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My old buddy Dwight (retired Navy and fellow Lexican) tipped me off to this new armored fighting vehicle currently in work. A few things about it raised a few warning flags in this old engineer's brain, so I went looking for The Chieftain's thoughts on the project. I feel a whole lot better now and I think that this "new" vehicle will be a war winner if, God forbid, we need to ever deploy tanks on a future battlefield. (From what I understand, many of the lessons learned in Ukraine will be considered. Just in case you were worried about that.)
Okay, this is a long video, but well worth your time. Nicholas Moran knows his business, he's an armor officer, and puts a lot of thought into the subject matter. He is truly a Subject Matter Expert when it comes to armored fighting vehicles and mobile warfare, both the history and the practice thereof.
Before jumping into the video, there were a couple of things I noted as a former engineer who saw the many ways people could find to kill a viable weapon systems concept.
The Chieftain asked (around the 25:50 mark of the video) why this wasn't a new tank but still an M1 variant. Colonel Howell's answer was that this wasn't really a new tank, because ...
"They did the requirements right back then ..."
Something Zumwalt (my big project as a worker bee) never really got right and never really finished. Requirements churn was a HUGE problem in the early days. If you can't nail those down, why the heck are you spending money on building the damned thing?
This machine is being built with the users in mind, the folks who will actually be manning the thing. (I mean it will even have cupholders! You'd be surprised how nice those are to have! Go to 27:30 in the video for a good talk about crew amenities.)
Anyhoo, here's the video, if you have any interest in how your tax money is spent on new military hardware, you should watch the whole thing.
The only thing which makes me nervous is the software for this beast. Believe me when I say, I know how easy it is to make a mess of that. You don't want your gunner to have to stop and say, "Sorry Skipper, you'll have to wait, the computer is rebooting ..."
Been there, done that and it does not impress the customer.
Enjoy.
A video! A Armor video! A Nicholas Moran Armor video! This perks up a Tuesday morning Sarge, thanks! Aaaand that's enough exclamation points for today.......:)
ReplyDeleteLooks like the Army is doing things right. Perhaps the Navy should take notes.
DeleteSeems I heard something a lot like that about the new Dreadnaught..... Something about the aircraft's light weapons couldn't seriously challenge the armor and antiaircraft defenses of a "Modern Warship...
ReplyDeleteWe're always fighting the last war. Economics matter, weight matters. When the current M1 cannot cross almost half the bridges in Europe, let alone poorer countries and bog down in the muck of Grafenwöhr Germany's training grounds let alone Ukraine's fields...
When a M1 with NATO trained crews costs the cost of a new M1 Abrams tank ranges from approximately $6.5 million to over $10 million per unit, depending on the variant and configuration. WITHOUT supporting equipment and such FAILS against a half dozen swarm of several thousand dollar drone well....
But like the Polish Winged Hussars they LOOK COOL.
Did you actually watch the video?
DeleteThe Winged Hussars were very effective cavalry. Just ask the Ottomans around Vienna in the 1600s.
DeleteIf you mean Polish Cavalry vs the Germans in WWII? Well, gee, the vaunted Germans had horse-troopers. So did the Russians, the Finns, the Italians, the French...
As to the M1 in question, well, it looks like it will work. 1 crew member can fight the vehicle if necessary. The ability to share crew-stations between all three (or 4, as there's provisions for another person potentially in the turret basket) will give overwatch ability to each crewmember, and make transferring tasks much easier in case of crew damage.
We tried basically all of this in the MBT70 but the technology and the Germans weren't quite compatible (plus that 152mm gun-rocket thingy was a weird gun.
Being able to isolate the explody portions of the tank from the crewed and powerplant portions is also a big plus.
All around, this vehicle looks like a winner.
DeleteIt's a good tank but current events in Ukraine show the tank is an endangered species.
DeleteThat and the economics of a few drones flown by a video game trained soldiers makes all that nice blowout panels and cup holders hard to pay for.
1 tank is how many hundreds of drones?
I'm not sure that the events in Ukraine are a reliable predictor of future land combat. Better to have a tank and not need it than don't have one, and need it.
DeleteVideo game "trained" soldiers?
Sarge - Software is always a concern with me about such things, not from any specific knowledge other than general experience with how easily software can mess anything up (looking at you, Windows updates).
ReplyDeleteClear, concise, and acknowledged requirements are a key to any successful project.
Amen to your last!
DeleteIf you want an example of how to completely FUBAR a project may I give you the British procurement of AJAX, late, several billion pounds over budget and a serious danger to the health of those using it. The current minister of defence will have to decide whether to kill the project or not. It's one of those situations where the procurement process was completely screwed by the military and others and someone down the line has to make tough decisions. In fairness a minister of defence from the previous administration has gone on record as saying he wished he had killed the project and purchased the CV90 instead. I'd add that AJAX was based on a design that other European armies had used but the UK army seem to want something that's different and kept insisting on changes rather than going for something off the shelf. In contrast the RN are procuring T26 and T31 frigates and the programme is going quite well.
ReplyDeleteRetired
I didn't know about that project so I went and read a couple of articles. Seems that the UK procurement system has many of the same problems the USA system has.
DeleteDo you throw good money after bad? Or do you cut your losses and cancel the program? Odds are that decision will be kicked down the road so that the current office holders can avoid making any decision at all.
Until someone else is in office.
Sounds awfully familiar.
It seems that good money has been thrown after bad and if I understand it the practice was to change over the head of the project every 18 months or so, each project head wanted to leave a mark ensuring were constant changes. There is now a system where there is a senior responsible officer for any single so that 'might' fix it. The current government inherited a massive problem with this. As a non-engineer I can't understand how a vehicle that was already in service was changed so much in the specs to make it virtually useless as well as dangerous to the crew. As an aside the army has procured a large number of Boxer 8x8 vehicles with a minimum of trouble and is procuring MLRS relatively quickly.
DeleteRetired
Ah yes, project leads wanting to "leave a mark." Those types usually did, on a human those are called scars.
DeleteCreeping elegance and a lack of end user input has destroyed many a career and program.
ReplyDeleteYup, I've seen it happen.
DeleteThe Old Man was the Program Manager for the Bradley and went into the job after heading up the Large Caliber Weapons Lab at Picatinny. It was a subject near to my heart. The killer, as noted and as I experienced as a Navy PM was the damned Specifications. They were the key driver in every single decision made at the PM level because the final product had to satisfy ALL of the Specs. As you might surmise, the issue lies in the multiple cross annihilating specifications that are mutually exclusive. That sort of thing is not supposed to make it out of the Pentagon. I think they sometimes do because they throw up their hands there in disgust and say, "let's see if industry can figure it out!"
ReplyDeleteAs to "multiple cross annihilating specifications" - oh dear, you've nailed it. Eff up the requirements and you've effed up the project. Many requirements types don't understand the KISS principle. Many of them have no background in the subject matter. Or is that just Zumwalt?
DeleteI don't know about Zumwalt but I expect it was exactly the same. Our Specs and Requirements came from Expeditionary Warfare N85 at the time and it was stuffed with virtuous SME at the 04-06 range. I'm pretty sure Zumwalt's came from a similar group at the Destroyer Type Desk in Surface Combatants. OTGH, I'm sure they had oodles of input from the cyber command and bleeding edge Lab types who always had the most amazing and impossible ideas.
DeleteWe've had similar experiences, trust me.
DeleteIf the Chieftan likes it, I'm convinced. Sounds like they are taking a solid approach keeping the "good idea fairies" away, and are focused on "build a little, test a lot". As an olde Luddite, I am naturally skeptical about too much digitzation, and break out in sweats at the thought of "the cloud" being anything other than a weather phenomena. They seem to be aware of the need to harden against electronic warfare jamming, but I fear that the multiplying drone threat might bring forth better EW tools which might eff up some of that gee whiz tech stuff they like.
ReplyDeleteMaybe consider units with a hi-lo mix of M1E3 armor for long range offense, along with some lightweight soft skinned vehicles full of drone/anti-drone stuff. Man the drone dets with the now superfluous "4th crewman" to help with the maintenance needs of the tanks as well as drone/anti-drone mission. Sort of like the symbiotic relationship where the egrets pick insects off the cattle and eat the insects stirred up by the cattle.
JB
The tank still needs to be part of a combined arms team. More on that tomorrow, though in a slightly different context.
DeleteThe big concern I've seen about such a remote mounted system is what to do in case of stoppages. It was a significant problem with the Stryker MGS and the Teledyne autoloader. "Go outside and clear the main gun," is suboptimal. The Teledyne got the advantage of fully-cased rounds rather than the mostly combustible 120mm ammo.
ReplyDeleteThat's in addition to the CROWS that's going on top of the main turret and not handily near a hatch.
If there's a door and a wriggle path to get to the gun's guts so you can clear a jam, that'd be nice.
That also tends to ask which autoloader are they envisioning for this? The one from the old Tank Test Bed worked better than Teledyne's. A completely different loader? LeClerc has been autoloading for a while now, to the point where they're looking at putting a LeClerc turret on a Leopard II hull for the "best of all worlds." LeClerc isn't a remote turret though...
The turret design isn't complete. Those are all good questions!
Delete