Col. Stogran re MGS vs Tanks Decision

[Kirkhill]

BBJ

AFAIK 3 Cdo RM doesn't include any heavy armour.  Isn't that right?

I believe your armoured assets include:

armoured versions of the Bv206 (recently acquired and issued at the rate necessary to equip one out of four cbt tms in a Commando, the other three being 2 foot and 1 Landrover)
1 Squadron of Scimitar Light Tanks (8 tonnes of aluminium with a 30mm gun) usually supplied from the Household Cavalry Regiment as a Brigade asset

4 Challenger IIs were just recently incorporated into an Allied landing exercise on the Georgia coast - but this seems to have been the first time in many years.

Perhaps you can clarify for me your apparent comfort with going into situations that, to quote CFL "can turn into a Fallujah at the drop of a hat" when  3RM Cdo Bde may or may not have heavy armoured support.  And if you do it is not integral to your force structure and likely only to be available in "penny-packets"?

Just curious Sir 

 

[big bad john]

BBJ

AFAIK 3 Cdo RM doesn't include any heavy armour.   Isn't that right?

I believe your armoured assets include:

armoured versions of the Bv206 (recently acquired and issued at the rate necessary to equip one out of four cbt tms in a Commando, the other three being 2 foot and 1 Landrover)
1 Squadron of Scimitar Light Tanks (8 tonnes of aluminium with a 30mm gun) usually supplied from the Household Cavalry Regiment as a Brigade asset

4 Challenger IIs were just recently incorporated into an Allied landing exercise on the Georgia coast - but this seems to have been the first time in many years.

Perhaps you can clarify for me your apparent comfort with going into situations that, to quote CFL "can turn into a Fallujah at the drop of a hat" when   3RM Cdo Bde may or may not have heavy armoured support.   And if you do it is not integral to your force structure and likely only to be available in "penny-packets"?

Just curious Sir  

To start with, the new Vikings are not armoured BV206s.  They are the next generation of vehicle.  Yes they have much more armour.  The rest of the assets are as described. 

Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan right now without really any armoured assets to speak of.  There are more ways than "blunt" force to gain an objective.  Armoured and Mechanized unit do have their place.  But I don't think that with the money provided the Canadian Forces right now, that it would be an affordable niche option. 

Personally, I have "gone in" with this type of force (i.e. Commando or Light Fighter) in Kuwait and Iraq 1, The South Atlantic, Sierra Leone, Rhodesia and a few others.  Heavy support is nice and can be necessary.  This is always "on call", sometimes as you need it, and sometimes with a lot less that you would like.  But at the end of the day you still have to complete your objectives.  It is easier to say that do, but you get on and do it.

 

[Zipper]

So whats the consensus? MGS piece of crap? Tanks not going to happen anytime soon crybaby? Turn our forces into a look alike light force similiar to 3 Cdo (RM)?

I think I agree for the most part. If we could turn one (or two) of our Bde's into something similiar to that, and have a 3rd (yeah right) in a heavier role as suuport, we may actually have something.

 

[Kirkhill]

Thanks BBJ

Zipper, oh to heck with it....

Cheers.

 

[RV]

Just another rant about the MGS...

While on my 6a two years we did a tour of the plant in London.  The tour guys there tried to convince us that the vehicle was "everything and then some", firing on the move etc etc.  They never answered my one and only question of "what ammunition will it be capable of firing".  They avoided the question and talked about the autoloader, and that the gun was a 105 and showed us propaganda of their vehicle driving and firing, although never from over the side.

Big deal.

After reading in the news a number of reviews, seeing the company propaganda films, and having also talked to the troops I know doing the trials etc I have come up to a new nickname, should the powers that be ever buy this P.O.S.



~~~~Cougar Mk. II~~~~


Its just like a cougar but bigger....


A question for all those Infantry guys who ask the question about "why keep something we will never use" (making the presumption that it also means why buy something we will 'never' use).


Which would you rather know has your back while you go house clearing, advancing to contact, trench clearing etc..  A fully functioning battle tank that can distinguish targets and paste them from a distance and then follow you over marginal terrain, keeping thier heads down, or, a vehicle you know has a spotty record even before the battle starts which may or not may not even make to the FEBA let alone survive long once it gets there.  While it is your job to ferret out the pockets of resistance, you need fire support that can suppress the enemy long enough to get you into position, (even a LAV cannot yet teleport despite all the fancy toys it has).  The MGS is a sitting duck, even more so than a tank because it is Lightly Armoured.  While a trained and capable infantry troop with a hand held missile can take out a tank, any idiot with a gasoline bomb or a readily available .50 cal. can dispatch light armour.

Any army soldier is or should be well aware of the limitations of each platform, I think perhaps some sober thought needs to go into planning this "army of the future" and stop brainwashing our troops into thinking that a modern 'urban' combat environment will become anything other than heavy marginal terrain very quickly(what happens to buildings when you play with explosives, and WWII vets can attest to the results).  Imagine the MGS going over rubble....not.  It will be the PBI's of the world slogging rubble and other obstacles out of the way so the MGS can move forward to get blown up.

If we buy the MGS it should be used strictly as close support for mopping up operations in well controlled territory where its security from fire can be controlled.


When it comes to the 'Cougar Mk. II', my money is on the tank.

DR-V.

 

[Zipper]

Agreed with you on all counts RV.

I am still wondering how you can have an auto loader with various types of ammo and be able to change them up fast enough to engage multiple targets? I think it is called HESH, HESH, and HESH.

Any army soldier is or should be well aware of the limitations of each platform, I think perhaps some sober thought needs to go into planning this "army of the future" and stop brainwashing our troops into thinking that a modern 'urban' combat environment will become anything other than heavy marginal terrain very quickly(what happens to buildings when you play with explosives, and WWII vets can attest to the results). Imagine the MGS going over rubble....not. It will be the PBI's of the world slogging rubble and other obstacles out of the way so the MGS can move forward to get blown up.

If we buy the MGS it should be used strictly as close support for mopping up operations in well controlled territory where its security from fire can be controlled.

You got it. They are not brain-washing anymore. They have come right out and said that we will no longer be doing any operations that are are beyond the capabilities with which we are equipped. In other words, operations in well controlled territory (no hard targets). We'll just be worrying about the guy with the shoulder mounted RPG and ATGM is all.

 

[RV]

Hey Zipper,

What you said reminds of something that still makes my skin crawl...

warning...   :warstory: helmets on...

~~~The scene, its 1994 driving through some small town heading towards Visoko~~~

It is my first day in country (B-H) and I, "R-V the REMF", volunteers to C/C a vehicle from Split up to Visoko because I don't want to ride in a crappy old bus with many other sweaty/stinky army guys who also just got off the plane and I was a young keen kind of guy (now I am just older and keen).   That combined with a one night stay in a Primosten hotel convinced me it was the thing to do..   :threat:  

It is a beautiful day for driving, the sun is out, the landscape is pretty, and I have the security of an armoured vehicle all around me.   My driver is a seasoned RCD guy, whose last name currently escapes me but his first name is Dave which is coincidentally amusing because so is mine.   As we go along we get in the mountains and at the entrance to one particular town, a while after going over Pacman I think, the road is going downhill into a sharp left then to the right almost like a switchback type of road.   On the left side of the turn is one of those monuments to accident victims and probably others, dug into the hillside and at the bottom of the hill it takes a hard right into the town and the road becomes wide enough for a column of Grizzlies without weapons.   We are the last vehicle in the packet and I am looking down into the town as we approach it with its narrow alleys between 3-4 story buildings and deserted streets and thinking to myself 'what a great place this would be to ambush an armoured column'.   It would be so simple and I am daydreaming of how I would do it with a simple, 'knock out the first and last vehicle and then slaughter the rest' type of attack.   I am not paying as much attention as I should be since I am playing out my mental battlefield, marvelling at my cleverness.   I just finish this 'battle' as we enter the town, passing the first building and my driver pipes up with "holy bleeeep do you see that?" I say "no, what?, where?"   He says   " look left at the kid with the RPG in that window", I look back and to the left and indeed there is a kid, probably 12 or 14 years old with an RPG on his shoulder waving as we go by.   My next thought is along the lines of "uh-oh this is going to suck" along with some colorful language as I drop down inside the hatch, banging my head in the process.   The kid just kept waving as we went by and happily did not fire the RPG at us.

I am glad the story worked out like it did and to me it has become something I snicker at for my reaction and banging my head on the hatch, but it does remind me that what we do can be dangerous and you need to remain vigilant and prepared.

I am sure that many of you have more harrowing tales than that one, but I just like to tell that story.

Cheers,

R-V

Agreed with you on all counts RV.

<snip>We'll just be worrying about the guy with the shoulder mounted RPG and ATGM is all.

 

[Zipper]

Nice. One of those situations that loosens the bladder, and makes you thank God for the fact that that kid wasn't on the opposite side.

But it proves my point well.

Once again after reading the Armoured bulletin and some other articles. I wish we could keep the Leo's in operation and build them into our future capabilities instead of moth-balling them and losing that asset.

But then I'm not the one making the decisions.

 

[RV]

While I agree that having heavy C/S is a good idea, I am not sure that the C2 is the way to go based strictly on its age and the cost of maintaining (which is actually my favorite thing to work on; I chose this trade -FCS-during POET because someone said I get to work on tanks).

What we really need is for the government to take a DND policy statement and work with it and get back to warfighting capability even if we don't use it; after all it is better to have and not need than to need and not have.   It is up to the government to decide how to employ military forces and it is their responsibility to equip them.   Too bad it is those same military forces that suffer from their decisions; Ross rifle, compressed-paper soled boots, LSVW, etc etc...   the list is long and sad.

It has seemed to me that over the past 20 years that I have been around DND makes a policy statement and the government says "yeah, great idea" and then says "here's a biscuit and you can have rest of the the money in a few years"...sound familiar.   When "a few years" arrives, the government is once again too poor to implement and they ask for a policy review.   In the reading I have done this has been somewhat of a "modus operandi" for Canadian governments since confederation to show the Canadian people and the world we mean business every few years but then nothing gets done about it.

I am hopeful that the new power brokers for DND can get the job done for a change.   But, like our back pay, I will beleive it exists when the money is in the bank.

^-^

Cheers,

R-V

Nice. One of those situations that loosens the bladder, and makes you thank God for the fact that that kid wasn't on the opposite side.

But it proves my point well.

Once again after reading the Armoured bulletin and some other articles. I wish we could keep the Leo's in operation and build them into our future capabilities instead of moth-balling them and losing that asset.

But then I'm not the one making the decisions.

 

[Zipper]

Well put RV.

I too am hopeful that things will change for the better. Reading all the online bullitens and journals is encouraging even though I personally do not agree with all the directions that we are taking. If you read the light forces as well as the light vs medium threads, there are quite a few good ideas being put forth. Of course, only the ideas that come down from NDHQ and official bodies of, count. But oh well.