The Future of the MBT

Bruno Anthony said:
Think of all the attachment free development! No need to seek funds from abroad and political entanglements.

We agree!
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There is no AFV R&D funding item in the current FMF program.
The only R&D item is a joint fund for air defense development, in which the US puts $500m annually.
Bruno Anthony said:
When should they be cut off?
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Who? From what?
Bruno Anthony said:
You waved the Iron Dome around. We don’t have those problems. You do.
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What problems do you not have?
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Big_Zukini said:
There is no AFV R&D funding item in the current FMF program.
The only R&D item is a joint fund for air defense development, in which the US puts $500m annually.

Who? From what?

What problems do you not have?
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When should the US cut off $3.8 bil in FMF to Israel? We agreed it wasn’t needed.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
When should the US cut off $3.8 bil in FMF to Israel? We agreed it wasn’t needed.
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$3.3 billion. The $500 million is a joint R&D program. It's not an FMF item.
So when should the US cut off $3.8 billion? IMO never. It doesn't provide $3.8 billion. So there is no such amount to cut.

When should the $3.3 billion be cut then? If we're talking about performative gestures, then now. That is assuming the performative is followed by a period of competence.

If we're talking about benefits to the US? Then the answer is no. There is no way to quantify the cost of removing the aid. But the general consensus is that monetarily it will be a net loss for the US.

There has been some debate in Israel actually about cutting off the aid, but it hasn't progressed anywhere yet.

Regarding your question, it will not affect the acquisition cost of AFVs.
 
Big_Zukini said:
$3.3 billion. The $500 million is a joint R&D program. It's not an FMF item.
So when should the US cut off $3.8 billion? IMO never. It doesn't provide $3.8 billion. So there is no such amount to cut.

When should the $3.3 billion be cut then? If we're talking about performative gestures, then now. That is assuming the performative is followed by a period of competence.

If we're talking about benefits to the US? Then the answer is no. There is no way to quantify the cost of removing the aid. But the general consensus is that monetarily it will be a net loss for the US.

There has been some debate in Israel actually about cutting off the aid, but it hasn't progressed anywhere yet.

Regarding your question, it will not affect the acquisition cost of AFVs.
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You proved Israel is:
Supporting US industry
Israel does not require support from the US
Those funds can be used elsewhere

We agree
 
Bruno Anthony said:
You proved Israel is:
Supporting US industry
Israel does not require support from the US
Those funds can be used elsewhere

We agree
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So in conclusion, what does this page of babbling have to do with the future development of MBTs?
 
Big_Zukini said:
So in conclusion, what does this page of babbling have to do with the future development of MBTs?
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Well first we agreed that Israel shouldn’t be tying down funds to support the US and now those extra funds can go to MBT development or anything else.

You did most of the babbling. I just walked you into the corner you were insisting on walking into.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
Well first we agreed that Israel shouldn’t be tying down funds to support the US and now those extra funds can go to MBT development or anything else.

You did most of the babbling. I just walked you into the corner you were insisting on walking into.
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FMF funds are earmarked for local manufacturing in the US, and cannot be used to fund R&D for projects in Israel.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
 
Dilandu said:
What tactics would US army use instead? Please don't start with "US army would not allow such situation to exist in first place"; we have no idea, would USAF be able to maintain airspace dominance against peer opponent. Use the situation you actually have; no airspace dominance, extreme level of electronic warfare, extremely large-scale standoff weapon use against even battlefied targets, frontline transparent for both sides.
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My personal thoughts on the campaign:
1. It is not clear that Russia is stronger. NATO on the whole is stronger, and can send additional resources upon Russian success to maintain a stalemate. It is also clear that NATO doesn't want Russia to win or lose too badly (aka regime change), as if Russia seriously loses everyone could eat nuclear weapons and there is a whole host of unpleasantness from instability even if that doesn't happen. If the upper limit of commitment from NATO is greater than Russian strength, the best thing to do is not to play.

2. If you don't have airspace dominance, are you actually stronger and thus worthy of being the aggressor? Sure one can have massive superiority in other assets, but they may not actually matter. It is like having a lot of spearman in a machinegun fight.

3. The Russian campaign is insane from a military perspective as it appears that the logical thing to do is simply not attack until ready, on multiple levels, from the initial campaign all the way to endless waves of meat/steel to grab land. It can only be understood as a information/propaganda/political theory of war (or just sheer dysfunction) as opposed to attempt to destroy opponent forces. No point in wastefully expanding 2 week trained troops on proven low effectiveness offense instead of thinking through a strategy and training and equipping the force to do it, the war is not going to be over that quickly.

4. If you do have extra resources, it can be converted into airspace dominance even without too much technology. Glide bombs is one successful case, and there is the low low hanging fruit where expenditure of drone production on political driven targets can be redirected to counter force. One predecessor of the Shahed was the harpy, and that was a SEAD drone.

Imagine the entire production run of Shaheds is converted to a intensive SEAD campaign.

Also, lots of low tech options can alter the balance of the air war. For example, a He-162 class aircraft directed by balloon AEW could be shooting down the slow drone spam of the Ukrainians, if existing airframes are not enough.

Dilandu said:
Seriously, we tried all this with such things as dozens one-ton guided bombs drooped on Ukrainean positions, as well as extensive use of artillery. And? Same results; you could wreck the trenches, but drones would still block the armor assault.
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Trenches are very low value targets that holds nothing (the rifleman have all but evac-d them) and does nothing. The proper targets is the drone (artillery) forces and its supporting elements of logistics, communications, production. There is a reason why Rubicon is considered the most threatening unit on the battlefield. Destroy the drone force and you can just walk up to the enemy.

The ability to run large size, high payload efficiency aircraft really need to be leveraged into winning this fight. Glide bomb is just one very simple use case. Imagine glide drones that are air launched at high attitude and, owning to minimum propulsion, cheaper than ground based (non-reusable) interceptors that needs to climb to catch them. You can spam and blanket the battle area and conduct interdiction.

Tankers complain that the battlefield is transparent because they use a slow vehicle with the worst stealth and weapons range, the worst choice for trying to surprise the enemy. If the fight is amongst drone forces, they are all hidden and if they weren't they can eat a glide bomb. There is a lot of ISR work still to be done.

It also appears that Russian don't have high performance aerial sensors, otherwise AEW can help in drone fights, just tracking launch positions enable counter fire. There is other stuff like ESM to detect anti-drone radars and so on.

Even with the hardware blocked due to sanctions and stuff, there is still a millions things that can be done about drone battle networks and AI. AI can also be done without expensive hardware if one spend the human resources optimizing. There is just so much to be done to reduce bandwidth requirements, increase maximum force density, increase force efficiency and so on. There is also the entire category of interceptor drones which really ought to evolve into a new air war that can be won by the more wealthy side.

Even the infantry is a resource that is not utilized. Instead of attempt to rifle people at short range, everyone can act as FARP to extended drone range, sortie rate and coverage into the enemy rear. The ground attack and infiltration strategy can be designed to maximize one's own sides micro-air power and diminish that of the opponent, and that may involve objectives like suitable locations for jammers, communication relays, electronic sensing, forward staging and likes, over "lines on map".

Of course, all this demands resources which Russia may not have to spare. Perhaps the war is just not affordable.
 
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