Cancel MGS - Buy new Cockeril 105mm design (see link)...

[ArmyRick]

Battle procedure is what takes place prior to launching a mission..
BATTLE DRILLS are what a section performs when going on a quick attack. Company, platoon or section.

I am not going to argue this trivial nonsense anymore. yes suppression is important but so is assaulting the enemy.

 

[Infanteer]

I am not going to argue this trivial nonsense anymore. yes suppression is important but so is assaulting the enemy.

Well, I don't think it is trivial at all because if the principle is valid, then it should require some change to basic tactical thought.  The articles above point these changes out.

If you don't wish to discuss it, that's fine; but don't bother treating everybody around here like a pack of recruits because you simply don't want to provide an alternate explanation.

 

[Kirkhill]

Fire & Movement

Left jab, right hook.

Some troops opposing you will run when they see you.  Others will wait until you are in their trench.  Some can only be killed. 

It is about defeating the enemy, not necessarily killing them.  It is about making them do what you want them to do.  Ultimately this usually means putting down their guns and going away so that you can stand in their place.  Everything else an army or a soldier does is geared to that end.

 

[Infanteer]

It is about defeating the enemy, not necessarily killing them.  It is about making them do what you want them to do.  Ultimately this usually means putting down their guns and going away so that you can stand in their place.  Everything else an army or a soldier does is geared to that end.

Right, and I guess the argument is that establishing "fire dominance" is the key to doing this.

 

[Kirkhill]

Right, and I guess the argument is that establishing "fire dominance" is the key to doing this.

How about numerical superiority?  Or denying the enemy the opportunity to relocate unobserved?  Or opposing the enemy with vehicles that they can't stop?  Couldn't those stratagems result in the same outcome?  Essentially the commander of the enemy force, on discovering that his position is untenable gives up.

This was the procedure with the mercenary armies of the 16th century and the professional state armies of the 18th century when commanders were personally responsible for the financial losses in their units.

I know our time is different - although perhaps becoming less so - but the point I am trying to make is to keep an open mind and be prepared to use all tools available.    Don't focus on the jab.  The other guy just might learn to expect it.

Fire power works when the enemy is engaged.  But you might want to win without engaging the enemy.

 

[DG-41]

I think that the sterling performance of the M1A1 in Iraq, both in the "March Up" and in the gruelling insurgency battles in cities, attests to the notion of "firepower dominance" that was mentioned earlier.

In essence, the argument is that "WIN THE FIREFIGHT" is the most crucial step in modern combat, the determinant of victory.

Based on what I have been seeing/reading lately, I agree.

I think it is interesting to note that in the "Thunder Run" into Bagdad (I have just finished reading the book of the same name) that the battles around the Hwy 8 interchanges (objectives Moe, Larry, and Curly), which were being held by infantry, came perilously close to being lost by the Americans as they were unable to establish fire dominance. If the Iraqis had been better led and organized, it seems entirely possible that they could have retaken the interchanges, cut off the "Thunder Run's" MSR, and then destroyed the armour in detail.

The American infantry holding the interchanges were very much aware of that too.

The success of the M1 in Bagdad seems to be that it was almost completely impervious to all the weapons that were used against it (the Bradley too, it seems) and it carried substancial firepower. An M1 could advance almost completely unopposed, blast eveything in sight, and win the firefight. With that done, the infantry could clean up the rest.

As a quick aside, that experience would suggest that light infantry had better have integral and effective anti-tank weapons with them, or they will be defeated by anybody who brings tanks to the fight. I wonder if Karl G can defeat Abrams/Bradley from any angle?

DG

 

[Infanteer]

(the Bradley too, it seems)

How much heavier is Bradley compared to a LAV in terms of protection?

 

[canuck101]

The Bradley weights in at 50,000 lbs info found on this site: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m2.htm
the LAV III weights in at 16 950 kg info found on this site: http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/lf/English/2_0_48_1.asp?FlashEnabled=1&uSubSection=48&uSection=5

I know that was not what you were looking for.I know you were looking for the protection difference.

 

[a_majoor]

How about numerical superiority?  Or denying the enemy the opportunity to relocate unobserved?  Or opposing the enemy with vehicles that they can't stop?  Couldn't those stratagems result in the same outcome?  Essentially the commander of the enemy force, on discovering that his position is untenable gives up.

This was the procedure with the mercenary armies of the 16th century and the professional state armies of the 18th century when commanders were personally responsible for the financial losses in their units.

I know our time is different - although perhaps becoming less so - but the point I am trying to make is to keep an open mind and be prepared to use all tools available.    Don't focus on the jab.  The other guy just might learn to expect it.

Fire power works when the enemy is engaged.  But you might want to win without engaging the enemy.

The problem with Manoeuvre Warfare theory in its extreme form is it makes no allowance for enemies who do not share your assumptions. From the "Three Hundred" at Thermopylae to Jihadis bunkered into hospitals, Mosques and schools in Fallujah, there are enemies who will not run and need to be dug out with cold steel (or vaporized with some heavy duty firepower). Even with western style armies, you can only manoeuvre so far before you bump into someone holding key terrain, and need to fight your way through.

The example of the Condottieri and early modern armies also only works when both sides shared the same assumptions. The Condottieri armies were swept aside by the invading French armies of Francis I, and the British and French armies suffered drubbings at the hands of native troops and militias in India and North America, since those armies did not square off in neat lines to deliver vollies of fire.....

In the modern context, Infantry soldiers need lightweight weapons which can deliver a lot of firepower, and need to be kitted to carry lots of ammunition into battle. The Equipment board has lots of threads on weapons (like the Shrike LMG), improved tactical vests and load carrying equipment to allow our soldiers to do this, and self propelled assault guns like the CV_CT or other systems provide fire above and beyond what the PBI can carry into battle. In our training, we don't carry enough ammunition or blanks to really see the effect (and don't have enough MILES or WES gear to really get the point driven home). Certainly the CV_CT is still not "all that", and given the close confines of urban and complex terrain, protection against all sorts of weapons is needed (which means a tank or full tracked armoured assault gun), or procedures need to be developed to call and deliver "magic bullet" firepower in the form of PGMs with the speed and volume to fully suppress the enemy.

 

[DG-41]

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/images/armor-comp.gif

One might assume then that a LAV + applique would have similar RPG resistance to a Bradley, assuming that the applique armour was fitted and was struck.

But in any case, even a basic LAV should be infantry-small-arms "proof".

DG

 

[Lance Wiebe]

The basic LAV can be defeated by 12.7 mm AP over the frontal arc, and 7.62 AP over sides/rear.  Adding the applique armour brings the protection from 12.7 to 14.5 over the frontal arc, hardly RPG proof.

The original BFV was hardly RPG proof either, which is why they have added so much add on armour, starting with the A1 and carrying on with the A2.  Current versions of the BFV are indeed well protected from RPG, something even our LAV's with add-on armour cannot attain.

 

[Infanteer]

Lance, is this because the BFV's tracked suspension can handle more armour weight?

 

[Lance Wiebe]

From what I have read and been told, wheeled cross country vehicle types such as the LAV are considered overweight if the per axle weight is five tons or more.  For the LAV III and other 8 wheel platforms, that gives a weight of no more than 20 tons.  So, yes, wheels do have a weight limit. 

Before anyone starts getting on my case, we all know that commercial trucks have far more than five tons per axle.  The big killer is ground pressure, tracks spread the weight over a much bigger footprint, wheels tend to get stuck in snow or mud where tracks won't.  Now, if we never intended to take them off asphalt............

 

[Blue Max]

Now, if we never intended to take them off asphalt............

Sarcasm - Outside of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal there are not that many roads in Canada...and then if you take in the conditions when we turn into the Great White North and you have to wonder, does NDHQ have serious contingency plans to defend Canada from ALL POTENTIAL incursions?  :-\

If our future is all wheeled armoured vehicles, then I think NOT. :-[

 

[a_majoor]

From what I have read and been told, wheeled cross country vehicle types such as the LAV are considered overweight if the per axle weight is five tons or more.  For the LAV III and other 8 wheel platforms, that gives a weight of no more than 20 tons.  So, yes, wheels do have a weight limit. 

Before anyone starts getting on my case, we all know that commercial trucks have far more than five tons per axle.  The big killer is ground pressure, tracks spread the weight over a much bigger footprint, wheels tend to get stuck in snow or mud where tracks won't.  Now, if we never intended to take them off asphalt............

In order for a wheeled AFV to have comparable cross country mobility to a tracked vehicle, it needs to have comparable ground pressure. In practical terms, you would see something like an ATV with really wide tires and skid steering. Essentially, you are just creating a tracked vehicle the hard way.....

The real killer isn't the AFV's, though, but the support vehicles. If the enemy disrupts the supply convoys then the tracks vs wheels debate becomes a bit moot. So long as the supply vehicles are confined to the roads, then we have the potential for a serious problem ahead.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Again turning the Thunder Run http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/36532.0.html , the odyssey of the combat trains reveals the problems that modern CSS can face.  The M1s achieve their mix of protection, mobility and firepower at the price of high fuel consumption.  Pretty much one day of combat operations and you must refuel.  My instructor at Ft Knox quipped in 1998 that if he was facing a US force he would let the tanks go by and then hit the refuellers.

The combat trains come up with ammo and fuel trucks escorted by a handful of HUMMVWs.  (From the first thread)  As they are trying to push forward the echelon (large, wheeled, unarmoured and very vulnerable fuel and ammo trucks), one solution brought out was to rely on speed to "run the gauntlet."  In order to have speed the order is made for one column to leave out armoured (and in this case tracked) vehicles from the escort to achieve speed.  I was thinking that LAVs and Coyotes would have made good escorts for these supply columns.  This would not have been Rear Area Security.  It was blasting through a gauntlet of enemy armed with small arms, AAA guns, RPGs mortars and car bombs.  As the obstacles had been cleared by the lead forces an all-wheeled AFV escort would have been handy.

Some other lessons reveal themselves as well.  Most of the trucks lack radios, meaning that the Lt in the front cannot pass on orders without getting everybody out.  CSS elements need the same installations as the combat troops these days.  Many trucks have 50 cals on them but they go unmanned during the fight.  Perhaps a remote C6 installation like that found on our new M113s?  Enough to allow the co-driver to bring suppressive fire down.  An even sexier mod would be to have a hand-held remote to allow the gunner to dismount when the convoy is halted and still fire the weapon (as opposed to asking the gunner to sit on a massive stationary IED in the middle of a firefight).  Probably possible if not necessarily practical.  On the plus side the combat trains had the ammo properly configured for the the troops in contact.

Turning to the thread at hand, I already believe that Coyotes and LAVs would have been very useful escorts.  Would a Troop of four MGS (or the beastie at the start of the thread) have been handy?  I suppose the effects of 105mm HESH would have been very useful, but more machine guns would be required.  If these large calibre gun weilding wheeled AFVs can truly acquire and fire on the move (to the flanks) then perhaps we have a very useful tool here.  If your escort force for a CSS convoy (enough to resupply a battalion sized Task Force of M1s etc) consisted of roughly six vehicles, would you rather all LAV/Coyote or perhaps four LAV/Coyote and two MGS?

Happy New Year,

2B

 

[DG-41]

I agree with the use of LAV as convoy escorts; there's a lot of firepower in a 25mm cannon and a coax MMG.

But I agree double on the need to treat and train CSS pers with more emphasis on the "combat" - my squadron went through this at Stalwart Guardian this past summer, when a sqaudron-sized convoy escort task turned into a giant Chinese fire drill when the truckers... made some unusual decisions when confronted with enemy presence, and command and control went to hell in a handbasket in very short order. Once C&C is lost, it is very difficult to re-establish.

( I also learned that, as LO, the job entails more than just running traces and frag o's back and forth between the convoy commander and the escort commander during the planning stages. If I had taken the time to do my own map recce and combat estimate of the proposed convoy route when the trace was handed to me by the convoy commander, I would have noticed the great big defile littered with ambush sites and could have suggested an alternate route on the spot, BEFORE it was graven in stone. *sigh*)

If your escort force for a CSS convoy (enough to resupply a battalion sized Task Force of M1s etc) consisted of roughly six vehicles, would you rather all LAV/Coyote or perhaps four LAV/Coyote and two MGS?

Hm. For sake of discussion, let's call it 8 vehicles and make it a Recce Troop convoy escort task. So I send a patrol up ahead as an advance guard, and then I have a patrol at the head of the convoy, a patrol at the tail of the convoy, and my HQ patrol in the centre of the convoy. And because we're on Hwy 8, a straight,  multi-lane, limited-access, Interstate sort of route, with little to no elevation changes to use as cover as we move along, we're not moving tactically by bounds, but rather screaming along at the best speed of the convoy.

*thinks*

I think the primary threat I'm facing are medium machine guns in roadside or standoff emplacements, RPGs in roadside emplacements, and the occasional suicide truck running onto the road in an attempt to ram. I don't need the anti-tank capability of the 105 (unless a tank shows up) and the 25mm can handle anything lighter than a full-on MBT.

What I DO need is supression. Ideally, the advance guard is going to locate the ambush sites and fire positions by setting them off prematurely. They'll radio back the contacts, and the patrol at the head of the convoy will pick them up and suppress as they go by, hand the contact back to the centre patrol (who suppresses in turn) and ditto back to the rear patrol - and if any weapons mounted on the CSS trucks can join in, so much the merrier.

While 105 HE makes for a good supression round, I don't think MGS (as I understand the layout) has sufficient ROF or ammo capacity on the main gun to last the entire way, and I don't think it has a coax MG either. I won't complain if you give me a couple of them in addition to the normal Coyotes, but I don't think I would trade a 25mm Coyote for an MGS on this mission.

Where it might be handy is smoke - if it has a smoke round, maybe I can smoke off nests as we approach them...

But you know what I *would* like?

If I can have a couple of M1 or Leo2, I'll send them along with the advance guard. Then if the advance guard finds a really big nest, I can leave a tank or two there to act as a static supression post. Unlike the MGS, the tank can afford to stay put and hand out punishment because it has enough protection to not need to rely on speed to keep it alive.

Please? Can I have a couple of Leopards?

DG

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

I've seen some good TTPs out of Iraq based on four "guntrucks" escorting a convoy.  Two up front and two in back.  Eight would be great, I suppose, if you can afford it!  Smaller "packages" with perhaps six trucks and four AFVs would have the advantage of being more "wieldy".  Smaller packages would also work for MRTs and ambs.

Coyotes and LAVs have the advantage of being able to operate at high speed on hard standing (like a highway) to allow the vulnerable trucks to also move quickly.  This cuts, to some degree, the Gordyian knot faced in Thunder Run.  They had M113s and Brads available to escort the trucks but the problem was that the trucks were then slowed down and became easier targets.  They had a few HMMVWs that could help out here, but there were then casualties among the escorts and not really enough firepower.  Coyotes and LAVs, however, could move quickly and lay down heavy suppressive fire at the same time.

I do believe that the MGS has a coax.  I saw an early demo (mostly CGI and some internal turret video) in 1998 at the Armor Conference down in Knox.  I asked how the coax got "readied" and the answer was that a crewmen opened a hatch and went up top before getting into contact.  I then asked how stoppages were remedied short of the crew getting up above the hull.  Perhaps they have worked this out (a problem for all "remote" machineguns, including the ones that I propose for the trucks above).

What are the threats here? 

    a.  Guys with AKs and light machine guns.
    b.  Guys with RPGs
    c.  Guys in cars with RPGs/AKs
    d.  Guys in cars with bombs (VBIEDs)

I'm no gunnery god, and I do wonder about the differing effects of the 25mm (sabot, frang or even HEIT) versus the 105mm against these types of targets.  On the face of it, 25mm and coax looks sufficient.  I suppose, however, that a hit (or near miss) with a 105 HESH round might also destroy/disable the RPG that the bad guy is holding.  Hit him with coax and some other bad guy can pick up the RPG.  Hit him with 25mm and the RPG might still survive.  If fire is coming from a building (threats a and b) would a 105mm round be better?  For car bombs, a hit with a 105mm would probably be harder to achieve than with 25mm if the target is moving a high speed (you could fire more 25mm rounds to achieve one or two hits, or just use coax and shoot in front of the vehicle).  That being said, 105mm would certainly resolve the matter with one hit.

Any input here Lance?

For these types of scenarios if I could only have one (25mm or 105mm) I guess I would go for the 25mm in a conventional turret.  A team of two MGS with four Coyotes (or LAVs), however, might be an interesting package.

Looking at the trucks again, what about 40mm AGLs in remote stations for some of the vehicles?  I wouldn't suggest it for a place that we are trying to stabilize, but for shooting matches like Thunder Run they might have been quite handy.

Cheers,

2B

 

[DG-41]

there were then casualties among the escorts

From what I remember from my reading, the escort casulties came from exposed crew commanders and (in at least one case) pure dumb luck. The fact that the escorts were in HUMMV didn't seem to be the reason why they were hit. In fact, that's one of the things I took away from my read of that, that the HUMMV didn't seem to be especially vulnerable.

Mind you, that's also a very small sample size. Is it a case that the HUMMVs were taking hits and shrugging them off, or were they hard to hit because of the convoy speed, or because the convoy had suprise, or because of poor Iraqi marksmanship, or a good job of convoy supression fire, or just more dumb luck? I dunno.

Eight would be great, I suppose, if you can afford it!

Well, that's supposed to be doctrine for a troop-level convoy escort task, but one makes do with what one has.

That being said, 105mm would certainly resolve the matter with one hit.

No doubt.   But I worry about MGS having enough ammo in the autoloader to support a mission that requires more-or-less continuous suppression fire down the entire length of the convoy route. The gun will also need to be fully stabilized and be able to do lead compensation - can MGS do that?

Looking at the trucks again, what about 40mm AGLs in remote stations for some of the vehicles?

That seems like an excellent supressive weapon, although I do worry about Blue-on-Blue from fragmentation effects if an excited and undertrained truck gunner puts a burst too close to the convoy.

DG

 

[Blue Max]

DG-41, would a LAV with an AMOS 120mm mortar system, or even an automatic 80mm turret be useful for convoy protection?