self propelled AT guns and assault guns today

the tanks were apparently Merkava Mk 2 which are comparable (perhaps even poorer in terms of armour protection) to our TR-85 M1 and light years behind Merkava Mk 3 and Mk 4... when I wrote that ATGM's are inefficient against modern tanks I wasn't referring to a tank from the 1980's, just in case you know

"The IDF placed a tight security ring around the tank in order to prevent Hezbollah fighters from reaching it. The Merkava-2 tank was destroyed by a mine packed with between 200 and 300 kilometers of explosives." (if your israeli journalists are correct they probably meant kilograms)

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/738310.html

OFF TOPIC SAYS YOU. . . . . . BUT I SAY MY COMMENTS ARE RELEVENT. THATS WHY ITS CALLED A FORUM

Please read under:

Fighter the pride of our future.

OPINION OF:

Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor, The Australian News, July 22, 2006

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...5001561,00.html

"THE dreadful fighting in southern Lebanon, in Israel's war with Hezbollah, demonstrates the importance, and the limitations, of air power.

In the end, to destroy Hezbollah, Israel had to send in ground forces. But to do that effectively it relied on its overwhelming air superiority to take out air defences, missile batteries and to prepare the ground.

In fact, with the benefit of clear air superiority, it is almost impossible for a competent ground force to lose.

That is partly why the US is such a decisive ally. Even if it doesn't send in ground forces, it can change any ground battle by the exercise of air power.

This column has often argued that Australia needs many more ground soldiers, partly because of the nature of the engagements we need to be involved in during the long war on terror, within our region and more distantly.

But we are also in the process of making thebiggest decision in our history about airpowerand, indeed, the biggest single defence purchase.

We are planning to spend, broadly speaking, $12 billion in 2002 dollars for a fleet of up to 100 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

I have to admit a fatal bias here. I've flown the JSF simulator and shot down three Soviet aircraft while notionally in the air. It's the most fun you can have legally in peacetime, but I suspect the simulator operators somewhat biased the odds in my favour.

Notwithstanding the affection you always feel for a fighter you've flown successfully, the JSF will move Australia into a totally new generation of air-power capability.

Most of the negative publicity you've seen about the JSF is tosh. Some of the specifics may be true, but they lack context. The JSF will be a fine replacement for the magnificent F-111, which has served Australia superbly well, and will establish a renewed technological and capability edge for us in the region.

There are some distinctive features about Australia's strategic culture that mean that certain types of controversy recur whenever we buy a big new weapons system. The F-111s were leading-edge technology when we bought them and they were plagued by development problems. In the late 1960s and early '70s, the F-111s were utterly ridiculed and scorned by the know-alls in the media of the day. You didn't need to know much about defence to know that the F-111 was a dud. I can recall radio figure Brian White offering to lead a rebellion in Australia's northern islands so long as all the Australian government had to fight him with were F-111s. It is impossible to overstate the scorn they engendered.

The F-111s have since become acknowledged as having been a superb plane for Australia. They were a strike fighter. They were hardy, tough, reliable planes with an extraordinary range, which you need if you're operating in Australia, or in the approaches to Australia. They gave Australia a potent strike capacity, which was not meant as a threat to any of our neighbours but nonetheless was a significant deterrent.

The JSFs will attract much less intense controversy than the F-111s did, but it will be the same type of controversy and for the same basic reasons.

One of the endearing and delightful things about Australia is the way our national conversation recurs, like a sweet symphony in which certain themes, certain melodies, are played again and again at orchestral intervals, so that there is a soothing rhythm to our national life.

The reasons we always have the same type of defence equipment controversies derive from our bigness and our smallness. Because we are so big and so far away from people who may harm us, trade lines we may need to protect or friends we may need to help, we need equipment that can work across vast distances.

This transcends the old debate over whether we just want to defend the Australian mainland or work farther out.

Even if only operating within Australia we need to be able to cover thousands and thousands of kilometres. It means we often need equipment with special characteristics: not only range as such but durability, survivability and the ability to operate in widely different climatic conditions.

So that's what bigness requires of us. Then there are the requirements of smallness. Because we are a small population we do not have the option of a big military, although I think it should be bigger than it is. But as well as being small, we are rich and technologically advanced. So the strategy we naturally adopt is to maintain a clear technological edge over our much more populous neighbours.

We can do this not only because we are rich but because we are such close allies of the US. They will provide us with defence technology that they will not provide to anyone else in our region. Because President George W. Bush has changed the US national disclosure policy to grant much greater information access for Australia, the US will give us more intimate knowledge of the highly sensitive systems in the JSF than it has for any plane we've ever bought before.

The strategy of always seeking a technological edge on everyone else in the region means we have to be involved in leading-edge technology, which means we have to take certain calculated risks.

If you buy something off the shelf you don't have the risks, but you also don't have the edge. Sometimes the risk can be too great. Sometimes we try to overdesign what we can get from a manufacturer.

This is essentially what happened with the Collins Class submarines, although at the end the cost overrun was reasonable and the Collins became the most formidable non-nuclear sub in the water, the F-111 of the seas.

Cost overruns seem to imply great incompetence on the part of defence planners. But has anyone ever done a renovation of their house that doesn't end up coming in 10 per cent over budget and three months late?

The notional cost of the JSF is very hard to calculate. The main real cost increases since the project was announced in 2002 have been caused by the increase in costs of titanium and the increased costs of skilled labour. Many of the misleading figures simply compare 2012 dollars with 2002 dollars (we'll take delivery of our first JSFs in 2012).

Similarly, the first plane you buy is more expensive than the last, especially if you're buying 100. Then the cost of just the plane alone is different from the average cost of the plane and all the accompanying systems, training equipment, simulators, support facilities and so on that you need over the lifetime of the program.

The average cost of the JSF is estimated at about $100 million. Thus a hundred aircraft is $10 billion. But the notional budget for the program is $12 billion, so that some leeway is built in.

The idea that any Russian-built plane in our region could challenge the JSF is nonsense. Modern fighter warfare is mostly done beyond the range of visual engagement. Some of the Russian planes have a notionally tighter turning ability in close quarters, but their weapons systems and stealth capacities are nothing compared with the JSF.

And our JSFs will be integrated with our Airborne Early Warning and Control command aircraft and our powerful radars. They will identify, track and destroy their enemies long before their enemies are even aware they are in the air.

The JSF answers our needs because it is both an air superiority fighter and a strike weapon. Because it is superbly flexible between those roles we can one day have 100 air-superiority fighters and the next day have 100 strike weapons. At the start of a conflict we can keep all the weapons inside the JSFand go very stealthily (largely invisible toradar).

Once we've knocked out air defences we can load up many more weapons on the planes' external weapons ports, not worrying that radar may detect external bumps on theplanes.

Oppositions always focus on the shortcomings of new weapons systems. Labor has suggested we buy a squadron of F-22s and keep the F-111s in the air for many more years. Both suggestions are ridiculous. The F-22 is a superior air fighter but does not have the JSF's strike capacity.

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson told me the US has told the Australian Defence Force it would not be prepared to sell the F-22 even to so close an ally as Australia.

It is just unrealistic to imagine we can keep the F-111s going forever, and the costs of running two types of plane are also excessive. The F-22 is vastly more expensive than the JSF anyway, not even factoring in all the extra costs you would incur by importing it.

"We can't afford to be risk-averse," Nelson says. Nelson gives every impression of relishing the defence portfolio, notwithstanding the tragedy of Jake Kovco and all the embarrassment that caused.

But we don't finally commit to the JSF until 2008, after the next election. The sheer fun of introducing magnificent new technology like the JSF would be enough to keep me in the defence portfolio for years.

The Howard Government's complete redesign of the ADF to match its strategic vision is proceeding deliberately, begun by Robert Hill, continued by Nelson. The JSF will be our pride and joy.

- END OF ARTICLE -

Kevin In Deva WAY OFF TOPIC

Yeah, did you miss this: http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?sh...indpost&p=53017

AND

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/742250.html

This post has been edited by Imperialist on July 25, 2006 09:21 pm

I think NCR has a point in that the self-propelled AT gun wouldnt survive once air superiority is lost. Hence buying s-p.AT.gun would lead to further expenses in air defense and airforce. Against a major power the whole of these expenses would be useless. Instead of spending on s-p.AT.guns I would invest in modern ATGMs.

I think the point is that no responsible observer sees any conventional threat to Romania's territory. Border control for the EU? Sure. Participation in multi-national forces. Yes, if you want to, and it looks like your current president does. NATO operations and joint training. Of course.

But hordes of Ukrainians coming over the border because of some incident with the canal or Snake Island? A joint Hungarian-Bulgarian invasion to settle the Romanian question? Turkey reviving the Caliphate and heading for Vienna? Only in paranoid fantasies.

And as for Yugoslavia proving NATO's ineffectiveness... well, it wasn't a NATO member, was it? The NATO treaty is a collective DEFENSE treaty, to defend its members, not to play policeman when non-members have a civil war, or help members regain territory they controlled in the past. Do I think France and Germany would get their hands dirty if Romania was attacked? They have pledged that they will. If Romania does not think they will honor their treaty obligations, she should think closely before joining the EU, another treaty organization they are founding members of. I'm not aware of any case where NATO has failed to respond to threats by a non-member against the territory of a member. (Yes, I worded that so that Greece vs. Turkey does not count.)

The suggestion that the US is about to quit NATO is too crazy and off-topic to discuss here. It's not happening any time soon.

Back on topic.... As I said earlier, what kind of vehicles makes sense for any nation depends on what sort of missions you see for your army. If all you will be doing is out-of-area missions in an joint environment, against opponents who lack heavy armor, why invest heavily in vehicles you cannot get to the fight?

I think NCR has a point in that the self-propelled AT gun wouldnt survive once air superiority is lost. Hence buying s-p.AT.gun would lead to further expenses in air defense and airforce. Against a major power the whole of these expenses would be useless. Instead of spending on s-p.AT.guns I would invest in modern ATGMs.

True,but myself I didn't gave too many chances for a self propelled AT even if this would have to face land forces. The problem I see is that the war is not what it used to be years ago. I don't think we will ever see massive forces fighting each others be it on land,water or air. Having air superiority in Yugoslavia (for example) didn't made NATO wishful enough to put foot on ground.Did NATO ruled the sky in Yugoslavia,yes it did. Did they dictate the rules on the ground? Not at all, proof is all ethnic cleansing that took place during the period. But I stop here because this is another subject.

At around 1:40 P.M., an IDF Merkava tank was struck by an explosive device in the village of Aita al-Shaab in the western sector. The tank's four crew members were killed instantly. The IDF is still investigating the source of the explosion. The kind of damage sustained by the tank (its turret was blown off) appears to indicate that the vehicle was hit by a large explosive device, but a senior Northern Command officer told Haaretz on Wednesday night that it was more likely that the Merkava had been hit by an anti-tank missile.

IDF troops in the area reported seeing the missile in flight.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/748556.html

so? what are you trying to prove? no one said tanks are indestructible. but tell me how many lebanese civilians have lost their lives so far and how many displaced because of Hezbollah's guerilla style war. the whole point of an army is to protect the civilians and boundaries.. look how romania was overrun by the soviets after the Iasi-Chishinau offensive. you can't stop hordes of tanks with small arms.

[edited by admin]

Did I call you by name or something, why are you so upset? Sure nobody said tanks are indestructible, but we were talking about the most efficient weapons that can destroy them, and in an air inferiority context those weapons are ATGMs. Otherwise can you give an example of an israeli tank destroyed with a self-propelled AT gun?

Sometimes an army cannot protect civilians and boundaries and civilian resistance becomes the army.

The bigger the weapon in air inferiority context the bigger the chances you wont get to use it at its full potential. Hordes of small weapons cannot be defeated by tank advancements either. But I dont think a good ATGM can be called a small arm.

This post has been edited by Imperialist on August 10, 2006 08:03 pm

deadmanwalking, please watch your language. There is no need to be so aggressive.