Stryker/C-130 Pics

"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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

"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.

"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.

"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)