Building on his discussion on the trend towards larger wheeled armoured fighting vehicles , guest contributor and ex-armoured corps officer Graeme Doull proposes a new solution to motorising infantry.
It's good debate material Ben, and i think it's needed. There are no ‘quick fixes’ or ‘muddling through’. Future defence needs carefully considered, especially regards personnel protection and mobility.
This looks like a lot of digital ink spilt just to remind us that technicals and gun trucks exist, that the Toyota War of 1987 was real, and that the Chadian forces of Chad were total Chads.
The points about smaller, lighter, cheaper, more numerous, and more agile vehicles aren't wrong, but they're just a single point in a much larger story.
Everything is going this way.
Civilian-military dual-use, network-centric, horizontally distributed across multiple nodes is coming for everything.
The naval version of these sorts of vehicles is the Boghammer (great name for a band) fast attack boat. But it's everywhere: land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace.
Are you familiar with the story of the jumbo jet Cosmic Girl? You should really check it out. That aircraft could do a lot of things, but one of the things it could do was launch a ballistic missile from 35,000 feet, be based anywhere a 747 can be based, and fire it from anywhere a 747 can reach. That's strategic military capability for the price of a civilian airliner—plus a few perks.
College students working out of their dormitory can put together a missile that can deliver a bomb through a specific window of a high-rise apartment 1,000 km away.
A bunch of dudes with pick-up trucks, armament technology equal to that of a Khyber Pass gunsmith, plus smartphones, are well on the way to a mechanized brigade.
Just sticking to New Zealand, that dude Bruce Simpson was about three-quarters of the way to building a cruise missile in his garage before the government shut him down. He was just a single eccentric, but if he had only managed a rough copy of WWII's V1, he'd have a weapon that could deliver a 100 kg warhead 250+ km. Put a Starlink terminal on it and it could do all that and thread a needle. All for about the price of a Toyota Corolla. What could he have done with government support, start-up funding, and some real factory space?
How far away is Peter Beck of Rocket Lab from getting a ballistic missile? Heck, he's got a ballistic missile! All he needs now is a warhead.
Sure, there will be gaps in capabilities, but not as many as you think, and those gaps can be bridged.
The biggest gaps will be social and political. As modern systems melt down the old military-industrial complex like the internet melted down old media, social systems must adapt.
The new military systems will look a lot less like McDonnell Douglas, Raytheon, and the Pentagon and be more like the medieval blacksmith who could make serious weapons of war from his village workshop and the Asiatic pastoralist whose bow, horse, and lifestyle already made him a serious military contender.
The social and political systems will have to change to fit these realities. Who knows exactly how, but a flatter technological system points towards a flatter social one. It may end up looking something like the classical Greek city states, who didn't have soldiers because every able-bodied citizen was also always a warrior.
A fascinating post thanks Ben and Graham. I quote:
"Larger vehicles present larger targets. Advanced anti-armour weapons can threaten almost any vehicle, reducing some of the advantages traditionally associated with heavier protection. Armour alone cannot guarantee survival."
Might this statement forecast the end of Aircraft Carriers too? Highly vulnerable to missile and submarines etc.
Hi Peter, Thanks for the comments and its fantastic that we are getting some good comments on this post. It is a really interesting and important discussion. And, yes I reckon a similar argument applied at sea as well. I think about a third of the Black Sea Fleet is on the bottom on the ocean and the remainder is locked down in ports. So there it is a good time to look at the future of sea power.
The trade-off made by lighter armoured vehicles for mobility doesn't work. Today's democracies would struggle to withstand the casualties taken by Sherman tank crews after D-Day. It is also possible for conventional and guerrilla warfare to happen during the same war. Once the limited environments where the light vehicle concept works are no longer present, the concept fails.
However, a returned focus to concealment, camouflage and decoys is worthy of attention. If Graeme Doull's article draws attention to those matters, then it is a success, despite my disagreements with his views.
The Sherman tank was critical to winning the land war in Europe - check this out from The Chieftain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACqzevjK2DQ Volume is important - the Panzers were generally a superior tank but lighter tanks were ultimately on the winning side.
I think you also missed the main point here - survivability in a future conflict will be more about being able to access different terrain, being a smaller target and needing lighter logistics, and less about the thickness of your armour.
Bushmaster is a fantastic vehicle to protect against IEDs and RPGs and unquestionably the right solution for the GWOT - where allies had air dominance and were fighting against a light enemy with limited access to sophisticated weapons. Against what Americans would call a “peer” or a “near peer” enemy - with huge volumes of advanced anti-armour missiles and advanced anti-armour drones with shaped charges, they are just a bigger target.
Indeed, the superior number of Sherman tanks was a strategic factor that overwhelmed German armour.
However, there is another historical note worth making. The American public didn’t balk at the wartime casualties until after the war in Europe ended. But what happens if the next mass-produced military vehicle contributes to public opinion turning against a conflict by being too vulnerable to enemy action in a conflict? Does WW3 override that issue temporarily?
The Soviets’ role in defeating Germany proved that a dictatorship can win a war while absorbing massive amounts of avoidable casualties. In purely analytical terms, that proves strategy trumps tactics. Moreover, our democracies rightfully wouldn’t tolerate a Soviet-style tactical approach.
The next Sherman tank or troop carrier will have to fit into tactical nous and operational art, fitting into a sound strategic outlook.
I agree that the Bushmaster isn’t a vehicle one would choose for conventional wars. My point was that one can retain off-road capabilities without sacrificing crew protection. Soft-skinned vehicles are an unnecessary death trap, otherwise.
Note to the reader: I acknowledge that logistics is a battlefield enabler. The issue with lighter logistics is that there will be a “weak spot.” For instance, hybrid vehicles require a battery but offer fuel savings. How much of the requirement is for a lighter logistical footprint verse the methods of resupply? Aerial resupply helps to reduce dependency upon road transport and allows for encircled units to fight on.
The strategic design issue is coming up with a design that balances out sufficient armour, over-the-top industrial output, and fuel economy. The other issues are maintenance-related. Outside of specialists or engineers, a vehicle in which the crew can change the oil is more likely to remain in service than something powered by a better-performing gas turbine.
Hi Lens of History, thanks for commenting we really appreciate it and I'm sure Graeme will jump in soon too. My take is that the mobility gain is at operational-level or getting infantry to the battlefield. Vehicles like Boxer weigh so much that they are very constrained by roads and bridges. A smaller civilian-sized vehicle can disperse across a wide range of secondary roads, country lanes or bush tracks moving a force in a more dispersed manner that provides some protection by concealment but that also makes a main effort harder to discern. Like a swarm of bees that moves in cloud then concentrates at the point of effort.
I agree about the protection question but think that given the cost of the next generation of vehicles you could probably equip a force with small vehicles and a second-line of MRAAPs for if an IED threat is present.
Finally, thanks for commenting because like you Graeme and I both agree that the most important thing is that these issues are discussed, ideas are challenged and that debate leads to better outcomes for the frontline.
Have you read Brendan Nicholson’s The Bushmaster: from concept to combat? Off-road capabilities can be built into troop carriers at the design stage. The same goes for air transport/fitting vehicles into the related aircraft.
The American MRAP family of vehicles’s designs was a product of wartime demand driven by the IED threat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, the shorter design times for the MRAPs ensured they are heavier than the Bushmaster and have other design quirks.
Hi Luke, No I haven't read Brendan Nicholson's book but Googled it. And it looks like a good story. As I recollect Bushmaster pre-dated MRAAPs because I remembered discussing it pre-GWOT. I also remember joking about it and having to re-think my position a few years later when it proved to be a pretty good piece of kit on operation in Afghanistan.
Agreed. You always end up bolting more on or withdrawing it from theatre. Go with something like Scorpion if you want small. Boxer is big, but neither are IMV of any type. If the Ukrainians are detecting individual infantry, size is probably moot.
Hi Jason, Thanks for commenting. I think Graeme worked on Scorp and I know that he definitely had that platform in mind when he was thinking about this subject. Size can provide protection but concealment is sometimes better protection.
Richard Simpkin was the mind behind the concept and Chieftain. So what you have is two ends of the spectrum. That the designs were imperfect is separate from the concept. He was also an early thinker about robotics. I think light nowadays should be interpreted as highly drone based. But you still have a massive logistic burden. Survival rates for armoured troops in Ukraine is far higher than light, but still not great. The trouble is there have been no new AFV designs, ground up, for decades, beyond tiny UGV. That constrains the solution space. But it’s good to discuss all this.
Anti-drone defense 🎛️📡 in a age of satellite surveillance: Maneuver at speed 🏁 is helpful. Surface survivability ~ land, sea & 🛢️ logistics is just an entirely knew thing! 🚛 Every truck or 🏗️ shipping container can suddenly retract it's top cover & become an ⚠️ autonomous drone swarm. Unmanned remote surface craft can launch their own swarms ~ 👁️ eyes / decoys / attackers 💥 that are cheap, lethal ⚰️🦑🪸 and expendable. Humans in trucks and on ships are going to need LARGE QUANTITIES of cheap defense weapons and systems to stay alive for more than just a few days or hours.⚡💽🛰️💫🤖
Good work Ben and Graeme. A very well thought out piece indeed 👍. Good and valid points all round.
Thanks JG, Graeme is the brains behind this idea and I think it is a really interesting proposal.
It's good debate material Ben, and i think it's needed. There are no ‘quick fixes’ or ‘muddling through’. Future defence needs carefully considered, especially regards personnel protection and mobility.
This looks like a lot of digital ink spilt just to remind us that technicals and gun trucks exist, that the Toyota War of 1987 was real, and that the Chadian forces of Chad were total Chads.
The points about smaller, lighter, cheaper, more numerous, and more agile vehicles aren't wrong, but they're just a single point in a much larger story.
Everything is going this way.
Civilian-military dual-use, network-centric, horizontally distributed across multiple nodes is coming for everything.
The naval version of these sorts of vehicles is the Boghammer (great name for a band) fast attack boat. But it's everywhere: land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace.
Are you familiar with the story of the jumbo jet Cosmic Girl? You should really check it out. That aircraft could do a lot of things, but one of the things it could do was launch a ballistic missile from 35,000 feet, be based anywhere a 747 can be based, and fire it from anywhere a 747 can reach. That's strategic military capability for the price of a civilian airliner—plus a few perks.
College students working out of their dormitory can put together a missile that can deliver a bomb through a specific window of a high-rise apartment 1,000 km away.
A bunch of dudes with pick-up trucks, armament technology equal to that of a Khyber Pass gunsmith, plus smartphones, are well on the way to a mechanized brigade.
Just sticking to New Zealand, that dude Bruce Simpson was about three-quarters of the way to building a cruise missile in his garage before the government shut him down. He was just a single eccentric, but if he had only managed a rough copy of WWII's V1, he'd have a weapon that could deliver a 100 kg warhead 250+ km. Put a Starlink terminal on it and it could do all that and thread a needle. All for about the price of a Toyota Corolla. What could he have done with government support, start-up funding, and some real factory space?
How far away is Peter Beck of Rocket Lab from getting a ballistic missile? Heck, he's got a ballistic missile! All he needs now is a warhead.
Sure, there will be gaps in capabilities, but not as many as you think, and those gaps can be bridged.
The biggest gaps will be social and political. As modern systems melt down the old military-industrial complex like the internet melted down old media, social systems must adapt.
The new military systems will look a lot less like McDonnell Douglas, Raytheon, and the Pentagon and be more like the medieval blacksmith who could make serious weapons of war from his village workshop and the Asiatic pastoralist whose bow, horse, and lifestyle already made him a serious military contender.
The social and political systems will have to change to fit these realities. Who knows exactly how, but a flatter technological system points towards a flatter social one. It may end up looking something like the classical Greek city states, who didn't have soldiers because every able-bodied citizen was also always a warrior.
A fascinating post thanks Ben and Graham. I quote:
"Larger vehicles present larger targets. Advanced anti-armour weapons can threaten almost any vehicle, reducing some of the advantages traditionally associated with heavier protection. Armour alone cannot guarantee survival."
Might this statement forecast the end of Aircraft Carriers too? Highly vulnerable to missile and submarines etc.
Hi Peter, Thanks for the comments and its fantastic that we are getting some good comments on this post. It is a really interesting and important discussion. And, yes I reckon a similar argument applied at sea as well. I think about a third of the Black Sea Fleet is on the bottom on the ocean and the remainder is locked down in ports. So there it is a good time to look at the future of sea power.
The trade-off made by lighter armoured vehicles for mobility doesn't work. Today's democracies would struggle to withstand the casualties taken by Sherman tank crews after D-Day. It is also possible for conventional and guerrilla warfare to happen during the same war. Once the limited environments where the light vehicle concept works are no longer present, the concept fails.
However, a returned focus to concealment, camouflage and decoys is worthy of attention. If Graeme Doull's article draws attention to those matters, then it is a success, despite my disagreements with his views.
The Sherman tank was critical to winning the land war in Europe - check this out from The Chieftain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACqzevjK2DQ Volume is important - the Panzers were generally a superior tank but lighter tanks were ultimately on the winning side.
I think you also missed the main point here - survivability in a future conflict will be more about being able to access different terrain, being a smaller target and needing lighter logistics, and less about the thickness of your armour.
Bushmaster is a fantastic vehicle to protect against IEDs and RPGs and unquestionably the right solution for the GWOT - where allies had air dominance and were fighting against a light enemy with limited access to sophisticated weapons. Against what Americans would call a “peer” or a “near peer” enemy - with huge volumes of advanced anti-armour missiles and advanced anti-armour drones with shaped charges, they are just a bigger target.
Indeed, the superior number of Sherman tanks was a strategic factor that overwhelmed German armour.
However, there is another historical note worth making. The American public didn’t balk at the wartime casualties until after the war in Europe ended. But what happens if the next mass-produced military vehicle contributes to public opinion turning against a conflict by being too vulnerable to enemy action in a conflict? Does WW3 override that issue temporarily?
The Soviets’ role in defeating Germany proved that a dictatorship can win a war while absorbing massive amounts of avoidable casualties. In purely analytical terms, that proves strategy trumps tactics. Moreover, our democracies rightfully wouldn’t tolerate a Soviet-style tactical approach.
The next Sherman tank or troop carrier will have to fit into tactical nous and operational art, fitting into a sound strategic outlook.
I agree that the Bushmaster isn’t a vehicle one would choose for conventional wars. My point was that one can retain off-road capabilities without sacrificing crew protection. Soft-skinned vehicles are an unnecessary death trap, otherwise.
Note to the reader: I acknowledge that logistics is a battlefield enabler. The issue with lighter logistics is that there will be a “weak spot.” For instance, hybrid vehicles require a battery but offer fuel savings. How much of the requirement is for a lighter logistical footprint verse the methods of resupply? Aerial resupply helps to reduce dependency upon road transport and allows for encircled units to fight on.
The strategic design issue is coming up with a design that balances out sufficient armour, over-the-top industrial output, and fuel economy. The other issues are maintenance-related. Outside of specialists or engineers, a vehicle in which the crew can change the oil is more likely to remain in service than something powered by a better-performing gas turbine.
Hi Lens of History, thanks for commenting we really appreciate it and I'm sure Graeme will jump in soon too. My take is that the mobility gain is at operational-level or getting infantry to the battlefield. Vehicles like Boxer weigh so much that they are very constrained by roads and bridges. A smaller civilian-sized vehicle can disperse across a wide range of secondary roads, country lanes or bush tracks moving a force in a more dispersed manner that provides some protection by concealment but that also makes a main effort harder to discern. Like a swarm of bees that moves in cloud then concentrates at the point of effort.
I agree about the protection question but think that given the cost of the next generation of vehicles you could probably equip a force with small vehicles and a second-line of MRAAPs for if an IED threat is present.
Finally, thanks for commenting because like you Graeme and I both agree that the most important thing is that these issues are discussed, ideas are challenged and that debate leads to better outcomes for the frontline.
Have you read Brendan Nicholson’s The Bushmaster: from concept to combat? Off-road capabilities can be built into troop carriers at the design stage. The same goes for air transport/fitting vehicles into the related aircraft.
The American MRAP family of vehicles’s designs was a product of wartime demand driven by the IED threat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, the shorter design times for the MRAPs ensured they are heavier than the Bushmaster and have other design quirks.
Hi Luke, No I haven't read Brendan Nicholson's book but Googled it. And it looks like a good story. As I recollect Bushmaster pre-dated MRAAPs because I remembered discussing it pre-GWOT. I also remember joking about it and having to re-think my position a few years later when it proved to be a pretty good piece of kit on operation in Afghanistan.
Totally, agree about the other points you make.
Agreed. You always end up bolting more on or withdrawing it from theatre. Go with something like Scorpion if you want small. Boxer is big, but neither are IMV of any type. If the Ukrainians are detecting individual infantry, size is probably moot.
Hi Jason, Thanks for commenting. I think Graeme worked on Scorp and I know that he definitely had that platform in mind when he was thinking about this subject. Size can provide protection but concealment is sometimes better protection.
Richard Simpkin was the mind behind the concept and Chieftain. So what you have is two ends of the spectrum. That the designs were imperfect is separate from the concept. He was also an early thinker about robotics. I think light nowadays should be interpreted as highly drone based. But you still have a massive logistic burden. Survival rates for armoured troops in Ukraine is far higher than light, but still not great. The trouble is there have been no new AFV designs, ground up, for decades, beyond tiny UGV. That constrains the solution space. But it’s good to discuss all this.
This is a very good and thorough analysis Ben, thank you. ⚓ Semper Fortis, 🛰️ Semper Supra, FLY FIGHT WIN.....🌏🧭✨🎯🔮
Thanks for the comments Robert.
Anti-drone defense 🎛️📡 in a age of satellite surveillance: Maneuver at speed 🏁 is helpful. Surface survivability ~ land, sea & 🛢️ logistics is just an entirely knew thing! 🚛 Every truck or 🏗️ shipping container can suddenly retract it's top cover & become an ⚠️ autonomous drone swarm. Unmanned remote surface craft can launch their own swarms ~ 👁️ eyes / decoys / attackers 💥 that are cheap, lethal ⚰️🦑🪸 and expendable. Humans in trucks and on ships are going to need LARGE QUANTITIES of cheap defense weapons and systems to stay alive for more than just a few days or hours.⚡💽🛰️💫🤖