Canada's tanks

[KevinB]

Regardless of the number of tanks mobilized isn't likely that there will be more ground to cover than there are tanks to cover it? And that there will be open flanks?

Keep in mind that generally no Western Army acts alone.

The there are slightly more than 2000 NATO 4 Tank Troop/Platoons last time I looked at the numbers of Armor available (9,000 plus MBT's).

The Estonia, Lavia. Lithuania border with Russia and Belarus is approximately 1,000km
The Polish border with Belarus is ~310km
Then the FInland/Norwegian boarder with Russia is another ~1,400km - but most of that isn't tank country -

 

[PrairieFella]

Talk to the Taliban, the Viet Cong, heck, even the Ukrainians. They started out training with wooden rifles and preparing Molotov cocktails.

The Russians could bring more tanks to the fight than the Americans. And look where we are today.

Kuwait, half the size of Luhansk Oblast engaged two or three Corps and a bunch of air forces for
the best part of a year.

Russian tactics of driving in straight lines playing bumper tanks is why their tank attacks fail often. Penny packeting out tanks the soviet way also contributes to this as you cannot achieve the massing and shock action for successful attacks.

 

[Kirkhill]

Russian tactics of driving in straight lines playing bumper tanks is why their tank attacks fail often. Penny packeting out tanks the soviet way also contributes to this as you cannot achieve the massing and shock action for successful attacks.

You are both still arguing for concentration and concentration necessarily means focusing effort on one patch of land. This means that the rest of the land is uncovered.

It assumes that you can find and dominate the singular and unique schwerpunkt that will cause a house of cards to fall.

Dividing the world up into countries and assuming that political borders result in secure flanks works in a relatively stable political environment. It can even work in a campaign in a geographically proscribed theatre like NW Europe between June 6 1944 and May 8 1945 (11 months of engagement). Or Italy, July 9 1943 to May 2 1945, (21 months). Ukraine has already gone on for 45 months and over an area twice the size of Italy with a frontline 5 times the size.

You might be able to replicate the 1860 and 1900 attacks on Peking with a Baghdad style thunder run but I doubt you would get that far or that it would resolve any conflicts.

And I doubt if you would be able to replace the tanks lost in any time soon.

 

[PrairieFella]

You are both still arguing for concentration and concentration necessarily means focusing effort on one patch of land. This means that the rest of the land is uncovered.

It assumes that you can find and dominate the singular and unique schwerpunkt that will cause a house of cards to fall.

Dividing the world up into countries and assuming that political borders result in secure flanks works in a relatively stable political environment. It can even work in a campaign in a geographically proscribed theatre like NW Europe between June 6 1944 and May 8 1945 (11 months of engagement). Or Italy, July 9 1943 to May 2 1945, (21 months). Ukraine has already gone on for 45 months and over an area twice the size of Italy with a frontline 5 times the size.

You might be able to replicate the 1860 and 1900 attacks on Peking with a Baghdad style thunder run but I doubt you would get that far or that it would resolve any conflicts.

And I doubt if you would be able to replace the tanks lost in any time soon.

I dont think you understand the principles of armour and how its an force multiplier on the battlefield.

 

[Kirkhill]

Which battlefield? Which singular, in place and time, battlefield?

Why do you think we are being outflanked by hybrid warfare? By economic warfare? By political warfare? And by non-tank technologies?

Our enemies are not meeting us on the ground on which we want to be met. They are doing the other thing...whatever that may be.

Tanks have their place. Just as Hobart's Funnies had their place and left an enduring legacy. But in a dispersed, netted, multi-nodal environment you are going to find it increasingly difficult to find lynch-pin targets against which to concentrate.

I don't think the enemy is going to create useful targets by massing effectors or allow you the opportunity to mass your own.

Now, massing effects on targets of opportunity, that is likely to be something else again.

 

[FJAG]

. . . But in a dispersed, netted, multi-nodal environment you are going to find it increasingly difficult to find lynch-pin targets against which to concentrate.

I don't think the enemy is going to create useful targets by massing effectors or allow you the opportunity to mass your own.

I don't think that massing against a mass is the idea, anyway. The idea is to mass where they aren't; punch through; throw their lines of communications into chaos; and collapse their defence. I can't think of anything better than tanks and IFVs properly supported by fires and air defence for the job.

Now, massing effects on targets of opportunity, that is likely to be something else again.

I'm a great fan of massing effects on targets. Such effects, however, are, for the most part, transient. Even heavily degraded and neutralized targets regenerate and regain effectiveness if given enough time to heal.

 

[Kirkhill]

I don't think that massing against a mass is the idea, anyway. The idea is to mass where they aren't; punch through; throw their lines of communications into chaos; and collapse their defence. I can't think of anything better than tanks and IFVs properly supported by fires and air defence for the job.

I'm a great fan of massing effects on targets. Such effects, however, are, for the most part, transient. Even heavily degraded and neutralized targets regenerate and regain effectiveness if given enough time to heal.

I agree that the best force for breaching is a heavy force.

My problem is that nobody can afford to be heavy everywhere. Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by encoursging them to try. And the cumulative results of their efforts have been swept away in less than four years in Ukraine.

China has a fleet of 6800 tanks.
The US fleet is reported at around 4650.

In both cases around half are in reserve storage with some vintages predating the 1980s in China. In the US the oldest are Reagan era Abrams.

Russia has lost north of 4000 tanks in Ukraine and has emptied their warehouses.

How many more tank heavy campaigns are likely to be fought?

And even if the tanks are held as a rainy day fund isn't conflict likely to continue?

I know We/US/NATO would do things differently than the Russians and we may even had a better outcome. But given the increasing cost of armour and the decreasing cost of "arrows" I still think a plan is needed for all those places and times where tanks are not going to be available.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Plus new tank design will have to protect from all round threats and not mainly frontal aspect kinetic penetrators. Since anything over 55tons is getting problematic, it means less frontal armour. By ditching the loader you can reduced the armoured volume (allowing better armour distribution), but lose out on SA and increase task load. That might cancel out improvements in SA by cameras, etc.

 

[Kirkhill]

Plus new tank design will have to protect from all round threats and not mainly frontal aspect kinetic penetrators. Since anything over 55tons is getting problematic, it means less frontal armour. By ditching the loader you can reduced the armoured volume (allowing better armour distribution), but lose out on SA and increase task load. That might cancel out improvements in SA by cameras, etc.

Unless you start relying more on AI.
Let the weapons free when circumstances permit.
Net the troop tightly so that, for example, one person could manage the air battle, one the near battle, one the distant battle and one maintains SA on the rear and flanks.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Unless you start relying more on AI.
Let the weapons free when circumstances permit.
Net the troop tightly so that, for example, one person could manage the air battle, one the near battle, one the distant battle and one maintains SA on the rear and flanks.

EW is a thing, the more you transmit the more the target you become. Also lessons from Ukraine is that high ground still counts as it gives you LOS and better communication with your drones. I think that outside of small groups of specialists in every army, the EW battlefield and terrain is not well understood.

A UGV in Ukraine currently requires a team of about 3 to operate it and another team of three to fly a drone to assist the UGV team. So that's two vehicles, 6 soldiers to operate 1 UGV. Judging by the lack of success in the self driving car market, on what is a far more controlled and less hostile environment, I don't see UGV's getting much easier to use anytime soon.

Your still going to have to first teach a tank crew how to drive the tank, navigate, maintain it, the TC still needs to learn basic command skills, navigation, leadership and how to bring it all together, before they can learn any advanced stuff. And you got fit all that training into the the training schedule. I will argue to reduce the burden on the crew, so they can focus on the local battle and their own survival.

 

[KevinB]

I think the next Gen tanks will have common bodies with IFV’s and Close Combat Support Systems.
Front engine (like the Merkava and Namer)
Heavily automated
45-55t
Modularity
Optionally Manned will be a heavily desired feature.

 

[Kirkhill]

EW is a thing, the more you transmit the more the target you become. Also lessons from Ukraine is that high ground still counts as it gives you LOS and better communication with your drones. I think that outside of small groups of specialists in every army, the EW battlefield and terrain is not well understood.

A UGV in Ukraine currently requires a team of about 3 to operate it and another team of three to fly a drone to assist the UGV team. So that's two vehicles, 6 soldiers to operate 1 UGV. Judging by the lack of success in the self driving car market, on what is a far more controlled and less hostile environment, I don't see UGV's getting much easier to use anytime soon.

Your still going to have to first teach a tank crew how to drive the tank, navigate, maintain it, the TC still needs to learn basic command skills, navigation, leadership and how to bring it all together, before they can learn any advanced stuff. And you got fit all that training into the the training schedule. I will argue to reduce the burden on the crew, so they can focus on the local battle and their own survival.

For a change I wasn't thinking of UGVs in this context.

I was thinking of potentiating crewed vehicles by tightening up C2 within the troop. Your point about comms is taken but I wonder what the state of play is with short range LOS comms - alternatives to RF systems.

As for the UGVs/OMVs I think the engineers, arty and infantry weapons companies, along with the loggies, are going to be the early adopters.

UAVs are another matter entirely. Ubique.

 

[Kirkhill]

Re the comms issue....

This is what AI tells me - for what it is worth.

AI Overview



Short-range communications that are resistant to electronic warfare (EW) primarily employ techniques like
spread spectrum (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum and Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum), ultra-wideband (UWB), and directional communication (Li-Fi, millimeter-wave laser-like beams) to achieve low probability of interception/detection (LPI/LPD) and high resilience to jamming.

Technologies and Techniques

• Spread Spectrum (SS): This is a foundational technique in EW-resistant radio communication.
  • Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS): Spreads the signal across a wide frequency band using a pseudo-random code, making it difficult to detect or jam with narrowband interference.
  • Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS): The signal rapidly jumps between many different frequencies in a pseudo-random sequence known only to the transmitter and receiver. This makes it very difficult for a jammer to target all frequencies simultaneously. Bluetooth and ZigBee use variations of this in the 2.4 GHz band.
• Ultra-Wideband (UWB): UWB uses very low energy pulses across a vast spectrum (hundreds of MHz or even several GHz). Its low power spectral density makes the signal "hide" within the background noise, providing excellent LPI/LPD capabilities and a high degree of interference resistance.
• Directional Communication: Using highly focused beams for transmission makes it much harder for an adversary outside the narrow beam to intercept or jam the signal.
  • • Millimeter-wave (mmWave) Radio: These systems use laser-like, highly directional beams at very high frequencies, making them highly resistant to disruption, though they generally require a line of sight.
    • Li-Fi (Light Fidelity): This technology uses the modulation of visible, ultraviolet, or infrared light to transmit data. It is inherently resistant to typical radio-frequency EW because it uses a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum and generally requires a clear line of sight, which limits interception to within the beam's path.
• • Physical Layer Techniques:
    • Low Power Transmission: Transmitting at the lowest possible power required for the short range can help avoid detection.
    • Specialized Antennas: Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars and Sidelobe Time Modulation (SLTM) antenna arrays can form multiple, independent, and rapidly changing beams, making them more difficult to jam and enhancing LPI/LPD.
  • Networking Techniques:
    • Mesh Networking: Protocols like ZigBee and Thread support mesh networking, allowing devices to relay messages through multiple paths. This provides network resilience; if one node or path is jammed, the communication can be rerouted.

By combining these techniques, short-range communication systems can achieve a high degree of resilience against modern electronic warfare threats.

 

[Kirkhill]

I think the next Gen tanks will have common bodies with IFV’s and Close Combat Support Systems.
Front engine (like the Merkava and Namer)
Heavily automated
45-55t
Modularity
Optionally Manned will be a heavily desired feature.

This business of engine in the front vs engine in the back.....

TAPV vs AVGP

I've noted previously that the TAPV and the Piranha AVGP share basically the same geometry. They are rectangles with the engine stuck in one corner. In the AVGP case the driver and commander sit in line beside the engine and the engine is at the front. In the TAPV case the driver and commander sit at the other side of the vehicle side by side and the engine sits at the back.

Nuther thought,

Saladin and Saracen - same supplier (Alvis), same engine (Rolls Royce B80), same gear box (five speeds forwards and five speeds reverse).
Seemingly the same vehicle from the top of the hood/bonnet down. The primary difference is the location of the driver and the direction he faced.