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#41
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"Paul Austin" wrote in message .. .
"phil hunt" wrote in message . .. On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 06:44:11 -0400, Paul Austin wrote: "Tony Williams" wrote I understand that basic Stryker is right on the size/weight carrying limits of the C-130. Any info on how the Herc will cope with the bigger versions, like the one carrying a 105mm gun? By buying A400Ms? Seriously, the Stryker (idiot spelling) sacrifices too much for C-130 compatibility, particularly in the area of protection. The MagicTech remote sensing/remote fires stuff What's this? Is it related to the "battlefield Internet" I've head about? FCS if the ultimate MagicTech, consisting of ground and airborne recon platforms, data networks, robotic fire and logistics vehicles and incidentally, replacements for the current generation mechanized vehicles for troop carriers, fire support, C&C and direct fire combat. Where does this term "MagicTech" come from? First I have ever heard of it... In the interim, "digital battlefield" electronics, wide distribution of ubiquitous and persistent recon imagery and analysis and precision fires from airborne and ground systems help a lot. The USMC completed a wargame about 6 months ago using all of this stuff and a light Marine Blue Force did very well against a conventional mech OPFOR. They also discovered that the Red Force could compensate for the advantages these technologies give US forces by targeting communications and fire support elements. If they can be degraded, then light forces lose the means to stand up to enemy mechanized forces and are often defeated. No, the "digital battlefield electronics", as you call it, is NOT an interim solution awaiting the fielding of FCS. Instead, FCS is merely a concept of an entire family of new equipment that will more completely integrate the evolving digital, ISR, targeting, and C3 developments that we have already instituted. And be careful of citing these battle simulations as "evidence"; as we saw last year during that JFC simulation, these exercises are designed and managed to acheive very specific goals, and even then are subject to anomalies; having seen a mechanized engineer battalion (minus) (one still mounted in the M113 battle taxis to boot) destroy the better part of an OPFOR mechanized brigade during a combined division/corps WFX (and this occured while the engineer unit was fleeing an overrun situation, for gosh sakes), I can tell you that trying to draw finite tactical conclusions is risky at best. Add in the fact that the usual process is to weight things a bit towards the OPFOR, since the objective is usually to stress the Bluefor, and you can see where this is anything but a clean and neat process. As usual with military affairs, there's no panacea and the guy you're trying to kill has powerful incentives to circumvent your advantages. And just as usual, the accuracy of computer simulations of tactical ground fights is strongly suspect. isn't ready yet, never mind "electric armor" And this? Britain has done development on large capacitor banks that pass very large currents through shaped charge jets hitting an armored vehicle, melting the jet before it can hit the inner armo(u)r. They say that scaled up versions might be able to do the same to long-rod penetrators. "Melt the jet"? OFCS, that jet is already at extremely high temperature, courtesy of its being shoved inside out and pushed into a "jet" moving at thousands of meters per second. "Melting" it does nothing to change its mass, and it is the combination of that mass and attendant velocity that makes a shaped charge (read up on the Munroe Effect) work. that's needed to make what amounts to a LAV mounted army viable. If the Army is to be both rapidly deployable and as effective on the ground as it currently is, then much more capable airlift is required. In fact, A300M is too small ITYM A400M. Yup. The A300M is obviously the two-engined version intented to replace the G.222 Mehopes that was offered tongue in cheek, as the G.222 is being replaced by the C-27J, and IIRC the A300 was a commercial design development... Brooks |
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On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 14:09:00 -0400, "Paul Austin"
wrote: "Alan Minyard" wrote On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 06:44:11 -0400, "Paul Austin" wrote: "Tony Williams" wrote I understand that basic Stryker is right on the size/weight carrying limits of the C-130. Any info on how the Herc will cope with the bigger versions, like the one carrying a 105mm gun? By buying A400Ms? Seriously, the Stryker (idiot spelling) sacrifices too much for C-130 compatibility, particularly in the area of protection. The MagicTech remote sensing/remote fires stuff isn't ready yet, never mind "electric armor" that's needed to make what amounts to a LAV mounted army viable. If the Army is to be both rapidly deployable and as effective on the ground as it currently is, then much more capable airlift is required. In fact, A300M is too small (only marginally larger box or payload than a C-130). What's needed is Pelican or LTA kind of solutions. It is called the C-17 Think bigger. Much bigger. The real problem with insertion of a combat force by air is in supplying it. Logistical loads dwarf TOE loads. Right now, the only way to meet logistical tonnage requirements is with ships. I thought you were discussing initial assault, sorry. I whole heartedly agree that, at least for the foreseeable future, an all aircraft logistics train for a large conventional force is not practicable. Al Minyard |
#43
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In message , Kevin
Brooks writes "Paul Austin" wrote in message . .. Britain has done development on large capacitor banks that pass very large currents through shaped charge jets hitting an armored vehicle, melting the jet before it can hit the inner armo(u)r. They say that scaled up versions might be able to do the same to long-rod penetrators. "Melt the jet"? OFCS, that jet is already at extremely high temperature, courtesy of its being shoved inside out and pushed into a "jet" moving at thousands of meters per second. "Melting" it does nothing to change its mass, and it is the combination of that mass and attendant velocity that makes a shaped charge (read up on the Munroe Effect) work. It's an electrical effect. Dump a lot of electricity into the copper jet, and you have current and motion: which produces a powerful magnetic field, so the jet repels itself and flies apart. Or that's the way my physics says it ought to work. Works quite nicely in a carefully-controlled experiment. Might even be useful in a fielded vehicle eventually. Won't arrive tomorrow, though. http://www.dstl.gov.uk/pr/press/pr2002/01-07-02.htm -- When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite. W S Churchill Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk |
#44
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On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 14:06:30 -0400, Paul Austin wrote:
FCS Ah, "Future Combat System". if the ultimate MagicTech, consisting of ground and airborne recon platforms, data networks, robotic fire and logistics vehicles and incidentally, replacements for the current generation mechanized vehicles for troop carriers, fire support, C&C and direct fire combat. So what data rate will FCS run at? Consider a unit such as a Brigade - will the data links be radio, or something else (laser beams? fiber optic? ethernet?) or a mixture? If the data links are radio, how will routing within the brigade happen? Will every vehicle be presumed to be in radio contact with every other, or will the system work as a smart swarm and automatically reconfigure routing between nodes by itself, or will routing be manually configured? In the interim, "digital battlefield" electronics, wide distribution of ubiquitous and persistent recon imagery and analysis and precision fires from airborne and ground systems help a lot. My understanding is 4th Infantry Division use the interim system - is this correct? How will FCS be better than the interim system - my understanding is the interim system's bandwidth is quite low, about 4.5 kbit/s. BTW, is there a good introductory document about VMF (Variable Message Format) messages? The USMC completed a wargame about 6 months ago using all of this stuff and a light Marine Blue Force did very well against a conventional mech OPFOR. They also discovered that the Red Force could compensate for the advantages these technologies give US forces by targeting communications and fire support elements. Comms equipment is giving out radio signals; if these can be pinpointed and targeted, the unit is ****ed. Imagine a swarm of cheap cruise missiles[1] homing in on radio signals from the nodes on the tactical internet. [1]: http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/ If they can be degraded, then light forces lose the means to stand up to enemy mechanized forces and are often defeated. If your comms are degraded badly enough, you'll lose whether you have light forces or tanks; even the best MBTs don't have perfect protection against ATGMs, etc. As usual with military affairs, there's no panacea and the guy you're trying to kill has powerful incentives to circumvent your advantages. Indeed. isn't ready yet, never mind "electric armor" And this? Britain has done development on large capacitor banks that pass very large currents through shaped charge jets hitting an armored vehicle, melting the jet before it can hit the inner armo(u)r. They say that scaled up versions might be able to do the same to long-rod penetrators. Does this work? It sounds nice, but I'm not sure if it's practical. What if the capacitors short out? That would release large amounts of enery, if it's enough to melt a solid piece of metal. -- "It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia |
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On 22 Sep 2003 08:49:13 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:
No, the "digital battlefield electronics", as you call it, is NOT an interim solution awaiting the fielding of FCS. Instead, FCS is merely a concept of an entire family of new equipment that will more completely integrate the evolving digital, ISR, What's ISR? As usual with military affairs, there's no panacea and the guy you're trying to kill has powerful incentives to circumvent your advantages. And just as usual, the accuracy of computer simulations of tactical ground fights is strongly suspect. Garbage in, garbage out. -- "It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia |
#46
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On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 21:30:29 +0100, Paul J. Adam wrote:
It's an electrical effect. Dump a lot of electricity into the copper jet, and you have current and motion: which produces a powerful magnetic field, so the jet repels itself and flies apart. Or that's the way my physics says it ought to work. Works quite nicely in a carefully-controlled experiment. Might even be useful in a fielded vehicle eventually. Maybe. I can't help but feel it'd be a lot simpler just to put a 1 mm metal plate a foot or so away from the main armour (and mayby use the resulting cavity as storage space). -- "It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia |
#47
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"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message m... "Paul Austin" wrote in message .. . "phil hunt" wrote in message . .. On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 06:44:11 -0400, Paul Austin wrote: "Tony Williams" wrote I understand that basic Stryker is right on the size/weight carrying limits of the C-130. Any info on how the Herc will cope with the bigger versions, like the one carrying a 105mm gun? By buying A400Ms? Seriously, the Stryker (idiot spelling) sacrifices too much for C-130 compatibility, particularly in the area of protection. The MagicTech remote sensing/remote fires stuff What's this? Is it related to the "battlefield Internet" I've head about? FCS if the ultimate MagicTech, consisting of ground and airborne recon platforms, data networks, robotic fire and logistics vehicles and incidentally, replacements for the current generation mechanized vehicles for troop carriers, fire support, C&C and direct fire combat. Where does this term "MagicTech" come from? First I have ever heard of it... It's a term science fiction readers use to describe overwhelming technological advantages that make the plot come out the way the author intents. US forces combine superb training (often overlooked by people who focus on equipment too much), doctrine and systems that seem like MagicTech to our opponents. In the interim, "digital battlefield" electronics, wide distribution of ubiquitous and persistent recon imagery and analysis and precision fires from airborne and ground systems help a lot. The USMC completed a wargame about 6 months ago using all of this stuff and a light Marine Blue Force did very well against a conventional mech OPFOR. They also discovered that the Red Force could compensate for the advantages these technologies give US forces by targeting communications and fire support elements. If they can be degraded, then light forces lose the means to stand up to enemy mechanized forces and are often defeated. No, the "digital battlefield electronics", as you call it, is NOT an interim solution awaiting the fielding of FCS. Instead, FCS is merely a concept of an entire family of new equipment that will more completely integrate the evolving digital, ISR, targeting, and C3 developments that we have already instituted. And be careful of citing these battle simulations as "evidence"; as we saw last year during that JFC simulation, these exercises are designed and managed to acheive very specific goals, and even then are subject to anomalies; having seen a mechanized engineer battalion (minus) (one still mounted in the M113 battle taxis to boot) destroy the better part of an OPFOR mechanized brigade during a combined division/corps WFX (and this occured while the engineer unit was fleeing an overrun situation, for gosh sakes), I can tell you that trying to draw finite tactical conclusions is risky at best. Add in the fact that the usual process is to weight things a bit towards the OPFOR, since the objective is usually to stress the Bluefor, and you can see where this is anything but a clean and neat process. Perhaps I expressed myself badly. The "Digital Battlefield" systems are in no way temporary and stopgap but_are_here and now. FCS is intended to fully exploit the advantages of enhanced battlefield digitization by making recon ubiquitous and every present and by extending the logic of automated systems to all levels of the battlefield. The remarkable thing about FCS is what a small part the replacements for current Bradley, Abrams and artillery system are within the complete FCS. I agree with you about the perils of simulations but there are lessons to be learned from them. In the case I cited, the Marines demonstrated an obvious counter to the FCS approach. As usual with military affairs, there's no panacea and the guy you're trying to kill has powerful incentives to circumvent your advantages. And just as usual, the accuracy of computer simulations of tactical ground fights is strongly suspect. isn't ready yet, never mind "electric armor" And this? Britain has done development on large capacitor banks that pass very large currents through shaped charge jets hitting an armored vehicle, melting the jet before it can hit the inner armo(u)r. They say that scaled up versions might be able to do the same to long-rod penetrators. "Melt the jet"? OFCS, that jet is already at extremely high temperature, courtesy of its being shoved inside out and pushed into a "jet" moving at thousands of meters per second. "Melting" it does nothing to change its mass, and it is the combination of that mass and attendant velocity that makes a shaped charge (read up on the Munroe Effect) work. Read more closely about the physics of shaped charges. The jet in a shaped charge is actually composed of a stream of solid particles. The article in IDR describing the "electric armor" didn't go into details about mechanism but a shaped charge's jet doesn't have anything like the penetrating power if the jet is turned into a liquid. In this case, liquid copper. The "electric armor" notion, still unproven in the field is that a jet shorts out two plates of a very high value capacitor and the resulting current melts the jet before it can travel into the armor array proper. Actually building such a vehicle encompassing capacitor in such a way that it 1. doesn't electrocute the crew or the attending infantry and 2. can be recharged reasonably quickly is left as an exercise for the development engineers. that's needed to make what amounts to a LAV mounted army viable. If the Army is to be both rapidly deployable and as effective on the ground as it currently is, then much more capable airlift is required. In fact, A300M is too small ITYM A400M. Yup. The A300M is obviously the two-engined version intented to replace the G.222 Mehopes that was offered tongue in cheek, as the G.222 is being replaced by the C-27J, and IIRC the A300 was a commercial design development... Yup. Brooks |
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"phil hunt" wrote Kevin Brooks wrote: No, the "digital battlefield electronics", as you call it, is NOT an interim solution awaiting the fielding of FCS. Instead, FCS is merely a concept of an entire family of new equipment that will more completely integrate the evolving digital, ISR, What's ISR? Yet another TLA. Information, Surveillance and Reconaissance, I believe. |
#49
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"phil hunt" wrote in message . .. On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 14:06:30 -0400, Paul Austin wrote: FCS Ah, "Future Combat System". if the ultimate MagicTech, consisting of ground and airborne recon platforms, data networks, robotic fire and logistics vehicles and incidentally, replacements for the current generation mechanized vehicles for troop carriers, fire support, C&C and direct fire combat. So what data rate will FCS run at? Consider a unit such as a Brigade - will the data links be radio, or something else (laser beams? fiber optic? ethernet?) or a mixture? The first Brigade XXI exercises were run using 64Kbps links over HF radios. Not suprisingly, trials proved that slow a data fabric completely inadequate. There are advantages to HF links but VHF, UHF and higher frequencies will be used. The Navy is planning EHF links. If the data links are radio, how will routing within the brigade happen? Will every vehicle be presumed to be in radio contact with every other, or will the system work as a smart swarm and automatically reconfigure routing between nodes by itself, or will routing be manually configured? In the interim, "digital battlefield" electronics, wide distribution of ubiquitous and persistent recon imagery and analysis and precision fires from airborne and ground systems help a lot. My understanding is 4th Infantry Division use the interim system - is this correct? How will FCS be better than the interim system - my understanding is the interim system's bandwidth is quite low, about 4.5 kbit/s. It's not so much interim as the first spiral of fielded systems with more and better to follow. The USMC completed a wargame about 6 months ago using all of this stuff and a light Marine Blue Force did very well against a conventional mech OPFOR. They also discovered that the Red Force could compensate for the advantages these technologies give US forces by targeting communications and fire support elements. Comms equipment is giving out radio signals; if these can be pinpointed and targeted, the unit is ****ed. Imagine a swarm of cheap cruise missiles[1] homing in on radio signals from the nodes on the tactical internet. Not nearly as easy as it seems, since everything is spread spectrum, fast hopping and anti-jam. [1]: http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/ If they can be degraded, then light forces lose the means to stand up to enemy mechanized forces and are often defeated. If your comms are degraded badly enough, you'll lose whether you have light forces or tanks; even the best MBTs don't have perfect protection against ATGMs, etc. MBTs are nearly immune to ATGMs now. About the best that can be hoped for by man-portable systems is a mobility kill. Heavier ATGMs have some hope of doing more than blowing a track but not along the frontal arc. Everyone has a story but damn few examples of success. Makes you wonder if the Chechens used the three man anti-tank team: first man waits until the tank noses out past the edge of the building, then shoves a section of rail road track into the drive sprocket. Number two throws a blanket over the vision blocks and number three crashes a gallon jug of gasoline onto the blanket. Number one then lights the blanket and the team skips off for a pint. As usual with military affairs, there's no panacea and the guy you're trying to kill has powerful incentives to circumvent your advantages. Indeed. isn't ready yet, never mind "electric armor" And this? Britain has done development on large capacitor banks that pass very large currents through shaped charge jets hitting an armored vehicle, melting the jet before it can hit the inner armo(u)r. They say that scaled up versions might be able to do the same to long-rod penetrators. Does this work? It sounds nice, but I'm not sure if it's practical. What if the capacitors short out? That would release large amounts of enery, if it's enough to melt a solid piece of metal. Success is a matter of sufficient development I find the notion of melting a 10-20mm thick rod of refractory metal in microseconds literally incredible. |
#50
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"phil hunt" wrote in message
On 22 Sep 2003 08:49:13 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote: No, the "digital battlefield electronics", as you call it, is NOT an interim solution awaiting the fielding of FCS. Instead, FCS is merely a concept of an entire family of new equipment that will more completely integrate the evolving digital, ISR, What's ISR? Intelligence, Surveillence, and Reconaissance. Often seen as C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillence, and reconaissance). -- Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail "If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed) |
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