🤨?
…wouldjya lookit dat there…?
We saw this in WW2. The Germans punched out ever more advanced versions of the armoured tank. They bragged about survivability: “For every tank we lose - the Americans will lose six!” Maybe it was more, maybe it was less… but regardless, when German Panzers met the Yanks with the tanks on the battlefield - the Yanks had 11 or 12 tanks and they mauled the Krauts with numbers.
We saw this again in the ‘Kraine: when the Ukes hit the battlefield with American Bradley’s and even M1 Abrams tanks - the fuggin Russians opened them up like tin cans! They swarmed them with those old Soviet BMP beaters, rockets, and old school anti-tank weapons. I don’t care how good your armour is - once you open up with weapons like the 30mm canon… they are going to make whatever you have look like Swiss cheese unless you can kill them first. And the hell of that is…there’s going to be a LOT of those stone aged battle wagons to kill. They’re cheap, easily manufactured, and there’s tens of thousands of them kicking around already. History has taught that the Germans had any number of advanced (for their time) wonder weapons. The Messerschmitt 262 jet, the V1 and V2 missiles, the Panzer IV’s… and they got their asses handed to them right on their own home turf by enemies with inferior weapons.
I’m beginning to think a certain tribe of people with big noses and funny hats are involved in the procurement process… because none of this is making sense to me…
But whadda I know?
I remember playing a computer game nearly 30 years ago called Red Alert. It was a war game of sorts that involved building factories, power plants, etc. so that you could then turn out various types of weapons. One side had the smaller, faster tanks with less firepower and light armor that were cheaper to build, while the other side had tanks that had more firepower, and heavy armor, but were slower and they cost a lot to produce. It didn't take very long to realize that if you chose to play the side with the cheaper weapons, that even though they had inferior fire power and armor, if you could ramp up production you could easily swarm the enemy and use 4 or 5 of the small tanks to quickly destroy one of the larger ones while only losing one or two of the small tanks.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct, it's a hat and nose thing, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteThe Bradley sucks armored donkey dicks with aluminum lips and burns for it.
We should copy and lightly improve the BMP, in other words make them effective and inexpensive, not cheap.
I think you're right on target with the small hats and big noses.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading a short story by Arthur C. Clarke called "Superiority" about a technically superior civilization being beaten in a war by the side with more numerous, but much more primitive, weapons. He stated it is (or was) required reading at West Point, to make sure the cadets don't get tripped up by hubris at their superior weaponry.
ReplyDeleteRIP Canada: 42.3% of Babies Born to Foreign-Born Mothers
ReplyDeletehttps://www.independentsentinel.com/rip-canada-42-3-of-babies-born-to-foreign-born-mothers/
They silence us by pretending to say it is Hitlerian. Saying it is a replacement is not Hitlerian. It’s truth and obviously so.
The selling points of the Bradley are 1) survivability and 2) lethality. A disabling hit on a BMP kills the entire crew. A disabling hit on a Bradley kills one or two guys. The Bradley can kill a T-72 with its 25mm chain gun while on the move - something a BMP gunner can't even imagine doing. As an added bonus, the dismounts don't have to climb or crawl out of a Bradley.
ReplyDeleteThe Russians are redesigning their next generation of AFVs after capturing a disabled Bradley that was abandoned by its crew.
Well that’s the other half of all this too. The military/Industrial complex has to be on board too. In better times the American Industrialists were punching out planes and tanks, spares, trained maintenance techs and everything else faster than you could think about it. Today China and Russia can pump,out whatever they need while ours picks its collective nose and relies on sales and marketing to “manage customer expectations”.
DeleteThe very concept of an "optionally manned" AFV is stupidly contradictory.
ReplyDeleteThink F35, their engines were made in two different states
ReplyDeleteWith parts coming from China and Japan…
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