Hi, here is an article that may be of some interest to this discussion. I am not too sure where it stands on Soviet Survival though. It covers US concerns on armor survival in the future The cover of the article is attached above.
Iraq conflict raises doubts on FCS survivability
JOSHUA KUCERA JDW Staff Reporter
Washington, DC
Additional reporting by Ian Kemp JDW News Editor
London
The constant stream of casualties from close-range fire in Iraq has again raised questions that the US Army's future family of combat vehicles, which will rely on superior intelligence rather than thick armour, could be vulnerable.
The Future Combat Systems (FCS), a group of 18 networked land and air platforms, will be ill-equipped to handle threats like improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), some critics say.
The army's official line is that the network will give FCS-equipped units such a good understanding of the enemy's positions that they will be able to evade threats rather than needing thick armour to withstand hits. However, critics argue that danger can never completely be avoided and that soldiers could be unprotected in such lightly armoured vehicles. This view has gained currency after higher-than-expected casualties from IEDs and RPG attacks in Iraq.
"The network is not going to keep you alive," said one army official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The network is probably irrelevant once you make close contact with the enemy, and we're going to continue to make close contact because even [Iraqis], who are pretty unimpressive, have turned out to be sufficiently smart to rapidly reposition, adapt, evolve, and change in order to inflict damage on us."
One source with a major European armoured fighting vehicle manufacturer expressed scepticism to JDW about the reliance on information superiority to ensure the survivability of the FCS.
He noted that situational awareness is easier to achieve on the conventional battlefield with an enemy equipped with tanks and other vehicles but much more difficult during peace support operations or counter-insurgency operations when the enemy uses stealth tactics to blend into the civilian population. This is particularly true of military operations in urban terrain.
"It's a concern," acknowledged Maj John Chicoli, FCS assistant programme manager for system integration. "It's a change in culture, for the soldiers out there in the field, so we've got to demonstrate this and give them confidence that it will increase survivability."
Maj Chicoli said, the network, with information gathered from small unmanned aerial and ground vehicles and sensors that act as scouts, will minimise risk. "Our measure of success is never having a shot fired at us."
Within the army, Congress and the two prime contractors for FCS, Boeing and Science Applications International Corp, this optimism is waning, army officials and analysts say. "I think large numbers of Democrats and Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee are acutely sensitive to all of this, understand it very clearly and are trying to figure out what to do," the army official said, adding "if the people from Boeing who work on this talk to you honestly they tried to tell the people in the army from the very beginning that this will not work."
Boeing spokeswoman Maria McCullough responded that FCS vehicles would be "far less vulnerable to IEDs than any other armoured vehicle in their class" due to advanced technologies for armour protection and other active and passive countermeasures, the details of which they could not discuss.
Last year the army had to rush the production of slat armour kits for its Stryker 8 x 8 medium armoured vehicles in Iraq because of a greater-than-expected threat from RPGs (JDW 10 September 2003). Earlier this year the army issued guidelines for units improvising their own armour protection for unprotected variants of the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle.
The debate echoes similar concerns raised about the survivability of the M2/M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the mid-1980s.
In contrast the German Army believes that armour protection will be vital for future survivability across the range of military operations. The new Puma infantry fighting vehicle, scheduled to enter service in 2006, will have three different levels of armour protection that will increase the Puma's weight from 31.45 to 43 tonnes (JDW 3 September 2003).
With years of experience countering IEDs and RPGs the Israel Defence Force deploys a range of heavy armoured personnel carriers developed from main battle tank chassis.
Boeing officials said they are confident that, by the time the FCS is actually fielded, the technology would be good enough to protect the lightly armoured vehicles. "We're still in the infancy of this thing and there a lot of ways to look at it, like new materials engineering ... so I don't think we know right now," said Jeffery Worley, FCS programme director - business management.
A Congressional committee this month recommended cutting $250 million from the $3.2 billion FCS budget for 2005, calling it "excess to requirements".
Boeing and army officials said they were confident that most of that money would ultimately be restored, warning that if the full cut went through it would mean significant delays on engineering work for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems and manned ground vehicles.
"If the change is in the $100 million range, it will affect the schedule but I don't see it having a tremendous impact," Worley said. "If it gets much more than $100 million then we're talking about some serious schedule movement."
Re: Soviet tank crew survival.
Hybrid Mode
