Milestone B decision, they seem to be planning to just chuck the rulebook, which will make for a very interesting set of protests.
 
whatismoo said:
What makes you say that? I'm partial to Lynx but haven't seen anything on it.
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Phrasing from the report. "The US Army moves Lynx XM30 into procurement..."


TomS said:
There has been no announced down-select. It would make no sense to go into EMF with two designs, so I guess they expect to pick one before they obligated these funds.
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Remember that MPF had at least a dozen M8s and M10s built for it (iirc 6 of each), which would track with a platoon and a command section of each type. The current mechanized-infantry platoon has 6 Bradleys in it, so you'd be looking at buying 6+2 or 6+3 of each design for troop tests. Buying a full company of each would be better, but you can probably get away with leaving 2 platoons in Bradleys and rotate the whole company through a single platoon of vehicles on exercises.
 
The budget docs are public, we don't need to speculate. The budget doesn't specify, it just requests a quantity of 19 for XM30 under a procurement line item (rather than RDT&E).
 
joshjosh said:
The budget docs are public, we don't need to speculate. The budget doesn't specify, it just requests a quantity of 19 for XM30 under a procurement line item (rather than RDT&E).
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19x Lynx would be a full company or just about.

I think it should be 20 vehicles for the full company, if Lynx is not carrying full squads. If Lynx is carrying full squads you get 14 vehicles per company (3x4+2).
 
If an XM30-based company would be smaller than a Bradley-based one, the rest could be to smash around.
Have the XM30 candidates gone through the full survivability tests?
 
Colonial-Marine said:
Regardless of how crucial obtaining and utilizing air superiority is, you still need men and vehicles on the ground to take and hold anything. The infantry fighting vehicle is an important piece in enabling the infantryman to be more useful than just serving as a target for the flying things trying to kill him.
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Ukraine and Russia don't seem to think so.

They're doing just fine holding terrain with airpower and artillery, unless a camera or a robotic machine gun counts as "men and vehicles", but isn't that just an unmanned sensor? It's kind of important when you have only about half a dozen men per kilometer of frontage on either side to roboticize and move beyond men holding trenches, which haven't been used for at least a year and a half now, because they're too vulnerable to hunter-killer drone attack.

The limit for attack and defense used to be locating targets. Now, everything is visible, and the only limit is how quickly firepower can be brought to bear. That's a C2 and artillery range/time-of-flight issue. DARPA explored this "roboticized warfare" concept in the 1980s under the Killer Robots initiative by the way. Their tagline was "the battlefield is no place for humans" IIRC.

Ground vehicles either need to be more disposable (or better defended), men more available (more than Russia), or ground forces need to be faster. None of these seem to be on the horizon with the XM30 or anything else. We're already seeing what happens when a Western mechanized force runs into a Russo-Ukrainian-style defense in Lebanon: it dies by a thousand cuts. This is not at all surprising.
 
Kat Tsun said:
They're doing just fine holding terrain with airpower and artillery, unless a camera or a robotic machine gun counts as "men and vehicles", but isn't that just an unmanned sensor?
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The IFV is a tool of maneuver. Holding already controlled ground is not maneuver.
Ground is better held by light infantry, or what some call "territorials". They do not need IFVs, and are typically mobile on light trucks, lightly armored or unarmored.

Kat Tsun said:
We're already seeing what happens when a Western mechanized force runs into a Russo-Ukrainian-style defense in Lebanon: it dies by a thousand cuts. This is not at all surprising.
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The numbers of the current fighting in Lebanon:
Time: 1 month, 9 days.
IDF casualties: 12 KIA
Hezbollah casualties: 1,400 KIA

Relevant to the topic, of these 12 KIA, only 1 is armor. The rest are infantry and combat engineers. (As of April 7th)

Ground was taken, cleared of strategically valuable infrastructure and fortifications, and now it is being translated to strategic gains.

Ergo, successful maneuver is possible in such environment.
 
Big_Zukini said:
The IFV is a tool of maneuver. Holding already controlled ground is not maneuver.
Ground is better held by light infantry, or what some call "territorials". They do not need IFVs, and are typically mobile on light trucks, lightly armored or unarmored.
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Exactly.

The US model is for Stryker brigades to roll up behind the armored units to hold what Armor captured, Strykers having most of the off-road mobility of tracked vehicles. And at some point the bare leg infantry shows up to relieve the Strykers, at which point the Strykers go back to being the fire brigade for the leg infantry.
 
Kat Tsun said:
They're doing just fine holding terrain with airpower and artillery, unless a camera or a robotic machine gun counts as "men and vehicles", but isn't that just an unmanned sensor?
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No one accepts control of territory until you have a soulful human plant a flag there, and in a world of numerous tiny killer robots, having armored transports with good defensive firepower lets you do that without painstaking mine warfare stages.

And war is politics with violence, flag planting is paramount. (maximum violence like with WMDs is rarely relevant)

The infantry man have ceased being a important source of killing firepower since forever.

The limit for attack and defense used to be locating targets. Now, everything is visible, and the only limit is how quickly firepower can be brought to bear.
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Humans are large, visible and limited, robots are not. The reason why the front can be maintained by short ranged robots is because they are invisible and move faster than historical firepower systems can be brought to bear.

Offense maneuver happen with bots all the time, the real problem is current bots don't have the logistics system to maintain sustained offensive mass to lock something down, but that will come.
 
shin_getter said:
The reason why the front can be maintained by short ranged robots is because they are invisible and move faster than historical firepower systems can be brought to bear.
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Robots are destroyed at a much greater rate than human troops die in Ukraine, presently.
 
Kat Tsun said:
Robots are destroyed at a much greater rate than human troops die in Ukraine, presently.
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Drones regularly conduct "impossible" missions like penetrate ten to thousands of kilometers behind the front. Neither the sensors nor shooters was up to the task without a generational upgrade with the same technologies that enabled drones.

The short range robots manage to survive interdiction and hold the front. If the robots are easily detected they could be defeated by long range fires. How else could the robots survive, are they very well armored or have active defenses of their own? The kill chain is sensor and reaction time limited.

We don't say that mines aren't stealthy because they are destroyed in huge numbers.

Think about why there isn't a infinite rate of loss and the war resolve in a split second. What is limiting the kill chain? The character of the limit defines the character of the conflict.

In sensor constrained conflicts, wars are slow because attackers can't leverage mass to win and need to find the defender. In firepower constrained conflicts, attackers can just mass and win, everyone can see the redshirts in a square but it works because muskets fire too slowly and don't have enough firepower to saturate.
 
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Holding territory isn't just planting a flag. In new territory it is the translation of your command and logistical infrastructure and capabilities further in to this territory.
In existing territory, it is about having robust sensory and fire capabilities across the sector.
But typically you want maneuver because you do not want to be static. When you maneuver, you disrupt an enemy's capabilities.
The relatively static front line in Ukraine is NOT a desirable situation for any warring nation. It is only one level more desirable than defeat.

The human element is not replaced by drones, but augmented by them. And drone operation is a very manpower-intensive work.
 
Big_Zukini said:
Holding territory isn't just planting a flag. In new territory it is the translation of your command and logistical infrastructure and capabilities further in to this territory.
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One can even say that IFVs have little impact on actually extending command and logistical infrastructure if one is not relying on infantry to dig holes. With robot arms maturing fast, I see no strong need for meat to do the job of keeping robots operating in the 2030s.

Just about any engineering variant have more impact than the troop carrying type.

But typically you want maneuver because you do not want to be static. When you maneuver, you disrupt an enemy's capabilities.
The relatively static front line in Ukraine is NOT a desirable situation for any warring nation. It is only one level more desirable than defeat.
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The weaker force desires a static front, to stall out a weak position and wait for change in strategic situation. This is much better than a rapid maneuver war that would logically quickly resolve favorably for the stronger side.

The human element is not replaced by drones, but augmented by them. And drone operation is a very manpower-intensive work.
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The point of drone operation is that the human don't need to be in rifle range. Frankly hiding under mountains seems like a great play with the current conflict.....
 
DWG said:
It's a non-defence publication, did the author even know there are two competitors?
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Fair point, but it should be fairly simple to look up. (Yes, I know I'm expecting basic fact checking out of modern journalists)

Also, IIRC the "M8 MPF competitor" had a very different M-number.
 
shin_getter said:
With robot arms maturing fast, I see no strong need for meat to do the job of keeping robots operating in the 2030s.
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You could say that since the 50's. Yet with ever increasing computation and autonomy, the experience does not point to any manpower reduction.
To the contrary. Capabilities become overall more manpower intensive.

Is there any reason to believe there is something inherently different now?

shin_getter said:
Just about any engineering variant have more impact than the troop carrying type.
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CEVs are far rarer than APCs/IFVs, so on a per vehicle basis a CEV has more impact.
But they share an AND type, nor OR type relationship.

Example: If you have no APCs/IFVs, a CEV is pointless.

shin_getter said:
The weaker force desires a static front, to stall out a weak position and wait for change in strategic situation. This is much better than a rapid maneuver war that would logically quickly resolve favorably for the stronger side
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So you advocate to be weaker.

shin_getter said:
The point of drone operation is that the human don't need to be in rifle range. Frankly hiding under mountains seems like a great play with the current conflict.....
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I wonder how anyone can look at Iran and say "I wanna be like that!"
 
Forest Green said:

Army's 1st Cav to test next-generation vehicle prototypes​

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Looking at the latest CRS report, it does indicate that both teams have contracts for prototype manufacturing (Phase 4), even though the Milestone B decision is still in limbo.

So between that, the FY27 budget, and this statement, it seems like the requested 19 FY27 vehicles will be likely be split between the two designs, with each team providing enough for a user test platoon (4-5 vehicles) and some for individual testing (another 4-5 vehicles).
 
Given all the unmanned revolution (s) seen on the current front, it is likely way too early to be proving out infantry tactics for a new vehicle. Housing drone operators & and casualty evacuation seems to be the primary purposes right now.

Likewise, these garrison specific drone "forges" (whatever idiocy there called) are aimlessly wasting soldier skill training time. Back to night patroling & other primarily infantry tactics please.
 

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