All matters MRAP JLTV (merged thread)

[Fuchs]

I reject your assertion. My military thought is bounded by the core functions, so I adhere to,

a. Not being found
Large vehicles can be silent, but are difficult to hide.
b. If found do not be fixed (loss of movement, comms, fires and observation)
I admit I'd opt for 4x4 light truck, but 4x4 is not optimal as the loss of one wheel is a mobility kill. AT mines destroy a wheel easily, although they keep going on with some bullet holes.
c. If fixed do not be Struck (the action that creates harm)
Big size and probably poor agility (hp/ton and high center of gravity) aren't helpful.
d. If struck do not be exploited. Suffer catastrophic loss from the harm.

I am pretty familiar with this area. Transport by "disguised" civilian vehicles was commonly done in Northern Ireland. (I know at least one platoon was regularly carried in a grain lorry)

None of this helps me, if I need to move 650 men, 500km in one night, and sustain them once they are on task.

If you move that far you'll be out of reach of almost all opponents most of the time anyway. That might be different in COIN, but an unpredictable movement at night along secondary roads bypassing traffic nodes even offroad should provide a lot of security even in such an environment. 500km is hardly a routine infantry movement in COIN, after all.

Actually the UK has looked at this before with AT-105 The problem with Saxon ( and I know it well) was it was a junk vehicle. - but I am now beginning to think elements of the concept were sound.

A concerns Sierra Leone, when I was there, if you wanted to travel the "upline" roads, you went in MAN 4x4 Commercial trucks. They go all over Sierra Leone. In fact most the world relies on pretty simple 4 x 4 commercial lorries. When I used to drive across the Sahara, I regularly encountered commercial lorries ripping along the "piste" with no problem
[b]MAN 4x4 gl trucks hit about 14 tons if fully loaded, but five tons of this is payload. So most often such trucks will weigh rather 10-11 tons as most payload densities hit the volume limitation much earlier than the weight limitation.

Wilf; we agree that MRAP has a niche in a mission like Iraq. You thought about the other possible other missions.

I remember that the GTK/Boxer monster is in part such a monster because one of the requirements was a bomblet protection. The implied assertion is that APCs are under threat by artillery.

But there's likely no harassing fire on roads if the force densities would be like assumed in exercises and doctrine. Modern brigades shall cover frontages larger than the frontage of an overstretched WW2 division. The force density is necessarily low.
The result is that the artillery needs much better recce to hit.
The artillery would in fact need to find, identify, prioritize and fire at individual companies due to the dense road network that enables a brigade to disperse its marching columns on different roads.

Lots of artillery systems could still penetrate MRAPs or destroy less protected vehicles that march nearby.