The Abraham had some trouble at the start didn’t it ?
I’ve read that their engines keep guzzling even when they aren’t moving… and therefore require horrendous amount of refueling.
Remember that the Sherman got things done… even if the individual tank commanders weren’t too happy about the differences. The M-1 in a prolonged conflict might totally crash and fuck up without high levels of supply or maintenance. Small invasion aren’t a good standard to say M-1’s are perfect. They have naturally been improved over the years.
Pardon the hijack, but I am curious here. I have actually enjoyed that movie, I found it cute. I have, however, never investigated the true facts pertaining to the Bradley and I have always been skeptical of the movie (knowing of course how facts can be streeeeetched). Is the movie totally false? I mean, did the Bradley take 17 years for production? Did we produce two types of vehicles, one that was safe for a foregin country and one that was unsafe for America (like this has not happened before- i.e. Pinto)? That it cost billions of extra dollars because of inefficiency and poor leadership?
I don’t think that anybody else uses the Bradley. The two main models, M2 and M3 (M2: troop-transport, the ‘normal’ version, and M3: Cavalry model. Carry less troops but more ammo) are both used by the US Army, and don’t differ much other than amount of ammo carried.
Lissa… if you had a military budget that is ridiculously large would you care much about wasting some of it ?
Check out some military development programs… quite a few run into billions and don’t have much to show for it. The internal squabbling and egos of course are a reason for so much waste and politics. Once retired the generals also get a neat and well paid consultant position with the same companies that make the weapon systems. Even canceled programs generate a lot of cash.
Its a lot of taxpayer money… for not so comparable results. The “waste” is greasing a system that demands more military budgets and contracts. Pure Pork Barrel. The companies make good profit, the politicians get pork barrel and jobs for their states and the generals get cozy arrangements. The only one to lose is the taxpayer. You.
There’s a couple of things that I wanted to talk about in this thread. It seems there are two assumptions being made about the status of the US Military at present:
The US is ‘spread thin’ because the Reserves and National Guard are on active duty.
I believe that this is actually a myth. Since the Mid-90s, a vast number of mission-critical functions (logistics, support, airlift capability, etc…) were moved from Active Duty formations in the Army, Navy, and Air Force (less so in the Marine Corps). This created a more front-line combat-oriented active duty, and a more support-oriented Reserve and NG formations.
This has resulted in that for any real-world long-term combat operation in the last 10 years has required a very large commitment of Reserve and NG formations to support them. This was true of Bosnian peacekeeping, No-Fly Zones in Northern and Southern Iraq, etc… The trigger pullers are generally Active duty, but often the ones bringing them bullets and beans are Reserve or Guard.
The US Military as a whole is spread thin.
I have my doubts this is actually true. If you go with the accepted model, of being able to support 2 full-scale Gulf War 1 type actions and one police action, then yes, the force is not capable of supporting this. But I believe that this is not in fact the requirement of the US military anymore. This would be like saying we need to support an invasion of North Korea, continue supporting Iraq combat operations, fight against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and support something along the lines of Bosnian peacekeeping, all at the same time. I realy don’t think this is required.
As for true readiness for real-world missions, I think that is another area entirely. I do believe that there are some serious issues with morale, due to things being done by higher command such as stop-loss orders and back-to-back deployments to Iraq, etc… Additionally, the vital role performed by the reserve and NG complements is becomming more and more difficult, as the Reserves and NG are missing repeatedly their recruitment goals. This means that the qualified people who are in uniform are not being replaced quickly enough, and additionally that the ramp-up time of new troops will degrade operation efficiency more as the problem of replacement becomes more pronounced.
So in a nutshell, whilst I don’t think the forces are truly overstretched, I do believe we are approaching a crisis in confidence amongst our armed services.
Remember that the US public is a lot more sensitive to our casualty rates now than they used to be. A cheaper tank or aircraft might be more cost effective on the battlefield, but would result in higher losses on our sides, which the American people would find unacceptable, and would hurt moral in the Armed services. Right now, the M1 & M2 combo wipes the floor with the old Soviet armour we are most likely to face, while a cheaper combo, even if provided for in greater numbers & costing would end up taking noticable damage.
Pretty much what I was going to say. Certainly we could have cheaper weapons systems that would be on par with, say, the T-72 or T-80. But then, they’d be on par with those tanks and we’d take a lot more casualties. In WWII we were willing to put American boys in Ronson Burners without batting an eye. Watching some of the shows on the History Channel reguarding the Shermans makes me cringe…sending in 20 tanks and getting 2 or 3 back is not an optimal situation. I guess the US finally got tired of sending our boys (and now girls) out in complete crap and relying on our fighting spirit to see us through…or shear numbers.
Personally, I don’t mind so much paying extra for better weapons if it means the people we put in them or that use them have a better chance of living. Of course, as my son is a Marine maybe I’m biased.
As to the OP, I think its pretty much been addressed. We haven’t been willing to spend the money required to maintain cold war levels of our PERSONNEL in our armed forces, investing more heavily in technology instead. Its not really any one parties fault…the fault really lies with each of us who relaxed after the Soviets fell and wanted some of our money that was going into the military to come back to us or to be put into other things. Certainly the fault also lies in the current administration for underestimating the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq and overestimating our own capabilities and more importantly resources before committing us to two wars in the region…and stretching our military so far. So, in summary, there is enough fault to go around from this admistration (for the Iraq war) to the previous administrations (for cutting military budgets or not focusing more on manpower issues) to each and every one of us for letting it happen.
The Abrams (not Abraham; Abrams was a general) didn’t replace the Sherman, it replaced the M-60 Patton.
Tanks simply do not last long without high levels of supply or maintenance. They never have, not since the Battle of Cambrai. The performance expectations are such on a tank that prolonged reliability and fuel consumption are simply not important capabilities. Tanks need to be powerful, fast, and as heavily armored as technology will allow, at the expense of niceties like long lasting engines or fuel efficiency. The trouble and expense of an elaborate and expensive maintenance and refueling operation to keep them going is simply part and parcel of having an armored force. If you’re not willing or able to pay that price (as the Germans were not in WWII, they being geniunely dreadful at the logistical side of things) they you just won’t have an effective tank force.
Some tanks may be worse than others, but the standards of longetivity and fuel consumption generally accepted for tanks would make a Lada look like a Honda Civic. It would be strange to criticize the Abrams for a characteristic that is common to all main battle tanks.
Furthermore, you don’t really use tanks in a “prolonged conflict.” Like anything else, a prolonged conflict will generally see the bulk of your tank fleet used in a major attack, then withdrawn, refitted, used again, etc., and so it has been since WWI.
xtisme:
We’ve beaten this issue to death in other threads, but the idea that the Sherman was a peice of crap is simply not true. It’s true that the Sherman was outmatched in a straight up gunfight against, say, a Panther, but
There just weren’t a lot of Panthers around. The U.S. (and British, and Canadian) armies were not fighting an enemy that had the luxury of a lot of tanks. The German army in western Europe was primarily an infantry and, to an amazing extent, horse-drawn army. The tanks they used had to be, by necessity, optimized to fight enemy infantry that used boots and horses to move around, not other tanks. Furthermore, the Allies were fighting in an operational environment where they enjoyed almost total air supremacy, enabling them to attack German armor with any one of thousands of fighter-bombers. The Sherman was an extremely flexible, multi-use tank in the context of the Allied combined arms scheme.
That doesn’t change the fact that a Sherman in the sights of a Panther was in deep shit, but to reverse a famous comment, you go to war against the enemy you’re actually fighting, not some magical fantasy enemy on a game board. The Germans were not, for the most part, a tank army.
The Shermans weren’t nearly as bad as their reputation, which (as happens with this stuff) has been ridiculously exaggerated and simplified over time. It was a reliable vehicle, fast, with a very fast turret traverse time (the speed the turret/gun can rotate and elevate.) It was improved with subsequent redesigns.
As was also true of Soviet designs, Shermans were relatively easy to maintain and fix. The ability to keep tanks running and in the field is a major part of a tank’s usefulness and it was something the Germans were really, really terrible at. During fairly large stretches of the war, the Wehrmacht’s much-praised heavy tanks, like the Panther and Tiger, were often 60-80% out of commission because they were so difficult to fix and the Germans didn’t plan for it. A tank that can’t move or shoot is useless, no matter what its ideal state is.
Quantity has a quality all its own; the ratio of Shermans to Tigers and Panthers combined was 15 to 1, at least. It wasn’t one sherman against one Tiger. It was five against one, or ten against one, which is a bigger advantage than even the raw numbers would suggest. Again, the Sherman crew just wasn’t going to SEE many German heavy or medium tanks, but the numerical advantage allows tactical responses the Germans can’t match.
That doesn’t mean the Sherman was necessarily just a tradeoff for quantity though; after all the Allies in Western Europe had more of EVERYTHING. They had scads of artillery. They had so many planes that the German troops had a joke about it:
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The Iraq invasion force was supposed to be in and out, in, oh, weeks. Now it’s a war of occupation and attrition, using essentially all the Army’s combat capability. Got something to do with it.
In and out , don’t know where you got that from, IIRC we are still in Japan and Germany from WW2. I never understood this to be in and out, or weeks, or even years for that matter.
As for the OP, I would suppose if push came to shove, all US forces could be recalled to protect the mainland, and if really something bad happens, like the Chinese, all one billion of them start over in their yunks torwds our coast tommorow we would have little option except that pesty “N” one.
Basing my opinion of the Sherman on several shows on the History Channel I’ve seen with veterans with tears in their eyes recounting just the example I used…sending a group of Shermans up a road and then getting very few back at the end of the day…or none. Or one show with a logistics and supply officer talking about the ‘merrits’ of the Sherman…namely that when one was hit, even though the crew was killed, they could be put back into service after cleaning them out of the guts and blood of the previous crew.
Now, how accurate all this was I’m not sure…I’m not expert on WWII. Perhaps such stories have been overblown.
No, there were never a lot of any of the big German tanks about. I don’t remember exactly, but they made tanks in the low thousands where we made Shermans in the 10’s of thousands. They never managed to make all that many of the big ones…and if I’m recalling right the Panther A’s had a lot of problems when they were initially deployed with their engines.
I’m not denying air superiority (which was crucial, especially tactical air superiority) nor the fact that the German troops were mainly infantry in Western Europe (most of their heavy armor being on the Eastern Front fighting the Russians)…nor the fact that the Sherman DID have its good points, mainly that it was incredibly reliable and we could make them by the dozen.
However, again at least from watching the History Channel, it wasn’t the best tank we COULD have made…we were forced to rush it into production in vast numbers because its what we COULD build fast, seeing as how we had allowed our military to once again languish after WWI and hadn’t put in the money to develop anything better. I remember seeing pictures once of a military excersize in the 30’s by the US army where we used trucks with ‘Tank’ painted on the sides…and troops using wooden guns. Hows THAT for preparations?
Certainly it wasn’t as bad as the worse critics say. It was certainly reliable and fast, easy to maintain in the field…and to put back into service after it was knocked out. And you are right…later they put a higher velocity gun on it and upgraded its armor (and the armor slope as well). It was still driven by gasoline of course, but so were other tanks. By the end of the war it was still not the best tank on the battle field, but it was certainly more effective in tank vs tank confrontations.
Again though, my point was that the US wasn’t prepared before WWII and our service men had to make do with something that wasn’t the best we, America, could give them. This has been the story of our nations military history from day one…we always forget that its important to maintain an effective military even in peace time, to do the best we can to train and equip our soldiers with the best we can give them in case we have to put them in harms way. I think WWII is a perfect example of the US once again failing to prepare…and the Sherman, reguardless of its many virtues, was still not the best we could have given our troops.
Certainly agree here. The Sherman was certainly much more reliable and easy to repair and maintain in the field than the German tanks. Much like the Soviet tanks in fact (from a reliability standpoint at least).
The irony of course is that the tank the Soviets started with, the T-34…much of the design (for the drive system, undercarrage and I think even the sloping armor) came from an American manufacture (Christy? Something like that)…because he couldn’t sell it to the US army who wasn’t interested in tank designs.
Oh, I know it. And thats how we won…but throwing masses of tanks at them in overwhelming numbers. I have no problem with that. My problem is, we didn’t give our troops the best protection or weapons systems we COULD have…had we, as a nation, simply been willing to invest a little of our money in designing and developing such things BEFORE our back were to the wall and we were forced into yet another European conflict.
The Germans were in a no win situation by that time…no doubt. They brought it on themselves of course. That doesn’t mean the US troops shouldn’t have been equiped with the best possible weapons America could develop…not something thrown together in a hurry and rushed into production and deployed to the field.
Anyway, I’ve hijacked enough. Wish I had of seen some of those Sherman threads from the past.
Well stated. Fact of the matter is, we’re falling behind other countries in developing new military hardware. Well, military hardware that actually matters. We have the gross screw up that is the F-22 leading the way, and the Stryker which is basically a quick knockoff of a Canadian vehicle (I forget the name) because someone somewhere realized that we will be fighting different kinds of wars in the future and the Humvee and Bradley aren’t up to the job (Humvee being too lightly armored, Bradley being a piece of crap).
We’re also heavily invested in things like stealth boats and laser defense systems (both against ICBMs and against other missiles - I saw one plan for a set of lasers mounted on a Humvee that would shoot incoming RPGs out of the sky, I want to see THAT work out in close quarters combat). I have no idea who they think we’ll be going to war with any time soon. All of the people who are pissed at us either have equipment we gave them 20 years ago (Iran, Saudi Arabia), and the only people with comparable military technology are our allies. There’s an off chance that Russia may start selling arms like the Su-37 and MiG 1.4, which would actually make the F-22 useful, but at this point, no one can afford those kinds of planes, and if they could, we would probably bomb the hell out of their runways before they could take off. Our European allies have long since started developing their own military technology. China doesn’t even have a navy, and their air force is a joke. Brazil is an emerging leader, and North Korea isn’t exactly cutting edge in military technology, and the rest of the world is basically stuck in a rut. Though from what I’ve read, the Israelis have been developing some pretty damn nice personal weaponry.
Can anyone remind me of the name of the Israeli assault rifle that has the barrel and lock pushed back into the stock of the weapon, making it effectively a carbine with full assault rifle power, excellent in close quarters combat, and made entirely of polymers. Light, durable, efficient. The new American assault rifles are more about fancy technology than battlefield endurance. It is a joke. American soldiers are going to cost so much money to deploy in 20 years that a larger group of insurgents will do very well against them.
Oh, and we’re still investing in land mine development. :rolleyes:
Basic assumption is that everyone in the military over the rank of Colonel, along with their civilian counterparts, is a moron, and this exponentially increases when you get to the guys who decide where money goes to.
Amazing how the military stupidity displayed in Catch-22 and MAS*H 50/30 years ago is still valid and working today.
Sure. Tell you what, when PRC attacks ROC and we are duking it out over the Straits of Taiwan, I’ll bet the pilots of those Raptors will think otherwise. The F-15 and F-16 are old designs. Still outstanding, but against the latest French and Russian designs, their lead is diminished.
No, the USMC uses the LAV series, which is based on the same vehicle that the Canucks use (Grizzly?). The Stryker is shiny new, and Canada is looking at buying it. And the troops over in Iraq love the Stryker. Works as advertised.
P.S. Please support your ‘Bradley being a piece of crap’ statement. Actual combat shows otherwise, but what do you base your claim on?
R&D. You don’t get stuff like the F-117 or B2 without R&D, and the goofy ‘Batship’ and joint US/Israeli missle defense laser are R&D projects (though the Israelis are close to deploying the first laser in N.Israel).
Without R&D, we are back to clubs and rocks.
The Russians are already selling the Su-32 and other advanced Sukhoi designs to anyone with the cash to buy em. The French are tring to sell their Rafale all over the world. Hell, the Swedes are trying to sell the Griffon all over.
The goal of the Airforce isn’t parity, it’s supremacy. And that takes forward thinking and advanced aircraft.
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Can anyone remind me of the name of the Israeli assault rifle that has the barrel and lock pushed back into the stock of the weapon, making it effectively a carbine with full assault rifle power, excellent in close quarters combat, and made entirely of polymers. Light, durable, efficient. The new American assault rifles are more about fancy technology than battlefield endurance. It is a joke. American soldiers are going to cost so much money to deploy in 20 years that a larger group of insurgents will do very well against them.
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Tavor. And the US line of rifles, the M16/M4, is incredibly reliable, accurate, light, and effective. What ‘fancy technology’ are you going on about? Sure, most are contract made by FN (Belgians) or Diemaco (Canadians), but they are fine rifle. What about the 40 year old M16 design is a joke? Specifics, por favour. Or do you not have a damned clue what you are talking about?
In the incredibly unlikely scenario of China actually entering into a shooting war with the United States over Taiwan, air superiority will be granted not by super-duper F-22s, but by destroying their air infrastructure. Dogfighting over the Straights of Taiwan is a pipedream, not a likely scenario - and it is also ironically the most likely scenario anyone can bring up.
shrugs I haven’t heard a peep about the Stryker in action one way or the other.
… that it is a piece of crap? How comfy would you be rumbling down the streets of Mosul in a Bradley?
Can you seriously state that the F-117 and B-2 programs have paid out their development and purchase costs?
No one has the cash to buy 'em. The greatest threat to American air power are the stripped down versions of our older aircraft we gave to countries like Iran. Other than that, we pretty much guarantee air superiority by superior numbers and by demolishing enemy airfields and aircraft on the ground, not in dogfights.
You should be well aware of the “super-soldier” concept where we’re developing GPS blah-blah and soldier-mounted computers that coordinate blah-blah and target for flying drones with bombs blah-blah armored with exoskeleton reactive suits blah-blah?
Landmines?
Cost effective?
Erm, perhaps, depending on what your goal is…
I can see it now: future generations of everyone so happy and glad that America came to their country and deposited millions of landmines and cluster bombs and crap that’ll be killing people 50 years from now.
We’re fighting urban warfare here, not large scale armor movements. Land mines are a defensive measure from half a century ago. Their impact (not just limited to economics) is increadibly sharp, and entire regions are still recovering from the use of land mines. If your concept of “cost effective” is surrounding US military bases in Iraq with landmines… well then sure, yea, they’re cheap. They’re also (currently) blind, and while research is being made into figuring out a “safe” landmine, most of it is bunk, or restricted to self-destruct timers set for a few years. Woohoo progress.
Current events are your friend. If you want to tear into the stuff, at least keep up with the latest goings on.
Let’s try this again and see if you will actually answer me this time: Please support your ‘Bradley being a piece of crap’ statement. Actual combat shows otherwise, but what do you base your claim on?
Damn skippy. With those aircraft, we have capabilities that no other nation has.
China and India already have new model Su-3x. Indonesia is in talks to buy buy them, as are a few other countries. And yes, airfield interdiction is the ideal way to achieve air superiority, but it would damned foolish to not have a plan B.
You mean like the XM8 (the lower portion of the OICW), which will soon be entering field trials?
Nice. Oog like his club, club effective, cheap and reliable. No need to research bow or pointy stick technology.
Yep. Not sexy, but they have their place.
Right. In Iraq we may now be in MOUT, but certainly you agree that it would be stupid to plan on refighting that and only that scenario?
I follow the action in Iraq pretty well. I just haven’t heard of the Strykers making much of an impact.
I’ll repeat again: Is your choice vehicle for moving soldiers through hostile urban areas a Bradley?
Like?
Right, but the F-22 is a poor plan B.
I notice that the Europeans seem to be developing their own weapons technology with significantly more ease and less money than we pour into our bloated defense industry.
Not sexy? Land mines are to warfare what syphilis is to sex.
Of course, planning for only one kind of fight is a foolish move, but the amount invested currently into useless technology is astoundingly stupid.
Then you aren’t following the news. (Not past a CNN or USAToday level, in any case.) A few seconds of googling turns up this and over at Army.mil they post occasional blurbs.
If you want to tear on the Stryker, do so with some actual facts, like those you will surely provide me to back your stupid ‘Bradley is teh sux’ claim.
MOUT is to be fought on foot, with vehicle support.
And again I will ask, though you seem to be impervious to requests for ‘facts’ (though I bet if I asked for ‘wild and unfounded speculation’, I couldn’t shut you up)
Please support your ‘Bradley being a piece of crap’ statement. Actual combat shows otherwise, but what do you base your claim on?
You made a damned specific claim. Now back it up.
Heh, the OICW, that you so readily pan, is designed by Heckler and Koch. They are, as you may know, a German firm. And Germany is, the last time I checked, in Europe.
But I eagerly await your examples of ‘Europeans…developing their own weapons technology with significantly more ease and less money’. That’s quite a claim, and I am sure you actually have some facts to back it up.
There’s an old saying, “The army always prepares to fight the last war”. The civilian corrolary is, “The government always wants to fund the army based only on the threats that exist today.”
We have prime examples of this kind of thinking in this thread. The notion that there are no large threats on the horizon is assinine in the extreme. Tell me who, in August of 2001, would have predicted that the U.S. military would be invading Afghanistan within two months and launch a major invasion of Iraq within two years?
In 1992, there were no threats to be seen anywhere. Fukayama wrote about the end of history. The Russians were our friends. Who needs the military?
In 1900, the world looked peaceful. It was hard to see any threats on the horizon. But within 50 years, there would be a communist revolution in Russia, two world wars, the start of a cold war, and war in Korea. Along with many other smaller wars and military actions.
Today, Russia is reverting back into something unpleasant. China is ascendant. India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, and unstable to boot. North Korea is a powerkeg. Iran is building nukes. France is trying to build the EU into a counterbalancing force against the U.S. The world looks a hell of a lot more dangerous now than it did ten years ago, or 100 years ago.
Also, the type of conflicts that could occur in the future require a LARGE armed force. The U.S. military should be thinking not just of fighting a two-front war, but a three-front war. It’s not unfeasible to believe that if the U.S. is forced to fight Iran or North Korea, the other migght seize the opportunity to do something while U.S. forces are tied down. Give the large intertwining connections between many nations hostile to the U.S., you could see conflict springing up in numerous places at the same time. What if extremists in Pakistan see the U.S. tied up in Iran and seize the opportunity to overthrow Musharref and take control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons? When the world is unstable, conflict in one region often causes spillover conflicts elsewhere, and opportunistic conflicts in yet other places.
In an era when a new weapons system can take 20 years to develop, produce, and shake the bugs out of, to not be engaged in programs like the F-22, strategic missile defense, and advanced infantry systems would be incredibly short-sighted behaviour. Because if you only start developing such advanced systems when a threat materializes that requires them, you will not have a hope of catching up.
, don’t know where you got that from, IIRC we are still in Japan and Germany from WW2. I never understood this to be in and out, or weeks, or even years for that matter.