About That Deficit

by Bryan

22 comments

1 Badtux { 10.12.12 at 12:36 am }

In 1991, the U.S. had equipment for 28 Army divisions. Today there are only 11 Army divisions (temporarily surged to 12 for the War on Terra). There’s way more equipment than men to use it, so there’s no wonder that the Army wants no more tanks. In a way the U.S. Army is in the position of the Russian Army, which has so much ex-Soviet gear in its armories that the case for producing new weapons is hard to make. The difference is that the U.S. Army actually upgrades its equipment, while the Soviets never bothered with designing equipment to be easily upgraded because they figured it’d just be obsolete within five to ten years anyhow and replaced with an all-new generation of military gear. (Even their “Bear” bombers aren’t the 1950’s generation gear upgraded like our B-52’s are, they’re 1980’s production built during the final years of the Soviet Union). The M1’s currently in service have all been upgraded to M1A2 status, with the latest warfighting gear, and are technologically still the best in the world.

The Lima plant isn’t actually producing tanks anymore, it’s actually just taking old M1’s from back inventory and upgrading them to M1A2 status, a few dozen a year. Well, the Army doesn’t need any more M1A2’s. They’re working on their next-generation of warfighting gear based on lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan about operation of tanks in anti-insurgency operations, which will be the M1A3 (turns out the notion of armored cars with small cannon as direct fire support for infantry troops didn’t work as well as they thought it would). But they haven’t finished the M1A3 work yet, it won’t be ready for production for another couple of years. In the meantime, if kept open the Lima plant is going to be producing M1A2 tanks that are already obsolete the moment they roll off the line, for no good purpose since there are no soldiers to man them… well, no purpose except for defense industry profits. Hrm.

– Badtux the War Penguin

2 Kryten42 { 10.12.12 at 1:29 am }

And so… What’s new? *shrug* I saw it during my time at GD and heard a lot about the strategies involved in getting projects funded and approved, and getting support from the Military was not high on the list. However, there was one project that I became aware of in the late 90’s (via my old friend who was MD of GD (Aus) at the time, that had the full support of the Army and Navy (almost unheard of) and Politicians on both sides. The XM2001 Crusader project was killed in 2002 by Rumsfeld, citing that the cost was too high (estimated around $25mill / Crusader). This was totally bogus on many levels, especially given that to appease the Military, Rummy increased the finding by $50billion (that would have more than paid for the Crusaders the Army wanted!)

Here’s a copy from a PDF I got in 2003 (Sorry, I don’t have a current link online to the doc).

USAWC STRATEGY RESEARCH PROJECT
The Cancellation of Crusader: A Study in the Dynamics of Decision-Making

by

Colonel James L. Davis
United States Army

Professor Len Fullenkamp
Project Advisor

…

THE GENESIS OF CRUSADER

More than any other event, the 1991 Gulf War demonstrated the need to modernize the cannon artillery assets. During Desert Storm, cannon artillery units were unable to support the campaign’s fast-paced offensive operations. The M109 155mm self-propelled howitzer, first developed in the 1950s was unable to keep up with the army’s armored elements and the howitzer’s cumbersome firing operations were too slow to allow them to provide effective fire support for fast moving operations. On the other hand, the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and the launcher’s missile derivative the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), acquitted themselves well and were particularly effective in attacking deep-targets such as Iraqi artillery, supply convoys, and command and control nodes.

In 1993, an improved version of the M109 howitzer called the Paladin (M109A6) was introduced in army units. This upgraded M109 fielding was seen by many as an interim solution for the cannon artillery problems that were highlighted during the Gulf War. The Paladin, has a maximum range of 30 kilometers, digitally receives computed firing data from a fire-direction center, automatically lays the tube for firing, and has a more powerful engine. The improved model, with its on-board location-navigation system, allows the Paladin to be dispersed to reduce artillery counterfire, while permitting the system to relocate rapidly after each firing to enhance survivability.

Unfortunately, Paladin’s ammunition handling operations remain labor intensive; its rate of fire slow due to manual ammunition loading, and breach swabbing requirements are outdated in this age of improved technology. Moreover, the vehicle’s speed is limited by its chassis design, and its data handling and communications relay capabilities are not as good as those of the MLRS. Due to the configuration of its chassis and turret, the M109 cannot be automated much further. On this basis, the army placed a high-priority on the development and procurement of Crusader, a technologically advanced, precision-fire howitzer system.

Originally, the Crusader was designed to be the world’s first “automatic” field artillery system. Its firing operation would have been the first totally robotic system with no humans occupying the weapon compartment, capable of firing 10-12 rounds per minute at ranges in excess of 40 kilometers. When deployment of the new Excaliber artillery projectile began in 2005, the Crusader’s firing range would have increased to over 50 kilometers. In essence, the Crusader would have been also capable of a high rate of fire, which would have enabled a single Crusader to perform a time-on-target fire mission of 4-8 rounds, a task that now requires several guns to perform.
…

OPPOSING VIEWS

The debate on the cancellation on a major piece of equipment was the first test of the new administration. As such, the opposing views were brought to the public forum in a heated debate that often bordered on insubordination and disrespect. The key issues associated with why the administration was against the continuation of fielding the Crusader centered around two things: first, statements made by the current administration about the future capabilities of the services’; and second, the administration’s belief that finite resources would drive their concern about not wasting money on unneeded or unwanted programs.

In statements made while on the campaign trail, then-Governor George W. Bush laid down the gauntlet for future policy by stating; “I expect the military’s priorities to match our strategic vision, not the particular visions of the services, but a joint vision for change. I will direct the Secretary of Defense to allocate these funds to new programs that do so. I intend to force new thinking and hard choices.
…

CONCLUSION

The widening gap over the Army’s Crusader program within the Department of Defense exposes what might prove to be a long and protracted battle within “the Beltway”. Although powerful congressional representatives may have grumbled over the way the decision was made; it does not seem to have hurt the Department of Defense in the end. Last year’s defense budget was increased by 50 billion dollars, even in the aftermath of the cancellation decision, and there does not appear to have been any effort on the part of Congress to make Secretary Rumsfeld pay for his decision to cancel Crusader. In fact, to an outsider, it appears that the wake of discontent has disappeared and aside from a few bruised feelings in the Army, the ship of state has sailed on smoothly.

Post 9-11 finds the Army at a crossroad of changing and new times. The old ways of doing business no longer applies. Things are moving quickly and transformation is occurring not only in the way we expect to fight but also in how we are doing business in DoD. The lesson from the Crusader cancellation debacle is that the Army needs to revisit its justification for the entire family of “new programs” and seriously question the utility of future FCS. Those programs at risk may need to be re-validated lest the shifting sands of the new geo-strategic era bring them down as they did Crusader.

In retrospect, regardless of how clumsily the decision was made, Secretary Rumsfeld was completely within his authority to deviate from the systems his subordinates were using to arrive at decisions and to do so at the slightest whim. It was for Congress to discipline him and the Bush administration, should it have appeared to them that Secretary Rumsfeld was wrong in his decision. That Congress chose to abide by the decision removes from the overall debate any criticism on how the decision was arrived at.

It will be interesting to observe the DoD decision-making process in the coming months and years to see if these process continues on its present course or a more congenial tone will emerge on the Hill and within the DoD infrastructure.

GD wanted this badly because they could satisfy the requirements of both Army & Navy and cut overall costs (by reducing duplication in the two services) and please Gov generally. But, Rummy had other ideas and made a unilateral decision, even above the objections of other republican’s. (Remember that during this time, the senior decision making committee was composed of 5 Repug’s, 2 Dem’s and one Military General).

The stated rationale and objective was to save money. The cost of cancellation was very high, more than was saved by cancellation. And the Army & Navy still needs new weapons systems. *shrug*

Some info here on Wiki:
XM2001 Crusader

3 Badtux { 10.12.12 at 1:50 am }

I think the Crusader decision was driven by a couple of factors: a) the perceived success of air power at providing the sort of precision delivery of ordinance that the Crusader was intended to provide, specifically, the utilization of B-52’s as “bomb trucks” over Afghanistan to drop precision-guided munitions upon targets within minutes of a fire support request from the ground, and b) the fact that the Crusader would have been of limited use in Afghanistan in the first place, due to the terrain, and Afghanistan-type wars were what Rummy was thinking about, not a replay of Desert Storm. Of course, GW was planning a replay of Desert Storm from the beginning, but given the shambles that was Saddam’s military, and the fact that the Crusader wouldn’t be deployed until years after the invasion of Iraq, there were other toys that Rummy wanted more. Like those awful Stryker vehicles that turned out to be ridiculously vulnerable to RPG’s and IED’s. Sure, LAV’s were pretty useful for peacekeeping operations in the hands of Canadians, but that was for places where there was peace to keep, which certainly never applied to Iraq during the U.S. occupation there.

I think there’s a case to be made that Rumsfeld was the worst Secretary of Defense since, hmm… well, I think we have to go back to the 1850’s for that. Some guy by the name of Davis, maybe…

4 Kryten42 { 10.12.12 at 6:26 am }

There were other considerations that weren’t openly discussed prior to cancellation of Crusader. One was that NATO wanted them, and so did the Aus Army (we still used towed artillery at that time!) So there were two buyers to help offset the cost. I know because my friend who ran GD (Aus.) convinced me to rejoin GD in the late 90’s and represent our interests on the project. It was a no-brainer for us. Cancelling Cruisader after all the promises that were made and all our efforts, really pissed off a lot of senior people here, and it is one of the primary reasons why Aus military purchasing decisions have been severely strained since. The biggest problem Rummy has always had is that he is quite short-sighted and has a very narrow view. That and that he’s never been a *team player*. I and a colleague made sure that all those who make decisions here understood that ‘the American’s cannot be trusted at all’, and I am happy to say that there has indeed been a definite shift by our Military from the US to Europe, which does make me happy. This includes canceling the order for F35’s And it looks like Japan will cancel it’s order also, as may other Nations. Thank the god’s of common sense for that! 😀

We had been prepared to spend billions on US weapons systems the past decade, and we have in fact spent only a hundred million or so. There is a reason why many Nations have cancelled, or are at least thinking of cancelling, their purchases with the USA. You can thank the Rethugs, and also Obama. There is a very palpable lack of trust out here in the *real World*.

Considering how much rethugs love money, they are amazingly stupid and short-sighted.

5 Kryten42 { 10.12.12 at 6:30 am }

You know… I was discussing these issues with a US friend I knew from GD days last year, and we wondered if this was being done at least partly on purpose by the rethugs. After all, if nations spend tens of billions of US military systems, it will help the deficit no end and make Obama look good! Can’t have that! No siree!! There is only one thing a rethug loves more than money, ideology. 🙂

6 Kryten42 { 10.12.12 at 6:40 am }

Ohhhh!!! I should have mentioned…

Just to add supremem insult to injury… Guess what the RAAF are *seriously* considering instead of the F-35? C’mon… guess?!!

You’ll never guess… i’ll give you a hint, it’s also got ’35’ in the name, and comes from Europe!

You should guess Bryan… 😉 LMAO

ohhh! I can’t wait! It’s the Sukhoi Su-35S ‘Super Flankers’ !!

Seriously! LMAO Oh jeez… I *REALLY* hope they do it! I’ll be laughing for years! LMAO Not only a slap in the face of US MIC, but a kick in the nut’s for Johnny Howard and co! The moron who decided to retire the most formidable Air Force in the Southern hemisphere only half way through it’s service life! The FB-111’s of course! The stupidest decision made in Aus the past 100 years!

BTW, there are several reasons why we should buy the Su-35S. It has proven to be a reliable and superior aircraft, Sukhoi will allow us to build them here under license, and they are significantly cheaper to buy, maintain and operate than the F-35 (or anything the US has). it’s a no-brainer really! So, it probably won’t happen. *SIGH* 🙁

oh well…

7 Badtux { 10.12.12 at 1:51 pm }

The Su-35S is cheaper to buy and maintain than a F-35, but you’d expect that given that it’s early 80’s technology. I do have to say that it makes a reasonable replacement for the FB-111’s, it hauls almost as heavy a load for almost as far a distance and likely has similar maintenance requirements, i.e., greater than a modern fighter jet designed for low maintenance (such as the F-18 Super Hornet) but less than something like the F-35 with its complex stealth features. The F-35 was always a lousy fit for Australian conditions in the first place due to its short range and small weapons load and high maintenance requirements, it isn’t as if Australia has a huge air tanker fleet to keep short-ranged fighters up in the air for long periods of time. (Australia has what, five tankers now?).

The Russians are really the only people building large long-ranged fighters for export nowadays. That’s really odd. The F-22 would have been ideal, since it has similar size and range to the Su-35 but is a generation newer, but the U.S. refused to allow Australia to buy it. Inexplicable. Oh well, probably for the better, given that the F-22 spends more time suffocating its pilots than flying :twisted:.

8 Bryan { 10.12.12 at 5:11 pm }

Hey, F-35s are actually flying in my skies, sometimes three of them at once. OK, so they are flying over the Gulf of Mexico, not the land, but they are finally flying. These are the most conventional Air Force versions, but they say they will have the Marine and Navy versions real soon now.

I can tell you that the stealth capabilities don’t include sound, because I can hear them take off from 6 miles away, and know it’s an F-35 rather than an F-22 at medium altitude based strictly on the sound of that one hard working engine.

The Stryker was over-weight and over-sized the day it was introduced. It was supposed to roll off the back of a C-130 and go directly into combat. Did not happen. Even with all of the ‘improvements’, it was never worth the money.

Badtux, at least Secretary Davis produced a dashing looking hat that no one wore, which is more than Rummy can say. The push to privatize everything in the DoD really screwed up the ability to maintain an Army in the field. Rummy believed that the air campaign would eliminate the serious opposition, and then the Army would drive in to plant the flag, and the war would be over. He had no idea what to do after that. He didn’t understand that the opposing army should have been asked to surrender and stack its arms, or that the invading army had to supply security. He basically didn’t know how to win a war, only how to win battles. He was the worse.

As long as they are going to be built in Oz, there’s nothing wrong with the Su-35, It certainly is a better idea than the mythical F-35.

Oh, Badtux, it turns out that the O₂ problem was known about about a decade ago, and Rummy didn’t do anything about it because the solution would be too expensive. It is a system design problem, and the current measures don’t fix it, they only make it survivable.

9 Badtux { 10.12.12 at 6:22 pm }

Bryan, the “stealth” in the case of the F-35 is about confusing SAM radars so that they can make it through active air defenses, or about confusing air-to-air missiles so they can take out opposing fighters before those fighters can get a radar or visual lock on them. Fliers of opposing fighters will be hearing only their own engines and I pretty much assume that folks getting bombed by F-35’s will know they’re being bombed by F-35’s with or without the noise of the engine punctuating the proceedings, much as the Cambodians knew they were darn well getting bombed by B-52’s during the Nixon’s “secret” Cambodian bombing campaign despite Nixon’s “Top Secret” classification of the campaign :twisted:.

Of course, the number of opponents with world-class air defenses that would require something like a F-35 to deal with said opponent can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and we have more than enough F-22’s to deal with those air defenses, meaning that the F-35 has no (zero) advantage over the F-16 for the typical mission profile while costing an astounding amount more to buy and operate, but… shrug. Can’t interfere with the MIC’s profits, can we?

And Bryan, there’s nothing wrong with LAV’s for peacekeeping missions. They’re perfectly acceptable troop carriers for moving troops around behind the lines or in peacetime, or for carrying troops around in a peacekeeping situation where nobody’s shooting at the peacekeepers because there is, duh, peace that they’re keeping (in the normal sense of the word, not in the U.S. “war is peace” sense of the word). The problem is when you want to send them into a war zone. Even porked up with light armor the way Rummy’s buds porked them up, they’re still ridiculously vulnerable to even the 1960’s-vintage RPG-7, and even with run-flat tires you can still end up disabled by one dude with an AK-47 managing to strafe your tire-line. Rummy may have been impressed by how fast the Ruskies got their troops into Kosovo on those BTRs, but one thing he apparently did not notice was that nobody was shooting at those BTRs…. the experience of the similarly-designed (but tracked rather than wheeled) BMP-1’s during the 1973 war where they proved ridiculously vulnerable even to .50 caliber machine guns should have taught him something, but apparently he wasn’t paying attention despite the fact that he became Gerald Ford’s SecDef shortly thereafter…

10 Badtux { 10.12.12 at 7:46 pm }

Hmm, as far as “worst SecDef” awards go, I’m trying to decide between Robert Strange McNamara and Rummy, now that I think back a bit… McNamara’s strange faith in the power of accounting to win wars was as ridiculous as anything Rummy ever believed or did.

11 Kryten42 { 10.12.12 at 10:42 pm }

LOL Yeah… 🙂

The biggest problem with the F-35 for Aus, assuming it ever actually makes it, is that it has a ridiculously short range, and not even combat, but ferry range!! To ferry one from NSW to WA we’d have to refuel the sucker at least twice! and that’s without a payload. The other problem is that it also has a small weapons load-out, and only a single inefficient engine. It’s insane really! Given that the Su-35 is a heavier aircraft with two engines, it has more than twice the range of the F-35. And, to get an F-35 airborne, you can’t give it a full fuel or weapon load. 😆

There is a really good summary of all the available options here:
Saving Billions on Air Forces

From what I hear on the grapevine, the deal sweetener for us to buy the Su-35S is that after 2016, we would be able to buy the Sukhoi PAK-FA (the full version, not the cut down *export* version!) That would be a hell of a deal for us. 🙂 It has the longest range of any fighter today, can carry a big weapon payload, is stealthy, has an impressive thrust:weight ratio (can accelerate vertically) and was designed to kill aircraft like the F-22. The latest 5th gen engine upgrade for the PAK-FA (AL-41F1) is awesome. 🙂

“Though the specifics of the new engine remains classified, information provided has included: increased engine thrust by 2.5 tonnes over the AL-31 engine, a reduction in engine weight by 150 kilograms (330 lb). These changes allow the aircraft to supercruise, sustaining supersonic flight speeds without using afterburners. The AL-41F1 engine generates a larger thrust and has an automation system, to facilitate flight modes such as maneuverability. It is expected that each engine will be able to independently vector its thrust upwards, downward or side to side. Vectoring one engine up with the other one down can produce a twisting force, which would enable the PAK FA to be the first fifth generation fighter with full 3-D thrust vectoring along all three aircraft axes: pitch, yaw and roll. These engines incorporate infrared and RCS reduction measures.”

Also, the latest avionics suite upgrade is nice also:

“he PAK FA’s SH121 radar complex includes three X-band AESA radars located at the front and sides of the aircraft. These will be accompanied by L-band radars on the wing leading edges.L-band radars are proven to have increased effectiveness against very low observable, or stealthy, targets which are optimized only against X-band frequencies, but their longer wavelengths reduce their resolution. However the initial prototypes will use legacy passive electronically scanned array radar. According to Sukhoi, the radar will reduce pilot load and make use of a new data link to share information between aircraft.[70] In 2012 ground tests began on the third aircraft of the Tikhomirov Scientific Research Institute of Instrument Design’s AESA radar. The PAK FA will feature an infra-red search and track optical/IR search and tracking system, based on the OLS-35M from the Su-35S.”

It can carry 7.5t of weapons, which can include 2x 1,500kg bombs, or several 500kg precision guided bombs, in the two internal bays with missiles on the hardpoints.

Here’s another good article here:
Why the F-22 and the PAK-FA have the “Right Stuff” and why the F/A-18 and the F-35 do not

Oh… Apparently the US is peeved because we have not only cancelled all future orders of the M1A2 MBT’s, but are mothballing what we have and cancelling all maintenance orders. 🙂 We don’t need MBT’s! Considering we can buy several Bushmaster’s or ASLAV-25’s for the cost of a single M1A2, and they are much more versatile for our needs, it makes sense. I like the ASLAV-25, it’s an impressive bit of kit! Can be fitted out for anything from an assault vehicle, to an Ambulance (An ambulance with a .50 cal MG!) 😆 It’s amphibious also, which suits our region well, and is well suited for Recon roles. I wish we had them in Cambodia! 😉 🙂

12 Bryan { 10.13.12 at 12:37 am }

My objection to the Stryker is based on the fact that it was approved for production despite the fact that it didn’t meet its primary goal of being a combat ready roll-vehicle for rapid deployments, not that it couldn’t functions in roles it wasn’t designed for.

The original specifications on both size and weight were exceeded to the point that the aircraft load master had to sign a waiver to take one on board, and the vehicle crew needed to attach things to the vehicle after it was rolled off. Not exactly a rapid deployment or anything you want to take to a hot landing area.

It wasn’t designed to take RPG kits, or .50 cal, so that was a problem for the jobs it was assigned to perform. It is the same problem of the rapid deployment Humvees with the plastic body panels that they sent to the war zone.

Hell, almost everything they sent to Iraq had to be heavily modified to survive in the conditions that were actually encountered.

McNamara totally screwed the training of officers by making them managers instead of leaders. He was in charge when I enlisted, so I was ready for the corporate world when I left, wondering what happened to the military I knew when I was growing up. McNamara was bad, but I don’t think he was crazy. Rummy, OTOH ….

Each nation needs to make its own decisions about what it needs to meet the threats that it sees, not the threats or conditions that someone else sees, Kryten. Most of your challenges involve small nations in your area of the world with terrain that isn’t exactly suited to MBTs. By the time you could get them there, the problem would usually be resolved. I can’t see us ever able to get equipment like that to or from the most obvious areas of conflict. Just look at the resupply problems in Afghanistan.

Hell, I’m still waiting for the US to finally begin issuing a decent rifle, so I don’t see why people buy from us.

13 Kryten42 { 10.13.12 at 12:49 am }

Sorry badtux, I meant to reply to your comment, but was interrupted by pesky visitors! 😉 😀

Hmmm… I know we converted 4 B-707-338C’s to A20-627 dual-role tanker/transports, but (from memory) these are being designed specifically to support our F/A-18 fleet, they won’t have booms to support other aircraft, including our F-111’s. Seems a silly idea to me. *shrug*

We have finally received 3 (I think) modified Airbus A330 MRTT (KC-30A) two years late because of problems modifying the boom by QUANTAS (or formally, Qantas Defence Services, who I wouldn’t personally trust to modify a paper plane!) Anyway… Apparently a 4th is currently being modified, and a 5th later. So I guess we will have 9 all up. 🙂

BTW, if you’d like to know what we think about Howard’s moronic decision to prematurely retire the F-111 fleet:
Why Australia Should Retain Its F-111 Fleet

“By far the best recent example of bureaucratic incompetence and dishonesty in Australia’s DoD is the completely arbitrary decision to prematurely retire Australia’s F-111 fleet, which at full strength accounted for over 50 percent of Australia’s striking capability.”

😆 You tell ’em Carlo m8!! 😀 😀

14 Kryten42 { 10.13.12 at 1:25 am }

Sorry Bryan, didn’t see your post m8. 🙂

You are right about Stryker. We looked and said no way. Talked to GD in Canada and came up with our own variant on LAV, the ASLAV-25 (based on the Canadian Bison, not the USMC LAV-25 as has been reported). We actually decided after extensively trialing trialing 14 x USMC LAV-25 and 4 x Canadian Bison’s, so they can’t say it wasn’t a fair test! Funny how the Stryker and ASLAV-25 are both based on the LAV-25, but the ASLAV-25 works (at least, it does what we want it to do). 😉

The original LAV-25 cost about US$880k while the Stryker costs around US$2.8m! That’s a pretty big increase for little return.

We are in the process of acquiring 144 Phase 3 ASLAV’s, 59 Remote Weapon Stations, 18 surveillance/recon ASLAV’s, 9 Crew Procedural Trainers, and upgrading 113 Phase 2 ASLAV’s. The original contract was going to be distributed between GD Land Systems and GM Defense, but is now totally with GD Land Systems (Canada).

Back to the F-111’s for a moment… The main reason I believe it was a seriously stupid idea to retire the entire fleet was no so much because of the loss of strike capability (which was significant), but because we lost almost our entire EW (or Electronic Combat, as it’s now known), Air Recon and Ground target surveillance and targeting capabilities! And these have yet to be replaced. This severely restricts the capabilities of the rest of our air force. To replace these lost capabilities will cost far more than it would cost to continue using the F-111’s.

Morons are everywhere. *shrug*

15 Badtux { 10.13.12 at 1:49 am }

The M1A2 is the best tank in the world, it is capable of taking out opposing tanks at a range where their shot merely bounces off the M1A2’s armor and my understanding is that no tanker in a M1 has ever been killed by unfriendly fire, but has some core limitations imposed by its age. Back when it was created, compact diesel engines with the power needed for a tank this size simply weren’t possible, meaning it has a gas-thirsty turbine that sucks JP-8 the way a wino sucks ripple(note: a brand of U.S. cheap fortified boxed wine). It is simply ridiculously expensive to operate and the hot exhaust makes it difficult to operate with infantry support in urban environments. And the maintenance ain’t small change either. It’s basically a 1970’s vintage jet engine — and you’ll notice that there aren’t any 1970’s vintage jet airliners flying anymore in 1st world nations, their engines were just too expensive to operate and maintain compared to modern turbofans.

Recently I got up close and personal and hands-on with a EuroPowerPack (created to power the next generation of European tanks), and it is as compact as the turbine in the M1A2, makes as much power, and is much more fuel efficient and much cheaper to buy and operate. The response of the U.S. defense industry has been to propose a new generation of turbines for the M1 that are almost as fuel-efficient, but still ridiculously expensive to buy and maintain compared to a diesel. But hey, GE doesn’t make diesels :twisted:.

I would worry that Australia is going Rumsfeldian though by dumping tanks altogether. LAV’s simply lack survivability in any real combat environment. While Australia’s combat operations requiring tanks are likely to be in support of US or UN operations rather than an invasion of local nations that need to be “taught a lesson”, sending lightly-armored vehicles into an environment where the enemy may have modern anti-tank weapons will just result in a lot of dead soldiers. If the several thousand ATGM’s thrown at Merkavas in 2006 in Lebanon had been thrown at LAV’s, there would have been no LAV’s left to retreat after the “victory” over Hizballah, while all but two of the Merkavas managed to do a French victory march (i.e., as fast as possible in reverse 🙂 ) after the Israeli “victory”.

Regarding the F-111’s, I think one issue would have been upgrading their warfighting gear to modern standards to allow them to deal with threats from modern fighters. That would, however, have been much cheaper than buying F-35’s or Su-35’s and the airframe certainly had sufficient room in it for any degree of countermeasures that you wished to insert into it.

Bryan, my objection to the Stryker is its lack of survivability in any real threat environment. Even in the threat environment of 2005 Iraq, two years after the end of active combat operations, the vehicles required significant modifications to survive the much-reduced threat environment that was encountered. Strykers sent into Lebanon in 2006 would not have come back, period. The notion of dropping Strykers into a hot zone is ridiculous even if the vehicle was not overweight and was properly rigged for the task, even Iran’s Toophans (reverse-engineered 1970s TOW missiles with dual-core heads for dealing with reactive armor or RPG cages, which they’re selling to anybody with money) would turn them into scrap metal.

16 Kryten42 { 10.13.12 at 9:28 am }

The rationale for mothballing the MBT’s is simple. 🙂 We see them as strictly an offensive weapons system. Our military role is now Defense and Peace Keeping, and given the cost of keeping the MBT’s (which, as you say, are expensive to maintain and operate, and the cost to deploy) it was easy to justify spending the limited budget elsewhere. We want to keep our budget in surplus. 😉

The link above has papers produced that show that extending the life of the F-111 to 2020 was and is the most cost effective option that also fit’s our military objectives. And we do have at least several fully qualified F-111 engineer’s who are now doing nothing (including yours truly who qualified as an avionics and weapons systems specialist. I know my way around the F-111 avionics bay blindfolded!) 🙂

17 Kryten42 { 10.13.12 at 1:13 pm }

I should mention that whilst we are buying the ASLAV’s, we are building a lot more Bushmaster’s here (not far from where I live in fact). 🙂 It’s planned for the Army and RAAF to have over 1,000 Bushmasters. They are designed for quite different roles. The Bushmaster has proved very successful in Afghanistan (and also Iraq & E. Timor) where their strength against IED’s and land mines has proven itself. We have exported quite a few to Holland, and other European Nations have expressed interest. 🙂 The Bushmaster has never been intended to be used as an APC, it’s role is ‘Infantry Mobility Vehicle’. We use the M113AS3 & M113AS4 for APC roles. The M113AS4 is longer than the US M113 and has a Tenix Defence designed one-man turret with a heavy machine gun. 🙂

M113AS4

We have six variants of the Bushmaster in use by our Army and RAAF. Troop, Command, Assault Pioneer, Mortar, Direct Fire Weapons, and Ambulance. They can easily be transported by C-130 & C-17 (and Mi-26) transports.
2
Bushmaster Bonanza at Bendigo

Australia’s “Hardened and Networked Army” push led them to adopt the v-hulled, mine resistant Bushmaster vehicles, long before allies like the USA and Britain awoke to the need. Bushmasters have been deployed to East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Interestingly, a US company (Oshkosh Truck) has paid quite a sum for a license to manufacture Bushmaster’s in the USA, but they have never received an order from the US Military who apparently prefer killing US troops in inadequately protected Hummers. 🙂

Everything has it’s place, but must have a legitimate role or it’s worthless. We don’t have a role now for MBT’s.

18 Badtux { 10.13.12 at 3:03 pm }

Sure mate, it was just “peacekeeping” when the Australian Army landed in East Timor. Hint: For it to be peacekeeping, there first must be peace to keep. If you’re actually going in and shooting people, that’s offensive operations, period. Luckily Indonesia was a U.S. ally under Suharto and thus didn’t leave behind stashes of ATGM’s and artillery shells in every cupboard like every Soviet client state had, or those M113’s that you guys landed would have been sliced open like aluminum beer cans faced with a combat knife. The Chinese found out to their horror in 1979 that even medium tanks like their clones of the T-54 were nothing more than target practice for village militias armed with ATGM’s with modern anti-tank rounds, they left behind a line of smoking carcasses when they did their French victory march back to China, full speed in reverse.

Tanks aren’t the appropriate weapon for most modern combat, but when you do need them, you need them, and no amount of LAV’s will replace them. Without modern tanks when faced with RPG/ATGM-filled threat environments you’re reduced to cannon fodder walking forward on shank’s mare at walking pace because anything wheeled or tracked other than a tank would just get turned into scrap metal. Just sayin’. That’s why, after Rummy withdrew the M1’s from Iraq in 2004, the Army basically said “uhm, bad move, send’em back, we need the direct fire support” and sure enough they ended up back in Iraq. That said, the M1A2 is certainly *not* the ideal tank for that kind of “peace-making” threat environment. Amongst other reasons that’s why South Korea replaced the fuel-thirsty diesel with a less powerful but more economical diesel in their clone of the M1… Korean terrain simply doesn’t support the kind of maneuver warfare that requires the extreme mobility allowed by the turbine, so why pay the expense?

Regarding Bushmasters, a number of MRAP designs were submitted to the U.S. military, all of them functionally similar to the Bushmaster but upgraded with lessons learned from IED and mine explosions in combat, have been purchased by the U.S. Army and USMC. 27,740 MRAP vehicles of all types had been made by the time production stopped last month, all of which provide better IED protection than the Bushmaster due to having been designed after encountering actual IED’s rather than designed to meet a theoretical threat. You are correct that the U.S. has not purchased Bushmasters, but incorrect in your implication that the U.S. has decided to kill troops in uparmored Humvees rather than purchasing Bushmaster-type vehicles. SecDef Gates is not my favorite person but he’s not an idiot either, and swiftly reversed Rummy’s decision to not buy Bushmaster-type vehicles for the threat environment faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.

19 Bryan { 10.13.12 at 11:47 pm }

Badtux, my complaint about the Stryker was simply that it was bought even though it failed to meet the basic specifications for the bid. It had nothing to do with whether or not LAVs are a good idea.

I fixated on that point because I’m ex-AF and the failure to meet those specifications endangers the C-130 and its crew. A 130 is a big enough target so you don’t want to come to a complete stop if at all possible. The original specs would have had the Stryker rolling off the ramp on its own power while the 130 was still moving, enabling the aircraft to clear the area that much quicker with some defensive fire from the Stryker.

Kryten, Oshkosh failed to own the necessary number of Congresscritters, and lacked the former generals on its board to be successful in the US defense procurement system [so called because of the number of ‘pimps’ and ‘whores’… errr … lobbyists and Congresscritters involved]. It is a fact that no matter what it is, the US never buys the first or the best of anything.

20 Kryten42 { 10.15.12 at 2:35 am }

The Bushmaster was based on the Irish Timoney MP44 which were designed as a response to the IRA’s use of mines and IED’s. There was nothing at all *theoretical* about it. 🙂 The Timoney designed APC’s and Troop carriers have been sold and used successfully by many countries since the 70’s, which is one reason we chose to go with them. For our next gen ICV’s we are talking with Timony to create a new vehicle based on the Terrex AV-83. It has a double hull with several armor variants and is designed to protect troops from everything possible (for a vehicle of it’s size and cost).

Interestingly, the USMC just awarded a contract to develop their new Marine Personnel Carrier based on the Terrex. They have similar requirements it seems. One of which is that the vehicle must be transportable by anything from a C130 up. They must also have nuclear, biological and chemical defensive system, which the Terrex has. It can also carry anything from a 7.62mm machine guns to a 105mm cannon. Another reason for the decision (by the USMC, us and other Nations) is that it’s also very modular and compartmentalized and therefore very flexible.

Sure, an MBT is safer for the crew (to a point), but that’s at the expense of cost, transportability, and flexibility. They have a legitimate role for the US and a few other Nations, but not for us and many others. But even MBT’s are not invincible. I was trained to know where the vulnerable points are and could stop one with a .50cal AMR that was designed for that task. The tracks of course, the engine compartment but most especially the big air intakes are some of the most vulnerable points. A 15.2mm ultra-high velocity APFSDS projectile traveling at more than 1.5km/s (greater than Mach 4.5) has a lot of kinetic energy and will do some serious damage to anything it hit’s. A single round could penetrate more than 2″ of RHA, and that was in the 80’s (and was part of the reason for the heavy armor upgrade on the M1A2. But thanks to that, they could no longer transport two rows of M1’s on a C5, so transportability suffered significantly). There are always tradeoffs. 🙂 The ICV’s, APC’s etc rely more on speed and maneuverability for survival. Even the best snipers have a harder time hitting one than an MBT (I know!) 😉 🙂

21 Kryten42 { 10.15.12 at 11:22 am }

Hmmm… Speaking of Oshkosh, here’s an interesting article I came across. 🙂

Investor Carl Icahn made an offer on the Oshkosh shares he does not already own for $2.7B, valuing the overall firm at $3B. With his current stake of about 9.5%, Icahn is the largest shareholder, but his proxy battle back in January failed. This follows a consistent takeover MO that Icahn applied across industries, with varying degrees of success. Earlier this week Navistar, where Icahn also ramped up a significant stake, appointed 3 board directors at his request. According to the Financial Times he is no longer interested in merging the two truck manufacturers.

Rapid Fire Oct. 12, 2012: Icahn Really Wants Oshkosh

There is a very interesting (and long) article on the USNI blog regarding Afghanistan and the 2014 withdrawal. It won’t be good. They mention Cambodia and what happened when the US withdrew. Yeah… memories.

The Specifics No Longer Matter

Yeah… same old… yadda. One thing about the USA… It’s certainly never had any use for history. It’s just a silly academic subject after all, has no real practical use, right? *sigh*

22 Bryan { 10.15.12 at 4:57 pm }

Icahn is another vulture capitalist. Real vultures have the common decency to wait until their ‘lunch’ is dead, but the human variety take an active role by draining out all of the blood to weaken them for the looting to follow. They are ghouls and looters, not real capitalists.

The US makes no effort to understand the people and their traditions, but just assumes they will go wherever the US tells them to go. Democracy takes a long time to foster, usually a minimum of two generations, and the US doesn’t have the required patience or attention span to do the job properly.

Most US policies have a maximum life span of the administration that installs them, but even that isn’t guaranteed.