Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicle - RG-31, LAV Coyote, and (partial) G-Wagon Replacement
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The vehicles are getting bigger and heavier for a few reasons IMHO:
1) We (as a society) are terrified of casualties, therefore to reduce casualties we make bigger vehicles with more armour
2) We are incapable of explaining to the gov't and/or public the advantages of hide and peak - look at how the SOF Ultralight vehicles are being received (they don't have any doors!! OMG 1011011!!! they will all bee DED!!!)
3) Traditional mud armoured recce is not in vogue right now. Its surveillance armour combined with UAV's that are all the rage. Surveillance packages generally need bigger vehicles to work from.
4) In a modern warfare situation, it has been hypothesized that ATGMs and IED's have made the battlefield too deadly for anything but heavily armored vehicles.
5) We've learned hard lessons that in a peace support operation, mines and IED's provide the most probable threat. Lighter vehicles are very susceptible to these types of attacks and mobility generally, doesn't help against them.
6) With new thermal tech, Battlefield Surveillance Radars that ignore folliage etc.. how can you hide a small vehicle? Just assume you can't and use a big armoured one.
7) If you are going to only have a few vehicle types in your fleet with variants then you might as well make them big and armoured.
:2c:
1) We (as a society) are terrified of casualties, therefore to reduce casualties we make bigger vehicles with more armour
2) We are incapable of explaining to the gov't and/or public the advantages of hide and peak - look at how the SOF Ultralight vehicles are being received (they don't have any doors!! OMG 1011011!!! they will all bee DED!!!)
3) Traditional mud armoured recce is not in vogue right now. Its surveillance armour combined with UAV's that are all the rage. Surveillance packages generally need bigger vehicles to work from.
4) In a modern warfare situation, it has been hypothesized that ATGMs and IED's have made the battlefield too deadly for anything but heavily armored vehicles.
5) We've learned hard lessons that in a peace support operation, mines and IED's provide the most probable threat. Lighter vehicles are very susceptible to these types of attacks and mobility generally, doesn't help against them.
6) With new thermal tech, Battlefield Surveillance Radars that ignore folliage etc.. how can you hide a small vehicle? Just assume you can't and use a big armoured one.
7) If you are going to only have a few vehicle types in your fleet with variants then you might as well make them big and armoured.
:2c:
George Wallace
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Underway said:
The unfortunate part of this logic is:
there are more munitions out there to kill this small amount of vehicles; whereas
if you had a large number of troops and vehicles, the numbers of targets being engaged have increased and the amount of munitions required to neutralize them would become too cumbersome for a defending force to have on hand at that particular moment.
People die in war. We have to accept that we will have casualties. A small number of highly trained troops in a small number of vehicles would become cannon fodder. A large number of qualified troops, in a large number of vehicles, would likely provide a greater chance of success, than the few heavily armed/protected vehicles in the fleets we tend to be drifting towards. Cold War Warriors would understand this concept.
Karel Doorman
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For G-wagon(partial) replacement "we"(Dutch)bought about 550(if i got the number right,but thereabout) of these "Tonka" trucks [lol: for our army and special forces.(It's designed by a former Paris-Dakar racer)
Maybe an idea for Canada aswell?Ladies and Gentleman may i introduce "the Vector"
https://youtu.be/x4nLbHXccTM
Maybe an idea for Canada aswell?Ladies and Gentleman may i introduce "the Vector"
https://youtu.be/x4nLbHXccTM
Colin Parkinson
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Old Sweat said:
The design continued to evolve, the problem was that neither the senior unit leadership or the Ordnance Board correctly anticipated the threat of the newer German tanks, few as there were. The 76mm on the US Sherman was actually capable of more penetration and MV, but at the price of more barrel wear, they choose to preserve the barrel at the expense of performance. They also did not see the need for the 76mm Shermans to be part of the invasion, partly due to less than expected performance of the gun. There was some semi-justified concern about having 2 types of tank ammo required, but the Brits worked it out with 3 types (6 pdr, 75 and 17pdr) Another issue was the US rejection of the tactical doctrine of placing a Firefly in each troop, preferring to cluster TD's together. It would have been better to have at least 1 76mm armed Sherman with higher M/V ammo per troop in the US armored units.
The Anglo-Canadian forces also were at a disadvantage because of the 76mm mounted on the majority of the Shermans in Normandy. See the tables on pages 374 and 375 of No Holding Back in Appendix A The Dilemma of Normandy. I got thinking about this again because a Brit military history magazine asked me to do a short article on Who Killed Michael Wittmann? Unfortunately there is a school of thought in the UK that considers any attempt to suggest it was not the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry as akin to an attempt to repeal the Magna Carta, so I an unlikely to be invited to the Palace for tea anytime soon.
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The quantity vs quality argument raises its ugly head again.
We are getting caught up focusing on the individual interactions (such as tank vs tank in Normandy). While individually a Tiger or Panther was far superior to a Sherman, the reality is the Germans had far fewer of them because building and supporting them was resource intensive, and they were overwhelmed or rendered irrelevant by the sheer numbers of allied tanks (they could not possibly destroy or even stop all of them, there were not enough Panthers and Tigers to block every conceivable armoured approach), not to mention Allied fighter bombers hunting them from the sky and Allied strategic forces working to cripple the logistical infrastructure of Germany. Now the shoe is on the other foot: NATO in general has gone for quality over quantity, and *we* stand to be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of enemy ISTAR platforms, ATGM's and more traditional weapons (in one thread someone mentioned the most feared tank killer is the "Sprut" anti tank cannon, essentially a very updated version of the deadly "88" of WWII fame).
In one sense, we need to stop going down the rabbit hole of more armour, bigger guns etc. This is starting to look like the "Infantry Revolution" of the 14-1500's, when easy to use weapons like crossbows and then firearms, and new tactics, like pike formations, allowed masses of conscripted and relatively untrained men to take to the field and prevail against fully armoured knights (men at arms, Janissaries, Samurai) who required expensive kitting and a lifetime of training to be effective. Our bespoke military forces are like these knights of old, running into crossbowmen supported by pikes more and more often. One day soon we will be encountering "cannon" for the first time......
The TAPV is an awful example of this, it weighs 17 tons, holds 5 men (in very cramped conditions) and is pretty limited in cross country mobility. The Israeli "Combat Guard" may represent a possible direction to go, weighing only 8 tons, able to carry 8 troops, having high cross country mobility and using active rather than passive armour to defeat ATGMs. We could conceivably argue for MTV's like the Bronco (just go where other people are less likely to follow), even smaller ATV's or even look at man portable weapons that provide light infantry the sort of serious firepower to make people think twice about tangling with the troops (accepting that operational and strategic mobility becomes an issue).
This really becomes an argument about doctrine and the organizational models that we need to adopt inn order to achieve the desired effects, rather than catalogue shopping for shiny kit (which I am horribly guilty of myself). Since the TAPV was seemingly purchased without a very clear understanding of what the desired effect of having these vehicles was supposed to provide the Army, it should be no surprise that no one can particularly think of how to employ it, and attempts to issue it out (like to the Light Infantry Battalions) have met with failure since it clearly isn't the right tool for that job. Retroactively rewriting doctrine to reflect the capability of the vehicle is counterproductive, to say the least.
We are getting caught up focusing on the individual interactions (such as tank vs tank in Normandy). While individually a Tiger or Panther was far superior to a Sherman, the reality is the Germans had far fewer of them because building and supporting them was resource intensive, and they were overwhelmed or rendered irrelevant by the sheer numbers of allied tanks (they could not possibly destroy or even stop all of them, there were not enough Panthers and Tigers to block every conceivable armoured approach), not to mention Allied fighter bombers hunting them from the sky and Allied strategic forces working to cripple the logistical infrastructure of Germany. Now the shoe is on the other foot: NATO in general has gone for quality over quantity, and *we* stand to be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of enemy ISTAR platforms, ATGM's and more traditional weapons (in one thread someone mentioned the most feared tank killer is the "Sprut" anti tank cannon, essentially a very updated version of the deadly "88" of WWII fame).
In one sense, we need to stop going down the rabbit hole of more armour, bigger guns etc. This is starting to look like the "Infantry Revolution" of the 14-1500's, when easy to use weapons like crossbows and then firearms, and new tactics, like pike formations, allowed masses of conscripted and relatively untrained men to take to the field and prevail against fully armoured knights (men at arms, Janissaries, Samurai) who required expensive kitting and a lifetime of training to be effective. Our bespoke military forces are like these knights of old, running into crossbowmen supported by pikes more and more often. One day soon we will be encountering "cannon" for the first time......
The TAPV is an awful example of this, it weighs 17 tons, holds 5 men (in very cramped conditions) and is pretty limited in cross country mobility. The Israeli "Combat Guard" may represent a possible direction to go, weighing only 8 tons, able to carry 8 troops, having high cross country mobility and using active rather than passive armour to defeat ATGMs. We could conceivably argue for MTV's like the Bronco (just go where other people are less likely to follow), even smaller ATV's or even look at man portable weapons that provide light infantry the sort of serious firepower to make people think twice about tangling with the troops (accepting that operational and strategic mobility becomes an issue).
This really becomes an argument about doctrine and the organizational models that we need to adopt inn order to achieve the desired effects, rather than catalogue shopping for shiny kit (which I am horribly guilty of myself). Since the TAPV was seemingly purchased without a very clear understanding of what the desired effect of having these vehicles was supposed to provide the Army, it should be no surprise that no one can particularly think of how to employ it, and attempts to issue it out (like to the Light Infantry Battalions) have met with failure since it clearly isn't the right tool for that job. Retroactively rewriting doctrine to reflect the capability of the vehicle is counterproductive, to say the least.
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GR66
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Maybe lighter vehicles could benefit in an indirect way as well. Our Army simply isn't large enough to play a decisive role in a major conflict. That's no criticism of the skill and ability of our forces, but should a major war break out the brigade group that we could realistically deploy and sustain would really be a fairly small portion of the overall force.
In many ways the real contribution we make is political. Putting our forces on the line together with our allies sends a signal to potential enemies that they must be prepared to face ALL of the West if they choose to fight.
If that's the case, then perhaps a light force that can more quickly be deployed to a potential flash point and possibly act as a deterrent to a potential enemy could have a greater impact than a slower to deploy, heavy force.
In many ways the real contribution we make is political. Putting our forces on the line together with our allies sends a signal to potential enemies that they must be prepared to face ALL of the West if they choose to fight.
If that's the case, then perhaps a light force that can more quickly be deployed to a potential flash point and possibly act as a deterrent to a potential enemy could have a greater impact than a slower to deploy, heavy force.
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With shaped charge technology now known and utilised by the most unadvanced foes, there are only 2 solutions:
1. You need your detection gear at the front of all movements to clear the the roads your guys will be using.
2. You need a combination of aerostats above those roadways and ground mounted cameras along those roadways that we're responsible for to provide 24/7 overwatch so bad guys can't come back and plant more IED's after your detection gear has passed.
If you do that, the vehicle armor used becomes much less important....
Matthew.
1. You need your detection gear at the front of all movements to clear the the roads your guys will be using.
2. You need a combination of aerostats above those roadways and ground mounted cameras along those roadways that we're responsible for to provide 24/7 overwatch so bad guys can't come back and plant more IED's after your detection gear has passed.
If you do that, the vehicle armor used becomes much less important....
Matthew.
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Thucydides said:
I think that maybe we are coming at it from the assumption that the army had no idea what the desired effect was. Perhaps the army got exactly what it wanted. They wanted a more mobile RG-31 and they got one. The priority was protection, followed by mobility, then the rest of the criteria.
Perhaps the army looked at what the main strategic weakness of the CA was and decided to get a vehicle that would mitigate that. The weakness is casualties. We take casualties and that has a strategic impact on the mission (as the population and gov't crawl over each other in their faux grief to prove who cares more about the troops). The RG-31 was bought for one purpose which was to move soldiers around the battlefield with minimal casualties from IED's and mines.
The CA looks at the missions the gov't normally wants us to do. Put out/monitor brush fires all over the world. The TAPV seems like it will be great for peace support, driving CIMIC and weapons inspection teams around, convoy escort duties and I'm sure it will work well as a surveillence vehicle. I don't think anyone is arguing that it won't work for those operations.
You also seem pretty quick to point out the Infantry don't know what to do with the vehicle and it's a failure. These types of vehicles often end up in the support roles vice the take and hold ones. The infantry like to pretend that they won't be doing those roles and tend to ignore that they could be working in a PRT type or FOB security setting. I think they probably know exactly what to do with the vehicle. They just and don't like the type of jobs that the use of them entails.. I have seen no evidence yet that it's a failure. It's 6 months into receipt of the vehicles. That was basically why I asked the question earlier to update the thread. What are the experiences with it and thoughts about employment now that some had time with the vehicle? Offroad mobility, ergonomics, whatever.... Give us a review.
quadrapiper
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Any rough ideas how the TAPV is likely to stack up as far as durability while cutting about on the sort of mission Underway describes? Will it be cheaper to maintain, on a miles-travelled basis, than other, more puissant vehicles?
Underway writes:
The M1117, on which the TAPV is based, was designed expressly for most of the roles you mention. US Army MP units used M1117's extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan for convoy escort and routine patrols. Some people don't recognize that routine patrols are not reconnaissance taskings and end up conflating surveillance with recce. Patrols are a form of surveillance and a means of maintaining the security of already-pacified areas.
Given that the TAPV is a pretty tall vehicle and has only modest cross-country mobility, it'll probably do OK as a recce vehicle in a pinch, but will do much better as a vehicle to ferry small numbers of troops, escort convoys, and carry out surveillance missions.
In my (admittedly non-professional) estimation, the ideal recce vehicle is fast, has good cross-country mobility and is relatively small (so as to be harder to see and hit). It will have sufficient firepower to force enemy infantry to get their heads down and take out enemy recce vehicles of similar size and capability, and enough armour protection to protect the crew against small arms fire, light and heavy machine gun fire, grenade launchers and shrapnel from artillery air-burst rounds. In an ideal world, it would have the capability to withstand light cannon fire, at least across the frontal arc of the vehicle.
Such a vehicle would also have the sensors and opto-electronic equipment needed to detect and monitor targets located up to distances of 8km or so, if the decision is made to set up a semi-static OP. Otherwise the sensors and opto-electronic equipment should allow the crew to detect and track enemy forces and movements while the vehicle is on the move.
I realize I've probably more or less just described the Coyote, without respect to its relatively large size and the size and complexity of its surveillance gear.
The M1117, on which the TAPV is based, was designed expressly for most of the roles you mention. US Army MP units used M1117's extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan for convoy escort and routine patrols. Some people don't recognize that routine patrols are not reconnaissance taskings and end up conflating surveillance with recce. Patrols are a form of surveillance and a means of maintaining the security of already-pacified areas.
Given that the TAPV is a pretty tall vehicle and has only modest cross-country mobility, it'll probably do OK as a recce vehicle in a pinch, but will do much better as a vehicle to ferry small numbers of troops, escort convoys, and carry out surveillance missions.
In my (admittedly non-professional) estimation, the ideal recce vehicle is fast, has good cross-country mobility and is relatively small (so as to be harder to see and hit). It will have sufficient firepower to force enemy infantry to get their heads down and take out enemy recce vehicles of similar size and capability, and enough armour protection to protect the crew against small arms fire, light and heavy machine gun fire, grenade launchers and shrapnel from artillery air-burst rounds. In an ideal world, it would have the capability to withstand light cannon fire, at least across the frontal arc of the vehicle.
Such a vehicle would also have the sensors and opto-electronic equipment needed to detect and monitor targets located up to distances of 8km or so, if the decision is made to set up a semi-static OP. Otherwise the sensors and opto-electronic equipment should allow the crew to detect and track enemy forces and movements while the vehicle is on the move.
I realize I've probably more or less just described the Coyote, without respect to its relatively large size and the size and complexity of its surveillance gear.
Colin Parkinson
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The French solution
The APC version
The APC version
Eye In The Sky
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Eland2 said:
I've been out of the recce game for a while, but I'll add:
- a good comms suite (double banked, RRB capability). I'd beef up my veh battery capacity; nothing gives your OP base away like a running veh charging its batteries.
- swimmable and capable of fording at non-prepared site (tracked? wheeled?)
- storage space. should be able to store the veh for 3 days worth of fuel/food/ammo/rats/batteries and everything else you need for the multitude of tasks you could bounce between.
The Coyote surv suite isn't used when on the move (that I know of, at least). Semi-statis (I think you mean Mounted?) O.P.s, it would be nice to have a IR/TI turrent, there may be times when something like a GMTI radar would work, other times it wouldn't.
I always was a fan of the mobility of the Bison. It could swim, it could do 120km on hardstand, stop, flick a few switches and be going cross country and *almost* as capable as a track with good use of ground and a switched on driver. I always thought the loss of some cross country mobility compared to tracked was an easy trade off for never having to worry about throwing/breaking a track, speed, and 8 wheels with run-flats in them. What the Bison lacked was firepower and surveillance *stuff*, but with a TOW on it and the surveillance suit a la backpack would have increased its ability some.
Both are loud, so if you're trying to do sneak and peak, its harder than it was with the Iltis.
I never thought the G-Wagon was suited to either task (surv or recce). :2c:
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Just looking at Colin's post above.
I continue to be amazed by proliferation of stuff. I see nothing but corners and weak points. Bullet traps. Dust traps. Optics. Bearings. Pivot points. Grease points.
King for a day solution to managing armoured vehicles. Replace HE artillery rounds with paint bombs with non-skid sand mixed in. Maybe add a bit of napalm for effect. Those things aren't going to be much use if they are covered in sticky carbonized gritty muck that is still burning.
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The TAPV was procured to provide a battlefield mobility solution for the Army. Vehicles of its ilk have been used by others very successfully in low intensity conflicts around the world for decades.
The vehicles were created to eliminate the need to do this:
I would even classify the French VAB as a variant of Patrol Vehicle, they seem to do just fine rolling around the desert:
Heck, the Brits figured out fairly quickly in NI the importance of having a vehicle that could get troops from Point A to Point B safely.
The French, South Africans, Portuguese, British, etc. Have all figured out what an Armoured Patrol Vehicle is good for, why is the Canadian Army having trouble wrapping their head around the problem?
The vehicles were created to eliminate the need to do this:
I would even classify the French VAB as a variant of Patrol Vehicle, they seem to do just fine rolling around the desert:
Heck, the Brits figured out fairly quickly in NI the importance of having a vehicle that could get troops from Point A to Point B safely.
The French, South Africans, Portuguese, British, etc. Have all figured out what an Armoured Patrol Vehicle is good for, why is the Canadian Army having trouble wrapping their head around the problem?
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