Stryker and ASV, too?
I'm not sure whether I've unpacked your last paragraph correctly, but I am curious as to why your "MRAP and JLTV" query did not also mention the Stryker family of vehicles, as well as the Armored Security Vehicle. I recently attended a short briefing on the former, and was struck by some tactical and organizational advantages in its current use. For example:Originally Posted by William F. Owen
- Tactical: Moving quietly on the battlefield.
- Organizational: Stryker Brigade Combat Teams (SBCT) are organized one battalion "heavier" than other BCT types.
Regarding the ASV, I note that some U.S. infantry with which I am affiliated deployed to OIF Security Force (SECFOR) missions were issued ASV, rather than armored Humvees. I don't know whether this was in order to make them provisional Military Police in all but name, but it did have implications for how they moved and fought.
I mention the Stryker and ASV as two other possible conceptual platforms from which to generate (or should I say "dismount?) some discussions, observations-insights and lessons regarding infantry mobility.
(Just saw your new post regarding the "Wildcat" concept. Must've hit the "send" key around the same time.)
Last edited by Randy Brown; 07-07-2008 at 01:47 PM.
L2I is "Lessons-Learned Integration."
-- A lesson is knowledge gained through experience.
-- A lesson is not "learned" until it results in organizational or behavioral change.
-- A lesson-learned is not "integrated" until shared successfully with others.
I tried not to mention Stryker but the points raised sort of forced me into it for the sake of clarity - something i guess I should try harder for!!-
Both Stryker and ASV seems to have very poor levels of protection. I think technology, operational reality and threat have all left Stryker far behind, but it's here now so folks will have to deal with it.
Another interesting vehicle is the Australian Bushmaster
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Mostly correct.
But consider this; how much would the infantry travel on roads? Let's assume a road speed of only 50 km/h. A five-hour move would certainly be an exception for infantry, happening only once in some weeks. The average truck might be moving less than one or two hours per day (logistics vehicles would move much more).
That's 22-23 hours per day without movement (albeit possibly waiting on or next to a road). Do you want a huge protected but difficult-to-conceal truck (an invitation to concentrate the squad in the vehicle especially in cold climate) or a smaller, easily concealed vehicle?
Concealed vehicles wouldn't need to be guarded as much and the lower weight and fuel consumption reduce maintenance and logistical requirements.
Some off-road capability is required for many tasks. Engineering vehicles for earthworks and lower echelon supply vehicles as well as vehicles for ATGM or mortar crews need to be off-road capable.
Furthermore; the armour employed in MRAPs is not quantity production material. Even if they used simple RHA we would still have a supply shortage in the event of a major war that requires ten thousands, not only about 2,000 vehicles per year. What's our equipment good for if you cannot produce it in wartime quantities, if you cannot equip your mobilized army?
Israel is a special case. It has rather high force densities in the event of a war, hard ground surfaces in many areas, many hilly terrains (Negev, Sinai, Lebanon, Golan) that don't permit much off-road activity anyway and its possible opponents cannot expect to achieve much with their reconnaissance or artillery.
Dingo 1 & 2
I enjoyed using the HMMWV before all the armor hit. The stryker looks interesting but I have never been in one during a combat tour so I can't say.
What have/do our allies use(d)?
From Wikipedia the Dingo
From Defesanet the Dingo 2The Daimler Scout Car, known in service as the "Dingo" (after the Australian wild dogs), was a British light fast 4WD reconnaissance vehicle also used in the liaison role during the Second World War.
The DINGO 2 is a consistent upgrade of the DINGO 1 all-protected carrier vehicle transport vehicle introduced into service in the year 2000 and proven in many foreign missions. For as many as eight crew, it currently affords the highest level of protection against modern hand-held weapons, artillery fragments, anti-personnel and anti-tank mines as well as against NBC combat agents. With its highly mobile off-road chassis, it reaches maximum speeds of more than 90 kph and a radius of action of approximately 1,000 km. Moreover, the DINGO 2 is air-transportable on C160-Transall, C130 Hercules and the future A400M aircraft.
Sapere Aude
Try this one for Dingo 1 / ATF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_Dingo
The protection levels are not fully known, of course. I remember that it's small arms and single or even double stacked blast AT mine resistant.
Dingos are armored Unimogs (light standard 4x4 truck).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimog
This is another German 4x4 (partially) armoured vehicle, designed to fit into CH-53G, IIRC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mungo_ESK
The Bundeswehr also uses different armoured cabs for medium and heavy trucks and a 4x4 armoured observation vehicle (Fennek). Boxer/GTK, a huge wheeled APC, is another program.
A new program for a new vehicle generation is underway. This includes the Grizzly (and other vehicles)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KMW_Grizzly
http://193.158.125.14/images/91_KMW-GFF4.jpg
A design from a blank sheet on is the GeFaS. It's modular and again huge.
http://www.rheinmetall.de/index.php?lang=2&fid=1698
We have I think about six to eight different Mercedes G class jeep versions with armour protection. The protection escalated as the anticipated missions evolved from MP vehicle to Afghanistan road patrols.
I've recently heard that no lesser protected vehicles than Dingo 1 are used for Afghanistan patrols and convoys anymore our contingent had luck some months ago when mines did much less damage and caused less severe casualties than possible.
Sometime early in the ISAF mission we had lots of KIA when a bus (a bus!!!) got hit.
The first patrols in Kabul were done with sandbagged open Unimogs mostly (with the appropriate spin about barrett-wearing friendly soldiers and intentionally no intimidating armour...but in the background they were hastily buying more armoured Dingos ASAP).
I dislike the Bundeswehr's apparently uncoordinated procurement of many different wheeled armoured vehicles in the past ten years. I believe it exposes a poor planning capability and a lack of clear understanding of one's own requirements.
The end result is far away from the successful Family of vehicles" maintenance- and logistics-friendly approaches like our old 2nd medium/light truck generation and the French ACMAT VLRA had.
South African Designs
Fuchs,
Thanks for the references. Here is one that might be of interest with regards to South African designs.
Regards,
Steve
Sapere Aude
For the sake of our discussion here, let's not forget that "protection" is not simply a function of armor alone. Speed is security, thus all- round mobility, coupled with firepower slaved to good sensors, can work equally well at preventing that RPG from being lit off in the first place. If you treat the platform like nothing more than a taxi, you will always die easily.
So there I was...
J,
Preach on. During OIF 1 no armor meant me and my team had the doors off, weapons outboard, good visibility, and good speed. One day, being a bit on the tired side I missed the initial signal, but rapidly got with the program when all of the Iraqi's bailed from both sides of the road around me & my team. Gotta love them HMMWV's, they are tough & maneuverable and we all cleared the zone.
The current war is a different one than OIF 1 however, and it would appear that armor has it's place.
Regards,
Steve
Sapere Aude
I've read a copy of "Taming the land mine", a book entirely about Rhodesian/South African anti-mine AFV designs of the 70's. I recommend it.
The V-shaped bottom was adopted by the modern designs, but the easily repairable wheel suspensions away from the hull ('monocoque design') was not. Some designs also have their cabin over the front axle or very close, also not very smart against pressure-fuzed AT mines.
I asked the Force Protection representative on Eurosatory 2008 about it and he evaded the hard questions. But he claimed that his company has "THE" experienced designer from South Africa with 30 years experience in mine-protected trucks.
Last edited by Fuchs; 07-07-2008 at 04:27 PM.
True -- BUT...
It also has the significant and far too often overlooked disadvantage of lulling the unwary into a false sense of being protected. That's a pernicious and dangerous affliction.
No matter how good the armor -- or the active countermeasures in lieu of ever more of it -- it can and will be defeated. Tactical agility OTOH can easily compensate for a lack of 'protection.'
The old saw is wrong; speed does not kill, incompetence does. Speed is good...
Asv
My unit received ASV's in late OIF IV to supplement our humvees and Mad Max trucks. It had better armor than our other vehicles, was faster, and had the turret with optics and protected crew-served weapon. It was hard to get in and out, and took more maintenance time when it did break.
I liked the ASV for Convoy Security, but for missions requiring constant dismounting, it would work for overwatch, but not troop transport.
The only people with MRAPs during my tour were EOD or "special," so we saw them out there, and thought, "be nice to have that." Speaking with a MSG currently on a MiTT that uses MRAPs, he is a big supporter. He just reiterated, make sure you buckle up.
Do we need to get out of the proverbial Buffalo?
Roger your earlier points on the ASV. I'd also be interested to find out if they were ever used in mixed tracked-and-wheeled formations, or used to overwatch dismounted troops in urban settings.
My only (indirect) experience with MRAP is with a couple of engineer units performing route-clearance missions. Given the intent of GEN Petraeus's Rule No. 4 "Get out and walk--move mounted, work dismounted"--I'm curious if you could shed any non-OPSEC skinny on how the MRAP worked in the MiTT mission.
(And, in a possible corollary to Petraeus, I swear I once heard SECSTATE Rice make an MRAP-related on-air comment to National Public Radio in late-2007. It was something about how "sometimes, you have to get out of the Buffalo." Haven't been able to find the cite since. It's part of an ongoing research project, if anyone else can point me to the original quote.)
I liked how Fuchs started to break the intellectual problem down as a wish-list for equipment capabilities, as well as the rationale behind each of his criteria. Granted, he prefaces his comments in terms of High-Intensity Conflict (HIC), rather than Low-Intensity Conflict (LIC), but I like the approach. In fact, I originally thought that's where this thread might be headed: Using a couple of existing platforms as conversation starters and examples, what would you want out of a future mobile infantry platform?
(Of course, remember the Alamo--and remember the painful developmental process of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.)
It's an interesting question, and one that forces a horse-and-armored-cart dilemma, the parallel being "how-do-you-want-to-fight" vs. "how-your-current-equipment-constrains/enables-you-to-fight."
Last edited by Randy Brown; 07-07-2008 at 06:59 PM.
L2I is "Lessons-Learned Integration."
-- A lesson is knowledge gained through experience.
-- A lesson is not "learned" until it results in organizational or behavioral change.
-- A lesson-learned is not "integrated" until shared successfully with others.
MRAP - just another word for a heavy, truck-shaped APC? Or re-inventing motorized infantry with super-heavy trucks instead of ACMATs?
I still fail to understand the fascination with MRAPs, especially since most of them are a far cry from the original - and in their ops environ - valid idea. When they were invented by the Rhodesians (mines, embargo), they were infantry taxis with widely seperated wheels, mine bottom, protection against rifle bullets and provided an elevated shooter platform.
But the latest MRAPs try to become APCs plus IFVs plus a dash of CFV - all in one vehicle. And that is just wrong. MRAPs are funny shaped, fashionable APC, taxis for light infantry, pax hauler. To actually fight, the infantry gets out. They are not supposed to be in there when the shooting starts. In infested territory they should get out and clean, not ignore and safely drive by. And besides the fact, that MRAPs can't really go offroad, they also can't swim. And with the proliferation of EFP know-how the MRAP will face a threat it can't defuse.
Leaves the medium (4x4) MRAP the role as urban riot control vehicle (people with too much money can glue some reactive armor onto them). And for the heavy (6x6) MRAP the niche as engineering and mine clearing vehicles.
The propsed heavy German MRAPs (GFF4) are just nonsense. For transport duties something like a SISU or MAN SX with a protected cabin is more suited. Convoy protection by APCs or JLTVs.
Basically there is no reason why APCs shouldn't get more protection, learning from MRAPs, but keeping the good parts of the APC concept. The proposed Marine MPC already goes that way.
On the JLTV: Good as liaison and scout cars, esp when not heavier than e.g. the MOWAG Eagle IV. Here to stay, something I have a hard time seeing the MRAP.
MiTT MRAP
He did not give me any real specifics, other than that they replaced their humvees for force protection. They still did mix of mounted/dis-mounted, with face to face interaction and advising. We didn't get deep into the TTPs or SOPs.
...and how long and how much funding will that require? The USMC MPC may have some merit but it risks same technology dead end that came to light in the UK FRES trials with Boxer, VBCI and the mythical Piranha V - the vehicle that won the trial despite not being there to take part!
If the well understood APCs designs had such potential, how come commercially derived and configured vehicles are now offering lower acquisition cost, (even with reactive armour and APS) great protection, and lower cost of ownership? All this has been achieved in less than 5 years, in most cases, while the cold war APC designs seem to offer less and less, in terms of flexibility across the missions being encountered.
Yes, you do have to make physical compromises. Size is one, but for the more mature designs they are no bigger than an average commercial truck. Some are C-130 transportable and Wildcat is possibly Cargo 747/C-33 transportable. Yes they are not good at crossing north German ploughed fields on rainy winter nights and they could not follow same cross country routes taken by tracked armoured vehicles.
Food for thought, as the result of some discussion in France recently. A generic MRAP based battle group can theoretically move 1,000 dismountable infantrymen, 500 km in 12 hours, (assuming a convoy planning rate of 41-45kph) to a tactical dismounted task of 24 hours and recover them back 1,000km, in 12 hours, using <150 well protected vehicles, based all on the same chassis, with no external logistic support.
I am still crunching a few numbers to confirm this, but in basic form it is, in itself, is an intriguing capability.
Last edited by William F. Owen; 07-08-2008 at 11:28 AM. Reason: Got excited.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
The problem you have Wilf, is that you could do the same with MTVR trucks, and many Marines would prefer to do so.
I guess that's not really a problem though.
Agreed. You could do the same thing in Bedford MK trucks and the UK used to move infantry companies from one side of the BAOR Corps Area in hours, but Bedford MKs had all the protection of a family car. MTVRs are much better, but MRAPs are even better protected, and can possibly deliver troops in better condition.
What I am trying to do with this thread (and I am extremely grateful for ALL the input) is error check a very simple concept that I can use to demonstrate a line of thinking to judge the usefulness of an idea. -
...and why would many Marines would prefer to do so? Comfort? Protection? Simplicity?
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
I think the answer lies in a mix of all three. I know several logistician types who would probably prefer to move such a force MTVR pure, as the vehicle (once uparmored) offers protection, good firepower(even if only using Mk 1eyeball sensors), while it has decent C2 ability with Blue Force Tracker for the convoy commander.
This is in use in Iraq today, and my current complaint with post-2003 Lieutenants is that some might think they can get away with this routine on all battlefields. Big vehs don't offer good "fighting" mobility, and I wouldn't want to be caught in a contact without HMMWVs for more nimble and lower profile support.
For daily support runs in W. Al Anbar, MTVR-pure has made in-roads.
William,
Could you point me to the source of your information, or explain your reasoning? Based on my knowledge, the first assertion is completely wrong, and the next two are debatable.
APCs offer more protection than either of these. In addition, the MRAP's gain underneath mine protection at the expense of vehicle dynamics and increased vulnerability to blast from the side (i.e. they blow over easy).
John Wolfsberger, Jr.
An unruffled person with some useful skills.
I must have missed those points previously, but JW is dead on methinks.
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