Interesting Site: Wheeled vs. Tracked AFV (US)

[JaM]

You catching my words Backis.Im from Slovakia, so i dont speak English so good.When i said they are versatile, i mean universal, You can do With M113 same things as with Stryker, Stryker is just faster on the road, but propability that next war willbe fought un the highway is very low... 2mil$ for light wheeled vehicle is too much even it has the best C4I suit avaiable.Those money should go to upgrades to Bradley(just example),or buy some M8 AGS or Thunderbird light tanks instead of Stryker MGS.

[kevin]

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoaaaaaaaa, whoa

This whole damn thing has been about a typo??? versatile for universal???

LMAO

So all that has really happenned is that the two of you are much closer to having "corporal" under your names instead of "private"? I feel cheated.

I did some searching through the Government Accounting Office, (that is an independent Federal government auditing office for the US. They are considered to be the official source of what the government spends for those of you who didn't know.) My suspicion about the Stryker cost was that it really didn't cost $2 million and I was right. It cost $2 million in accounting terms. I'll explain:

Let's say the government buys 9 hammers and 1 torpedo inspection machine. (My mother worked for Gould in the 1980's, when that infamous $4,000 hammer came out and it was her company that was involved.) The total cost of this order is $40,000. In reality, the torpedo inspection machine costs $39,900 and the hammers $100. But for accounting purposes, the items are all treated as having the same cost in order to make the paperwork easier to track (pause for snort). The result to the casual observer is that you paid $4,000 for a hammer and $4,000 for an inspection machine.

Okay, why am I boring you with this? That $2 mil for the Stryker includes the price of the vehicle, simulators and other training material, and the transition costs for the 1st Stryker Brigade.

Source:
http://searching.gao.gov/cs.html?cha...ext&n=28&la=en

Here is another interesting .pdf doc, It's the GAO's audit of the Army's Stryker / M113A3 comparison. I didn't read it, but since you guys seem to be motivated....
http://searching.gao.gov/cs.html?cha...ol=&n=13&la=en

Someone mentioned that hundreds (thousands?) of M113 were deployed in Kuwait, but not being used for political reasons. Well not quite. The M113 is an integral part of US Heavy Divisions. The M113 is deployed but in it's different variants (ambulance, self-propelled mortar, etc.) It's being used as it was intended, one can't just start putting them on the road to haul cargo, mainly for the simple reason that you can't drop a pallet of MRE's or ammo into an M113 like you can a truck. The time required to load all this stuff by hand would by a nightmare.

As far as how the troops feel about the Stryker:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/ne...23-stryker.htm

There are also a number of other links to information. This story was from the Baltimore Sun. There are other articles praising the Stryker but they were written by military journalists and I didn't want to get into a "bias" debate with anyone. The key thing you should pull from this article is that no one has died from an IED / RPG hit to a Stryker.

[JaM]

Nice links Kevin, funniest part is that they compared simple M113A3 (modification from 1987) with a new wheeled APC and find that their performace are similar with some points for Stryker and some for M113A3.

[Backis]

kevin said:
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoaaaaaaaa, whoa

This whole damn thing has been about a typo??? versatile for universal???

LMAO

Well, I think around 0.1% of the posted material were somewhat interesting and worth the read.

Someone mentioned that hundreds (thousands?) of M113 were deployed in Kuwait, but not being used for political reasons.

Not really, that was a rhetorical question if whether the reason that those available weren't used was political or if there perhaps was some other reason.

If suitable for escort duty they would have been crossattached to logistics units, but they weren't.

IMO it was most likely felt that the added protection for the escorting units was not worth the increase in convoy vulnerabilty induced by forcing unprotected trucks to stay longer on the roads in "injun country".

[kevin]

Thanks guys.

Just some FYI's:
A comprehensive study was done to determine the C-130 replacement. It was decided to replace the C-130 with the C-130J. It looks like the original design, but was completely redesigned from the inside out. Better materials, Glass cockpit MFDs, etc. They saved thousands of pounds of weight by replacing cables with fiber optics (In fact, the cockpit is so light now, that the titanium armor cover is a standard option on all models, military and civilian. Otherwise there would be no way to trim the airplane.) The bottom line is that the C-130 is a proven design (some 50 countries use it) and has unsurpased rough-strip landing capability (IMO the A400 will need to prove it has the endurance to take repeated rough-strip landings.)

Source: "Airborne, A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force" Tom Clancy

Of course, Donald Rumsfeld put the C-130J program on hold, along with M1A2 SEP and a whole host of other legacy programs. I havn't been able to determine if they have reopenned the Medium Tactical Transport research program or what? Does anyone know?

The Bradley was looked at as an Interim solution but they determined it has too big a logistic tail, (tread spares and horrible gas mileage) and too heavy for what they wanted.

Source: I don't know the date, It's something I remember watching on C-SPAN, General Shinsheki testifying before Congress.

The USA's procurement process is at least partially broken!!
How dare you characterize the US like that. What gives you the right to make such an unsubstantiated claim? Where is your source? As an American I'll have you know that the USA's procurement process is an absolute perfect













completely broken huge mess.
My favorite example of the system is the abuse it has taken from Senator Trent Lott. The Navy had to buy 2 warships ($1.2 Billion) it didn't want because the Shipbuilding Yard is in Lott's home state. It was good of Lott not to let some fly-by-night, mickey mouse operation like the US Navy ACTUALLY DETERMINE WHAT KIND OF SHIPS IT NEEDS!!!!! *sigh*

[JaM]

Nice, so they want rapid deployment forces without adequate air transporter.So if they dont develop "magical" armor with low weight to have vehicles under 30t, they will fight(and die) in light armor vehicles and heavy stuff will stuck in depots...

[Backis]

Initially FCS was supposed to weigh 20 tons...

They rather sensibly dropped that requirement, at least for now...

[PlasmaKrab]

There was a "magical armour" project around, in British industry IIRC, something about high voltage electric fields doing strange things to any shaped-charge penetrator.

Just saying that on the top of my head, haven't heard of this for quite a while. Has someone more recent info about that?

Anyway, the USAF has C-17s for less hairy landings, and IF you have stronger opposition on an airfield than units in a C-130J flight can take out, a huge air preparation (US style) is sure to do the trick.

[kevin]

Oh, good one Plasma. Yeah I forgot about airpower. Aviators are such prima donnas (they get all depressed if you forget to tell them how great they are each morning), that I forgot how useful they really can be.

[kevin]

Ours is not to reason why, just to do and die..... I guess. I know what we thought of that phrase when I was in the Marines. It involves language the moderators deemed inappropriate for this forum.

The FCS is actually incorporating some "magical armor." Research into new advanced composite materials has always been a big priority in the US, both public and private. I believe that Rumsfeld has a good reason for everything he does. I wonder if the C-130J wasn't working as well as advertised?

The biggest plus for the FCS is suppossed to be the C4I concentric network anyways. Rumsfeld, and President Bush, are more businessmen than they are politicians. I'm a business graduate student and I can see were they are coming from. The bottom line is synergy effects (also called the 2 + 2 = 5 principle) In business this means company A and company B can do more together, operating at 100% than they could seperately, even with both running at 100%. In military terms, artillery becomes much better when arty spotters can more accurately call in fire. The APC on your left is more useful when it sees what you can see.

As far as the Stryker Brigades, the recon Stryker controls mini-UAV's that broadcast data to everyone. Dismounted Squad Leaders can see around corners without having to look themselves. The Stryker can run from an armored force, while calling in airstrikes (as oppossed to staying put to provide accurate BDA.) Gaps in enemy lines are easier to see and exploit.

I bring this up because I get the feeling that the true power and advantage of this kind of networked system is not fully understood. It means little in SP terms because we already have that "God's eye" view of the battlefield that networked warfare is trying to create for real. As both a military and businessman, it has me pretty excited.