The question is how many LOS "anti-tank" stowed kills is needed?
Why is it strictly an LOS argument? MRM had greater range that surface launched Hellfire and was (I think) just as volumetrically efficient
as AMP or the KE penetrators. If you want lightweight MBT guns they can be made lightweight; they just kick harder.

The gun is giving you that initial impetus for a rocket assisted projectile that's very hard to achieve for the same volume of
all-up ATGM. You could appeal to ETC or other techniques to reduce propellant volumes if you really wanted to improve
loadouts; that doesn't seem to have been a major goal recently.

For the non-AT roles, like say wall breaching, it doesn't look like any of the ATGMs or other missiles are nearly as
efficient (in terms of rounds expended to create the desired hole) as the MBT fired multipurpose rounds.
 
Well, optimizing the gun for BLOS fires and maximum penetration LOS fires is different so the design have to figure out what to do. Propellant and sabot length are important factors for KE penetration, while BLOS fire favors sheer payload, more modest acceleration, variable charges, high gun elevation and so on. The maintenance of reliable non-Sabot anti-tank ammo means sabot performance is not that important unless one faces minimum range engagements.

From the perspective of upgrading existing tanks, adding sensor masts to tanks for organic turret down capability, combined with good GLATGM option does make some outdated vehicles semi-competitive, on the defense, for cheap.

The talk about LOS is describing what it is exactly I don't think is necessary to preempt counterarguments like:
Omg the APFSDS pen is terrible, this tank is a useless waste of money as "electronics thingys" are all junk if you "insert jamming/emp/lasers/smoke" and swarms of 50+ 152mm armed Armata will start 500meters from you and Zerg you do death. We need liquid propellant 183mm to provide suitable overmatch against Russian swarms across Poland!

---------------
If one starts leaning on indirect fire anti-tank, the role gets mixed up with dedicated howitzers. The question becomes "why not just get more howitzers" and all the arguments about force structure explodes.

The thing to think about is probably whether BLOS gun tubes as a important constraint. If battle network targeting capacity constraints is smaller than fleet weapon rate of fire than adding tubes don't do much, while if the former is plentiful than adding tubes can be helpful. If we are talking about effective high volume targeting by both sides (peer-ish conflict) however, the battle evolves to a artillery duel so the tilt probably falls to more howitzers for the range.

The development of deep battles will also provoke greater defensive capability on part of artillery as they are threatened by recon-fire networks more so than before. Networked early warning, soft kill, armor and some hard kill (against loitering munition/ISR at least: formation based yes, integrated: depends) We can see convergence here.

I guess the end game differentiator will be responsiveness in close combat (things like gun stabilization/handling, organic sensors, etc) and frontal armor trading off improved gun range.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some ideas I'm working on:
I.


Then there is autonomous loitering munitions: just fire a swarm of them and not worry about communications as much. I guess the combine arms in this domain, is that the bandwidth and "fast, high performance weapons" get reallocated to reliable defeat of high value targets like AD radars and effective area C-RAM that can neutralize a swarm, while cheap swarms help maintain situation awareness and take out unprotected targets.

One thing that have not fully developed is aerial counter mini-UAV capability: what would it look like and how efficient and how the offense-defense co-evolution work? Prelim thinking is high performance (say fighter) aircraft packing area sensors to direct narrow sensor anti-air drones, with directed energy armed aircraft sweeping the air in more permissive environments. The question is the operating ranges and scale, the size of aircraft deem recovery worthy, and sustainment constraints. how far forward the basing, with what terrain constraints and cycle/pack up time? The answer to these questions will shape the availability of swarm to influence battle on land, and published analysis is limited.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some ideas I'm working on:
II.



In any case, for me what is interesting to think about is the future of maneuver as opposed to the vehicle that have a turreted gun.

Having thought about the future deep threat environment, what does the survivability onion say about threat to the "leading" land vehicle?. Note of course you'd send cheap UAV or use long range sensors to scout first.

So what would the leading vehicle face? Well anything standoff sensors can not reliably spot and clear by ranged fire must be dealt with.
1. Stealthy, underground, indoor threats from sensors, mines, tunneled forces, infantry.
2. Fast threats, approaching from outside sensing network range. Enemy ranged fire.
3. Resilient threats: hard to kill at standoff despite detection -> used to be the classical tank, What would this look like today?.

As I see it, the really stealthy threat is volume constrained and it is possible to defend via armor. Fast threats have no hard constraint but is expensive, the question is whether to go expensive and defeat them, or cheap and take attrition.

If we go by mine warfare logic, there is no detecting the threat first, only taking hits and carrying on. Perhaps trying getting the first shot against stealthy platforms is wrong. Perhaps the equation of trying to defeat missile trying to hit slow land vehicle by using projectiles capable of hitting another missile (aka hard target) is a losing proposition.

Perhaps:
1. Really cheap but armored UGVs, demand either hit to kill and/or sizeable warhead (armor can be cheap)
2, with rather poor ranged sensors (sensor arms race gets expensive) as the enemy spots you first always, just have enough (or off board support) to pick up the firing signature to shoot back. Must be able to detect stealthy threats at very short range though, if the opponent tries to hide and fight follow on forces.
3, and not very good firepower (low organic ammo/weapons performance to cut cost/internal volume/weight, provision for but generally not with, higher performance missiles). Off board things can shoot instead.
4. not sure how much mobility do I want this, maybe look at costs first
5. while operating on autonomy, poor behavior reliability means investing much into the platform is a waste anyways.

It is practically a decoy but real enough to force a real response, ranged interdiction fires have lowest effect relative effect compared to different vehicle designs.
 
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A step towards the future:


 
would be hilarius to put an m109 howitzer in the place of the hypervelocity cannon. would reduce performance.
 
What effect has the fitting of the MTU diesel had on the performance of the M1A3?
 
What effect has the fitting of the MTU diesel had on the performance of the M1A3?
Has this actually been built and trialed? Apart from the one off demonstrator shown at AUSA years ago (see below), I'm not aware of any other.

EY7m6QwXYAAN7pF
 
Apologies, I read an article on Global Security which I took to mean the M1A3 had started to enter service, teach me to read more slowly.
 
Apologies, I read an article on Global Security which I took to mean the M1A3 had started to enter service, teach me to read more slowly.
GS isn't what it once was, some of the articles aren't worth your time these days.
 
What effect has the fitting of the MTU diesel had on the performance of the M1A3?
Has this actually been built and trialed? Apart from the one off demonstrator shown at AUSA years ago (see below), I'm not aware of any other.

EY7m6QwXYAAN7pF
According to this a variant using a 1500hp MTU was tested in 2000. And in the '80s the M1 CATTB was fitted with a 1450hp Cummins XAV-28 V-12 diesel, but that thing was hella weird and used the same oil for cooling and lubrication.
 
.

Have there been any feedback (official, or "unofficial") on the experiences of the Russians with their experimental/pre-production T-14 Armata tanks ?

Is the three man crew with unmanned turret regarded as a practicable, workable solution ?

.
 
When the M1 was developed, the US Army was focussed on the defence of West Germany from masses of Soviet tanks so weight was not a great issue.
Since 1991 the M1 has been mainly used in the peace enforcement role from Bosnia to Iraq/Afghanistan. Apart from Iraqi T72s it has not had to kill enemy tanks and certainly none of the post-Soviet Russian or Chinese designs.
Back in the day when the latest Sov tank drove NATO tank design it was a whole lot easier, but we still got lemons like the M60A2.
 
Some thoughts:

Disaggregate sensor and shooter? Had that with WWI artillery, the fundamental limitation remains (response time, reliability, etc). Direct fire weapons can get firing data via narrow view organic sensors fairly cheaply and simply compared to datalinks. What all this adds up is artillery is improving, which is no news. Disaggregation also is not directly related to crews, especially in an AI enabled environment.

----------------
Some people want say magical new tech and tactics will mark a return to old tank concepts, but that just isn't so: the change from passive defense to alternative methods is one matching the change from 8" gun armed cruisers to missile armed ones.

A combat vehicle is optimized for its operating environment, and the modern environment involves a huge volume of low cost, long range, easy to employ, "low tech" munitions from loitering munitions to various missiles. Defeating such weapons is of greater value than defeating rare weapons like tank sabots.

An arms race between attack and defense will naturally happen, and unless the defense cost curve invalidates the attack concept completely or is completely useless, increasing cost and payload fraction can improve performance. A tank with $1mil 500kg APS would lead to missile countermeasures/tactics which defeats such defenses, and "next gen" systems of $2mil system 1ton APS system gets developed and so and so on. Given that $30mil Air defense vehicles commonly failed to defeat attacking munitions, and $3bil 10,000ton AD ships are still vulnerable to missiles, the upper limit to offense/defense evolution is far beyond $10mil 70ton platform.

It is however wrong to assert that because defense can not cost effectively defeat offense that it is not valuable: many missions can not be achieved by offensive firepower alone. Submarines and naval bombers can't escort a merchantman, while artillery and standoff munitions can't protect trucks. Note that with new offensive platforms, the defensive mission is now the focus.

Intercepting very high speed, numerous, low signature, targets like munitions require high performance sensors, weapons and fire control. It is easy to extend this capability via multi-functionality for a 80% solution than purchase specialized systems that nonetheless need escorts to be functional. The vulnerability of sensors means armor defeat is not necessary for effectiveness, and faster sensing and opponent sensor kill is sufficient for superiority. Improving masts and micro-air vehicles means detection ranges increase, and the side that can keep their own sensors alive (C-RAM protection) while defeating enemy sensors (anti-aerial observation firepower, long Range strike) have a huge advantage.

I think strapping anti-tank weapons to C-RAM capable (soft and hard kill) vehicles is what'd define the front edge of heavy maneuver formations. Moving up from a 0.5ton APS system to a 30+ton AD system greatly improves capability to defeat munitions and sensors a lot, especially on a formation level when it enables mutual support. Moving up from an heavy ATGM tubes of a 1ton, plus ~10 tons of fragmentation protection armor to 40tons of armor and 10tons of HV gun do not provide all that much over match in the vehicle fight. For other mobile land targets, a MBT gun is overkill while AD capable autocannon have faster engagement times and cycles, greater ammo efficiency. With DEW laser AD vehicle, the ammo efficiency is absurd in the sensor kill sense, and wide area blinding would enable huge advantage against EOIR limited opponents.

There are niches that tanks fit best even in this environment, but it isn't general maneuver:
First is against opponents without huge volumes of missile and long range fire (lowering defensive fire needs) while behind in direct fire contest. Those are non-peers.

Second is urban warfare. Interception and anti-sensor defense don't work in point blank fights. The opponent weapon is also volume, weight and time constrained (man portable systems in constrained space under suppressive fire), as opposed to cost constrained for mech on mech fights, so enough armor is actually possible. Men and robots in buildings are also the case of mobile, stealthy, very resilient and yet cheap and numerous targets: a tank gun have the economy and performance to do the job. Artillery is limited by geometry, response time, and the difficulty in observing opponents moving in this environment, while smaller weapons often just lack power.
 
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VPX is a cool bus.

Since we're reaching Peak Transistor the performance of chipsets and buses will probably plateau for a while before it needs to be replaced, hopefully, but I guess that really means SWaP will only be able to be afforded by engine and transmission upgrades I guess. Not that that's a bad thing, though.
 
Generally we need more updated electronic gear. Where is the problem installing the most up to date kit?
 
Generally we need more updated electronic gear. Where is the problem installing the most up to date kit?
When Congress stops being an idiot and stops going back to the Tillman/Pre-Cold War era of military budget mentality.
I foresee yet more disaster in the making...
Not really. The M1 design is surprisingly future-proof. Especially since we're getting some genuine Battletech materials (EndoSteel was pretty much revealed to the world back in 2016) involved.
VPX is a cool bus.

Since we're reaching Peak Transistor the performance of chipsets and buses will probably plateau for a while before it needs to be replaced, hopefully, but I guess that really means SWaP will only be able to be afforded by engine and transmission upgrades I guess. Not that that's a bad thing, though.
You forget that Congress went back to its old 'starve the military' mentality after the Cold War ended.
 
The Army, maybe, but neither the Air Force nor the Navy are particularly strapped for cash. But that's mostly because the Army is a bit stupid. So maybe they'll learn to spend money on simple things that actually matter instead of stupid stuff, which isn't bad. We're already seeing some fruit of this with XM1299 ERCA. How much further can the Army go when it's forced to think with its head instead of wallet?

Since there's very few gobsmackingly stupid boondoggles going on right now, Strategic Long Range Cannon being the elephant in the room, and quite a few genuinely good and capable upgrades, like this VPX based bus, and the new high density powerpack for Bradley, and Precision Strike Missile. IFCS is also coming in, with the Israeli Iron Dome, which is proven and capable for the job its been picked for. All of that probably wouldn't exist if the Army had enough money to think about doing something beyond basic maintenance of its existing vehicle fleets and improving current weapon systems.

The early 1990's, like the early 1970's period of fiscal famine, was something of a renaissance for the US Army weapons development. It seems like any time they're given money, they end up wasting it on something that is either impossibly ambitious and way too far forward thinking (Pentomic Divisions) or just sorta dumb (FCS). Perhaps the '20's can be the same.
 
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The Army, maybe, but neither the Air Force nor the Navy are particularly strapped for cash. But that's mostly because the Army is a bit stupid. So maybe they'll learn to spend money on simple things that actually matter instead of stupid stuff, which isn't bad. We're already seeing some fruit of this with XM1299 ERCA. How much further can the Army go when it's forced to think with its head instead of wallet?

Since there's very few gobsmackingly stupid boondoggles going on right now, Strategic Long Range Cannon being the elephant in the room, and quite a few genuinely good and capable upgrades, like this VPX based bus, and the new high density powerpack for Bradley, and Precision Strike Missile. IFCS is also coming in, with the Israeli Iron Dome, which is proven and capable for the job its been picked for. All of that probably wouldn't exist if the Army had enough money to think about doing something beyond basic maintenance of its existing vehicle fleets and improving current weapon systems.

The early 1990's, like the early 1970's period of fiscal famine, was something of a renaissance for the US Army weapons development. It seems like any time they're given money, they end up wasting it on something that is either impossibly ambitious and way too far forward thinking (Pentomic Divisions) or just sorta dumb (FCS). Perhaps the '20's can be the same.
Not really, I'm afraid. People think this but forget that things have changed a lot in the intervening years. Due to technological context that has been evolving as of late combined with the fact that Congress returning to its 'starve the US military' ways (the Cold War was an anomaly in that regard) despite the fact that the US military needs a far larger budget in general across all branches to just keep with commitments... let alone any new ones.

Yeah, it's being starved.

It should be also noted that what we see as stupid now might give us insight later. Right now what is needed on the battlefield is in flux thanks to the technological context that has been evolving as of late, the only things we actually know is related to the fact that body armor capable of telling intermediate rounds where to stuff it is an actual thing, hence why the 6.8mm round is being chosen for the next assault rifle.
 
the only things we actually know is related to the fact that body armor capable of telling intermediate rounds where to stuff it is an actual thing, hence why the 6.8mm round is being chosen for the next assault rifle.

If that's the only thing they know with a $100+ billion DoD research budget I'm not sure the US is getting its money's worth.
 
The Army, maybe, but neither the Air Force nor the Navy are particularly strapped for cash. But that's mostly because the Army is a bit stupid. So maybe they'll learn to spend money on simple things that actually matter instead of stupid stuff, which isn't bad. We're already seeing some fruit of this with XM1299 ERCA. How much further can the Army go when it's forced to think with its head instead of wallet?

Since there's very few gobsmackingly stupid boondoggles going on right now, Strategic Long Range Cannon being the elephant in the room, and quite a few genuinely good and capable upgrades, like this VPX based bus, and the new high density powerpack for Bradley, and Precision Strike Missile. IFCS is also coming in, with the Israeli Iron Dome, which is proven and capable for the job its been picked for. All of that probably wouldn't exist if the Army had enough money to think about doing something beyond basic maintenance of its existing vehicle fleets and improving current weapon systems.

The early 1990's, like the early 1970's period of fiscal famine, was something of a renaissance for the US Army weapons development. It seems like any time they're given money, they end up wasting it on something that is either impossibly ambitious and way too far forward thinking (Pentomic Divisions) or just sorta dumb (FCS). Perhaps the '20's can be the same.
Not really, I'm afraid. People think this but forget that things have changed a lot in the intervening years. Due to technological context that has been evolving as of late combined with the fact that Congress returning to its 'starve the US military' ways (the Cold War was an anomaly in that regard) despite the fact that the US military needs a far larger budget in general across all branches to just keep with commitments... let alone any new ones.

Yeah, it's being starved.

It should be also noted that what we see as stupid now might give us insight later. Right now what is needed on the battlefield is in flux thanks to the technological context that has been evolving as of late, the only things we actually know is related to the fact that body armor capable of telling intermediate rounds where to stuff it is an actual thing, hence why the 6.8mm round is being chosen for the next assault rifle.

The US Army was starved plenty during the Cold War. It got its budget axed after WW2, after Korea, and after Vietnam, and it compensated by ditching useless hangers-on and focusing on realistic threat assessments. Big budgets encourage slothfulness and badthink, while tight budgets encourage creativity, frugality, and economy. You don't need a billion dollar budget to buy a gun. Well, maybe the US Army does, but that just means the US Army needs a lot of people fired and downsized like it was after WW1. It'll cut out the chaff.

Sadly that isn't in the tea leaves, unless the US Army decides to ditch every Stryker brigade wholesale or something.

If buying a new electronics bus package for the M1 and M2 to replace their current buses is "starving", then as I said, good. It's focusing on important things.

When the US Army gets money, it spends it on stupid things. FCS produced a octet of $2 billion howitzers with range and performance comparable to the WW2 era's M114. Comanche produced a pair $6 billion scout helicopters without weapons and the only things that got saved, the engines and the FLIRs, were found to be much better off in the British Super Lynx and the AH-64, respectively. FARA is shaping up to be similar in its boondoggleness, so hopefully that gets the axe sooner than later.

If "starving" the US Army beyond a very modest procurement budget that can afford piecewise upgrades to existing equipment is the only way to get it do make sensible decisions in how to buy things, then starving is what should happen, period. If it literally cannot be trusted with large amounts of money, precisely because it cannot pin down what is a good thing to buy, then it shouldn't be given anything more than basic maintenance and a bit less, so it's forced to ask itself if it really needs the things it has, or if it can make do with minor upgrades. Then it can ask Congress for a bigger allowance next time and present its case.

If it has no choices to make then it will never be able to prioritize anything important. It will prioritize something nebulously defined but only because it's fairly futuristic, and either do it so efficiently it makes everyone mad (Pentomic) or so parochially it loses all meaning (FCS). Making a 2050's armored brigade with 1950's technology threw the entire parochial establishment into a tizzy because it (rightfully) pointed out that mechanized combat of the future wars could be decided between spigot mortars with atom bombs and a few riflemen. Spoiler alert: the atom bombs won.

I guess to avoid that whole kerfluffle they made FCS the opposite and had two dozen pieces of equipment when you really needed "fast flat firing gun", "indirect gun", "man carrier", a small truck that carries a pallet or something in its cargo bed, and a big truck that carries containers on its back. That wasn't exactly smart though, because what's the point of a howitzer if it can't out shoot the mortar? Oh because the infantry have M120, and they don't want to be left out of the Cisco-brand future.

There's nothing "insightful" about going to battle with a militarized version of Windows 95 running on a Pentium III in your vest, a CRT strapped to your gun, and a VCR on your back, which is what Land Warrior essentially was by the standards of what something like IVAS is. FCS is useful as a benchmark or thought experiment to gauge what is actually useless in terms of parochial branches and what actually has some merit in a future where loitering drones and 5 kg PGMs are vaporizing individual anti-tank missile crewmen, tanks, and howitzers.

We already know what future wars with mega drones will look like, at least, so there's rather little question there. Writ large it's most a questionable of scalability of current protection methods and dispersion once again seems to be the order of the day.

All of that sort of means that the US Army should be focused on defending what works, which is M1 tanks and M2 Bradleys, and looking at examples of smaller mechanized nations like Israel which have to defend against drones and attacks on large areas. It should also be trying, in a very limited manner, to examine what might work. If HPMs can be produced in reasonable quantity to work well with Iron Dome, then sure, but it shouldn't be funneling money to give every tank an HPM generator and also make them fit underneath FVL flying cranes. That's a bit stupid.

tl;dr Congress is entirely correct to "starve" the Army at this point. Caution is the order of the day, as the US Army historically is not very "fiscally responsible" during times of rapid change (atomic bombs, post-Vietnam, the '90's). Better to sit back and watch what other people, like Turkey, are doing before taking a chance. Let those guys spend all the money and copy what works.
 
the only things we actually know is related to the fact that body armor capable of telling intermediate rounds where to stuff it is an actual thing, hence why the 6.8mm round is being chosen for the next assault rifle.

If that's the only thing they know with a $100+ billion DoD research budget I'm not sure the US is getting its money's worth.
Wow, this is a level of... not understanding that I'm having trouble fathoming the sort of mentality of that would lead to this.
The Army, maybe, but neither the Air Force nor the Navy are particularly strapped for cash. But that's mostly because the Army is a bit stupid. So maybe they'll learn to spend money on simple things that actually matter instead of stupid stuff, which isn't bad. We're already seeing some fruit of this with XM1299 ERCA. How much further can the Army go when it's forced to think with its head instead of wallet?

Since there's very few gobsmackingly stupid boondoggles going on right now, Strategic Long Range Cannon being the elephant in the room, and quite a few genuinely good and capable upgrades, like this VPX based bus, and the new high density powerpack for Bradley, and Precision Strike Missile. IFCS is also coming in, with the Israeli Iron Dome, which is proven and capable for the job its been picked for. All of that probably wouldn't exist if the Army had enough money to think about doing something beyond basic maintenance of its existing vehicle fleets and improving current weapon systems.

The early 1990's, like the early 1970's period of fiscal famine, was something of a renaissance for the US Army weapons development. It seems like any time they're given money, they end up wasting it on something that is either impossibly ambitious and way too far forward thinking (Pentomic Divisions) or just sorta dumb (FCS). Perhaps the '20's can be the same.
Not really, I'm afraid. People think this but forget that things have changed a lot in the intervening years. Due to technological context that has been evolving as of late combined with the fact that Congress returning to its 'starve the US military' ways (the Cold War was an anomaly in that regard) despite the fact that the US military needs a far larger budget in general across all branches to just keep with commitments... let alone any new ones.

Yeah, it's being starved.

It should be also noted that what we see as stupid now might give us insight later. Right now what is needed on the battlefield is in flux thanks to the technological context that has been evolving as of late, the only things we actually know is related to the fact that body armor capable of telling intermediate rounds where to stuff it is an actual thing, hence why the 6.8mm round is being chosen for the next assault rifle.

The US Army was starved plenty during the Cold War. It got its budget axed after WW2, after Korea, and after Vietnam, and it compensated by ditching useless hangers-on and focusing on realistic threat assessments. Big budgets encourage slothfulness and badthink, while tight budgets encourage creativity, frugality, and economy. You don't need a billion dollar budget to buy a gun. Well, maybe the US Army does, but that just means the US Army needs a lot of people fired and downsized like it was after WW1. It'll cut out the chaff.

Sadly that isn't in the tea leaves, unless the US Army decides to ditch every Stryker brigade wholesale or something.

If buying a new electronics bus package for the M1 and M2 to replace their current buses is "starving", then as I said, good. It's focusing on important things.

When the US Army gets money, it spends it on stupid things. FCS produced a octet of $2 billion howitzers with range and performance comparable to the WW2 era's M114. Comanche produced a pair $6 billion scout helicopters without weapons and the only things that got saved, the engines and the FLIRs, were found to be much better off in the British Super Lynx and the AH-64, respectively. FARA is shaping up to be similar in its boondoggleness, so hopefully that gets the axe sooner than later.

If "starving" the US Army beyond a very modest procurement budget that can afford piecewise upgrades to existing equipment is the only way to get it do make sensible decisions in how to buy things, then starving is what should happen, period. If it literally cannot be trusted with large amounts of money, precisely because it cannot pin down what is a good thing to buy, then it shouldn't be given anything more than basic maintenance and a bit less, so it's forced to ask itself if it really needs the things it has, or if it can make do with minor upgrades. Then it can ask Congress for a bigger allowance next time and present its case.

If it has no choices to make then it will never be able to prioritize anything important. It will prioritize something nebulously defined but only because it's fairly futuristic, and either do it so efficiently it makes everyone mad (Pentomic) or so parochially it loses all meaning (FCS). Making a 2050's armored brigade with 1950's technology threw the entire parochial establishment into a tizzy because it (rightfully) pointed out that mechanized combat of the future wars could be decided between spigot mortars with atom bombs and a few riflemen. Spoiler alert: the atom bombs won.

I guess to avoid that whole kerfluffle they made FCS the opposite and had two dozen pieces of equipment when you really needed "fast flat firing gun", "indirect gun", "man carrier", a small truck that carries a pallet or something in its cargo bed, and a big truck that carries containers on its back. That wasn't exactly smart though, because what's the point of a howitzer if it can't out shoot the mortar? Oh because the infantry have M120, and they don't want to be left out of the Cisco-brand future.

There's nothing "insightful" about going to battle with a militarized version of Windows 95 running on a Pentium III in your vest, a CRT strapped to your gun, and a VCR on your back, which is what Land Warrior essentially was by the standards of what something like IVAS is. FCS is useful as a benchmark or thought experiment to gauge what is actually useless in terms of parochial branches and what actually has some merit in a future where loitering drones and 5 kg PGMs are vaporizing individual anti-tank missile crewmen, tanks, and howitzers.

We already know what future wars with mega drones will look like, at least, so there's rather little question there. Writ large it's most a questionable of scalability of current protection methods and dispersion once again seems to be the order of the day.

All of that sort of means that the US Army should be focused on defending what works, which is M1 tanks and M2 Bradleys, and looking at examples of smaller mechanized nations like Israel which have to defend against drones and attacks on large areas. It should also be trying, in a very limited manner, to examine what might work. If HPMs can be produced in reasonable quantity to work well with Iron Dome, then sure, but it shouldn't be funneling money to give every tank an HPM generator and also make them fit underneath FVL flying cranes. That's a bit stupid.

tl;dr Congress is entirely correct to "starve" the Army at this point. Caution is the order of the day, as the US Army historically is not very "fiscally responsible" during times of rapid change (atomic bombs, post-Vietnam, the '90's). Better to sit back and watch what other people, like Turkey, are doing before taking a chance. Let those guys spend all the money and copy what works.
Here's the thing, the technological context doesn't support 'modest' procurement budgets... but then again you remind me of some of the dunderheads that I butted heads with in other forums.
 
On the contrary, rapid technological change doesn't support massive investment in R&D, especially since returns on R&D investment have been shrinking for decades. Whatever you make today will be obsolete tomorrow. What's the point? Wait until things simmer down, progress goes from once a week or once a month to once a decade, and then decide after looking at what other people did.

The only reason you'd support massive investment is if you are ignorant of history, and think that rates of change continue to infinity (the Kurzeilian/Karl Marx interpretation; although Marx had better footing in his assumptions since he was writing from the mid-1800s), or you have some sort of personal bias in the matter (you actually work Lockheed and might be impacted by a Gremlin swarm manufacturing decision). Given the population of this forum the former is more likely, though. Most people here aren't missile factory managers.

In 5-10 years, whatever technological progress made with drones will have settled down again and the US Army can take a long, hard look at them and maybe have some sort of loitering swarming munition in service in the 2030's. An armed RQ-7-alike with small-ish (50-90mm) laser guided bombs seems to be quite a viable investment alongside bigger MQ-9s for the Army. No real vast development needed there, just a bunch of small scale, bite-sized experiments and letting other people copy your ideas and do it better, so you can do the same to them.

That's sort of the point of FCS and the personal computer made 20 years ago. France and Israel seem to be moving forward with FCS-type equipment without much issue in terms of hardware or equipment. Whether it will actually work in terms of radio bandwidth or the sort of machine learning/recognition algorithms is another question that FCS never got to ask because it had to spend $20 billion-with-a-b on 1990's server-in-a-backpack that got turned into a cellphone. Now it's worth asking whether or not DOD could have just waited 10-15 years and used an Android distro to do everything FCS was supposed to do for GI Joe.

Congress is smart enough to not repeat that, despite the US Army probably wishing they didn't, but that's because the US Army is packed with future CEOs of Lockheed.
 
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If the Us Army does not have SLRC and M1 replacement able to engage tanks at around 10km then the US Army could be looking at its first HIConflict defeat.
 
the only things we actually know is related to the fact that body armor capable of telling intermediate rounds where to stuff it is an actual thing, hence why the 6.8mm round is being chosen for the next assault rifle.

If that's the only thing they know with a $100+ billion DoD research budget I'm not sure the US is getting its money's worth.
Wow, this is a level of... not understanding that I'm having trouble fathoming the sort of mentality of that would lead to this.

The "mentality" was a joke about a relatively successful response to the "technological context that has been evolving as of late" being a mild evolutionary improvement.

(Of course the US has been trying to replace the M16 since before it was even adopted with a variety of programs that failed even at the height of Cold War spending because they were nutty and ill-conceived. Maybe they've found the right balance today with cartridges ballistically identical to those in similar experimental stages before WW1 but slightly lighter.)

"Starving" implies a budget reduction, not minor increases. But it's possible to be morbidly obese and malnourished, just like it's possible to spend 50% more than the Cold War average and have no idea what to do with it.

If the Us Army does not have SLRC and M1 replacement able to engage tanks at around 10km then the US Army could be looking at its first HIConflict defeat.

This is a good example of how these dumb programs are harmful.
 
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On the contrary, rapid technological change doesn't support massive investment in R&D, especially since returns on R&D investment have been shrinking for decades. Whatever you make today will be obsolete tomorrow. What's the point? Wait until things simmer down, progress goes from once a week or once a month to once a decade, and then decide after looking at what other people did.

The only reason you'd support massive investment is if you are ignorant of history, and think that rates of change continue to infinity (the Kurzeilian/Karl Marx interpretation; although Marx had better footing in his assumptions since he was writing from the mid-1800s), or you have some sort of personal bias in the matter (you actually work Lockheed and might be impacted by a Gremlin swarm manufacturing decision). Given the population of this forum the former is more likely, though. Most people here aren't missile factory managers.

In 5-10 years, whatever technological progress made with drones will have settled down again and the US Army can take a long, hard look at them and maybe have some sort of loitering swarming munition in service in the 2030's. An armed RQ-7-alike with small-ish (50-90mm) laser guided bombs seems to be quite a viable investment alongside bigger MQ-9s for the Army. No real vast development needed there, just a bunch of small scale, bite-sized experiments and letting other people copy your ideas and do it better, so you can do the same to them.

That's sort of the point of FCS and the personal computer made 20 years ago. France and Israel seem to be moving forward with FCS-type equipment without much issue in terms of hardware or equipment. Whether it will actually work in terms of radio bandwidth or the sort of machine learning/recognition algorithms is another question that FCS never got to ask because it had to spend $20 billion-with-a-b on 1990's server-in-a-backpack that got turned into a cellphone. Now it's worth asking whether or not DOD could have just waited 10-15 years and used an Android distro to do everything FCS was supposed to do for GI Joe.

Congress is smart enough to not repeat that, despite the US Army probably wishing they didn't, but that's because the US Army is packed with future CEOs of Lockheed.
And what happens when the enemy doesn't give you the luxury of catching up the advancements they've made in fielding new systems and tactics that take advantage of them? Even incremental steps are better than none.
 
On the contrary, rapid technological change doesn't support massive investment in R&D, especially since returns on R&D investment have been shrinking for decades. Whatever you make today will be obsolete tomorrow. What's the point? Wait until things simmer down, progress goes from once a week or once a month to once a decade, and then decide after looking at what other people did.

The only reason you'd support massive investment is if you are ignorant of history, and think that rates of change continue to infinity (the Kurzeilian/Karl Marx interpretation; although Marx had better footing in his assumptions since he was writing from the mid-1800s), or you have some sort of personal bias in the matter (you actually work Lockheed and might be impacted by a Gremlin swarm manufacturing decision). Given the population of this forum the former is more likely, though. Most people here aren't missile factory managers.

In 5-10 years, whatever technological progress made with drones will have settled down again and the US Army can take a long, hard look at them and maybe have some sort of loitering swarming munition in service in the 2030's. An armed RQ-7-alike with small-ish (50-90mm) laser guided bombs seems to be quite a viable investment alongside bigger MQ-9s for the Army. No real vast development needed there, just a bunch of small scale, bite-sized experiments and letting other people copy your ideas and do it better, so you can do the same to them.

That's sort of the point of FCS and the personal computer made 20 years ago. France and Israel seem to be moving forward with FCS-type equipment without much issue in terms of hardware or equipment. Whether it will actually work in terms of radio bandwidth or the sort of machine learning/recognition algorithms is another question that FCS never got to ask because it had to spend $20 billion-with-a-b on 1990's server-in-a-backpack that got turned into a cellphone. Now it's worth asking whether or not DOD could have just waited 10-15 years and used an Android distro to do everything FCS was supposed to do for GI Joe.

Congress is smart enough to not repeat that, despite the US Army probably wishing they didn't, but that's because the US Army is packed with future CEOs of Lockheed.
And what happens when the enemy doesn't give you the luxury of catching up the advancements they've made in fielding new systems and tactics that take advantage of them? Even incremental steps are better than none.
This, fracking this. A large part of the US Army's problems is that every time they do a project, either it fails and the next project uses everything that was learned to avoid the same pitfalls that happened in the previous attempt, works as intended (please note that only one project of the US Army -back when the Airforce was the Army Airforce- that worked as intended was the B-17), was so out there that the project failed and a slap-dash solution was applied (the Mauller SAM system and its slap-dash solution in the form of the M163), was actually going somewhere but due to a combination of problems/events got it canned (the AH-54 Chyeenee got killed by a combination of system issues -which were going to be applied in the next round of prototypes- and Congressional pressure while the Sgt. York program was going to fix quite a few problems with the weapon system when some journalists decided to make what was practically a hit piece against it... although the investigation into the program discovered that the barrels that the program used were worn to hell and back...), or canceled because Congress decided to be a jerk with the budget (the entire Mk14 torpedo charlie foxtrot would have been avoided if it wasn't for the fact that every torpedo was worth more than its weight in gold and thus none of them were actually tested...).
 

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