high-tech vs. low-tech (was Blackhawk Down pt II)

Status
Not open for further replies.
I

Ivanhoe

New member
this thread is a continuation of a digression from the "Blackhawk Down" threads...

a quick note on the ME-262; fantastic aircraft. very maintenance intensive. hard to fly (and by the time it saw service, Germany had 14 year olds with 100 hours flight time soloing in a high-performance het wthout any dual instruction). as already stated, Hitler was idiotic for trying to make it a light bomber instead of an interceptor. however, I still don't believe it would have impacted the war if used as such. here's why; the 262 would have been very successful at knocking down Allied bombers, but the vast majority of heavy bomber sorties were against "strategic" targets that had little effect on Germany's warfighting capability. bombers had the most impact on "tactical" targets that were close to the forward edge of battle, but the Allies stuck to the strategic bombing doctrine which was rather ineffective.

a side note; one reason Hitler was so fixated on having a good light bomber was that the de Havilland Mosquito and Martin Marauder light bombers were very effective in the ETO and the Luftwaffe was not successful at knocking them down (compared to taking out Allied heavy bombers). a Mosquito interrupted one of Hitler's speeches, and I think it became a neurotic fixation.
 
If Hitler's interference had not delayed the introduction of the ME 262 12-18 months, thw war in europe might have gone quite differently/
 
If Hitler's interference had not delayed the introduction of the ME 262 12-18 months, thw war in europe might have gone quite differently/

Something strange happened here. Sorry for the double reply.

[This message has been edited by Hard Ball (edited February 10, 2000).]
 
I don't want to get into the ignorant decisions made by hitler or the general staff, but would like to look at the decisions being made in how our nation is defended. I do see a lot of paralells between our procurement and priorities and the WWII German priorities. For instance they developed the concept of Blitzkrieg and poured all their resources into tanks and APCs and artillery. Then they supported it with a logistics train that was mostly horse drawn. We have the best tank in the world, but are reduced to leasing shipping to move them overseas and trucks to support them in theater. Not a big step above horse drawn if you can't get them to where the fight is or keep them in fuel or bullets once you get there.

We're spending millions to develop the OCIW to replace our M16 series of rifles. What is the OCIW, it's another try at ideas that didn't work in the '60s the SPIW. Both weapons utilize an over/under grenade launcher rifle arrangement. Both systems attempt to use technology to make up for training. The OCIW will weigh in at about 20 pounds and cost $10,000 per copy. How many Infantrymen can our economy afford at that price. Oh, the 20 pounds doesn't include ammunition. Once we have it we will develop doctrine and strategy on it's employment. And we will unlearn how to fight without it.

Right now we have 3 different versions of the M16 fielded in quantity in our army. The M16A1, the M16A2 and the M4 Carbine. These 3 different rifles require 2 different types of 5.56mm ammunition. The ammunition for the A2s and M4s can't be used in the A1. The rifling twist in the A1 is too slow to stabililize the longer M855 bullet. At $460 a copy, we can't even afford to give our army the same rifle to shoot the same bullet. At least the Germans standarized on the 8mm round for all of their rifles except for the STGW-44.

I don't think that the production line for the M1 Abrams is still up. So where do we get replacement tanks when some are destroyed in combat. The technology to produce them is much more advanced then in WWII. We can't just go in and convert an auto assembly plant to build M1 tanks, nor will we be able to hire people off the street to man the plants.

Big news here near St Louis is the possible shutting down of the F15 line at Boeing. The Air Force knows it won't buy enough F22s to perform their world wide mission, they are just too expensive. So if the F15 is to be our fighter for the forseeable future, how will we replace losses?

War requires tremendous amounts of resources. It's not good for the economy of a nation (I don't know who started that myth :) ). We should either commit to building enough high tech weapons to sustain ourselves in combat, or not spend obscene amounts of money developing weapons we'll never be able to buy enough of to use.

A year or so ago there was a big wargame involving computer simulations of the next war. The plain and simple fact was, they had to stop the wargame and reprogram the comuters for the high tech (us) side to win. It seems that the role players on the rogue nations side "cheated". They took a relatively low tech theater range missile and used it to boost a warhead into low orbit. then they detonated the warhead. The resultant Electro Magnetic Pulse fried our satellites and put a whole bunch of the systems that we use for target aquisition and guidance out of business. Without GPS and a bunch of other systems that we have grown dependent on, our forces started losing. Of course we "know" that no rogue state would cheat like that and take out our satellites.

Dependency on these systems is already causing problems. Land navigation is suffering because soldiers are getting dependent on PLGRs and other electronic navigational aids. The artillery firing incident I mentioned earlier could have happened with a manual lay of the guns. The problem is, I understand that some Paladin units never fire degraded (manual lay with aiming circles and survey). These are perishable skills ao what would happen to our very responsive artillery if the bad guys took out the satellites that GPS is based on?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a military Luddite, I just think we should think about total cost before we jump into the procurement of wonder weapons.

Jeff
 
So if I just look at the synopsis of what the post is really telling. I'll read that we (the US) are essentially the same place we were pre-WW II. Troops are down, productions are down, current technology models are cost prohibitive. In short, defense spending is being cut to the bone.

Does that about size it up? Sounds like another history lesson being repeated here. And the Socialist types want me to hand my guns in and bend over...

Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Best Regards,
Don

------------------
The most foolish mistake we could make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerers who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall.
Adolf Hitler
 
Don,
I some ways we are in better shape then at the beginning of WWII. A lot of the equpment we do have is the best in the world. At the beginning of WWII most of the equipment we had on hand was outmoded and obsolete.

I fear that we have lost sight of what war really entails. We have conditioned our society to look at war as an almost bloodless computer game. This is because we haven't been at war with a determined ememy with the will to fight back since Somolia. Really since Vietnam, Somolia being just a microcosm but the results were the same. Low tech in the hands of a determined adversary, beats high tech all the time. From Vietnam to Afganistan to Somolia. I know we never really lost on the battlefield in Vietnam or Afganistan, but the other side won their political goals so the net result was a loss. Low tech beats high tech in almost every NTC rotation. The recent air campaign in Kosovo has been proven to be not as effective as it was let on, just as the air campaign in Desert Storm wasn't really as effective as we were originally led to believe. This is getting off track into tactics, but we used expensive laser guided bombs to take out targets that would have been more properly engaged by a few cannon shells. I watched them drop LGBs on a fuel truck in Kosovo, why, so that they didn't have to endanger pilots lives. These munitions are expensive and we were running out of some of them before the bombing campaign in Yugoslavia stopped.

The Air Force tested out bombs guided by GPS in that air campaign. These are intended to replace LGBs because they are all weather and not degraded by smoke and other battlefield obscurants. But as I posted earlier one small nuclear device detonated at the right altitude and we have no more GPS to guide the bombs.

The weapons we are building today are being built almost one at a time on a single production line. And they are so high tech that opening new lines and training workers to build them will not be a short term proposition. Many of them require materials that are not readily available in this country. But I don't even know if we still have a strategic materials program.

Then we haven't even looked at how we would expand our forces to fight a major war. Before WWII the National Guard was called into active service. In most cases a year in advance. These divisions provided the cadre of experience that allowed the Army to rapidly expand. The divisons don't exist any more. If congress were to pass a law tomorrow re-establishing the draft, it would probably be at leats 90 days before we inducted the first draftee and 8-10 months before he was a minimally trained soldier ready for deployment. In the meantime the very small armed forces would have to hold the line (wherever it was) and maintain a training base for the new soldiers.

Of course the world is a safer place now and we shouldn't need to think about these things.

Jeff
 
Jeff my friend, you need to stop reading my mind. when it comes to the US military, as self-appointed armchair general I have developed 3 axioms;
1) Any time a general officer states that "we won't need our winter uniforms," rest assured the frostbite casualties will number in the tens of thousands.
2) The US Army ordnance command will manage to develop a substandard issue rifle, no matter how much ingenuity it takes.
3) DoD will manage to neglect at least one critical element of success, despite all the O-2s thru O-4s writing expository articles in Proceedings etc.

concerning the supply train; I sure would like to see one NG div designated for supply and support services for every active duty corps. those guys would come equally in handy in domestic emergencies (particularly weather-related events). I'd also like to see the Reserve system replaced with one like the Guard, with monthly FX and training so that, with an 8- or 12-week full-time refresher before deployment, they'd be sharp enough. here I'm thinking along the lines of light infantry divisions (again, one per corps) as backup, security, MP, and prisoner handling. our army probably has the lowest percentage of riflemen of any army in history; hope *that* doesn't bite us someday.

rifle-wise, I'd like to see 3 types of guns. a folding-stock carbine in a light caliber similar to 6.5x55, an assault rifle of same cartridge but full length, and a scoped marksman's rifle of 7.62x51 (basically thinking accurized M1A or AR-10 here). every squad ought to have one guy with serious long-range capability. two cartridges; a "penetrator" round for the light cartridge (lets say 100gr) and a 168gr AP round for the 7.62 (yes I know the current AP round is unsafe; we oughta fix that). the OICW is idiotic; the next thing you know it'll have wheels and a tripod. I'd rather have one or two guys per squad with a repeating grenade launcher who are skilled with it.

one thing that is really killing the military, IMO, is that both development projects and production schedules are getting jerked around so much that we spend much of our financial and human resources just starting things up and shutting them down. we *must* get Congress to demand honest, consistent scheduling from DoD, then Congress *must* follow thru with steady, reliable funding. if we could just smooth things out, I believe we'd be in much better shape.
 
Jeff, unfortunately the American way is to look for the easy solution first. sometimes that works, but we have always been bad about not being prepared for tough sledding. we have been fortunate that we have not yet faced a determined, overwhelming enemy from the get-go. look at our wars, going all the way back to the Revolutionary War. always takes us awhile to resign ourselves to the fact that we would have to slug it out chin-to-chin to succeed. I guess its that fundamental American optimism. of course, with the advances in mechanization and industrial production, full-throttle warfare nowadays is likely to last only a few months.

I think the reliance on satellites for com and nav has been based on the supposition that we had plenty of launch capacity to throw 'em up faster than Nikita could knock 'em down. well, bad news on that front; due to the politics involved in the birth of the Shuttle Transport System, it is unlikely we can do so now.

if you are suffering from low blood pressure, here's a little fact to bring it up to a boil; back in the mid-1970s, NASA *paid* McDonnell Douglas Astronautics to cut up the tooling for the Saturn engines. that's right, *paid* them to cut the tooling up. you see, as long as the tooling was around, there was the chance that Congress would kill Shuttle development funding and force NASA (and the AF) to go back to Saturn-based heavy launch. think what having a dozen Saturn booster chassis means; enough throw weight to put a rudimentary ABM system up in a matter of days.

having looked at several aerospace procurement successes and failures (the Book "Augustine's Laws" by Norm Augustine is highly recommended), I believe the best approach for any hardware system is to constrain the project to three 5-year intervals. the first 5 years is the R&D, leading to full-scale working prototypes. if it passes field testing in its 5th year, then go to a 5-year production phase, near the end of which upgrades and improvements are evaluated and either a 5 year production extension follows or work begins on a clean-sheet replacement. if things drag out too long, either the concept becomes obsolete or too many people are lost, and then its quicksand time.

oh well, somebody pass me the crying towel...


[This message has been edited by Ivanhoe (edited February 14, 2000).]
 
I think the problem with our defense policy is that we don't have one. The defense of the nation and the Constitution really doesn't seem to have any bearing on the way decisions are made. Weapons are kept in production because they are made in certain congressional districts, Generals and Admirals move from the military to the defense industry at high salaries.

All of this high tech stuff and we still have to put soldiers on the ground and let them get their boots muddy to win. I think we've lost sight of this. I wonder what our national will is anymore. Will the American people accept casualties or will bloodying our nose like happened in Somolia be enough to cause us to pull out? War is politics by other means according to von Clauswitz. So if we get into a situation like we did in Oct 93 and even if we kill thousands of the enemy compared to a few of our losses and we pull out without achieveing our goals, have we won?

Can our economy build enough cruise missiles that we have enough to take out every possible target with them and never have to put an attack pilot in harms way again? At about 1000 lbs of HE in a conventional warhead and a million dollars for the cruise missile that's a pretty expensive proposition. What will we do when we run out of these cruise missiles?

What good are our M1A2 Abrams tanks if we don't have enough tank transporters to get them to critical point of the battlefield? What good is the fastest firing, most responsive artillery in the world, if we still have to manually handle the ammunition, and don't have enough trucks to haul it to the batteries?

I guess the thing that bothers me is that we are spending billions to develop weapons that are generations ahead of anything the threat might possibly have, and we're neglecting those things we need to sustain ourselves in combat now. We are spending billions to develop the F22 but there is no fighter in the world that can go up against the F15. And who in the world is developing a fighter capable of beating the F22? Nobodys economy but ours can afford to do this.

While all of these billions are being spent developing the next generation of superweapons, the ones we have, the ones we will go to war with today if need be are sitting in ill repair. Why, because we can't afford repair parts. Our soldiers, sailors and airmen have lost their edge because we can't afford to train.

The new Chief of Staff of the Army is trying to build a deployable force, but instead of buying the transport to move and sustain the forces we have, he is building a lighter force. It remains to be seen if this lighter force will be as capable. I wonder how many C130s, C141s and RoRo ships we could build for what we are going to spend developing the all wheeled motorized force?

Jeff
 
I don't think there has been a big change lately in the foreign policy aspect of our military doctrine; its been screwed up all the way back to Prez Wilson. T.R. had it right, at least partially; speak softly and carry a big stick. that is the way to deal with the 3rd world. and with the old world, to a certain extent. doesn't work for sociopathic dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, but nothing else does either. you simply can't reason with nutcases. like teaching the proverbial pig to sing. Gulf Storm was intended to stabilize the region, but that is like trying to stabilize four tons of soft Jello. there were good outcomes from it, but the State Dept types probably didn't learn anything.

I disagree somewhat with your assessment of the F-15. the newer Russky designs (Mig-29 etc) can dogfight with the F-15, and now have good radar and weapon systems. our big advantage over everyone except the Israelis is that we have the best training and tactics. but in Desert Storm we lost several "high-tech" aircraft to ground fire and even one F-18 to an air-to-air missile (classic error; the F-18 pilot was on an anti-SAM mission, shot his HARMs, and didn't maintain his scan; took the missile up the wazoo and never saw it coming). however, the F-22 approach is disastrous because when you only have a few items, it only takes one lucky shot to wipe out a substantial percentage of your force (remember the F-117 in Bosnia? lucky shot, but it is going to happen every once in awhile). the Japanese navy learned this the hard way when the Allies sent destroyer packs after the Japanese heavies in the south Pacific; the "tin cans" effectively neutralized Japanese cruisers and battleships with torpedo attacks. great example of light, fast, and cheap disabling big, heavy, and expensive with proper use of tactics.

if we wanted cruise missiles as a primary conventional weapon, we could build them for $100,000 each or less if we accepted success rate of 60% rather than 80%. unfortunately, the designs themselves and the production lines were set up for production runs of one a month, not one a day.

unfortunately, due to the unholy alliance between Congress, the Pentagon, and industry, our military no longer has credibility. they've sold the country too many white elephants. we could do a lot better if we eliminated about 2/3 of the general officer staff. make the requirements for promotions from CPT to MAJ to COL to BG a minimum of 4 years of combat unit command. somehow we need to eliminate the "procurement program general".
 
I agree with you about too many flag officers. We have more flag officers now then we did at the end of WWII when we had nearly 6 million men under arms.

Even at $100,000 a copy that's a lot of money for delivery of a thousand pounds of conventional explosives. Cruise missiles were designed to hit the target you couldn't take out any other way because of AAA etc. of course when your mission profile calls for no casualties, that's every target I guess. Don't get me wrong, I'm not for casualties, but our reluctance to fight in close will eventually cost us dearly.

You're right about the unholy alliance. I think President Eisenhower warned us about the "Military Industrial Complex". We are running out of things like cruise missiles and TOW anti tank missiles. All of the high tech munitions we expended out of war reserve in the Persian Gulf and Yugoslavia haven't been replaced. I'm not even sure if the TOW missile is still in production. I wonder how long we could sustain a mid to high intensity conflict. I'd bet we couldn't go more then 30 days. Against a determined enemy who was willing to take losses to achieve his goal that wouldn't be enough. I'm afraid that someone will use the same type of tactics opn us that we used on the Wermacht...just overwhelm us with large numbers of technically inferior tanks and aircraft.

Out at Ft Irwin, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment regularly beats the best our army puts up against them. And they do this with single channel radios, no thermal sights or sophisticated RPVs or other airborne surveillance systems. How do they do this, they know the terrain, and they know how the American systems work, so they know how to beat them. Our units are better for the experience, but should we think that our potential enemies aren't as smart as we are? I think that's a dangerous assumption to make. I predict that if we don't get back to our roots when it comes to the military, we will see a replay of the Task Force Smith debacle somewhere in the world in the next ten years and the American people will wonder what the billions they poured into defense bought them.

Jeff
 
There's never going to be an honest comparison between the MiG-29, Su-27 and the F-15 and F-16. I think too many toes would get stepped on. There have been a few exercises between the ex-East German Mig-29s and F-16s, now that the Luftwaffe has them. The results are on the net somewhere. The overall impression was that the MiG-29 was good, but the F-16 was better (for various reasons). I don't really know if that's true, never having flown either A/C, but I don't really expect honesty where defense contract dollars are at stake. Does anyone here know more about the relative merits of the planes? I know the F-16 cockpit is supposed to be more user-friendly (HOTAS, etc.) but the MiG has the off-axis targeting system and the R-73 (AA-11) missile, which supposedly beats the AIM-9 hands down. Shorter range, but better T/W ratio and better close-in manueverability. Interestingly, the MiG's 30mm cannon is supposed to be the most accurate in the world, but only has an 80 second barrel life. What do they make those things out of? Of course I guess 80 seconds is about 3000 rounds so...

Speaking of procurement failures, does anyone have any more info on the Sgt. York DIVADS? I know it was a big scandal (self-destructing targets and the like) and do we have anything currently that would fulfill the mission of a short-to-medium range AA capability? I know the M163 is getting long in the tooth and is only short range and I'm not familiar with how well Chapparal works. Same with Avenger and Rapier systems. Besides, I guess I'm interested in the guns, not the missles, as you can't jam a shell! (though you can jam its radar). Also, wasn't the Patriot not as effective as we were led to believe?

John
 
The right kind of "High tech" can be desicive on the battlefield.
In its day the M1 Garand was high tech, but it gave our infantrymen a major advantage in World war two and Korea.
The M1 Abrams main battle tank was extensively trashed for being high tech and being equipped with "useless gadgets" kike FLIRs, laser range finders, and digital computers. Compared to the "rugged and reliable" Russian T72s it was supposed to be a piece oj junk. When the Gulf War came however, the "complex and unreliable" M1A1s destroted large numbers of T72s wjth no significant losses.
You just have to be careful and realistic when deciding what high tech weapons to buy.
On the F15-F22 question, the current situation is just another example of Clinton administration incompetence in defense matters. Their spokesmen often say we don't need the F22, the F15 can handle any opponent's fighters. Then they propose closing down the F15 production line. This is similar to their stopping priduction of the F14 Tomcat, leaving the US navy with no first class carrier fighter in production.
 
John,
We still have the Vulcan, but the Avenger is replacing it in most units. I think the National Guard divisions just recently retired the old M42 Duster (twin 40mm). If we were smart we'd just distribute the Stinger down to platoon level, like the old Soviets did with the SA7. The Avenger is a Stinger mounted on a turret that slides into the rear of a HMMWV. I don't think we are looking at any gun AA system right now. The Air Force wouldn't like that though, they don't want us to have anything we can shoot aircraft down with. We might shoot one of our own down when it mistakenly bombed us. :) I think the official USAF view is that they will clear the sky of enemy aircraft, making air defense a non-issue. So far they have succeeded.

I got a look at the T80 that the MI detachment at Ft Irwin has. Funny thing, it didn't look near as crude as the propagandists have led us to believe. A lot of electronics including a laser range finder IRRC. Interesting story as to how we aquired it; supposedly after the wall came down and the Soviets were pulling out of the former East Germany, a battalion commander sold several to British intellegence for 25K each to raise money to ship his unit home to the USSR. Don't know how true that is, but that was their story.

It's intersting how the military can give the troops one story about enemy capablities and give congress another one. Troops were often briefed that Soviet block equipment was crude, unreliable and not very up to date, but there was a lot of it. Then the Defense Department published an annual every year called Soviet Military Power. It was designed to influence policy makers. The former Soviet Union looked just as modern and up to date as the evil empire from Star Wars in that publication. High quality art work depicted their newest technolgy dominating the battle field. The truth of course was somewhere in between. I still have a few of those old annuals from the 80s around somewhere.

Hard Ball - We can't really judge how capable our systems are by the gulf war. Who knows how we'd do against someone who had the will to fight? The M1A1 is a success story, but I don't think it's invulnerable. I recommend you read "The Lessons of Modern War" published by the Institute for Strategic Studies. It's a three volume set that covers the Arab Isreali Wars, the Falklands War and the Iran/Iraq War. I think it was published in 88 or 89. After reading the volume on the Iran/Iraq war I realized that the Gulf War was a forgone conclusion, it really couldn't have come out any other way. You have to wonder though, how the Air/Land battle doctrine and all the technology that it was built around would have performed against a competent enemy who had the will to fight. I'm glad we didn't have to find out, not that we would have lost, but that we didn't have to pay in blood for the lessons.
Jeff
 
Hmmm. I knew the Avenger is a Stinger on a vehicle, but is it the same missile exactly? Seems like you could put a bigger warhead or motor on it for increased range/lethality once the manportability is not an issue. Dusters!! Did they upgrade those with radar or something? I wouldn't think they would have a snowball's chance at hitting a jet-speed target with just the eyeball and a hand crank. Still, if you put enough lead out there you'll maybe hit something once in a while.

I think the easy victory (comparatively) in the Gulf War has made us a bit complacent in our ideas of what the future of combat holds for the country. I'm not denigrating the fighting ability of our troops at all, but the Gulf was a theater tailor-made for our tactics and equipment, it would seem. The desert allowed little in the way of camo and made our complete air superiority all the more effective. It was also perfect terrain for our tanks, with the better sights, gunlaying and crew training. Don't forget the Arty! I concur that a low-intensity conflict in a region like Kosovo against a determined enemy (and the Serbs were nothing if not determined) might have been a lot more difficult. Just ask the Wermacht how easy it was to keep Tito out of their hair!

John

[This message has been edited by Gopher a 45 (edited February 15, 2000).]
 
maybe we can form a "general's brigade" and use them as shock troops... ;)

Jeff, I'll restate your concern about "up-close-n-personal" combat this way; we have always been averse to preparing for brute force land combat, yet we always end up doing so despite being poorly equipped and prepared. I prefer that we stay reluctant, but history shows time and time again that we eventually throw young bodies at the problem regardless of the consequences. so we should plan, configure, and train for large-scale land warfare, because by being better prepared we are in the best position to avoid it. the question is, where are our weak links?

cruise missiles and other high-tech gadgetry cannot replace conventional ground and air forces, but they are good tools when designed and used appropriately. again, Desert Storm provides an example; we used Apaches firing Hellfires to clean out radar sites so the F-15s could begin their interdiction runs. DS also showed that we had to drive our armored and mechanised forces into Iraq to get Saddam's attention. my conclusion is that there's no substitute for combined arms attack, for which I define "combined arms" = strategic air + interdiction air + CAS + arty + armor + infantry.

in almost all things, there usually is a "sweet spot" in between the extremes where one gets the best results from a unit of expense. in the high-tech/low-volume versus low-tech/high-volume debate, there are plenty of examples where one sees a "knee" in the efficiency curve. an example I'll use here is that the bomb tonnage required to destroy a given target type has dropped over the years. there was a big jump in effectiveness when the F-16 came on line, as its computerized stability & control system stabilized the airframe so that iron bombs would have a smoother and more accurate release. so the electronics which were developed for air coombat maneuverability also happened to provide a great bombing platform. our military is pretty poor at finding the sweet spot, however; they tend to go for either the "ultimate solution" or stick to an existing NSN item. they need to consider evolution as well as revolution when it comes to technology.




[This message has been edited by Ivanhoe (edited February 16, 2000).]
 
IMHO, Desert Storm was less a vindication of current doctrine than a windfall of our preparation for the expected Warsaw Pact invasion of western Europe. kinda like getting into a sh*t-slinging contest with a cattle rancher. the Kosovo/Bosnia/Serbia situation indicates the other end of the spectrum, when friend and foe look alike, weather is awful, terrain allows guerrilla-style tactics, etc.

Jeff, you obviously know more about this stuff then armchair generals like me, so I figure you'll have some perspective on the Airland Battle concept. when I've read the usual simplistic articles on ALB, it always seemed to me that the concept of victory thru maneuver assumes an enemy who is inherently unwilling or unable to close and fight against less favorable odds. this is great if we're fighting France ;), but perhaps wishful thinking against Combloc or dictatorship forces. some folks won't quit just because they are outnumbered or out-maneuvered; Chechins for example. sometimes you have to keep hitting until the guy's eyes roll back in his head...
 
Gopher, your assessment of F-16 vs Mig-29 matches what I've read. the two areas in which the Russians excel are continual development of new missile designs, and having flexible, well-rounded capabilities (for example, their defensive-measures suites).

F-16 is *the* fighter pilot's fighter. easy to fly, great overall maneuverability, great electronics, etc. its one of those few systems where you think of what you want it to do, and it does it. weaknesses include mediocre supersonic performance (fixed geometry engine inlet, thus shock losses), small wing area for some situations, and poor weapons suite. we have air-air missile systems that predate the pilots; the Sidewinder and Sparrow missiles both originated back in the early 1960s IIRC, though they have been updated some. the Russians are much better about developing new missile designs.

the Russians have a totally different design philosophy. for example, they design their jet engines for a much shorter lifespan. they run their engines hot and hard, and expect to replace them at 5,000 hours or less. we design them to last much longer, with a few overhauls here and there. the Russian approach give better power/weight ratio, whereas our approach allows much more training. combat results indicate that the best investment in air combat is training, so we are probably better off with a bit less thrust and more training hours.

the Russians have made great improvements in aircraft electronics according to sources like Jane's. aerodynamically their stuff looks quite good. I don't think their structures are as good, nor is their production quality as good. they are much better at "purpose-built" aircraft; they have a design for just about every conceivable role.

the Patriot is a mixed bag. better than what the detractors claim, not as good as the proponents claim. one problem was that the Scuds tended to break up in flight, which caused multiple radar targets. Raytheon apparently came up with a software fix that identified the main item to aim at. another problem is the "soft kill" scenario. we were getting partial hits, but not decomposing the Scud in-flight. even if the warhead fails to detonate, and the missile loses navigation and control, its still a big heavy doohickey that's going to land somewhere. and again, there was a "C cubed I" problem in that we didn't have real-time coordination of our satellite systems, air defense radars, and Patriot launch controls.
 
Hi Ivanhoe,

I'm interested in the Russian design precisely because they have such an entirely different design philosophy. It seems that the Russians out of all the big powers at least know their limitations. The shorter lifespan of the Russian engines is a case in point. Also, I've heard the MiG-29 and Su-27 described as easy to maintain, or otherwise designed so that a "semi-literate guy with a dull screwdriver could work on them." No complicated engine overhaul shops for them! When an engine needs to be maintained, it's sent off and a new one strapped on (which is supposedly very easy with the MiG-29). I guess in war, that shortens the tail of the train, provided you have a good stockpile of spares on hand. Besides, I think in combat, they don't expect the aircraft to outlive its engines anyway, which is probably a good bet, but as you said, it makes peacetime training all the more difficult and expensive. As an aside, economics may play a bigger role even than engines. I hear that the average Russian pilot only flies a few hours a month due to costs of fuel (and maintainance) although that could be just rumor. Also, you have to take into account the overall Russian war philosophy, which seems to be "overwhelm superior technology with brute force and sheer numbers." The more the better, the cheaper the better. It worked for them in WWII and the reasoning is also applicable today, up to a point, so long as the enemy technology isn't vastly superior, which is where I guess our discussion started.

I well agree that the Russian quality controls aren't as good. I've looked at a lot of (photos) of MiG-29s and Su-27s (and older designs "in the flesh") up close and the overall "finish" on the A/C is much rougher than one would see in a comparable Western A/C. But, that is just in keeping with the philosophy above. Also, the MiG-29/Su-27 have at least a nominal rough-field capability, which could prove to be a deployment asset, if ever needed. I really can't imagine an F-15 or F-16 taking off from anyhthing less than a paved airfield! The design of the F-15 and F-16 is very ironic, given that we have such a beautiful platform, (great radar and other electronics, pilot-friendly) but with fairly unspectacular weapons to hang on it. I hear the AMRAAM didn't live up to its expectations in combat. I suppose the Russians spend so much on the missile, because that's the "sharp end of the stick" and the plane may be regarded as a semi-disposable launching platform. They know they can (or used to be able to) win a one-for-one war of attrition with the West, but whether that still applies... However, of all the wonderful things I've read about the new Russian missile designs, I've never seen any reports of how well they actually work in non-test conditions (well, except from the manufacturer!) :D

Oh, I think the Patriot did an okay job given its comabt debut, I was just wondering if there'd been any more analysis of the effectiveness since then. The soft kills were a problem as I recall, but then the SCUD is a rather large object to break up, isn't it? I don't remember how big the Patriot warhead is, but to reduce a (20 some-odd meter?) SCUD to harmless fragments seems a lot to ask of one missle. Any truth to the rumor that the Israelis sold some Patriots to China? I don't remember where I read that, but if true, it would seem to be very short-sighted, as it couldn't be long before Patriot-resistant SCUDs fell on Tel Aviv!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top