Ukraine - Superthread

[MilEME09]

Realistically, the West would be not much better off if we were sustaining losses. We might be in worse shape, because apart from America, nobody else is really stockpiling armour for a rainy day.

I hope some enterprising engineer in the West is designing a tank that can be rapidly thrown together like a modern Sherman. Power it with common diesel engines used in trucks/heavy equipment, give it composite bolt on armour, and a simple yet robust FCS.

Makes you wonder if we should dig a deep bunker into the rockies to store armoured vehicles of old.

 

[Furniture]

Makes you wonder if we should dig a deep bunker into the rockies to store armoured vehicles of old.

Likely better to have a "good enough" modern design on the back burner, with prototypes pumped out on occasion to verify the design makes sense and can be rapidly built.

 

[MilEME09]

Likely better to have a "good enough" modern design on the back burner, with prototypes pumped out on occasion to verify the design makes sense and can be rapidly built.

Modern design, and built rapidly? Given what we have seen over the past year, pick 1. We have gotten too high tech, and need look at what needs to be advanced and what doesn't.

 

[NavyShooter]

Fast, good, cheap. Pick any two.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Fast, good, cheap. Pick any two.

I'll take cheap and good.

As Wyatt Earp said "Speed is good, but accuracy is everything".

 

[ueo]

Likely better to have a "good enough" modern design on the back burner, with prototypes pumped out on occasion to verify the design makes sense and can be rapidly built.

What armor of old, the Shermans were made into a few monuments or shipped to Israel as scrap. Cents became monuments/ targets. Almost complete divestiture.

 

[Furniture]

Modern design, and built rapidly? Given what we have seen over the past year, pick 1. We have gotten too high tech, and need look at what needs to be advanced and what doesn't.

That's my point, we need someone right now to be sitting down and designing a tank that acne be mass produced on a rapid scale, that is "good enough".

Realistically, not just tanks, but aircraft, ships, and other systems. We don't necessarily need to make and use them in limited conflicts like we've had for the last 30 years, but we should ensure that we have the design just in case.

 

[Spencer100]

Fast, good, cheap. Pick any two.

New reality...pick one

 

[Staff Weenie]

New reality...pick one

Never!!!

Whatever we pick must be: Over-priced, late, made in a riding that the LPC want to win, and made by a company that has never once made a piece of military equipment (preferably owned by a relative of an MP). By the time it arrives, it will outdated, and we will have only purchased 1/3 of what the CAF needed. The company will immediately fold up, and replacement parts will be impossible to obtain.

 

[MilEME09]

Never!!!

Whatever we pick must be: Over-priced, late, made in a riding that the LPC want to win, and made by a company that has never once made a piece of military equipment (preferably owned by a relative of an MP). By the time it arrives, it will outdated, and we will have only purchased 1/3 of what the CAF needed. The company will immediately fold up, and replacement parts will be impossible to obtain.

You mean like why we need to upgrade the turrets in our leopards? Because half the electronics aren't even made any more?

 

[GR66]

What if your "good enough" isn't as good as, or is only just as good as the enemy's? Tank, Fighter, Warship, Artillery? We're a small country in terms of population. Our potential enemies (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc.) have larger populations/militaries so we will not overmatch them in quantity. Should we lose our qualitative advantage as well?

I get the whole "quantity has a quality all its own" concept but it can only work if you have a relative quantity advantage over your adversary. It's fine to say that for the price of 80 x Leopard 2A7's we could have 300 x Leopard 1's. That's certainly a quantitative advantage over what we have now, but in relation to the number of equally effective tanks that our enemies have (Russia - 12,267, North Korea - 6,000, China 5,750, Iran - 2,842) we are still greatly outnumbered. Same for every other major piece of military hardware we have.

We're not going to match our enemies in quantity. If we want to give our soldiers/sailors/air-humans a chance to defeat our enemies (and survive in a conflict) then we owe it to them to give them the greatest qualitative advantage we have.

Of course there are limits to the concept. If you were to buy the absolutely latest, greatest cutting edge technology for every capability you'd use up your budget and have a military too small to be effective. But to my mind we should strive to field equipment that on average exceeds the quality of the equipment being fielded by our foes.

 

[Furniture]

What if your "good enough" isn't as good as, or is only just as good as the enemy's? Tank, Fighter, Warship, Artillery? We're a small country in terms of population. Our potential enemies (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc.) have larger populations/militaries so we will not overmatch them in quantity. Should we lose our qualitative advantage as well?

I get the whole "quantity has a quality all its own" concept but it can only work if you have a relative quantity advantage over your adversary. It's fine to say that for the price of 80 x Leopard 2A7's we could have 300 x Leopard 1's. That's certainly a quantitative advantage over what we have now, but in relation to the number of equally effective tanks that our enemies have (Russia - 12,267, North Korea - 6,000, China 5,750, Iran - 2,842) we are still greatly outnumbered. Same for every other major piece of military hardware we have.

We're not going to match our enemies in quantity. If we want to give our soldiers/sailors/air-humans a chance to defeat our enemies (and survive in a conflict) then we owe it to them to give them the greatest qualitative advantage we have.

Of course there are limits to the concept. If you were to buy the absolutely latest, greatest cutting edge technology for every capability you'd use up your budget and have a military too small to be effective. But to my mind we should strive to field equipment that on average exceeds the quality of the equipment being fielded by our foes.

That was the point of "good enough"...

My point was also that the West as a collective needs to do this, not Canada all alone.

The West has had the luxury of decades of not needing to fight full scale wars, so our military development naturally has gone down the route of making a small number of highly complex systems. In a full scale war, we would have nothing left to fight with after a couple weeks of losses. We need to be planning the "good enough", yet still easily enough to produce rapidly, systems.

As an example, the Sherman was not the best, most complex, or most modern tank used by the Allies. It was good, better than many people give it credit for these days, but still not the pinnacle of tank technology at the time it was made. What made the Sherman so effective was the fact we could pump out thousands of them, and they were "good enough".

 

[Good2Golf]

Fast, good, cheap. Pick any two.

 

[Rifleman62]

Never!!!

Whatever we pick must be: Over-priced, late, made in a riding that the LPC want to win, and made by a company that has never once made a piece of military equipment (preferably owned by a relative of an MP). By the time it arrives, it will outdated, and we will have only purchased 1/3 of what the CAF needed. The company will immediately fold up, and replacement parts will be impossible to obtain.

You are obviously old enough to quote history.

 

[Staff Weenie]

You are obviously old enough to quote history.

I'm old enough to have lived through three decades of this. MPs and GOFOs showing up at unveilings to tell you why the piece of absolute crap they just handed you is the best thing ever, and how it created all sorts of jobs in some riding.

I especially love being told that 'item X' is waaaaaaay better than 'item Y' that it is replacing. Therefore, for every two of 'item Y' you must now return, you will get only one of 'item X'.

 

[QV]

Likely better to have a "good enough" modern design on the back burner, with prototypes pumped out on occasion to verify the design makes sense and can be rapidly built.

To have the capacity for rapid industry production on this scale, step one is making sure you have cheap and plentiful energy. Only two provinces really have the ability for that and the current government is actively mitigating that upscale. Secondly, raw materials, and components. A gigantic problem is that a lot of things we need came from Rus, Uk, and China. So we better figure that part out, and quick.

 

[Maxman1]

Likely better to have a "good enough" modern design on the back burner, with prototypes pumped out on occasion to verify the design makes sense and can be rapidly built.

So a modern version of the M48 or M60 Patton?

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Another win by Putin, NATO's Salesman of the year!

U.S. RC-135 Intelligence Gathering Jet Flying Unprecedented Mission Inside Finland's Airspace

Operating from the Finnish airspace, the U.S. ISR (Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance) aircraft can spy on the Russian forces near the border with

theaviationist.com

 

[Spencer100]

It's 1941 and your super new bomber can't be built fast enough.......You call a company in Dearborn MI to see if they can have a look at the California plant. Over night at the hotel after the tour they redesigned the production process. By wars they have the build more bombers than then anyone and build the largest factory in the world. With Marble Bathrooms! (that's another story)


I say pick a system you want a ton of. (they kind of did this with the JLTV) Take the design from the bespoke Military contractor. Put it out to bid to non military manufacturers. You will get a big price reduction. If you remove the government procurement BS the price will come down again. No landclaim, No DEI, reduce the Security requirements (if say its just a truck, different than a F-35)

 

[daftandbarmy]

It's 1941 and your super new bomber can't be built fast enough.......You call a company in Dearborn MI to see if they can have a look at the California plant. Over night at the hotel after the tour they redesigned the production process. By wars they have the build more bombers than then anyone and build the largest factory in the world. With Marble Bathrooms! (that's another story)


I say pick a system you want a ton of. (they kind of did this with the JLTV) Take the design from the bespoke Military contractor. Put it out to bid to non military manufacturers. You will get a big price reduction. If you remove the government procurement BS the price will come down again. No landclaim, No DEI, reduce the Security requirements (if say its just a truck, different than a F-35)

Between 1942 and 1945 Ford built:

86,865 COMPLETE AIRCRAFT, 57,851 AIRPLANE ENGINES AND 4,291 MILITARY GLIDERS.​

In addition to aircraft, Ford plants built 277,896 vehicles (tanks, armored cars and jeeps).

https://www.ford.com/proud-to-honor/history#:~:text=Ford%20Motor%20Company%20repurposed%20its,that%20was%20one%2Dmile%20long.