M1 Abrams MBT Replacement

[bobbymike]

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/army-to-demo-robotic-wingman-vehicles-in-2017

 

[marauder2048]

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/army-to-demo-robotic-wingman-vehicles-in-2017

My guess it that the UAV managed by the loader will be used to provide fire control quality data to
a revived MRM.

 

[Kat Tsun]

The return of FASTDRAW?

It would require the arm to be centerline between the loader and gunner/TC, though, rather than the weird laterally shifting arm the 1980s version had.

 

[marauder2048]

At a guess:

https://youtu.be/_D71OAAP6jg

 

[bobbymike]

http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1745414-army-plans-new-tank-after-abrams-2030s

 

[jsport]

http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1745414-army-plans-new-tank-after-abrams-2030s

If the tank is to be replaced it only logically follows the reintroduction of a family of vehicles and thus the return of some form of FCS program. There were great parts of the FCS program and material and other science continues to progress. Vehicles may not be of a uniform weight size, for instance medical, artillery, resupply. recovery and even IFV vehicles may be outsized while RSTA, Mounted Combat, large UGVs may be downsize but there still needs to be max commonality.

 

[Kat Tsun]

http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1745414-army-plans-new-tank-after-abrams-2030s

If the tank is to be replaced it only logically follows the reintroduction of a family of vehicles and thus the return of some form of FCS program.

We can only hope not, unless you mean TARDEC's Future Combat System but that was just a 40-ton tank in the vein of Block III. AOE and FXXI eras' Light-Heavy dichotomy is the closest the US Army has ever come to perfection. Scrapping all thoughts of air-mechanization and starting from a line of thinking explicitly recognizing the need for both +50 ton heavy forces and light infantry in tandem would be a better move, which is apparently what the US Army is doing in this time of austerity.

Something more like SPz Puma and less like FCS MGVs would be a better starting point for a future American tank. Or Block III again.

 

[sferrin]

http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1745414-army-plans-new-tank-after-abrams-2030s

"high-tech future lightweight tank platform "

You'd think they'd have learned their lesson on FCS.

 

[marauder2048]

For lighter weight vehicles, recoil limitations are overcome by incorporating the larger caliber rarefaction wave gun
technology while providing guided, stabilized LOS, course-corrected LOS, and beyond LOS accuracy"

Excellent overview of competing recoil management techniques from Dr. Eric Kathe, US Army RDECOM ARDEC’s Benet Labs, presentation at Armaments 2015.

Fire-out-of-battery always struck me as the most readily realizable.

 

[Foo Fighter]

There is a certain element of logic in the lightweight platform direction. Using the triad of armour as a base point, as long as you have a method of reducing the threat of armour penetraion you CAN have a good balance. The thing is to decide on the level of threat you want to protect the crew from.

If you decide to begin with the premise that there is no such thing as total protection you can convince any government you care to mention. When I served in the British Army we were of the opinion that the Chieftain was pretty much the dogs danglies and unbeatable but as much importance comes from training and support as in armour thickness/type. The medium PZKPFW V medium tank had side armour (hull) of 40mm to 50mm while our Chieftain heavy tanks had side armour of 38mm with 13mm side skirts. Tell me, what would that protect anyone from?

The T34/85 was a pretty good medium tank for its day and the M4 Sherman was acknowledged as , well, not all that. What happened when the two met in the middle east? Israeli crews of the Sherman and later AMX 13 won the day. What is needed is to acknowledge that if you remove protection from one source you MUST replace it with protection from another source and the best bets are:-

Self protection systems.
Area defence, drones/helicopter/aircraft.
Increased training levels.
Choose your battlefield
Joint arms deployment.

In no particular order, there should also be a willingness for command personalities to refuse to deploy troops to ground that is unsuitable, tanks in towns and cities for example. Have a look on youtube for examples of simple and sophisticated weaponry types used in these environments. Plenty of crews cooked by poor judgement on deployment. Tanks need to evolve and with technology combined with plenty of common sense, they will. As long as the idiots can be MADE to avoid wasting money there will be more of it to actually produce the weapons and systems our troops NEED to do the job and hopefully survive.

 

[marauder2048]

Related news: looks like ATK won the AMP downselect

DOD Contracts Jan. 23, 2017

Alliant Tech Systems Operations LLC, Plymouth, Minnesota, was awarded a $45,622,095 modification (P00015) to contract W15QKN-15-C-0066 for 120 millimeter Advanced Multi-Purpose, High Explosive Multi-Purpose with Tracer cartridges, exercising option one for engineering, manufacturing, and development phase two of current contract. Work will be performed in multiple locations with an estimated completion date of July 23, 2019. Fiscal 2017 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $923,943 were obligated at the time of the award. Army Contracting Command, Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, is the contracting activity.

 

[bobbymike]

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R44741.pdf

 

[jsport]

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R44741.pdf

great find thank you Bobbymike

"The Army’s effort to replace the Abrams and Bradley, referred to as the Next Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV), is reportedly anticipated to be:
A multi-decade effort that will require completing the majority of the work prior to 2025 because it’s going to take 10 years for industry to actually build and field what we want for the first unit equipped in 2035. Tied in with the initiative will be four years of analysis and a focused science and technology effort.5
This approach suggests that for almost the next two decades, the Army will continue to rely on legacy upgraded Cold War ground combat systems. In the meantime, other nations could potentially develop and field multiple iterations of new advanced ground combat systems while a number of factors, including limited funding and the constraints of the U.S. defense acquisition process precludes similar U.S. developmental efforts. One defense expert characterizes the U.S. defense acquisition process as:
... consisting of a ponderous requirements definition process, ill-informed by knowledge resident in the defense industrial community, engage in an excessively drawn out series of competitions and then pursue a painfully laborious major program that might produce half of what is needed in twice the time and at higher costs.6
This situation is further exacerbated by what some consider a less than well-defined vision for the NGVC: (...continued)
The panel that produced the report was chaired by Gilbert Decker, a former Army acquisition chief, as well as Gen. Lou Wagner, the now retired former chief of the Army Materiel Command.

That’s not to say that the next-generation combat vehicle might be an infantry fighting vehicle. But it could also be a single combat vehicle that replaces the Abrams [and] the Bradley.... We don't know yet, with another option creating a family of vehicles very similar to the original Future Combat System program.7
While it may not be realistic to have definitive design criteria for a vehicle to be fielded in 2035 established now, a clearer sense of direction is viewed by some as necessary—sooner as opposed to later—to facilitate not only program success but also to instill a sense of confidence in policymakers that the Army can successfully execute ground combat vehicle replacement programs."

 

[dan_inbox]

The T34/85 was a pretty good medium tank for its day and the M4 Sherman was acknowledged as , well, not all that. What happened when the two met in the middle east? Israeli crews of the Sherman and later AMX 13 won the day. What is needed is to acknowledge that if you remove protection from one source you MUST replace it with protection from another source and the best bets are:-

Self protection systems.
Area defence, drones/helicopter/aircraft.
Increased training levels.
Choose your battlefield
Joint arms deployment.

the obvious one missing from this list is mobility. (Which is what Israelis used in '67, along with better crews. Easier done in open terrain tank warfare than when statically occupying Baghdad or Fallujah, granted))

In no particular order, there should also be a willingness for command personalities to refuse to deploy troops to ground that is unsuitable, tanks in towns and cities for example. Have a look on youtube for examples of simple and sophisticated weaponry types used in these environments. Plenty of crews cooked by poor judgement on deployment. Tanks need to evolve and with technology combined with plenty of common sense, they will. As long as the idiots can be MADE to avoid wasting money there will be more of it to actually produce the weapons and systems our troops NEED to do the job and hopefully survive.

We don't want to drift off-topic here, but
a) commanders should keep obeying the civilian authorities even when their orders appear daft, just because the alternative is so unpalatable.
b) "idiots wasting money" will last as long as congresspeople needing re-election, and as long as inter-service rivalry for budgets.

 

[Foo Fighter]

Sorry for the off topic points but if we insist on deploying armour units in towns and cities, mobility has a reduced impact. Not sure what the chances of major unit action on ground suited to armoured warfare are for the future. Perhaps we will learn to stop that sort of thing.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Tanks are fine in urban combat, it's just bad old thinking that makes the opposite true. Tanks (or infantry or whatever else) dying loads in urban combat only happens when you have troops who are incompetent or otherwise unprepared for fighting in cities (or in the case of WW2, fighting in general). In which case, cities are bad for all arms, not just tanks. Mobility of tanks isn't really impacted either when we consider that cities are literally built around automobiles now, so tanks have much more obvious and varied routes to travel, unlike in the mountainous terrain of Korea or Italy. The psychological and physical effects of "fast, armored, big gun" in urban combat are really difficult to understate anyway.

The Second Battle of Fallujah is more or less the epitome of well-trained, well disciplined mechanized troops and tanks being able to run amok in urban terrain and win. That said, if you don't train troops to fight in urban terrain you probably can't expect to win in that terrain, but it's the same if you don't train troops to fight in deserts, forests, the Arctic, etc.

Western armies have understood this for a couple decades now. In the USA, it took UNOSOM (and arguably Los Angeles) to really hammer the lesson home about the necessity for training for MOUT.

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/gott_tanks.pdf

 

[Foo Fighter]

Armoured units in towns and cities can be funnelled into corridors unless support and cooperation levels are high. The point I made about youtube is that there are numerous demonstrations of the high ground (literally) being tall buildings with accessible points to fire down on said armoured units. The consequences are not pretty.

I agree that training for terrain is of vital importance.

I am sorry if I keep mentioning this, having a service in tanks I think a lot of the conrfidence we had in our vehicles has been proven to be misplaced. I was aware of the differing thickness of armour throughout the vehicle and appreciated the triad of armour but, was badly misled on the thickness of our side armour. Having seen the result of Chieftain in combat I doubt very much the lessons we were told had been learned through wargaming and exercises. If the Warsaw pact HAD gone steaming though the Fulda gap etc, we would probably have had less impact than we were told. That in itself was not all that either. In a worst case scenario, once in contact with the main armoured formations, we were told a Chieftain could expect to survive for 38 seconds. Looking at the Chieftain hulks strewn about various parts of the Iran/Iraq war, they were just as catastrophically destroyed as any BT series tank on the eastern front of WW2. Just what the answer is seems to be another moving target. Should the M1 replacement be a smaller and more agile vehicle? Should it have a rail gun? What is the priority for crew protection and when can we realistically place computers in this role?

 

[Rickshaw]

Why not replace the M1 with a robot vehicle? An "unmanned ground vehicle", initially remotely controlled/crewed and then later, fully autonomous. Remove the crew completely from the equation. This would decrease the size of the vehicle considerably and allow it to be significantly uparmoured. If it can be done for air vehicles, surely it is possible to do it for ground vehicles. Once the crew is removed, the political costs of losing tanks decreases significantly.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Armoured units in towns and cities can be funnelled into corridors unless support and cooperation levels are high. The point I made about youtube is that there are numerous demonstrations of the high ground (literally) being tall buildings with accessible points to fire down on said armoured units. The consequences are not pretty.

The ability to work in combined arms cooperation is probably more vital than general urban terrain training, too. Consider the US Army Airborne in Panama, where they operated in conjunction with M551s and USMC LAV-25s (Team Armor), despite never having trained together and lacking urban battle experience, they won through cooperation with the armor, mortars, and the Air Force. That said I can easily imagine FTX rack up tremendous costs when they bother to go all out and train mechanized and tank troops together.

Should the M1 replacement be a smaller and more agile vehicle? Should it have a rail gun? What is the priority for crew protection and when can we realistically place computers in this role?

I don't think it can be much smaller. Considering Johnson's criteria, vehicle height is the critical dimension that determines survivability on the battlefield. Maybe if you gave it in-arm instead of torsion bar suspension, you could make it slightly shorter, but the gains of in-arm suspensions would be worth it alone. Tonnage will need to remain the same objective (40-50 tons), but in reality means it'll probably be similar to the early M1s or Leopard 2s (approx. 55 tons), but with protection maximized in a smaller area. That should help it be protected against most ultra-modern long rod munitions.

Rail guns are a bit too futuristic, armament will probably be a conventional cannon in the 130-140mm range. Crew protection might necessitate something like T-14 or some of the early Block III concepts posted in this thread, where the crew lives in an armored capsule in the hull, while view is provided by fiber optics and thermal sights. That's a bit old hat though, the last time the US Army worked on a tank it was in the early 1990s and I'm more or less regurgitating the TARDEC stuff. I suspect it may be broadly similar to Block III tank or FMBT, i.e. crew in hull, automated turret and loader, with a three-man crew. Not only does that save money in the seemingly perpetually and exponentially increasing personnel costs, but it also saves lives because you can put more armour around a smaller crew in a smaller space.

There may be provisions for teleoperation of UAS, UGS, and NLOS targeting using a MMW radar and some sort of beyond-line-of-sight ammunition like STAFF (https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m943.htm ). Active protection will be used to defend against all-aspect attacks in urban and low-intensity combat. There might also be some form of passive ESM for the tank to detect TUAVs in the area, similar to the Wolfhound system, and direct REC assets to attack their datalinks.

Why not replace the M1 with a robot vehicle? An "unmanned ground vehicle", initially remotely controlled/crewed and then later, fully autonomous. Remove the crew completely from the equation. This would decrease the size of the vehicle considerably and allow it to be significantly uparmoured. If it can be done for air vehicles, surely it is possible to do it for ground vehicles. Once the crew is removed, the political costs of losing tanks decreases significantly.

Because the M1 crew, or whatever future main battle tank, will be operating the robots. Manned ground vehicles won't be replaced by robots until we invent super AIs, so more or less "never". They'll be useful wingmen and scouts for the manned ground force. Such concepts are unusual in Western armies, but were well entrenched in the Soviet Army (before it exploded, the USSR was planning on having Object 299 or some similar tank crews operate teleoperated helicopters and reconnaissance vehicles similar to Udar) and the Russians have been using TUAV and TUGV in Ukraine quite effectively.

That said, we're catching up with them, slowly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTTO6ZkuLzQ

NREC's "Black Knight" UCGV participated in the Air Assault Expeditionary Force experiments in 2007-08. It was found rather problematic. It got stuck a lot and had to be guided out of obstacles by a human operator, and more often than not had to be babysat by the Bradley crew and safety officer using a semi-automatic (or assisted manual perhaps?) control mode called "Guarded Teleoperation".

The problem with teleoperation is that it's too easily detected and attacked, either electromagnetically (the Bulgarians have a electromagnetic artillery ammunition, essentially an expendable radio jammer that is deployed by 152mm gun or 122mm rocket) or physically with long-range anti-tank missiles. Manned ground vehicles can operate independent of non-line-of-sight radio transmissions for the most part, although the problem remains of the relative ease that you can detect and attack HF/UHF/VHF emitters compared to something like MMW or various LPI radars. Until you can have LPI HF transmitters, it seems a bit impractical against an opponent with powerful REC and artillery, which is where the Russians have excelled for decades and the US Army has lagged behind for a similar period.

With the death of powerful and capable REC systems like Advanced QuickFix and GBCS-H/L, the US Army is stuck without offensive jamming capability in a world where the electromagnetic battle is becoming all too important to winning the war on the ground.

 

[GTX]

Manned ground vehicles won't be replaced by robots until we invent super AIs, so more or less "never".

Be careful saying never...

 

[Rickshaw]

Manned ground vehicles won't be replaced by robots until we invent super AIs, so more or less "never".

Be careful saying never...

Indeed. They once claimed that there could never be a computer capable of defeating a Chess Grand Master. Big Blue proved them wrong. AIs are becoming more and more capable everyday. While initially, I don't doubt that the first AIs will be fairly primitive and not capable of much (witness the 2008 UGV tests), AIs designed a decade or two decades later will be quite capable. Today, Google and other companies are creating driverless cars. Driving a car on a road is much easier, I agree than driving a tracked vehicle off one. However, it still requires thousands of decisions which must be delivered in split seconds to prevent accidents, keep the car on the road and on the correct side of the road and not hit pedestrians, street furniture and other cars.

It is always easy to dismiss the first generation of any new technology. I'd expect the next generation and the one after that to be each in turn more capable.

 

[bobbymike]

Manned ground vehicles won't be replaced by robots until we invent super AIs, so more or less "never".

Be careful saying never...

Indeed. They once claimed that there could never be a computer capable of defeating a Chess Grand Master. Big Blue proved them wrong. AIs are becoming more and more capable everyday. While initially, I don't doubt that the first AIs will be fairly primitive and not capable of much (witness the 2008 UGV tests), AIs designed a decade or two decades later will be quite capable. Today, Google and other companies are creating driverless cars. Driving a car on a road is much easier, I agree than driving a tracked vehicle off one. However, it still requires thousands of decisions which must be delivered in split seconds to prevent accidents, keep the car on the road and on the correct side of the road and not hit pedestrians, street furniture and other cars.

It is always easy to dismiss the first generation of any new technology. I'd expect the next generation and the one after that to be each in turn more capable.

Since the last few comments started with 'tanks in urban environments' then I'd think self driving car software/hardware tech could/will be very applicable to a UGV.

The other thing I wonder is how 'ethical' the software is making the mission harder or easier and the impact on deployment of these systems. If one side has their system set to "must be shot at first ROE" and the opponent has a 'kill everything with a heat signature' mode..........

 

[sferrin]

Manned ground vehicles won't be replaced by robots until we invent super AIs, so more or less "never".

Be careful saying never...

I wouldn't say "never", but I'd put that kind of AI in the same category as fusion power and hypersonics. "20 years away and always will be."

 

[Colonial-Marine]

I see the uses for unmanned ground vehicle but fully replacing main battle tanks and such? Not viable. An unmanned tank that throws a track won't fix itself and expecting the guys who will fix it to simply drive up in a truck or something doesn't seem too wise.

No, such vehicles would have to be teamed with manned AFVs for sure.

 

[Foo Fighter]

Considering that the urban environment will also consist of rubble closed streets, the ability to consider the blockage being a method used by the opfor to funnel these vehicles into a kill zone is a requirement that as far as I can see requires a biological entity in the decision making chain. The thrown track is a good point.

 

[donnage99]

"20 years away and always will be."

Quotable quote!! If not because of technology than because of red tape. All it takes is one unsuccessful incident, and those heads who green lighted the thing into combat would roll.

 

[Kat Tsun]

I see the uses for unmanned ground vehicle but fully replacing main battle tanks and such? Not viable. An unmanned tank that throws a track won't fix itself and expecting the guys who will fix it to simply drive up in a truck or something doesn't seem too wise.

No, such vehicles would have to be teamed with manned AFVs for sure.

Robotic AFVs would probably be considered mostly disposable due to their lack of human crews TBF.

 

[marauder2048]

Considering that the urban environment will also consist of rubble closed streets, the ability to consider the blockage being a method used by the opfor to funnel these vehicles into a kill zone is a requirement that as far as I can see requires a biological entity in the decision making chain. The thrown track is a good point.

There's a strong argument for an armored UGV as a resupply vehicle for manned units operating in the urban jungle.

It's unclear to me than an MBT is the right vehicle for urban combat; something like an up-armored (could be kit-baed for example)
NLOS-M, a tracked, self-propelled, turreted 120mm mortar system with an autoloader and a 3 man crew.

There's the need for high angle fire, NLOS fire and the ability to penetrate structures top-down (where it's much harder to reinforce against plunging fire).
And you can take advantage of the many developments in 120mm guided mortars.

 

[Kat Tsun]

There is no "right vehicle" for urban combat. Down that path lies MMEV and Original Sin.

Urban combat requires mortars, infantry, tanks, aviation, and artillery to operate in concert with each other to succeed. Literally the same as any other terrain, but it asks more of all of them (the infantry have the hardest job in urban combat anyway, not the tank). Displacing one arm for another is a mistake that tends to only get made in times of austerity. Tanks have powerful armour to survive RPG attacks, they have powerful direct fire guns that can destroy other tanks or reduce strongpoints, they're protected against small arms and can move under fire, and they have psychological presence that deters attack in the first place. The latter is the hardest to quantify but the most valuable trait of the tank in low-intensity combat.

 

[marauder2048]

Tanks have powerful armour to survive RPG attacks, they have powerful direct fire guns that can destroy other tanks or reduce strongpoints, they're protected against small arms and can move under fire, and they have psychological presence that deters attack in the first place. The latter is the hardest to quantify but the most valuable trait of the tank in low-intensity combat.

With the right ammunition, there's nothing preventing something like NLOS-M from doing all of the above.
MBTs have there place and that's in countering sorties or breakout attempts or mounting counterattacks.

And as Gott's study points out: a good portion of the RPG fire the Russians encountered in Grozny was *indirect* or
from high angle sources.

 

[dan_inbox]

"RPG fire from high angle sources" can be suppressed by collapsing the building with a penetrating bomb dropped from above with a delayed fuse.
It was done effectively by Tsahal in Lebanon in 1982 using F-16s as vectors at the time. Today it can be done any number of vectors: mortars, missiles, drones, you name it. It does not even need to be nearby.

It is only a matter of the willingness to do so, knowing that the usual baddies will be sure to stuff a building with babies and women, with cameras and journos prepositioned. If you are Putin or Assad or any of their kind it's no problem, if you are Westerner the question is more open.

 

[Foo Fighter]

"20 years away and always will be."

Quotable quote!! If not because of technology than because of red tape. All it takes is one unsuccessful incident, and those heads who green lighted the thing into combat would roll.

This is a bit like owners of football clubs sacking the manager due to one defeat. How I wish this short sighted "Management" could be constrained to the bin. Management of military projects should be brought out of the play pen and into the real world. News flash, sometimes good things fail, it is called the real world. The idea of 100% reliability and victory is a myth.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Tanks have powerful armour to survive RPG attacks, they have powerful direct fire guns that can destroy other tanks or reduce strongpoints, they're protected against small arms and can move under fire, and they have psychological presence that deters attack in the first place. The latter is the hardest to quantify but the most valuable trait of the tank in low-intensity combat.

With the right ammunition, there's nothing preventing something like NLOS-M from doing all of the above.
MBTs have there place and that's in countering sorties or breakout attempts or mounting counterattacks.

And as Gott's study points out: a good portion of the RPG fire the Russians encountered in Grozny was *indirect* or
from high angle sources.

The ammunition point is true. The AMOS mortar can be used as an assault gun, as can 2B9 Vasilek and other medium-velocity gun-mortars.

The major problem is that if NLOS-M is pretending to be a tank it can't be a very good mortar at the same time.

You're not only diminishing the mass of the force (people will want to cut more units out of an organization if they think a unit can do multiple jobs at once) but you're diminishing the commander's flexibility by forcing him to use a single weapon as he would multiple ones. Mortars are probably the most valuable weapon in urban combat FWIW, so splitting them up into assault gun teams and mortar teams is risk losing concentration of force, one of the key principles of war. The loss of one of these assault guns to an ATGW would felt more than the loss of a single tank or a single mortar if the weapons were segregated, it gives a good incentive to cut force sizes by looking at the multiple capabilities of these vehicles and slashing the mortar and tank issue plans in half because you have a "do-all" vehicle, and you're still going to need an actual tank to attack enemy armour because a low velocity mortar isn't going to cut it in providing high velocity direct fire.

It is literally the same issues brought up with MMEV. However, BMP-3 would be a better comparison since it can pretend to be both a tank and a mortar. MMEV was more like an air defense vehicle, tank destroyer, and smoke generator all in one, but it suffered from the same problems of politicized force reduction and problems of concentration that splitting MMEV between a LAV-NLOS, LAV-AD, LAV-TOW, and LAV-SMK would have solved. The downside is sticker shock I suppose, but multiple dedicated platforms working together are always greater than the sum of their parts. A single "do-all" vehicle is expensive both in terms of capability lost if it's destroyed or disabled and the quantity needed to fulfill the same mission as multiple dedicated vehicles.

The other problem is that you're seeking a technological solution for a tactical problem. This is unnecessary as we've already solved this conundrum with current equipment. The issue of high angle and RPG attack is covered by having the tanks operate in buddy teams with either another tank or an infantry carrier to cover it at a distance. It avoided a Grozny in Fallujah. It'll avoid a Grozny in Talinn or Freetown or wherever The Next War will be fought. The other real alternative is introducing a tank escort vehicle like BMPT but even the Russians are getting away from that since it seems they've merged BMPT and BMP into a single chassis with T-15, and the Germans haven't touched the idea of tank escorts since Begleitpanzer 57 died in the '70s.

It's true that mortars like AMOS/NEMO/Vasilek/NLOS-M can be used as assault guns, but this is rare in real life. In practice it only happens because the person in charge either has literally no other weapons capable of defeating the target (the US Army in Aachen used high velocity self-propelled guns and the Russians in Berlin used super heavy howitzers to break down the thick masonry of European architecture, Gott mentions the former explicitly) or because he has literally nothing else that can do the job.

There's nothing wrong with providing natures of ammunition for self-defense of a mortar battery either, this could theoretically be used in an infantry support role too, but you've missed the point of the tank. The principal job of the tank isn't to fight other tanks or lead counterattacks: it's to provide a mobile gun platform that can deliver accurate direct fires to things that might slow down the infantry, that the mortars and artillery have missed. The tank showed up to deal with machine guns and barbed wire in the Western Front, it'll stick around to deal with machine guns and bus barricades in the urban battles of tomorrow.

If you had an NLOS-M with an up-armor kit that could provide adequate protection for the urban jungle, you'd likely be looking at a vehicle that might weigh somewhere north of 40 tons with all aspect Special Armor and active protection, protecting its 120mm medium velocity mortar and three man crew who live in an armored capsule. For reference, SPz Puma is ~40 tons, but it has a smaller gun, larger volume, and commensurately less protection than any tank. You're not so much talking about replacing the tank in urban combat as you are trying to give tanks mortar guns.

Anyway, this is a bit of a tangent so I apologize. The implicit course of action I'm thinking about is that the only way you're going to see mortars used as you imagine them to be used would be if tanks don't exist. If tanks exist, the mortars will be used as mortars, the tanks will be used as tanks. Training officers to do it another way will just result in them either having loads of preventable deaths, using tanks anyway because it works better, or both. Giving penny pinchers the chance to cut force and cost by rolling capabilities into a single vehicle is just asking for trouble. Trying to make a mortar into a tank will just result in a overloaded mortar carrier or a poorly protected tank, or both, because the tank has a specific niche that hasn't disappeared in the mountains of Korea or urban jungle of Aachen or Berlin.

Reading Grozny as an example of tanks being bad for urban combat is reading Grozny wrong. The correct interpretation is that sending troops with no prior preparation, refresher training, or area specific planning/intelligence, operating under normative assumptions without accurate reporting of unit readiness, is bad for urban combat. Fallujah is the most telling example of how to use heavy troops in urban combat. More or less total victory because the people in charge understood their troops and understood their terrain which was the opposite of 1st Grozny.

 

[marauder2048]

Compare

so splitting them up into assault gun teams and mortar teams is risk losing concentration of force, one of the key principles of war.

with

having the tanks operate in buddy teams with either another tank or an infantry carrier to cover it at a distance

Which is by definition losing concentration of force.

 

[Kat Tsun]

No it isn't.

The latter is the opposite of the former. Using a tank platoon or a mixed infantry-tank platoon to advance down a street is concentrating force. Using a mortar as an ersatz tank risks losing concentration.

A tank can only be a tank.
An infantry carrier can only be a carrier.
A mortar can only be a mortar.

At least ideally.

If you have a mortar that can be a mortar or a tank, you inherently lose the ability to concentrate the mortar-tank as either a mortar or a tank, depending on what it's doing at the time. The opportunity cost of having a multi-mission vehicle needs to be taken into account, which is something that is difficult to quantify because it's qualitative. You can't simply look at a tank and gauge how useful it is by examining its individual characteristics. It has to be examined holistically with how it fits into a unit's mission. Empirical testing of weapons requires lots of money, ISO container towns and cities, and a few months of running around in the Mojave or the Bayou, but even the Canadians figured out how bad a multi-mission multi-capable vehicle was and took MMEV out behind the shed before it went too far.

Even FCS, for all its faults, recognized this to the point that it had a tank instead of using NLOS-M as the tanks.

This is mostly a case of "your mortar-tanks can't do two things at one time" though.

You're going to either need twice as many mortar tanks, or accept having half or less as many mortars and tanks at any one time, which is why you risk losing concentration of force; that's about as simple as it can be put and if you're going to have twice as many mortar tanks why not simply have mortars and tanks in separate units?

The ultimate point is that tanks are as vital in open terrain as they are close terrain. The latter I suppose is epitomized by a desert while the former is epitomized by mountains or maybe forests. Cities are somewhere in between those two extremes, being neither too closed to vehicle traffic because of their emphasis on automobile travel, but not too open because of built-up areas and structures creating channels of movement for vehicle traffic. However, cities have multiple discrete routes of travel, while mountains might have one or two narrow passes that tanks are forced to travel on, but we've used tanks in Italy and Korea which are known for mountains without trouble.

I don't see why cities are suddenly inhospitable to the tankers who have proper training and a mindset to tackle its unique challenges. There are numerous examples in history where properly trained or properly adaptable units were able to overcome the challenges of the urban jungle to use tanks, infantry, and artillery effectively in city fighting, like Hue, Fallujah, and Aachen. There are probably an equal or greater number of examples where poorly trained or improperly prepared forces were annihilated in urban combat or escaped by the skin of their teeth, like Grozny and Suez. That's why I linked Mr. Gott's monograph. The problem with "tanks in urban combat" is not a problem that is solved by replacing the tank, because there is nothing inherently wrong with the tank in urban combat. Further, there is nothing that can replace the tank in urban combat. Anything that tries to replace the tank simply becomes a tank in its own right.

Rather, it is a question of how you use the technics themselves, which is much harder to quantify than something like aspects of protection or Special Armor composition, and not the least bit because mechanized training is expensive and has many dependent variables that can't be easily isolated. The flip side of this is that tankmen of the future may be experts in fighting in the concrete jungle, but lose the ability to effectively fight in rolling hills, deserts, or other stereotypical "tank country" terrains. I suppose that's only because there's only so many hours in a day you can devote to training I guess.

 

[Foo Fighter]

Perhaps a return to the assault gun as a local support to the infantry. When we think about a tank it usually has a turret. At least it should. I have arguments all the time with folk who have no clue about vehicle designation and the news reporters are thicker than tarmac saying that an APC or Armoured car are TANKS.

Suggesting that if something is not a tank it cannot carry out support roles is disingenuous and totally missing the point, why use tanks in an environment they are not suited to? It is possible to have a support vehicle within the infantry formation, training WITH the infantry formation ALL the time and could take on ALL the local infantry support roles.

What is left of my regiment is now carrying out the armoured cavalry role going back to its original employment. Perhaps a combination of this and the all arms combat group is the ideal.

 

[dan_inbox]

Suggesting that if something is not a tank it cannot carry out support roles is disingenuous and totally missing the point, why use tanks in an environment they are not suited to? It is possible to have a support vehicle within the infantry formation, training WITH the infantry formation ALL the time and could take on ALL the local infantry support roles.

Sounds like someone is about to invent the IFV!

 

[Foo Fighter]

No, I did not mean to sound flippant. I am suggesting the return to a dedicated infantry support vehicle otherwise known as the assault gun. These vehicles were pivotal to the Blitzkrieg concept that predated their subversion as anti tank vehicles. This could hardly be seen as a negative move as their use would cover all terrain types. Cooperation is a key here, not giving different uses to tanks, especially when the assault guns can be cheaper and kept within the infantry battalion.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Perhaps a return to the assault gun as a local support to the infantry. When we think about a tank it usually has a turret. At least it should. I have arguments all the time with folk who have no clue about vehicle designation and the news reporters are thicker than tarmac saying that an APC or Armoured car are TANKS.

Suggesting that if something is not a tank it cannot carry out support roles is disingenuous and totally missing the point, why use tanks in an environment they are not suited to? It is possible to have a support vehicle within the infantry formation, training WITH the infantry formation ALL the time and could take on ALL the local infantry support roles.

What is left of my regiment is now carrying out the armoured cavalry role going back to its original employment. Perhaps a combination of this and the all arms combat group is the ideal.

The I made point isn't that something that isn't a tank can't carry out infantry support roles, the point is that it's just inferior to the tank in that role. I explicitly said that gun-mortars could be used as assault guns if needed, but that this was strictly an emergency capability. A mortar is, for hopefully obvious reasons, much better being used for IDF, smoke laying, and other mortar things, rather than running around pretending its a tank and getting shot up by machine guns or RPGs (or worse, contributing to the battalion losing the indirect fire battle).

For one, self propelled mortar vehicles usually lack the armour protection to survive the environment the tank is supposed to survive in (giving them up-armour kits just means the suspensions will be stressed more often) and for two, a self propelled mortar being used to attack a strongpoint in direct fire isn't being used as a mortar. The effects of that sort of virtual attrition are hard to understate, especially since it would give incentive to strip units of better direct fire weapons like tanks in the first place.

FWIW the only modern assault guns are bad things like Stryker Mobile Gun System. These can be made totally useless by a well placed brick or small arms fire. The compromises of StuG-like vehicles (turretless) or MGS-likes (no protection) are mostly irrelevant in the context of super-industrial economics since the 1970s anyway. A good assault gun would just be a tank but probably somehow worse because it's less protected or less capable for essentially arbitrary reasons.

A dedicated sort of assault gun made sense when fighting vehicles' principal costs are taken up by the mechanical systems, so stuff like StuG weren't totally silly because turrets constituted a major part of a vehicle cost. However, modern assault guns and modern tanks require similar capability in targeting and firepower, to the point that even a wheeled vehicle with a robotic turret (such as Stryker MGS) might cost more than half as much as a tank because its vectronics suite is comparable to the tanks. Infantry support has moved from being the domain of dedicated gun carriers to being another mission requirement of the ever expanding battlefield roles of the tank.

For illustrative purposes we can look at economically: I'm not sure how much turrets constituted a cost of the assault gun/tank in WW2, but in the 1960s, the fire control system alone constituted something around 45% of the MBT-70's overall cost, and something like 40% of the M1 Abrams cost. This percentage of vectronics cost has only consumed more of the unit and operating costs of a vehicle as we've reached the end of the age of machine warfare. The US Army recently (~2015) acquired some super snazzy dual-band (MWIR/LWIR) FLIRs for the M1A2SEP Abrams at the unit cost of something like $1.5 million per camera. Given the overlap in requirements for the two direct fire missions (both assault guns and tanks have similar target recognition and accuracy requirements, which means their fire control systems will be very similar, if not identical), you aren't actually saving money by using assault guns instead of tanks, except by cutting out the pittances of engine and Special Armor costs, which might be like 40% or less of the overall cost of a vehicle these days.

Tanks are just better assault guns period. The training issues of dealing with tank-infantry cooperation are the point of the US Army's Combined Arms Battalions (and Battalion Task Forces before that) which have worked fine since they were introduced near the end of WW2. I guess the point is that tanks in urban combat aren't a technological problem, they're a tactical or training problem. You could just as easily solve it by putting tank companies in infantry battalions and training them to support infantry as you could inventing/acquiring a new vehicle to do the same thing with.

TBF, there is a case to be made for modern assault guns, but it's not to replace tanks in mechanized units: A modern assault gun, like Stryker MGS or M8 AGS, could be used as an airborne or airdroppable vehicle to support paratroopers. That's about the only place for them these days, but that's just a "light tank" by any other name I suppose.

 

[kaiserd]

Perhaps a return to the assault gun as a local support to the infantry. When we think about a tank it usually has a turret. At least it should. I have arguments all the time with folk who have no clue about vehicle designation and the news reporters are thicker than tarmac saying that an APC or Armoured car are TANKS.

Suggesting that if something is not a tank it cannot carry out support roles is disingenuous and totally missing the point, why use tanks in an environment they are not suited to? It is possible to have a support vehicle within the infantry formation, training WITH the infantry formation ALL the time and could take on ALL the local infantry support roles.

What is left of my regiment is now carrying out the armoured cavalry role going back to its original employment. Perhaps a combination of this and the all arms combat group is the ideal.

The I made point isn't that something that isn't a tank can't carry out infantry support roles, the point is that it's just inferior to the tank in that role. I explicitly said that gun-mortars could be used as assault guns if needed, but that this was strictly an emergency capability. A mortar is, for hopefully obvious reasons, much better being used for IDF, smoke laying, and other mortar things, rather than running around pretending its a tank and getting shot up by machine guns or RPGs (or worse, contributing to the battalion losing the indirect fire battle).

For one, self propelled mortar vehicles usually lack the armour protection to survive the environment the tank is supposed to survive in (giving them up-armour kits just means the suspensions will be stressed more often) and for two, a self propelled mortar being used to attack a strongpoint in direct fire isn't being used as a mortar. The effects of that sort of virtual attrition are hard to understate, especially since it would give incentive to strip units of better direct fire weapons like tanks in the first place.

FWIW the only modern assault guns are bad things like Stryker Mobile Gun System. These can be made totally useless by a well placed brick or small arms fire. The compromises of StuG-like vehicles (turretless) or MGS-likes (no protection) are mostly irrelevant in the context of super-industrial economics since the 1970s anyway. A good assault gun would just be a tank but probably somehow worse because it's less protected or less capable for essentially arbitrary reasons.

A dedicated sort of assault gun made sense when fighting vehicles' principal costs are taken up by the mechanical systems, so stuff like StuG weren't totally silly because turrets constituted a major part of a vehicle cost. However, modern assault guns and modern tanks require similar capability in targeting and firepower, to the point that even a wheeled vehicle with a robotic turret (such as Stryker MGS) might cost more than half as much as a tank because its vectronics suite is comparable to the tanks. Infantry support has moved from being the domain of dedicated gun carriers to being another mission requirement of the ever expanding battlefield roles of the tank.

For illustrative purposes we can look at economically: I'm not sure how much turrets constituted a cost of the assault gun/tank in WW2, but in the 1960s, the fire control system alone constituted something around 45% of the MBT-70's overall cost, and something like 40% of the M1 Abrams cost. This percentage of vectronics cost has only consumed more of the unit and operating costs of a vehicle as we've reached the end of the age of machine warfare. The US Army recently (~2015) acquired some super snazzy dual-band (MWIR/LWIR) FLIRs for the M1A2SEP Abrams at the unit cost of something like $1.5 million per camera. Given the overlap in requirements for the two direct fire missions (both assault guns and tanks have similar target recognition and accuracy requirements, which means their fire control systems will be very similar, if not identical), you aren't actually saving money by using assault guns instead of tanks, except by cutting out the pittances of engine and Special Armor costs, which might be like 40% or less of the overall cost of a vehicle these days.

Tanks are just better assault guns period. The training issues of dealing with tank-infantry cooperation are the point of the US Army's Combined Arms Battalions (and Battalion Task Forces before that) which have worked fine since they were introduced near the end of WW2. I guess the point is that tanks in urban combat aren't a technological problem, they're a tactical or training problem. You could just as easily solve it by putting tank companies in infantry battalions and training them to support infantry as you could inventing/acquiring a new vehicle to do the same thing with.

TBF, there is a case to be made for modern assault guns, but it's not to replace tanks in mechanized units: A modern assault gun, like Stryker MGS or M8 AGS, could be used as an airborne or airdroppable vehicle to support paratroopers. That's about the only place for them these days, but that's just a "light tank" by any other name I suppose.

For what's worth I think that is a very well argued contribution; others feel free disagree