Doesn’t fit in an SR25 mag. That was a primary goal of the creedmoor. That it is also a really good bolt-action cartridge is a side benefit.
XM7 worries from the field.
- Thread starter Terry Cross
- Start date
I’m not mil or former mil, so take this opinion for what it is worth. But; from the Delaware River, to a meadow on the Trinity river, Mt Suribachi, a spider hole in Iraq, and to the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan, modern conflict relies on some group of dirty grunts standing on a patch of dirt, carrying rifles. Regardless of what was done by the artillery or the airplanes, it ain’t yours until you have guys standing on it. For my money (and it is our money) my strong preference is that our guys be carrying the best available. I just wish we could agree on what “best” means.
And just to say that I have some skin in the game, beyond my tax dollars, my son joined in January.
And just to say that I have some skin in the game, beyond my tax dollars, my son joined in January.
Going forward you are going to see less infantry as a ratio of forces and probably more SOF if they can be scaled up. They are going to be doing those types of roles. Small, highly trained, agile teams who can operate in a EW and Drone world. They will have what they need, as they always have.
Massing infantry formations is nothing but a big juicy target. You will want smaller, dispersed units that can hide easier and attack with little/no warning.
Mobility, agility, EW defense and superior SA is how you will survive on the modern battlefield. You cant hide from satellites, C5ISR, Sensors, Drones, EW emissions, Infrared spectrum and probably some other shit we don't even know about working together.
We live in a different world. Just as the breach loader and the machine gun changed war, Sensors and AI are going to as well. Modern warfare may becomes the bloodiest and costliest warfare of all time, just due to the ease off finding, locking and hitting targets while not wasting munitions trying to get a 1:1000 hit ratio.
Massing infantry formations is nothing but a big juicy target. You will want smaller, dispersed units that can hide easier and attack with little/no warning.
Mobility, agility, EW defense and superior SA is how you will survive on the modern battlefield. You cant hide from satellites, C5ISR, Sensors, Drones, EW emissions, Infrared spectrum and probably some other shit we don't even know about working together.
We live in a different world. Just as the breach loader and the machine gun changed war, Sensors and AI are going to as well. Modern warfare may becomes the bloodiest and costliest warfare of all time, just due to the ease off finding, locking and hitting targets while not wasting munitions trying to get a 1:1000 hit ratio.
You can, but the how all depends on the part(s) of the EM spectrum that are used by sensors covering your location. SAR is the only imaging method that can penetrate clouds/smoke, (edit: MWIR/LWIR can depending on the heat variation and smoke density) and it is very difficult to analyze unless you’re trained. It also can be impossible to analyze if there are lots of moving things (like leaves in the wind). LWIR and MWIR can’t penetrate through barriers, even transparent ones. And it’s easy to stay unobserved in the non-SAR RF wavelengths. You just don’t emit, or go back to the basics and use directional antenna, transmitting extremely briefly and only with enough power to reach the other radio. Not perfect but it eliminates a lot of the DF/TDOA fixing.
Every sensor had a weakness. But it does add a lot of complexity to the world of deception and concealment.
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Very true point.
I guess my comment wasn't worded clearly because the picture I quoted I don't think came up.
I was comparing when they chose to chamber things in .30-06 and similar instead of the 6.5x55 that was also a well known caliber at the time.
(Very late 1800 / very early 1900 range).
Even around WWII they were still humping a lot of .30-06 as a primary round.
I think had something like the 6.5x55 been chosen instead of the .30-06 small arms development for the next 50 years might have gone a lot faster.
5.56 is great and all for it's intended purpose.
It's just interesting that all the cool kids have been trying now for some time to figure out how to stuff a 6.xx back into the same rifle size for "better performance".
In the end however I think at some point it won't make any difference, the first military to figure out how to go full on AI driven hands off killbots without humans in the decision loop will start dominating things short of using theater weapons and everybody else will dive in big time.
Then it's machines vs machines and then winning machines mopping up the humans who's machines lost.
(or well falling back to nukes to avoid that).
I’ve seen this movie before. After they mop up the losing side’s humans, they start going after the “winning” side’s humans too.
Or they just eat the entire biosphere.... (Horizon: Zero Dawn) obligatory "fuck Ted Faro"
Not sure if this iteration of the optic will be useful but I think the tech will continue to evolve into a more useful version. Same thing applies to the newer high pressure ammo. Those are really the two good things I think will come from this program. I want the ICAR to succeed in its contract. I was talking to someone in the ammunition development area and he was explaining that ammunition developed for the icar could see a 300fps gain over standard 6 arc ammo currently available. That's something I would be interested in.
The training issue is definitely real. If I could be king for a day I would absolutely bring rifle MMS to a decisive skill for advancement in the Army. It's such an easy thing to fix too. But you watch the Army attempt to emplace any
And then you think about how it would this work in a draft with rapid deployment of new soldiers. The time and skill you can invest in them is going to be limited. Definitely going to be a challenge.But I will say advancement of material solutions isn't mutually exclusive to training solutions. They both need to happen, but you don't have to self-limit based on one or the other. And in the Army, these two lines of effort exist in different responsibilities. Tradoc and operational unit training vs force modernization and CDDs.
When you annihilate any logistics hubs and turn any transportation assets into smoldering remains before Infantry have a chance to even deploy into the theater, our Infantry don’t have to take any ground from them because threat forces never even reached their intended dismount points. This is happening before any Infantry unit even gets alerted. It’s all over too fast.
With the way we do layered ISR now, there isn’t any way to get through those chokepoints and allow threat Infantry to fulfill their mid-stage transportation plans. They wouldn’t even survive early-staging and departure of friendly lines in most cases.
If we were to prosecute ODS today, it would look much different, go down much faster, with more brutal efficiency and speed. For ODS, not all of our TACAIR strike platforms were night/all weather capable, with precision-guided munitions.
Most of the F-16 force at the time lacked any of those capabilities. Now ALL of the combat-coded F-16CJs have it, plus Wild Weasel capes, and they are outdated compared to F-35A.
The layers of satellites, high-altitude/high endurance drones, manned ISR, mid-altitude ISR, and low altitude ISR platforms are a totally different force structure than in 1990-1991, and many of those are armed with PGMs.
I did a series of analyses overlaying modern combat capabilities over several key conflicts in the 20th Century to see how they would go down, then looked at each Theater Combatant Command and extrapolated campaign evolution against modern threats in each of those regions. This is why I don’t see a place on the timeline for Infantry to even be deployed in a combat capacity for these types of Larger-Scale Conflicts.
I DO see a more modernized Infantry as maybe one of the key assets in COIN and contingencies where lower-intensity conflict emerges as matters of surrogates for the larger actors. SOF would be the lead leveraging host nations in that though, supported by US and coalition/regional air.
But the internal propaganda of Infantry taking ground, seizing key terrain, and repelling a conventional army’s counter-attack are outdated and repeated to a minority internal audience to make us believe we were some kind of bleeding edge element to the success of any overall future campaign.
If someone can talk me through the specific region where they see Infantry playing the advertised key role that were were told in 11 series land, I’m all ears. I’ve looked at Europe, ME, Asia, Central America, South America, Africa, and the islands of the South Pacific, including near Australia and Indonesia. None of these regions make any sense to deploy Infantry in a historical sense.
If you study how modern air assets are designed, made, and employed, we’ve moved to a multi-spectral sensor cluster format with algorithmic-based threat libraries and net-centric connectivity. This is especially true with F-35s, which have one of the most capable AESA Radars ever made, fused with 7 different IR sensors and at least a dozen more passive RF sensors embedded under the skin.
In CENTCOM, there was a National Command-level Named Target of Interest assigned to specific spy platforms to locate, and they couldn’t. A flight of F-35s on an unrelated mission accidentally geolocated and PID’d that target without the pilots even trying to find it.
Once any one of these sensor nodes geolocates and PIDs a TGT, that data is fed into the network. TGT detection is fed into the net as soon as possible, so other nodes nearby can use their sensors to scan and analyze it through whatever processing capacity they have onboard, which is interleaved with the network.
The AESA Radar Ground-Mapping and Imaging modes in the pre-IOC APG-81 AESA had resolution that was breathtaking. They scrubbed the images, but they could pick out individual windows on casinos in Vegas from 80nm away. That was before any sensor-fusion with the EOTS (a FLIR pod and Laser Spot Illuminator/Tracker/LRF built into the nose).
Forget about dismounted Infantry or insurgents, and think about all the vehicles on the land, in the air, or sea needed to prosecute a full-scale military campaign. They are nothing but targets now.
I’ve worked on programs tied to some of the capabilities/platforms you’ve mentioned. My background is with adaptive EW, computer vision/ATR, tracking&fusion, autonomy, manned-umanned teaming, etc.
We have some amazing stuff, and I do believe we’re leading the world in cutting edge military R&D. But there’s a difference between what the MIC advertises to government customers in tailored demos * and test reports vs how everything works together in the real world across domains.
* not knocking our testing or demos. We have far more transparent and realistic testing than our adversaries, it’s not even close. But humans are human and like to put some polish on their work by putting it in the best light sometimes.
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Were these analyses done for a government customer? Are there white papers or products available (unclass or high side)?
As for deploying infantry in a historical sense, I’m not sure anybody is claiming they should be used in a historical sense. Infantry would likely need to be decentralized and more agile in any future large scale conflict.
It’s happening right before our eyes with Israeli Air Force strikes on Iran. They started by degrading and eliminating Iranian Air Defenses at their pleasure, then launched the series of precision strikes picking out Iranian nuke scientists in their beds on specific floors of their apartment buildings, in addition to targeting all the other nuke sites and support facilities.
Israeli Air Force can only do what the USAF does on a very small scale. USAF, USN, and USMC are able to saturate these types of strikes in ways no other military can really comprehend.
The Iranians are responding with.....long range fires.
Notice the role of Infantry in these types of operations isn’t even a thing. For COIN and UW, totally different story.
When and if a revolution is started in Iran, weapons will need dispersed to the rebels. Some will need training. This could require a limited amount of ground forces to augment Iranian rebels.
The Iranian leaders and military will not surrender because it will mean certain death when the rebels win. This could require infantry support sooner or later. Just who's infantry remains to be seen.
If you read through the ODS AAR on Air Power, you see the real pk, CEP, and weapons effects percentages. Nothing is 100%, but it marked a dramatic departure from legacy dumb bomb strikes. Laser-Guided Bombs were introduced in Vietnam, actually first employed in Laos, dropped from F-4Ds. A lot more LGBs were used in SEA than people realize, but the majority of aircraft were not equipped to employ them.
We steadily scaled that capability into the 4th Gen fighters that were multirole, while it was baseline on the F-111F and immediately expanded into the A-6E, A-7D, and A-7E already in-service. F-16A had some initial Pave Penny LGB delivery capability, but wasn’t all-weather/night capable, so there was a push to develop those night/all-wx capes into the Viper with Block 40 F-16C.
F/A-18 had a lot of this capability as a planned baseline out of the gate, with the FLIR and ATFLIR pods and GBUs, and quickly got Anti-Radiation Missile strike capability for the USN SEAD mission, alongside EA-6Bs.
F-15E was envisioned out of the gate to have the F-111F night/all-wx capes, with a more modern airframe that was easier to maintain and capable of self-escort against potential air threats.
By the time ODS came along, there were enough TACAIR platforms in the total US Air component force structure to deliver a steady barrage of Laser-Guided Bombs at night in adverse weather. The F-111F was the most mature of those systems in ODS, and did an excellent job of eliminating Iraqi Air Force runways, taxiways, parked aircraft in hardened shelters, ammunition bunkers, POL bunkers, then once they serviced all those TGTs, switched to tank-plinking at night in kill boxes. They killed more tanks than A-10s did, in 1/4 the sorties.
Then there was of course the F-117A, which could go downtown inside the Iraqi IADS MEZ and drop 2000lb LGBs wherever it wanted at night.
All of that is really old tech compared to what we have now. We basically took all the best capabilities of all of those platforms, spread a baseline propulsion and sensor package across a single engine design with better stealth than the F-117A, better A2A capabilities than any F-15, better EW capabilities than the supporting EW birds, and started cranking them out en masse, distributing them across the theaters to partner nations, backed by regional USAF and USN forces in the same areas.
Nothing is 100% brochure-advertised, but sometimes the culmination of certain technologies backed by numerical superiority really yields an end-result that might as well be from 100% FMC systems.
So while we saw somewhere between 62-92% positive weapons effects in ODS, even if those numbers stayed the same, the rapid net-centric kill web campaign is still executed much faster than in ODS. And because of what we’ve done with sensors and guidance technology (making it more robust, more reliable, more redundant), the CEPs and pK have incrementally improved with demonstrable effects in the real world.
For small arms, it will be more important to focus on lightweight systems that base defense personnel can employ in the last line of defense against small drones, like what we saw just happen with Ukraine vs Russian strategic bomber bases. The M7 fits nowhere in that capability matrix, and we will see a thorough disinterest in it from USAF SP and base defense leadership, as well as AFSOC personnel who are attached to both conventional and SOF elements in the US Army and US Navy.
US Army should be thinking more along these lines, of how some dismounts assigned or attached to Air Defense, Long-Range Fires, Aviation, and EW units will provide a last-line defense against small FPV or autonomous algorithmic-targeted drones.
The days of US Infantrymen charging hills to take terrain will only be in COIN or JRDF deployments, not LSCO. This has already been true since Korea, so for the last 72 years.
I know this is way off topic, but curious to see how you think the F-22 fits into this. I always wondered why they stopped production when it seems to still be the most capable fighter we have. Maybe you have more insight into this than I do.If you read through the ODS AAR on Air Power, you see the real pk, CEP, and weapons effects percentages. Nothing is 100%, but it marked a dramatic departure from legacy dumb bomb strikes. Laser-Guided Bombs were introduced in Vietnam, actually first employed in Laos, dropped from F-4Ds. A lot more LGBs were used in SEA than people realize, but the majority of aircraft were not equipped to employ them.
We steadily scaled that capability into the 4th Gen fighters that were multirole, while it was baseline on the F-111F and immediately expanded into the A-6E, A-7D, and A-7E already in-service. F-16A had some initial Pave Penny LGB delivery capability, but wasn’t all-weather/night capable, so there was a push to develop those night/all-wx capes into the Viper with Block 40 F-16C.
F/A-18 had a lot of this capability as a planned baseline out of the gate, with the FLIR and ATFLIR pods and GBUs, and quickly got Anti-Radiation Missile strike capability for the USN SEAD mission, alongside EA-6Bs.
F-15E was envisioned out of the gate to have the F-111F night/all-wx capes, with a more modern airframe that was easier to maintain and capable of self-escort against potential air threats.
By the time ODS came along, there were enough TACAIR platforms in the total US Air component force structure to deliver a steady barrage of Laser-Guided Bombs at night in adverse weather. The F-111F was the most mature of those systems in ODS, and did an excellent job of eliminating Iraqi Air Force runways, taxiways, parked aircraft in hardened shelters, ammunition bunkers, POL bunkers, then once they serviced all those TGTs, switched to tank-plinking at night in kill boxes. They killed more tanks than A-10s did, in 1/4 the sorties.
Then there was of course the F-117A, which could go downtown inside the Iraqi IADS MEZ and drop 2000lb LGBs wherever it wanted at night.
All of that is really old tech compared to what we have now. We basically took all the best capabilities of all of those platforms, spread a baseline propulsion and sensor package across a single engine design with better stealth than the F-117A, better A2A capabilities than any F-15, better EW capabilities than the supporting EW birds, and started cranking them out en masse, distributing them across the theaters to partner nations, backed by regional USAF and USN forces in the same areas.
Nothing is 100% brochure-advertised, but sometimes the culmination of certain technologies backed by numerical superiority really yields an end-result that might as well be from 100% FMC systems.
So while we saw somewhere between 62-92% positive weapons effects in ODS, even if those numbers stayed the same, the rapid net-centric kill web campaign is still executed much faster than in ODS. And because of what we’ve done with sensors and guidance technology (making it more robust, more reliable, more redundant), the CEPs and pK have incrementally improved with demonstrable effects in the real world.
For small arms, it will be more important to focus on lightweight systems that base defense personnel can employ in the last line of defense against small drones, like what we saw just happen with Ukraine vs Russian strategic bomber bases. The M7 fits nowhere in that capability matrix, and we will see a thorough disinterest in it from USAF SP and base defense leadership, as well as AFSOC personnel who are attached to both conventional and SOF elements in the US Army and US Navy.
US Army should be thinking more along these lines, of how some dismounts assigned or attached to Air Defense, Long-Range Fires, Aviation, and EW units will provide a last-line defense against small FPV or autonomous algorithmic-targeted drones.
The days of US Infantrymen charging hills to take terrain will only be in COIN or JRDF deployments, not LSCO. This has already been true since Korea, so for the last 72 years.
Not really. Not as you're describing it as an automated network and against a peer or near peers. What Israel is doing against Iran is like picking in the retarded kid in class. And the other irony about your example here is how guys in the ground, behind enemy lines defeated the air defense network before isreals airpower even entered. Pretty much what you were saying isn't relevant in previous posts.
But I'm sure you'll have another 500 word essay to parse out what you meant vs what you said, chock full of buzzwords.
The F-22 is an air superiority fighter first and foremost.
It is extremely effective, but also not linked to other platforms like the F-35 is. It could have been updated to include a lot of the networking, sensors, and data fusion that the F-35 has, but really the F-22 is a fairly old design. The best performing fighter we have, but still on the old end to be revamping in such significant ways.
The budget only allowed one, and the F-35 was cheaper and was able to be sold to other countries. Which both helps with cost and with integration in a combined/multinational fight. The F-22 could not be. The F-35 was also made with work being performed in far more congressional districts than the F-22. I’m sure that was a big part of Congress’ decision.
Another plan was that a 6th Gen air superiority fighter was already in R&D when the F-22 was axed.
Because SECDEF Gates was working for the Russians and Chinese. F-22 was meant to replace one-for-one the F-15C fleet, which was an initial order for 750 aircraft.
The Russians and Chinese really hated the F-22 once they got word from their internal moles on how it actually worked once we did tactical exploitation of it out in the Nevada Test & Training Range complex. It didn’t matter what threat air did in the exercises, the stealth and its LPI datalink actually worked. The test pilots (all F-15C Fighter Weapons School patch wearers and some MiG-killers) started having contests to see how quickly they could slay F-15Cs and F-16Cs. They did one set where they killed 12 of them in 2min 22sec, without being seen.
The problem the F-22 presented for China and Russia was that any US Theater Commander could erase any threat air within his AOR at his pleasure, with no real worry of losses on our end. So they had to kill it before we could go into FRP (Full-Rate Production), which is exactly what Gates did. Keep in mind SECDEF Gates began his campaign to kill the F-22 when he was under W. Bush, and Obama kept him on. That was really rare for such a radical Democrat candidate to keep on a Republican’s SECDEF.
We invested $31 Billion into ATF RDT&E before even going into Low Rate Initial Production, and the USAF was denied the opportunity to capitalize on that huge investment. Multiple USAF Chiefs of Staff fell on their swords and sacrificed their command to try to save the F-22 and go into FRP, but Gates had his marching orders and was hellbent on killing it.
I’m not clear on what you’re trying to convey.
Israeli SOF elements working inside Iran might have provided some terminal guidance for PGMs and things related to HUMINT and its importance for their operation.
That is really far from anything to do with Infantry wielding 14lb battle rifles trying to take hills.
It was designed and envisioned to be an air dominance fighter, so no matter what the Soviets did to upgrade the Su-27 and MiG-29, nothing would give them an edge to be able to counter the ATF. Air superiority fighters deliver a favorable exchange rate, assuming there will be losses on both sides. We relied on training, systems quality, and performance to continually try to keep an edge in the F-15C vs Su-27 and Su-30 one-up game. With F-22 vs any Flanker, there isn’t anything they can do to level the playing field, even with a high-hr Sukhoi pilot vs a low-hr Raptor pilot.
The F-22 pioneered the IFDL LPI data link, which is line-of-sight, high data-transfer rate, can’t really be intercepted or jammed with any EW systems. This is a giant leap over any of the Link-16(V)X systems and protocols, which are omnidirectional.
F-35’s MADL data link is another leap over F-22’s IFDL, mainly because it can transfer higher saturated data from fused RF and Electro-Optical/IR sensors and interleave that with other F-35s.
F-22 also pioneered sensor fusion and interleaved sensor data sharing among flights of F-22s, giving it better SA than any AWACS could provide. Even though F-22 uses a more advanced data link than legacy fighters, they can provide better information to joint tactical distribution systems, which then pipe that into the legacy Link- equipped fighters as necessary. F-35’s systems were natural evolutions and fulfillment of things from the ATF program, some of which were dropped from ATF due to cost concerns. Advanced IRST was one of those, which carried over somewhat into EOTS in the F-35.
The budget was planned for both ATF and JSF to supersede and replace F-15Cs and F-16Cs in USAF, which are on different tracks and not interchangeable. The claimed cost savings SECDEF Gates made blatantly contradicted the reality of having to fund SLEP for the F-15C and A-10 fleets, where billions were spent on structural repairs and layering of newer sensors and avionics on antiquated architecture from the late 1970s-mid 1980s. By holding onto F-15Cs and A-10s well past their service lives, we cheated ourselves from going into FRP with a relevant modern and future system with the F-22, and still spent the money on dead-end airframes that weren’t very useful in the Air Tasking Order.
If F-22A could have gone into FRP, we were looking at a $93m airframe flyaway cost due to volume order benefits downstream among the subcontractors and streamlined final assembly.
Both the F-22 and F-35 share the same basic Congressional district industrial base manufacturing share, but F-35 is traitor-proofed in that its industrial base was spread among many nations who all really need replacements for their F-16s, F/A-18s, and Harriers.
The traitors within still worked hard to cancel or hinder the F-35 program, and were successful in Canada in delaying its acquisition even though Canada has some of the largest industrial share in the JSF program, with over 100 companies making parts for the entire enterprise.
Either way, we’ve delivered over 1,185 F-35s to-date, and in the first week of July, the program update will include mention of having surpassed 1,200 airframes delivered to customers.
As I understand it the MRAP was largely funded through the money that was earmarked for the F-22 before cancellation.
So, while I believe all of Iraq and any approach in Afghanistan more than repetitive punitive raids were strategic-level distractions from what ultimately matters from a U.S. point of view, i.e. the PRC and Russia, I do believe SECDEF Gates was duty bound to the mothers of America to protect their sons and daughters against the current threat, even if it added future risk.
-Stan
Comes internally from people who worked with him well before he sabotaged ATF.
There were several programs DARPA and USAF were working on together that showed a ton of promise, USAF was very excited, end-users excited, contractors excited, not crazy expensive, killed by Gates. When asked why these programs could not continue, the managers could only explain it that they were suspicious of Gates working for KGB. Strike 1
When he went after any USAF Chief of Staff who said the USAF must capitalize on their $32 Billion in RDT&E for ATF and go into FRP, he fired every one of them. Obama kept him on as his SECDEF from Bush43 WH. Strike 2
He then pushed the agenda that we must kill the F-22 program because it was too costly, without showing how SLEPing F-15C and A-10A into A-10C was actually more costly since it created a fighter gap in airframes that were about to or already timed-out anyway, with extremely limited relevance in current and future Air Taskings Orders. “We don’t need F-22s to bomb the Taliban.” Strike 3
After successfully killing the Raptor in the nest before we could go into Full-Rate Production under Obama’s WH, he got out of DoD, went to Boy Scouts of America, and pushed degenerates as legitimate Scout Leaders. Strike 4
Once you study Gates’ career, you start to see a pattern that really screwed over our force structure, the age of our fighter fleet, and wasted tens of billions in RDT&E we couldn’t capitalize on, even as we pounded billions of dollars into dead airframes made from 1978-1986 (F-15C/A-10A).
MRAPs were a money-pit that wasted $45 billion with no positive cost-benefit to the force, while losing the capitalization on being able to go into FRP with F-22s. It played exactly into the hands of China.
The MRAP Boondoggle
US Army divested itself of most of them, to include leaving them in-theater, giving them to foreign nations, and placing them in storage at a continuing cost with no real benefits to the force.
Every dime wasted on MRAPs should have gone to F-22A Block 40, 50, 60 FRP and kept the line open. MRAPs added roll-over danger in water environments, causing drownings to many crews. My brother was the first MRAP rollover in water that survived, and it was by the skin of their teeth. He was called out of A-Stan to go give a presentation back CONUS after it happened to explain how they did it. The doors are too heavy and lock the crew in basically in a rollover, so any openings that allow water in fill the crew compartment up rapidly, drowning the occupants.
Majority of MRAPs to be scrapped or stored, 2014 Article
Taliban has a bunch of them now:
Our value systems are the same. Our analyses are different on how to get there.
As the Naval Post-Graduate School research discovered, the false claims about MRAP effectiveness in soldier life-saving were factored as if other medium protection vehicles didn’t provide the same level of protection for small arms engagements against the vehicles.
So if an MRAP column was lit-up with PKM fire, this was counted as MRAPs enjoying better protection than other armored vehicles that did the same thing in those scenarios.
That’s how they padded the numbers to make MRAPs look like a worthwhile investment, to the tune of $45 Billion.
Again, I would have not allowed that money to have been wasted on stupid MRAPs, and would have fulfilled the USAF orders for F-22s, and phased-out F-15Cs on schedule. This would also have brought the CPFH down on the Raptor fleet, which is extraordinarily-high now because all the subcontractors said, “I’m out with no more orders.” They either ceased or bid on F-35 subcontracts to stay in-business.
We obviously need more oversight built into the system when Army programs cheat strategic-level systems from being fulfilled for USAF. In the end, we helped China immensely by wasting the money on MRAP.
The quantity advantage for 5th Gen fighter force posture in the Pacific was given-up to a degree, while the Chinese went ahead with massive efforts in stealing everything from us in their development of J-20.
This all goes to show how insignificant the NGSW program is in the grand scheme though. They’ve already wasted hundreds of millions on NGSW so far:
Through-2024: $331 million
2025 NGSW budget: $367.292 million
That money should have been spent on another 6 F-35s with weapons packages, which are actually useful and a gift that keeps on giving for 30 years of service life. Overpriced pea-shooters from SIG are more likely to be canned and given to some foreign despot down the road.
This I think is going to start being what small arms is going to start being all about very soon.
Everyone around the world has see how cost / resource effective small FPV drones are and EVERYBODY is going to start planning to use them, from US, to the Russians and Chinese and then down to your local Yemini Sand Dweller.
As a user of MRAPs for a bit, @LRRPF52 is correct that they were a waste of money.
I’ll caveat that perhaps they were worthwhile for support troops.
But for combat arms/maneuver elements, they were a bigger negative than positive. Roll overs killing troops and way too slow and difficult to dismount/remount.
The sand dwellers were the first to use them.
But like all battlefield new technological advancements, their time in the spotlight is soon to diminish as better countermeasures come out.
Shooting it without a barrel on doesn't count aight
