Our North - SSE Policy Update Megathread
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Arguably that is a planning/leadership/control issue as well.
For you need to be able to be able to rapidly mass forces from dispersal and equally disperse quickly from mass. As much as I like to malign the US Army MDO strategy, it has been dealing with that pre UKR Invasion.
You either need to be able to do it unnoticed, or it has to be done in such a time frame that the enemy cannot react with sufficient mass in time to counter.
There is a OS version of the document out there, for those interested / my version isn’t, or I’d cut and paste some of the relevant information.
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Norway has a direct land and sea border with Russia, and the Russian Navy sails close-ish to the Norwegian coast.
Not surprised that they would have a strong defence budget.
FJAG
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That article doesn't really differ from what I said with respect to the category of "damaged" v "destroyed" and how close the impact is. Do note one particular issue with respect to the damage against armoured vehicles which is the splinters created by the rounds used in the test and modern 155mm ammunition. The older M107 round on functioning breaks into shards and splinters. The shards were very large. I've seen many that were the length of the projectile and up to 1/4 of its circumference with razor sharp edges. It could have a mass of ten to twenty pounds and deliver a very large energy transfer that could cause the level of damage seen in some of the pictures. Such fragments can fly hundreds of metres but generally are contained much closer than that to tens of metres. The new M795 HE round is described as a "high fragmentation" round. It does not put out large shards of steel but a very high volume of smaller splinters which are considerably more effective against personnel and materiel but have a lower energy transfer against armour and large armour components such as road wheels and tracks. It can still "disable" a tank or proper IFV from a near miss, but is much less likely to "destroy" it"
Again, the argument here is that while dumb rounds can disable and even destroy hard armoured targets, it takes a high number of rounds to do so. Take a look at the figures quoted. To achieve 50% destruction and 50% casualties on a fixed, dug-in company position took 2,600 rounds. The same number of rounds fired against tanks and IFVs also caused 50% "damage."
Artillery has very distinct definitions for "destroy" and "neutralize" in that the former is a permanent effect while latter is a time limited one.
Incidentally, here's a better page for that article.
Be careful of your interpretation here. These are not vehicle "kills", but "losses." Note that "losses" includes "breakdowns" so what we are dealing with are vehicles which were immobilized on the battlefield which includes both repairable damaged as well as destroyed vehicles. One of the things that always amazed me re WW2 that not withstanding its reputation as a "Ronson Lighter" when hit, the number of "hit" Sherman tanks that were put back into service within days by US maintenance battalions was quite high.
More importantly you need to remember the vast number of artillery rounds fired, and that the effectiveness of these rounds generally was more on a par with that of the M107 round creating large shards and the considerably thinner armour of the WW2 tanks involved than today's armour. Add in one additional fact that the highest proportion of losses - in the area of 68% - came from "AP shot" which in those days meant either a tank or anti-tank gun. That brings us back to the only point that I'm really making which is that it is significantly more efficient to "kill" armour with specific anti-armour weapons such as other tanks, ATGMs, guided artillery munitions including armed drones.
Absolutely.
Yup.
That's actually not that much of a difference. The difference is that western artillery is more flexible. Our standard command and control terminology creates the same situation as you describe for the Russians. An artillery battalion in DS of a brigade provides support for one commander through observers and fire support assets. That bde has the highest priority of call on the fires and the observer/liaison function stays with the brigade even if priority of fire is given to another sector for a limited period of time. This is a feature of western artillery that goes back to WW2 which comes as a result of a flexible and efficient command and control system that the Russian system does not match.
A given bde with a DS arty bn will not lose its arty support during close combat. In your example of a penetrating brigade, a western one would have its own DS bn to organize and support the attack but would also be given the arty support from other unengaged brigades and divisional and corps resources in a reinforcing role. The Russian structure is not as flexible but makes up for that by having greater number of arty bns organic to the brigade (2 gun, 1 rocket v 1 gun) and additional higher level arty bdes.
The practical effect is that while on a small scale - brigade and div level - the two systems can achieve close parity with fire support, on a broad level across a theatre, the Russian system can deliver more effects simply because it has a lot more guns, rockets and guided systems available in their inventory. The issue then becomes one of the accuracy of both STA and other ISTAR resources in sourcing targets and the accuracy and effects generated by the munitions supplied. And let me be clear, that includes not just gun batteries, but guided rocket, missile and drone systems which can deploy precision effects.
There is no practical difference as between Russian and western artillery doctrine in general on that. There are merely case-by-case differences in how those are applied depending on the circumstances.
Hopefully I'm not sounding to critical of your position here. I'm quite enjoying this discussion which is going into greater detail than many others.
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31 million Euros per tank? Too rich for our blood I think
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Well Canada has a 1,600+ NM Arctic Ocean border with Russia - which is actually the largest border Russia has with anyone, albeit China has a land border nearly that large.
One would think the RCN would have a much higher priority than it does.
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Where do those Norwegians find the money to buy all that stuff? I mean what do they have to sell beyond fish, oil and gas, electricity and technology. It's not as if they design and build their own military solutions....
Understood, I realize there is a difference. My broader point was that the Russians have always considered their artillery to be usable (if not the preferred weapon) in an anti-tank role. In fact, one of the reasons they locate their artillery within the Regt/Bde AO is that they believe Btys can stand their ground in an emergency and prevent a breakthrough for a period of time. I think this is wrong-headed, but they really like the AT value of both indirect and direct firing guns.
We tend to view HE as a general purpose, but primarily anti-personnel, weapon and design and employ our systems accordingly.
No disagreement here. I think the use of the 50% figure was too high of a bar, diminishing returns really start to take hold after about 20% casualties. Rounds keep hitting the same space multiple times while other areas (ie outside the 2 probable errors) get hit only sporadically. Using my Russian calculator, getting to 30% destruction takes less than half the rounds. As I had mentioned previously, the Russians have always aimed for that 30% number as a prerequisite for suppression, so they are certainly prepared to expend the ammunition.
Interestingly, they usually estimate that equipment loss rates will be higher than personnel losses for a given amount of rounds fired. I'm not sure of the mathematics behind that, I assume it has to do with the relative size of an AFV vs a person, but it might also factor in that a person can more easily find cover.
I'm aware that there is a difference. I think there is good evidence that in WW2 many armoured vehicles were lost to indirect fire. Factoring in fuel exhaustion or breakdown changes the numbers quite a bit for any given vehicle. The article didn't really talk about it much, but some of the charts at the back included the difference between losses and losses excluding fuel/breakdown.
On the topic of Shermans, about ten years ago I came across a US Sherman tank battalion's AAR from Okinawa. It had a breakdown of all of its tanks that had been damaged to various causes, and the personnel losses associated with each incident. I don't have the pdf of the AAR any more but I do have a chart that summarized the losses, as well as a few of my notes:
Weapon | AFVs Damaged | Killed | Wounded | AFVs Destroyed | Killed | Wounded | Total Incidents | Total Casualties |
| Artillery | 24 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 26 | 12 |
| Molotov Cocktail | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Conical Shape Charge | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Mines | 6 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 20 | 15 | 24 |
| Satchel Charge | 4 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 14 | 2 |
| 47mm AT Gun | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 |
First thing to note with the data - they were fighting the Japanese who had the worst artillery of any major power in WW2. The AAR commented that the Japanese shot inaccurately, infrequently, rarely at higher than Bty level, and with relatively weak guns (mostly 75mm, but some 105mm and 150mm). Also, most of the "artillery" was actually mortar fire, but the data lumped both into the same category. As we have discussed, heavier guns tended to do more severe damage, but the AAR noted that even the mortars were surprisingly dangerous. The AAR's author had several recommendations about what to do under artillery fire but I have lost them; I assume relocating or seeking cover from observation would be the main ones.
Tanks were classified as damaged if they had to be withdrawn from service and sent to a maintenance facility for repairs. This suggests that the chart does not include vehicles that suffered relatively minor damage that could be repaired at unit level, but I can't confirm that. I recall that the original PDF listed all the individual repairs required for each specific incident and how long they were out of action.
Most of the tanks damaged by artillery had no personnel losses; the casualties for the destroyed tanks was skewed by the fact that a near miss from a shell set a flamethrower tank on fire - the crew never had a chance.
As an aside, the satchel charge attacks were conducted by specialized tank hunting teams, and were in fact suicide bombings. They had a small number of riflemen who escorted one or two suicide bombers. The AAR noted that the Japanese soldiers didn't know the best places on the tank to blow themselves up, so the losses weren't as bad as they could have been. The two personnel casualties only happened because the riflemen who escorted the bomber were able to bayonet the crew as they evacuated the tank.
Ours is definitely the superior system; being able to switch tasks or mass fire when appropriate gives us advantages they don't have. They are stuck with Bns only doing DS tasks and others only doing GS tasks. They do have a task that is similar to Reinf or GSR (I think it's called "Fire In Support"), but I don't believe it is widely used. Ultimately, I think the Russians favor the "one mission, one commander" principle a little too much. Some of it is probably cultural - they didn't have enough radios and staff in WW2 to go for a more flexible approach, and the system they ended the war with worked well enough. Once it got locked in, they probably didn't want to change it. Their system is simpler and minimizes the need for additional artillery staffs and CPs, but that really is a small price to pay for the added flexibility.
They do have one relatively interesting feature that is designed to add technical (rather than tactical) flexibility. All of the CPs in a Bn are supposed to be able to calculate firing data for any of the Btys in an emergency. The BC and CO's parties are also capable of generating firing data. If you ever see footage of a Russian BC in his OP, watch for his techs - one of them is always running a plotting board. It strikes me as a low return on investment, but the Russians seem to be concerned about CPs being put out of action in high intensity combat.
On the whole, we should be able to do better at the Div and higher levels, even if the Russians have more guns. Their logistical systems are nowhere near as robust as ours and they can't deliver ammunition at the same rates that we could (assuming we had the rounds to deliver, and were fielding a doctrinally sound force, anyway). This is obviously a big deal for the artillery, where consumption can be measured in hundreds of tons per day. To a large extent the Russians go with what they can carry on their prime movers. The reasons for this are somewhat complex, but one big reason is that they assume that their Bde/Regts will be quickly consumed in heavy fighting - resupply gets easier if you assume 50% of your equipment will be wrecked on the first day. Another reason is that once they have achieved a breakthrough, they don't want to slow down for logistical reasons. Resupply is also linked to the operational art, ie synchronizing tactical efforts over time and space.
So in this particular case I was referring to the issue of range and depth behind the front lines. The Bde/Regt's artillery is normally quite close (but it's further back in Ukraine than desired) and deals with close targets, for the most part. It doesn't really need to be all that close, because it doesn't have that far to shoot, but they like to keep the commander's assets close to the commander. As for depth targets, the higher artillery handles those, but they are also usually located surprisingly close to the front. It's somewhat different on the attack; there, they keep the guns close to the front of the advance because they can't risk having them being out of range at critical moments.
In their case, that is compelled by how they do artillery C2. In our case, the GS or GSR assets usually sit further back, but they can engage close targets when it is profitable to do so, or when they aren't busy.
Not at all.
FJAG
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They had even worse tanks. Most had nothing more than the equivalent of the 2 and 6 pdr at best. Some 75s came out in very limited numbers late in the war. Okinawa is both rough terrain and heavily populated with urban and rural areas. The fight was mostly close. Japanese tank loses were only 27 compared to up to 1,700 guns and mortars. The low number of tanks lost is a reflection on how few they had. The Japanese anti-armour fight, by necessity, was through artillery. Their anti-tank artillery sucked as much as their tanks so, again by necessity, field guns were their principle weapon against tanks in both indirect and direct fire.
That's actually fairly easy here too because our IFCCS used for calculating indirect fire is essentially a ruggedized laptop with a fire control software package that can easily switch between weapon type and gun location. It could be easily operated from any location for multiple batteries. Most NATO countries have something similar. Connectivity between the IFCCS and gun is more an issue but in the event of the loss of a CP that can easily be worked around from the FSCC or from another troop CP. Most modern arty equipment is going with gun management systems on each gun/launcher that caters to frequent moves, self locates the gun and, in some cases, calculates firing data at the gun. My guess is that the future will have digital networks with multiple, fail-over "command and control" nodes. The gun deploys individually and then is priorized onto targets based on a set command and control rules. The basic tech for that exists. Such a system's weakness is the logistics involved in keeping the guns fed with ammo and supplies and the maintenance of the digital comms links in the face of hostile EW.
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Think. not our plitical long suite.
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Bit hard to bring a FFH up the Canal to remind Parliament that there is an RCN.
Although it would be hilarious to try.
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There's an O-Boat in St Thomas... My assumption is that the Nav O was looking for a shortcut to the west coast and got lost.
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They had even worse tanks. Most had nothing more than the equivalent of the 2 and 6 pdr at best. Some 75s came out in very limited numbers late in the war. Okinawa is both rough terrain and heavily populated with urban and rural areas. The fight was mostly close. Japanese tank loses were only 27 compared to up to 1,700 guns and mortars. The low number of tanks lost is a reflection on how few they had. The Japanese anti-armour fight, by necessity, was through artillery. Their anti-tank artillery sucked as much as their tanks so, again by necessity, field guns were their principle weapon against tanks in both indirect and direct fire.
That's actually fairly easy here too because our IFCCS used for calculating indirect fire is essentially a ruggedized laptop with a fire control software package that can easily switch between weapon type and gun location. It could be easily operated from any location for multiple batteries. Most NATO countries have something similar. Connectivity between the IFCCS and gun is more an issue but in the event of the loss of a CP that can easily be worked around from the FSCC or from another troop CP. Most modern arty equipment is going with gun management systems on each gun/launcher that caters to frequent moves, self locates the gun and, in some cases, calculates firing data at the gun. My guess is that the future will have digital networks with multiple, fail-over "command and control" nodes. The gun deploys individually and then is priorized onto targets based on a set command and control rules. The basic tech for that exists. Such a system's weakness is the logistics involved in keeping the guns fed with ammo and supplies and the maintenance of the digital comms links in the face of hostile EW.
Is this fair comment?
The barrage is comparable to a minefield.
The barrage creates an environment where trespassers are likely to randomly encounter a lethal threat. The greater the density of the minefield or the barrage the greater the probability of trespassers suffering damage or lethal consequences. The barrage is easier to establish and shift than a minefield.
Taking out individual targets, plinking, requires precision and is best accomplished from a distance.
FJAG
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All the above is fair.
The part about precision to take out individual targets is true. IMHO, distance isn't a factor. A man with a satchel charge running up to a tank, or an M72 or panzerfaust at close range is equally precise and effective as a long range ATGM or laser guided artillery round.
The point with precision weapons is that one round can do the job. Mines and artillery barrages will too, but it takes many more mines to be laid and rounds to be fired to achieve a result. I saw one video from Ukraine with anti-tank mines being brought in dump trucks and literally being dumped out the back like large rocks before being surface laid. I expect they've laid hundreds or even thousands for every AFV destroyed. Mines, at least, can be recovered and reused.
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I guess my take is that I would sooner be standing 5 km off with an ATGM, or an FPV OWAUAS, than be the poor bugger with the satchel charge.
The point with precision weapons is that one round can do the job. Mines and artillery barrages will too, but it takes many more mines to be laid and rounds to be fired to achieve a result. I saw one video from Ukraine with anti-tank mines being brought in dump trucks and literally being dumped out the back like large rocks before being surface laid. I expect they've laid hundreds or even thousands for every AFV destroyed. Mines, at least, can be recovered and reused.
Japanese tanks were suitable for infantry support against somebody with poor AT weapons, but that's about it. The Army probably felt they had what they needed to beat the Chinese and replacements weren't required.
In theory, yes, but we certainly don't set ourselves up to do that.
McG
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Could you get one up the Ottawa River & do a u-turn below parliament? Would make a nice picture taken from around the museum of civilization.
Colin Parkinson
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Also their logistical train and amphibious landing craft dictated a very lightweight tank. interesting to note the US Armor Corp in WWII lost only about 1800 (recalling from memory with only 1 coffee so far) personal in WWII. Nicholas Moran did a talk on the subject and had found the number in the archives.
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Highly unlikely, the Ottawa river channel varies significantly with the recommended centerline going to 6.48ft depth in certain areas closer to Ottawa.Could you get one up the Ottawa River & do a u-turn below parliament? Would make a nice picture taken from around the museum of civilization.
According to Wiki the Halifax’s take 16.1’ so let’s say anything under 25’ would make them very skittish.
It appears from the charts, that you could safely (ish) make it near Orleans up the river in at least 28’ of water, after that, the depth gets sketchy.
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