M10 Booker Combat Vehicle / Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF)

[Kat Tsun]

Do you have a source for this?

Artillery Survivability In Modern Combat - The Dupuy Institute

[This piece was originally published on 17 July 2017.] Much attention is being given in the development of the U.S. joint concept of Multi-Domain Battle (MDB) to the implications of recent technological advances in long-range precision fires. It seems most of the focus is being placed on...

dupuyinstitute.org

Trevor Dupuy worked on a DA sponsored study ("HERO") looking into casualties of the 1973 war. It was discerned from after action reports, unit reports, and battle damage assessments that M109 was not terribly survivable. Loss rates were higher than M114 towed guns in earthen revetments. The solution Artillery School came to was that there needed to be a replacement of M109 with higher protection standards. This resulted in various aborted attempts to make a M109 PIP in the 1980s.

The end result of this was the protracted development of the XM2001, which focused on a protection level comparable to M2A1 combined with a higher rate of fire and longer range based on the suppression missions demanded by Desert Storm. NATO joined in and this all resulted ultimately in the Pzh 2000 being the most protected, and only "shoot and scoot" survivable, howitzer in the world.

Ukraine is merely confirming prior observations, which were of limited utility due to the brief duration and small parcels of materiel in Yom Kippur, because the highest number of howitzer losses are coming from M109s, 2S1s, and 2S3s. Peonys are surviving by virtue of being very long ranged, as are the modern European L/52s for the most part, but this is only because the average Russian howitzer threat is a relatively short-ranged D-30.

Pzh 2000 is so far the only howitzer to see battle action in the D-30 range of fire and not actually die in tremendous numbers, which are due to its high protection level (14.5mm all around) and good mobility. The M2 Bradley is the standard by which future howitzers must be judged and M109 is, at best, an overburdened M113.

This study, and its cousins, forms the basis of all modern American/DOD "high intensity war" casualty planning.

And assuming so, what is you thesis for why?

Because the average self-propelled howitzer in U.S. Army is little better protected than an open top truck. It might stop 7.62x51mm on a good day. M109A7 has an applique kit which covers most of the hull and turret, but its mobility leaves much to be desired, so while it may survive the shoot but it will not be able to scoot. Because its tracks will broken by splinter or its engine disabled by a ICM grenade.

Pzh 2000 has the best of both worlds: high mobility to escape counter fire and armor protection to avoid being disabled during the escape. If you lack one, either armor or mobility, you die. That said the proliferation of reconnaissance-fire complexes might make Pzh 2000 obsolete. It is an unnatural shape and easily detected at long range even with relatively primitive single digit megapixel CCDs.

Towed guns likely have innate survivability against counter-battery fire because they are simple, present an incredibly small silhouette of target due to lack of enclosed volume, and their crew can hide in a dugout. The worst that might happen is an Excalibur impacts inside the revetment and destroys the limbers or something, but towed guns can also be recovered and put back into action faster than self-propelled pieces, at least if WW2 is any indication.

They can also be easily dummied up with decoy positions, using fallen trees or telephone poles, and camouflage netting. Convincing mechanized decoys in all spectra (radar, infrared, and visual) are expensive and impossible to produce in-situ. This is extremely important in the era of the electronic eye and near 24/7 real time multispectral surveillance.

Active protection systems that can intercept missiles that are of more sturdy construction and far faster than kamikaze drones have existed for years

It only took 20 years to buy Trophy and Iron Fist. If you're willing to wait another 20, the U.S. will have the best tanks of 2025 ready to defend Hawaii from the PLA in 2045 I guess?

I can guarantee that won't happen, because that entire turret doesn't work. The metal supporting the ammunition stowage is not thick enough to avoid deflecting while loaded, so the shells are not where the autoloader is trying to grab them. And there's no space to install thicker metal or stiffening pieces, either.

No space in the Stryker, at least without modification, which is why GDLS was panned back in 2009 or whatever by DA sure. The floor plate can be thickened, the turret raised, and the problem solved because the AMPV is a different hull working from a clean sheet...

The US military itself says that towed artillery has no future.

This is the same U.S. Army that thought ERCA's 58-caliber tube firing copper bands was a good idea based solely on vibes and then someone at lunch remembered Crusader had a copper band issue. Forgive me for thinking such, but institutionally speaking, the U.S. Army is completely senile with regards to artillery.

Towed pieces are pretty good in actual combat. CAESAR is nice too, even if that's a side effect of being one of the longest range pieces in the world. It still takes about as much time to limber up and mobilize as an M777, but it can't be easily disassociated from its prime mover. Peony's don't take beatings either, and they're completely open as well, but woe be the Peony that breaks a track. The benefit of a towed piece is that in practice it isn't much less mobile than a CAESAR or similar gun-on-a-truck, it's much harder to disable and easier to recover than a permanently affixed cannon, and it can use any old wagon if its assigned prime mover gets destroyed by counter-battery fire.

The only downside is you need about twice as many people to crew it. That's why the U.S. Army thinks towed guns don't have a future: it's too poor to afford soldiers and wouldn't be able to meet the recruiting goals anyway. Present TTPs are insufficient to preclude casualties in artillery units, though, provided they're in counter-battery range. The literal only reason we don't see more burned out CAESARs or whatever is because they're as long ranged as a Giatsint or Peony.

Put them on the line with the M109A5s and you'll start seeing burning trucks next to the tracks.

 

[Colonial-Marine]

Which aren't in inventory, and won't be in inventory, since DA is moving forward with Trophy and Iron Fist. Check back in 25 years when they decide they need a new APS after losing 5,000 tanks and IFVs to FPV drones or Javelins or whatever. But hey, they'll be safe from Kornets and RPG-29s. At least until someone fires a third round, since most APS are only really good for about two shots before they're disabled, but I'm glad missiles are really hard to make...

...what do you mean the only defense firms consistently getting massive contracts over the past 10 years have been for ammunition?

I won't even try to defend the present state of our procurement system and the constant changes in direction which have resulted in such little progress. But the technology is feasible and it's what needs to be pursued. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than committing to fight like it's 1916 France but with the addition of drones. Of course, military leaders in the interwar period put a great deal of work into how to avoid fighting a future conflict like the war the Great War had been fought and incorporated all the technological improvements occurring. What you suggest seems to be more akin to abandoning any notion of maneuver warfare and doubling down on just digging more trenches and sending more cheap drones at the other guy in the hopes that maybe after 4 years of attrition you might win at the negotiation table. Basically, planning to fight the last war in the worst possible way.

Except it hasn't, and the U.S. Army just killed one of their most important air defense platforms for drone defense, obviously.

There are a lot of stupid decisions going on lately, I'm not going to defend ones that are clearly wrong.

A missile that barely exists in inventory isn't going to stop a $500 racing drone with a free ICM bomblet or PG-7VL for a nose. A 25mm PABM round for the Bradley would be nice, but that's too sensible. There's no more JLTVs, so say goodbye to 30mm PABM and M230LF, which would have provided SHORAD to mechanized troops if they had stayed in production.

And we should be working to correct these shortfalls, not doing away with our mechanized forces.

The Abrams hull line was shut down in 1995 and would require about 36 months to restart, assuming the hull production machinery is still in good condition, and the only bottleneck is ballistic welder training. This was discussed by BAE/United Defense back in 2018 as a way to scale orders in response to Crimea and the solution was to cancel DA orders and use those to fill Polish orders instead.

Anyway, by that time the war will be over, so it's a moot point.

So maybe we should do this sort of thing before the war starts? And even in a worst-case scenario are we not supposed to make the effort at all to build new MBTs, IFVs, etc.? "The war will be over by the time this stuff is ready" is just an excuse and is often proven wrong when wars take far longer than projected, like Ukraine.

Welcome to war, enjoy your stay.

Morale is important, and being told "Here are some trucks, go take that well defended position without heavy direct fire weaponry and armor protection beyond what can stop rifle caliber ammunition" will rightfully be seen as a suicide assignment versus an actual plan. Oh, sure they'll eventually have drone support and fire support, but that's not going to give much comfort to the light motorized unit being torn to shreds without much in the way to return direct fire. Of course, enemy drones and fire support will likely be showing up at the same time, and since we're not providing those poor unlucky bastards heavy firepower or decent armor, I doubt they're going to be provided with any effective anti-drone measures either. This is just using the poor bloody infantrymen as decoy targets for enemy positions to expose themselves when they open fire. Why don't we try using some UGVs as the decoys instead?

Hey, what has Ukraine been most commonly compared to?

Well, the Somme it isn't, besides there being trenches and misery the similarities end, but that's just war. It's more similar to the projected Pentomic battlefield but with hollow charge anti-armor missiles instead of nuclear bombs. If that's the narrative, then America should leave Asia while it still has that choice, because otherwise it's picking a fight it ostensibly doesn't want to win.

On that nuclear battlefield at least, you'd likely see some movement of devastated units versus going back and forth over a trench line.

What does it mean to leave Asia? Are we going to be fighting the ground war on the Chinese mainland? The prospective war with the PRC will be decided by the naval and air arms of the USA and PRC. Combat on land will likely be limited to small islands since I very much doubt Army of Marine units will land on Taiwan proper before it is taken and before the outcome of the war is determined.

The Russians were saying this as they drove their parade BMDs into Kyiv and Rosguard's riot police led the way.

One can write a very long list of all of the ways Russia's more-direct intervention and effort to take Kiev was poorly planned and poorly executed.

Thankfully the U.S. Army is quite big, and when the losses of armored forces mount, it will be able to revert rapidly to a sensible force of light motorized infantry backed by heavy armor reserves and small packets of task organized fire support vehicles of M1s or M2s. Ukraine is showing us that even this sort of mechanization isn't a panacea, but it works, unlike the 2014-2022 dynamic of "sending T-72/BMP battalions to their burning deaths with nothing to show for it".

There is nothing sensible about any of this.

I suspect we'll end up with a war in the latter half of 2027, maybe push it out to 2030 if there's another global recession, and all those factories we have now just won't be able to do anything due to the current administration's budget cuts. By the time they're fully staffed, and able to make weapons responsively again, we'll be signing the peace treaty. I'm sure GDLS and BAE know this, too.

Consigning ourselves to defeat like this would be stupid, maybe we shouldn't do that.

Right now the ball is in Chevy's court and they'll probably start ramping up ISV production for the IBCTs to transition. DOD has paid a ton of attention to how the Russians are fighting, and winning, in Ukraine. They're attacking in fireteam size units against mechanized infantry squad DFPs/trenches and being supported in their attacks by battalion level fire support groups. This is a shift from the last year's (or year before) assault detachments, but not a huge one.

If Russia wins this conflict (however that is determined), then it has been slow-motion victory at such a cost where desiring to replicate what's going on there is a fool's errand. There are far better ways to discover enemy positions than using infantrymen as bait. And all that to take some trench and move some slight distance in a massive country?

IBCTs replicating this type of "ultra light motorized" formation could see a lot of success in the reconnaissance-fires complex saturated battlefield, but we're probably getting to the point where individual soldiers "attacking" might be noticed at operational-tactical levels anyway, and destroyed by artillery. Eventually, we may see a reversion to marching to objectives several kilometers or miles away, but in multispectral battledress, and stopping every so often to avoid the electric gaze of ground search radar. That's a few decades out still, I think.

That's a very liberal definition of "success" especially when we could have far more suitable systems doing the reconnaissance.

Point is that mechanized armor like Bradleys and Abrams are too high profile and easily detected by even third rate armies like Russia. They're still necessary to have but not as an assault force, they're simply too vulnerable at the moment, and it isn't clear if there's any real path forward where they won't be. If there is, it's very far in the future, considering the M1s are just now getting anti-missile systems which existed in the 1990s.

That's why we need to modernize the armored/mechanized force, not discard it.

Anyway ask me after the 4th when Hegseth kills M1301, AMPV (for good this time), NGH, XM30, M230LF, FLRAA, and divests the GMVs.

Ask you what? I might ask what kind of drugs he must be on to call for many of the cuts he already has, but that's rather irrelevant.