The Iron Triangle - tradeoffs in design

A_Kid1234

A_Kid1234

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The iron triangle is something used to classify tanks. But can the iron triangle be used to classify aircraft and boats aswell?
 
A_Kid1234 said:
The iron triangle is something used to classify tanks. But can the iron triangle be used to classify aircraft and boats aswell?
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Firepower, Protection, Speed, right? And in terms of mass used for each part?

Sure, I've even seen it used for spaceships. https://eldraeverse.com/2014/08/29/ships-of-the-fleet/
shipgrid05.jpg


I prefer adding another dimension, but it's easier to visualize on paper with just those 3.

Let's see here... The F-117 is low on firepower, only carrying 4000lbs of boom or so. It's also low on speed, being firmly subsonic and the Flight Computer loses its mind when the bird goes supersonic. But it's very heavy on protection. So it'd sit over in the bottom left corner about where the V is on that image. The B-2 carries an immense amount of boom, but is similarly low on speed and high on defenses, so it's going to be about where the M is. B-21 would be in about the same place.

The F-22, on the other hand, has lots of power, not a lot of weapons by weight, and lots of defenses. It probably sits about where the C does. An F-15 has more weapons and less defenses, so I'd put about on the D,F area.

etc
 
Thanks for the insight, I also notice your watching a lot of my threads
 
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A_Kid1234 said:
The iron triangle is something used to classify tanks. But can the iron triangle be used to classify aircraft and boats aswell?
Click to expand...
As far as I know it started with ships, especially with reference to battleships. Ship engines and propulsion systems are heavy, armor is heavy, guns and ammunition are heavy. For a given displacement this means choices have to be made.
 
apparition13 said:
As far as I know it started with ships, especially with reference to battleships. Ship engines and propulsion systems are heavy, armor is heavy, guns and ammunition are heavy. For a given displacement this means choices have to be made.
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That’s interesting
 
Scott Kenny said:
That was a naval measure for scifi, so that's where the Cruisers lurk.

Ground side, we'd probably call that the MBT. roughly balanced gun, protection, and mobility.
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Aren’t MBTs just medium tanks on steroids?
 
A_Kid1234 said:
Aren’t MBTs just medium tanks on steroids?
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IIRC, the term came from the British, who had "Infantry Tanks" (slow, heavily armored, tended to have a small gun) and "Cruiser Tanks" (fast and lightly armored). The MBT was supposed to have the armor of an Infantry Tank but the speed of a Cruiser.
 
Scott Kenny said:
IIRC, the term came from the British, who had "Infantry Tanks" (slow, heavily armored, tended to have a small gun) and "Cruiser Tanks" (fast and lightly armored). The MBT was supposed to have the armor of an Infantry Tank but the speed of a Cruiser.
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The British had some really weird tank classifications
 
A_Kid1234 said:
The British had some really weird tank classifications
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Early on, the question was whether to keep the tanks slow enough that the infantry could keep up on the walk, or whether to make the infantry faster via armored transport. The British actually built both ideas. The Infantry tanks, especially the Churchill, were geared low enough that they could go just about anywhere a man on foot could.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Early on, the question was whether to keep the tanks slow enough that the infantry could keep up on the walk, or whether to make the infantry faster via armored transport. The British actually built both ideas. The Infantry tanks, especially the Churchill, were geared low enough that they could go just about anywhere a man on foot could.
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I understand what the British were trying to do but I find it interesting that their iron triangle for certain classes looks different, I also find it funny that we’re talking about this at 2am.
 
A_Kid1234 said:
I understand what the British were trying to do but I find it interesting that their iron triangle for certain classes looks different, I also find it funny that we’re talking about this at 2am.
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You might be, but I live in New Zealand so its 8pm here.
 
A_Kid1234 said:
I understand what the British were trying to do but I find it interesting that their iron triangle for certain classes looks different, I also find it funny that we’re talking about this at 2am.
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Why on earth are YOU discussing anything at 2am?
 
martinbayer said:
Hey, it's a global forum, and some of us are night owls :).
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Fair point, circumstances have removed me from the night owl community - two years ago, working from home and logging in after 7am meant a connection to the office so slow I thought I could see the electrons moving on my screen. Better now, but my membership of the-society-of-night-owls has lapsed.
 
Scott Kenny said:
IIRC, the term came from the British, who had "Infantry Tanks" (slow, heavily armored, tended to have a small gun) and "Cruiser Tanks" (fast and lightly armored). The MBT was supposed to have the armor of an Infantry Tank but the speed of a Cruiser.
Click to expand...
A_Kid1234 said:
The British had some really weird tank classifications
Click to expand...
Scott Kenny said:
Early on, the question was whether to keep the tanks slow enough that the infantry could keep up on the walk, or whether to make the infantry faster via armored transport. The British actually built both ideas. The Infantry tanks, especially the Churchill, were geared low enough that they could go just about anywhere a man on foot could.
Click to expand...
A_Kid1234 said:
I understand what the British were trying to do but I find it interesting that their iron triangle for certain classes looks different, I also find it funny that we’re talking about this at 2am.
Click to expand...

The iron triangle is already quite simplistic on its own, but is even less applicable to most tanks of WW2. It's more of a post-hoc explanation by pop historians.

In reality, engineers often just selected their own bespoke components and layouts without trying to adjust parameters on a single shared platform. And different classes did not always have identical weight limits where trading only propulsion, protection and firepower at equivalent weight is valid.
Except in the US where designing was mostly concentrated in a single group with most outliers never entering service, different tank classes were the result of competing factions in military services, or were designed by very different companies, which resulted in few vehicles adhering to shared optimal design practices and components to adjust the iron triangle around.

For example, the Matilda II and Cruisers were the result of a disagreement between military factions as to whether heavy armor would be necessary and viable or whether speed only should be emphasized. The Matilda was designed prior to the Cruisers and shared ideas with the previous A7E3 medium tank, so had twin engines and a conservative coil spring bogie suspension while the Cruisers moved on straight to a more weight and volume efficient single high power engine, and a suspension which was more weight efficient and capable of higher speeds. The uparmoring studies done for the Crusader show that it could have gotten quite close to Matilda II at a lower or identical weight if needed, while still being more mobile. Indeed what 1940 showed was that you couldn't get away with light armor.

In the USSR, the KV and T-34 tanks were designed independently with the latter lacking the more efficient torsion bar suspension of the former, but having a more weight efficient arrangement of the front armor and rear plate.

It is only late in the war that designs start to converge in single platforms, such as how the A27 Cruiser tank and A33 Assault tank share a similar layout, armament and powertrain. Even then, heavily armored vehicles are just heavier instead of applying the iron triangle as we generally portray it. More often than not, the actual tradeoff is with the weight and ease of transportation.

Even then, as long as tanks didn't reach maximum logistical limits, there was still room to make the universal tanks that were needed. The appearance of the MBT has a lot to do with the fact that countries finally put a lot of effort in a single tank and gave them decent limits on weight and dimensions.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
Not sure I see the point of this.
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War-gamers and board-games (e.g. World of Tanks) like simplified algorithms that allow them to quickly compare “tank A” with “tank B.” Most of these gamers start as teenagers and have yet to acummulate the thousands of hours of historical study to understand the details of tank design.
Most of the modern (post-2010) books, videos, video games, etc about military history are driven/finance by video-gamers.
 
Triangles is useful for simplifying symmetric platform-centric warfare and it can totally work for other vehicles.

In networked warfare, such concepts are not useful. Even something simple like observer - artillery "combat strength and tradeoffs" completely evade the iron triangle.
 

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