War is expensive when it comes to materiel, this is quite clear from Ukraine where a medium size war costs thousands of armoured vehicles per month.
We talked about it in the Ukraine thread, currently the UK, Germany, Italy and France together has some one thousand main battle tanks and a few thousand other assorted armoured vehicles and some tens of thousand lorries and trucks. France, since I won't bother going over them all so I'll use France as example, has about 100 artillery pieces. Going by the example that Ukraine sets that's about one month of war on the scale of Ukraine, a few weeks perhaps if it's a larger conflict.
Now, the west will always have air superiority, but light AT and AA weapons might make that costly in a peer conflict and it will most definitely be costly in armoured vehicles. Also, we saw in Libya that the western nations do not have any logistical depth when it comes to robots and air plane armaments, they couldn't even do that operation without US logistical support. Presumably western interdiction will be out of weapons after a week or so of serious conflict.
Right now this is not much of a problem, Russia is spent and not a real threat and we still have the US watching over us, but in the years to come this will change. The US will be mainly pre-occupied in the pacific (or on internal affairs perhaps, but this is not the place for that discussion). So the assumption needs to be that Europe, in 20-30 years or so, will have to carry its own weight and pick up the slack in Africa and the Middle east.
This is a short time away, we need to hurry. Russia can be rebuilt and a vassal to China by then, supplied by factories on gigantic scale. What do you guys think needs to be done?
The war in Ukraine has shown us investing in large numbers of tanks may not be the smartest idea.
Quote from: Josquius on April 15, 2022, 11:43:52 AMThe war in Ukraine has shown us investing in large numbers of tanks may not be the smartest idea.
That's not true, except in the sense that investing in more tanks than you can use in combined arms is a bad idea (just as over-investing in anything is a bad idea).
Investing in large numbers of Russian tanks would be a bad idea, if you have Russians using them.
Exactly. Ukraine could probably use a couple of hundred extra tanks - Russian or otherwise - at the moment, for example.
It is an interesting question though.
For a lot of countries that have let their military deteriorate to nearly nothing, what is the right way to build it back up?
What should they spend on, assuming they are starting from nearly scratch?
For Canada. I think we should start by buying some AA capabilities, a nuclear powered submarine and develop the necessary logistical capabilities to have the ability to field 2 different kind of fighter jet.
I think the tank no longer belongs on the modern battlefield.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 15, 2022, 09:48:54 PMI think the tank no longer belongs on the modern battlefield.
Thanks for sharing.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 15, 2022, 09:48:54 PMI think the tank no longer belongs on the modern battlefield.
Why do you think Ukraine is requesting tanks then?
Quote from: Jacob on April 15, 2022, 10:24:23 PMWhy do you think Ukraine is requesting tanks then?
They think differently.
Judging from the current war I'd say it's a good idea to invest heavily in training and logistical equipment.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 15, 2022, 10:30:47 PMQuote from: Jacob on April 15, 2022, 10:24:23 PMWhy do you think Ukraine is requesting tanks then?
They think differently.
Seems pretty clear Ukrainians are the subject matter experts when it comes to fighting Russians.
If they say "we need more tanks", we should probably listen.
Military procurement seems to lead to over-engineered, very expensive, but also extremely capable systems that have very long lead times in production and training.
I wonder if in an all-out war, quantity is not more important than quality. So maybe military design in the future should not emphasize getting the last bit of capability out of small numbers of equipment, but rather focus on simple production and logistics so that it is possible to make and use a lot of it?
Maybe not for the US with its huge budget as they can actually afford the super-duper solutions in sufficient quantities, but for the rest of the world.
Think Bayraktar versus the more advanced US drones.
Quote from: Zoupa on April 16, 2022, 12:07:34 AMSeems pretty clear Ukrainians are the subject matter experts when it comes to fighting Russians.
If they say "we need more tanks", we should probably listen.
What a wonderful idea. :lol:
Quote from: Zoupa on April 16, 2022, 12:07:34 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on April 15, 2022, 10:30:47 PMQuote from: Jacob on April 15, 2022, 10:24:23 PMWhy do you think Ukraine is requesting tanks then?
They think differently.
Seems pretty clear Ukrainians are the subject matter experts when it comes to fighting Russians.
If they say "we need more tanks", we should probably listen.
They know asking for a air force capable of conclusively beating the Russians isn't an option likely to see much success for them however.
The west does have that option.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2022, 01:31:38 AMQuote from: Zoupa on April 16, 2022, 12:07:34 AMSeems pretty clear Ukrainians are the subject matter experts when it comes to fighting Russians.
If they say "we need more tanks", we should probably listen.
What a wonderful idea. :lol:
So apart from the snarky one-liners, you mind expanding a bit on "I think the tank no longer belongs on the modern battlefield."
Quote from: Zoupa on April 16, 2022, 03:45:31 AMSo apart from the snarky one-liners, you mind expanding a bit on "I think the tank no longer belongs on the modern battlefield."
Since you asked, I do mind. I made a purely academic statement and your responded as if I had insulted your mother. It was bizarre. What kind of person responds to a statement about the place of the tank on the modern battlefield as if it's a personal matter?
Quote from: Zanza on April 16, 2022, 12:37:50 AMMilitary procurement seems to lead to over-engineered, very expensive, but also extremely capable systems that have very long lead times in production and training.
I wonder if in an all-out war, quantity is not more important than quality. So maybe military design in the future should not emphasize getting the last bit of capability out of small numbers of equipment, but rather focus on simple production and logistics so that it is possible to make and use a lot of it?
Maybe not for the US with its huge budget as they can actually afford the super-duper solutions in sufficient quantities, but for the rest of the world.
Think Bayraktar versus the more advanced US drones.
This has long been a debate in military (and naval) services. If you have the manpower, lots of good enough systems are good enough. A classic example of this was the US debate ion WW2 over whether to replace the M4 Sherman tank with the T26/M26 with its better armor and much more powerful gun. The decision was made to stick with the less powerful Sherman because they had had all the production bugs worked out and many more could be made and shipped than the M-26. A big part of that was the realization that tanks actually seldom fought tanks, and in all other missions the M4 was as good as a tank needed to be. More tankers were lost than would have been the case with better tanks, but the increased combat capabilities were seen as worth it.
The US Navy wants to build a lot of lower-capability more expendable ships with lower manning, but has generally ended up with over-designed, overly-expensive ships that are not, in fact, expendable.
"Quantity has a quality all it's own," as Uncle Joe is supposed to have said.
"Getting the bugs worked out" has incredible value, especially in the middle of a war.
I think tanks still belong on the modern battlefield, but I don't think they are the dominant weapons system anymore.
I am not sure, but I think it has shifted back to the infantryman again.
Area denial. Mines.
Quote from: Berkut on April 15, 2022, 08:44:42 PMIt is an interesting question though.
For a lot of countries that have let their military deteriorate to nearly nothing, what is the right way to build it back up?
What should they spend on, assuming they are starting from nearly scratch?
Nukes.
Quote from: Berkut on April 16, 2022, 11:09:02 AMI think tanks still belong on the modern battlefield, but I don't think they are the dominant weapons system anymore.
I am not sure, but I think it has shifted back to the infantryman again.
I think about the same, tanks will have a role but they won't be the kings of the battlefield anymore. I doubt that having loads of them will make much sense anymore. I'd say that light infantry coordinated with drones and artillery could be a winning combination, as well as relatively inexpensive.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2022, 03:56:45 AMQuote from: Zoupa on April 16, 2022, 03:45:31 AMSo apart from the snarky one-liners, you mind expanding a bit on "I think the tank no longer belongs on the modern battlefield."
Since you asked, I do mind. I made a purely academic statement and your responded as if I had insulted your mother. It was bizarre. What kind of person responds to a statement about the place of the tank on the modern battlefield as if it's a personal matter?
Wtf are you going on about? I said the Ukrainians are in a better position than us (NATO) to know how to beat Russia.
Not sure how that qualifies as me responding as if you insulted my mother...
Whatever. Carry on.
I would be wary about drawing to many conclusions about Russian-Ukrainian equipment. The tanks getting blown up are outdated, manned by poorly trained crews guided by defective doctrines. Tanks were dismissed in the 1930's based on the Italian experiences in Spain. The correct interpretation was not that the tanks weren't a decisive arm of the military but that the Italians were incompetent.
Why should there be a military buildup? Do we think we need more fancy toys to stand up to Russia for some reason?
Quote from: Zoupa on April 16, 2022, 02:27:56 PMWtf are you going on about? I said the Ukrainians are in a better position than us (NATO) to know how to beat Russia.
Not sure how that qualifies as me responding as if you insulted my mother...
Whatever. Carry on.
When I first read your post, I took it to mean the Ukrainians know better than me, which sounded sarcastic, and I responded in kind. Since you've clarified, I will answer your question as to why I think the tank doesn't belong on the battlefield.
Indications are that modern ATGMs have a very high kill rate. By modern ATGMs I mean the Javelin and the NLAW, the kind that hit the top of the turret. IIRC the Javelin has a range of 2,000 meters and the NLAW 600. That means you have to have information about enemy positions that far out in front of you to ensure any kind of tank survivability, either visually or some other kind of intel, like heat or camera, or whatever, so you can avoid, suppress, or kill any ATGM teams. If you need to maintain a screen of dismounted infantry 2,000 meters in front of any of your tanks, that reduces the ability of the tank to place fire on enemy positions or vehicles. Ergo, the tank is becoming useless.
Quote from: alfred russel on April 16, 2022, 04:12:23 PMWhy should there be a military buildup? Do we think we need more fancy toys to stand up to Russia for some reason?
I think it's so Europe can act independently. There's no need for us to spend more on the military.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2022, 04:25:41 PMWhen I first read your post, I took it to mean the Ukrainians know better than me, which sounded sarcastic, and I responded in kind. Since you've clarified, I will answer your question as to why I think the tank doesn't belong on the battlefield.
Indications are that modern ATGMs have a very high kill rate. By modern ATGMs I mean the Javelin and the NLAW, the kind that hit the top of the turret. IIRC the Javelin has a range of 2,000 meters and the NLAW 600. That means you have to have information about enemy positions that far out in front of you to ensure any kind of tank survivability, either visually or some other kind of intel, like heat or camera, or whatever, so you can avoid, suppress, or kill any ATGM teams. If you need to maintain a screen of dismounted infantry 2,000 meters in front of any of your tanks, that reduces the ability of the tank to place fire on enemy positions or vehicles. Ergo, the tank is becoming useless.
I would think that the advances of man-portable anti-tank weapons means that additional care and thinking has to go into the combined arms tactics with tanks, rather than outright render tanks obsolete. I mean, there are many man-portable anti-aircraft weapons as well, with great range, and that doesn't mean that fixed wing aircraft and helicopters are obsolete... right?
I'd expect that tanks will remain useful in situations where bringing maneuverable heavy guns to bear quickly is worthwhile. There might still be applications like that in all the different permutations of modern warfare.
I don't think Europe meaningfully needs to spend more simply for self-defense. But if they want to try and improve, I think the foundation would be a shift to a more professional, career, full time military. It is a good move that most NATO member countries have ended conscription and universal male service--I spent time in Europe when I was in the Army and every officer I've ever discussed it with has agreed that the general quality of European conscript soldiers was absolutely atrocious.
That being said, several significant NATO member countries--Germany in particular, while no longer reliant on conscripts, is overly reliant on people who can serve as short as a 7 month enlistment contract with many serving between 7 months and 23 months. The average length of enlistment in the U.S. military across the non-Coast Guard branches is 15 years--this is the sign of a military with a lot of guys and gals joining to make a career of it.
This is important because of many of the things we're seeing right now in Ukraine--chaff soldiers do horribly on a modern battlefield which is filled with very portable, very lethal munitions and in which small unit discipline, NCO professionalism and skill etc are paramount.
Layering on top of that, major efforts, including developing more robust war college type programs for them, needs to go into beefing up the career NCO corps--in small unit warfare these are the guys who are largely responsible for success or failure.
Mass manpower wars of the second World War and to some degree I think how we often imagined a Great Power war might look for the entirety of the Cold War, things were different, you needed a lot of meat. I think the ability to rain destruction down through a number of delivery modes on large unit formations means there may just be very few scenarios in a great power war where a great power can even leverage a mass man formation akin to the huge offensive fronts of WW2. There's just too many ways to kill too many guys at once.
Drones, missiles, and other long range weaponry effectively neutralize large manpower buildups. At the same time, where infantry are still important, they are better served by being dynamic, independent, and able to operate effectively in a variety of conditions under limited supervision.
A robust special forces element can serve as sort of a beating heart of the ethos you want all of your infantryman to possess.
TLDR:
- Professionalize
- Beef up NCO training/education
- Buy/build a fuckton of missiles of all delivery modes
- Invest heavily in drones
For Europe, the Naval question really depends on what they're talking about doing.
What is the future of close air support in a world where man portable anti-aircraft weapons are becoming increasingly more accurate and more dangerous?
If the era of the tank is over is the era of the IFV, like the Bradley or BMP also over?
The lesson from Iraqi Freedom is that you get nukes as soon as possible, will that make their use a given?
I suspect that one of the lessons learned from the increased use of man-portable ATGMs is that artillery needs to have a lot more smoke rounds in their ammo trailers.
People also over-estimate the utility of light infantry and ATGMs in the attack. They are severely deficient in mobility and highly vulnerable while moving. I do think that infantry kit costs pretty much everywhere are going to go up to something approaching the $20,000 it costs to equip a US soldier (with no ATGM), because modern soldiers without it going up against modern soldiers with it are Brewster Buffalos going up against Mitsubishi Zeros.
Quote from: Jacob on April 16, 2022, 06:04:42 PMI would think that the advances of man-portable anti-tank weapons means that additional care and thinking has to go into the combined arms tactics with tanks, rather than outright render tanks obsolete. I mean, there are many man-portable anti-aircraft weapons as well, with great range, and that doesn't mean that fixed wing aircraft and helicopters are obsolete... right?
I'd expect that tanks will remain useful in situations where bringing maneuverable heavy guns to bear quickly is worthwhile. There might still be applications like that in all the different permutations of modern warfare.
My understanding from the Russian occupation of Afghanistan is that Stingers don't have the range to hit jets, unless they're flying at low altitudes. That being said, it has been remarked several times that the Russian air force is strangely absent from the fighting.
A tank main gun is a line of sight weapon. That means if you can see the target, the target can see you. Anything you can hit can hit you back. Trading off tanks that cost several million for a Javelin that costs 50K is not a winning proposition.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2022, 06:49:11 PMQuote from: Jacob on April 16, 2022, 06:04:42 PMI would think that the advances of man-portable anti-tank weapons means that additional care and thinking has to go into the combined arms tactics with tanks, rather than outright render tanks obsolete. I mean, there are many man-portable anti-aircraft weapons as well, with great range, and that doesn't mean that fixed wing aircraft and helicopters are obsolete... right?
I'd expect that tanks will remain useful in situations where bringing maneuverable heavy guns to bear quickly is worthwhile. There might still be applications like that in all the different permutations of modern warfare.
My understanding from the Russian occupation of Afghanistan is that Stingers don't have the range to hit jets, unless they're flying at low altitudes. That being said, it has been remarked several times that the Russian air force is strangely absent from the fighting.
A tank main gun is a line of sight weapon. That means if you can see the target, the target can see you. Anything you can hit can hit you back. Trading off tanks that cost several million for a Javelin that costs 50K is not a winning proposition.
What about helicopter gunships?
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on April 16, 2022, 06:55:09 PMWhat about helicopter gunships?
Like, how vulnerable are they? My understanding is very.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2022, 06:49:11 PMA tank main gun is a line of sight weapon. That means if you can see the target, the target can see you. Anything you can hit can hit you back. Trading off tanks that cost several million for a Javelin that costs 50K is not a winning proposition.
That's been the main argument behind the "the tank is obsolete" argument since 1919. And, for armies that intend to only defend until their enemy gives up or their own nation collapses, that's a pretty good argument. The Finns were successful using that argument in the Winter War (until they were not successful and lost, but it wasn't because they were beaten by tanks).
Not too many militaries are going to be satisfied with a purely passive posture, though. Going on the offensive against tanks with your ATGM force means moving and trying to find an enemy that has far better sensors than you before he finds you and kills you dead. A 6000 meter range sounds impressive until you look at what the average line of sight in Europe actually is.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2022, 06:57:31 PMQuote from: Darth Wagtaros on April 16, 2022, 06:55:09 PMWhat about helicopter gunships?
Like, how vulnerable are they? My understanding is very.
It's been getting tougher for them, which is why the latest have sensor pods above the rotors so that they can "see over the top" and fire-and-forget missiles so they can didi before the enemy can react to the rocket blast/smoke plume. There are no current countermeasures to laser-guided MANPADS except evasion.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 16, 2022, 06:31:21 PMI don't think Europe meaningfully needs to spend more simply for self-defense. But if they want to try and improve, I think the foundation would be a shift to a more professional, career, full time military. It is a good move that most NATO member countries have ended conscription and universal male service--I spent time in Europe when I was in the Army and every officer I've ever discussed it with has agreed that the general quality of European conscript soldiers was absolutely atrocious.
-
TLDR:
- Professionalize
- Beef up NCO training/education
- Buy/build a fuckton of missiles of all delivery modes
- Invest heavily in drones
For Europe, the Naval question really depends on what they're talking about doing.
Agreed.
I bet conservatives in some places are using Ukraine as an excuse to push for the necessity of conscription (they will latch onto anything for this) , though really it should be seen as showing the complete opposite.
It's a backwards policy of little military utility.
If I was a country like Switzerland for example (as I'm here), I would be cutting back conscription drastically to maybe a summer or two at 24 (18 year olds. Pff.), followed by short fortnight refreshers every few years, to give young women (important) and men basic militia training - that's all they're good for anyway-and fulfill the whole national identity portion of conscription, whilst massively boosting pay, conditions and training for pro soldiers.
Big investment in drones and anti tank and anti air weapons to arm them with.
Fuck the air force. Its stupid they even have it for anything other than natural disasters (unlike say for larger countries where it should be a priority).
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2022, 06:49:11 PMMy understanding from the Russian occupation of Afghanistan is that Stingers don't have the range to hit jets, unless they're flying at low altitudes. That being said, it has been remarked several times that the Russian air force is strangely absent from the fighting.
I'd guess that the absence of the Russian air force comes down to exhausting their limited smart munitions (due to corruption or simply expecting a swift end of the conflict).
Relying on dumb bombs means you have to get awfully close to Ukrainian air defense systems.
One of the lessons seems to be that you need big stockpiles of smart munitions for an all out war, which I think only the US and Israel have.
The way I see it right now in Ukraine AA has won over air forces and both sides have resorted to make extensive use of drones plus arty combos. Of course that is extremely skewed by the limited info we get.
Stealth seems also extremely important in order to gain air superiority or operate when it is not possible to achieve it. Lockheed Martin's F-35 looks like a big winner here. I see no reason to go for a 4/4.5 frame right now.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2022, 06:49:11 PMA tank main gun is a line of sight weapon. That means if you can see the target, the target can see you. Anything you can hit can hit you back. Trading off tanks that cost several million for a Javelin that costs 50K is not a winning proposition.
That's where geography and who has the initiative is crucial. In the southern plains of Ukraine a tank will see you coming long before you get within Javelin firing distance. They also have a lot more mobility and can deliver shots much, much faster than missile teams.
That's why, I'd wager, the Ukrainians are asking for tanks. Now that the battles up north are over, they need them to evict the Russians from those territories they took.
In the near future I expect to see a lot of emphasis on developing reliable AI for disposable drones used either for surveillance, as laser designators for smart munitions or loitering munitions themselves.
I do wonder also if eventually we are not going to see AI drones take over the tank role as well.
As scary as that sounds, I think that's where the future is going. A world where machines can make lethal decisions on their own to overcome enemy ECM.
I wonder if the real lesson here is that offensive war is not particularly feasible.
Or at least I hope that is one of the things China is learning.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 17, 2022, 09:08:22 AMI wonder if the real lesson here is that offensive war is not particularly feasible.
Or at least I hope that is one of the things China is learning.
Hopefully there'll be a few more ship sinkings to show what even a nation completely not focused on the sea can do there.
From what I've read, the most important lessons learned from the current conflict are: invest heavily in army reform!
Looks like the Ukrainians did this (with lots of help from the West), and in particular, in creating an effective NCO class.
The Russians went in for reform as well, but with much less success - they reduced, but did not eliminate, their reliance on conscripts, increasing reliance on 'contract' soldiers; but their main focus was on flashy new weapons systems, none of which were made in large enough numbers to really affect their fighting potential much.
As for what gear to buy - that will depend on what you expect your army to do. A nation like Ukraine focused most on light infantry, for the defence, and again so far successfully; but for attack (to drive the Russians out of prepared positions) they will need different gear - like heavy artillery and tanks - and this is what they have been asking for now.
Obviously the two most important bits of gear so far have been man-portable missiles, and drones. The issue will be how the Ukrainians can fight if they switch over to the offensive.
Quote from: grumbler on April 16, 2022, 07:10:38 PMQuote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2022, 06:57:31 PMQuote from: Darth Wagtaros on April 16, 2022, 06:55:09 PMWhat about helicopter gunships?
Like, how vulnerable are they? My understanding is very.
It's been getting tougher for them, which is why the latest have sensor pods above the rotors so that they can "see over the top" and fire-and-forget missiles so they can didi before the enemy can react to the rocket blast/smoke plume. There are no current countermeasures to laser-guided MANPADS except evasion.
I also get the impression that the roles filled by helicopter gunships can also mostly be replaced by drones like the Bayraktar, with far less cost/danger to crew.
Quote from: Tonitrus on April 17, 2022, 01:01:32 PMI also get the impression that the roles filled by helicopter gunships can also mostly be replaced by drones like the Bayraktar, with far less cost/danger to crew.
True, but a force able to shoot down helo gunships will slaughter drones.
Quote from: grumbler on April 17, 2022, 01:49:14 PMQuote from: Tonitrus on April 17, 2022, 01:01:32 PMI also get the impression that the roles filled by helicopter gunships can also mostly be replaced by drones like the Bayraktar, with far less cost/danger to crew.
True, but a force able to shoot down helo gunships will slaughter drones.
So swarming instead of expensive targets.
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on April 17, 2022, 05:18:57 PMSo swarming instead of expensive targets.
In a high-threat environment, ten $1 million drones may not be as survivable as one $10 million helo.
But they'd have more utility in any other environment. Drones are clearly the way of the future, but they are not a panacea, and the much greater situational awareness of the helo crew still has its place.
It seems to me that this war so far shows the value of combined arms. The Russians seem to run an equipment heavy army to compensate for the lack of infantry and they have about as much success as Monty had on Caen.
So yes, tanks will probably be part of a future army, as one component in a combined arms army.
The Russian strategy of storing all equipment as long as possible seems to be a good approach right now. If all modern heavy equipment is shot up the one with the most old functioning stuff will have an advantage. An old T-72 is better than no tank at all. An old VAZ fuel truck from 1969 is better than no fuel truck.
I also guess that for the foreseeable future it'll be smart to invest heavily in counter-drone measures.
I don't think the man-portable AA is really similar to man portable ATGM.
The range thing is the key - at the end of the day, a man portable AA weapon cannot have the range to deny air power within the range of air powers ability to operate on the battlefield. It can make it less effective by forcing it to stay out of range, but the F-16 can still drop a PGM on you from 15,000 feet. (The advances in SAM systems are an interesting thing to think about however, but at the moment it looks like the advances in stealth might be able to overcome that - the Russian Air Force being notable absent from this fight in the numbers expected is rather interesting - I am looking forward to some analysis of that. But I suspect that the same answer might be forthcoming - it's hard to say since their Air Force has clearly not had the training hours needed to be survivable in a high threat environment regardless of technology).
The range of modern man portable ATGM's however are effectively similar to the range of the modern battle tank - you can't stay far enough away from them, because as as noted, they both have basically LOS range.
And as Jake mentioned, and I pointed out before, the combined arms answer isn't really an answer. That worked back when the threat posed to the armor was largely equivalent to the range of the infantryman's weapons to neutralize that threat (or at least degrade it). A WW2 Panzerfaust or Bazooka has largely a similar range (often a lot less in fact) to the infantry's personal and squad weapons. So if you can reasonably assume the infantry with you has established fire control over the area they are in, and they are with your tank or near it, you have degraded significantly the threat of anti-armor personal weapons.
That is no longer true. Your supporting infantry would have to be able to establish fire out to some 2 kilometers. They cannot do that. If you could establish that control over that area, then what do you need the tank for? You've already taken that space!
I still don't know what replaces the tank as the primary offensive weapons system though - because grumbler and such are right, ATGMs are almost entirely defensive weapons. Tanks are actually pretty hard to see when they are not moving, for example - they can be hidden. And while these ATGMS are man portable, they are not THAT portable.
Grumbler made a strong point about offensives--against a prepared enemy who is holding say, a line around an urban area from which it is raining artillery fire, a tank battalion moving in force is likely to fuck them up, bad. You will lose some of those tanks from anti-tank weapons, but you won't lose all of them, and once their line is broken the tanks value diminishes in any sense. Tanks are not rendered useless because they might be lost in relatively high numbers, but they are rendered less valuable in a lot of situations in which they had been "adapted" for use--their core role going back to the experimental tanks of the first world war they are still valuable, and there is no obvious better solution.
Mind you that's because you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't have great solutions--when an enemy is well dug in with heavy automatic weapons and artillery support, how do you drive them out if for whatever reason you can't degrade their capacities via attacking their supply lines, and can't prepare any sort of flanking maneuver against a less defended angle? Close air attacks or even fixed wing bombers can be an option, but if you lack air supremacy there is a ton of risk in using those, as seen in the war in Ukraine.
THat is a good point - in a point assault against a fixed defense, there is actually a lot you can do to degrade an enemies emplaced AT weapons as well, since you know where they are, and rpesumably are bringing considerable weight to bear on that point (your own artillery, CAS, etc).
You are going to take losses for sure, but there isn't a scenario where you aren't going to take losses.
That is a very specialized case though, and one that every military planner tries very, very hard to avoid. Because you are right - there is no "good" solution there, just a bunch of bad ones (unless you can fix them and isolate them, in which case it becomes bad for them, but that is a different scenario).
Hmm. I wonder - if the tank is obsolete, what will replace it?
There is a pretty clear line of development, from heavy cavalry - tanks. Heavy cavalry got more specialized, and eventually disappeared from the battlefield altogether, because they became too vulnerable to infantry weapons - the tank was the solution to this. Is there a solution to infantry held anti tank missiles and drones?
Maybe walking/flying antipersonnel drones too small to make good targets for missiles, yet armoured enough to be less vulnerable to rifle fire. Something that can crawl in after people hiding in bunkers and trenches.
I am not sure the development line from heavy cavalry to tanks is all that clear at all.
I think the US Civil War and WW1 saw a clear break in the utility of cavalry, and basically there was no heavy cavalry at all during either war (heavy cavalry being defined as cavalry with the armor and weapons necessary to fight from horseback as shock troops, rather then skirmishers, scouts, or mounted/mobile infantry).
I think of it more like the Napoleonic Wars seeing the beginning of the re-ascendancy of the infantry as the primary battlefield weapon system, that being solidified in the US Civil War (where cavalry was strictly scout/harassment (South) or scout/mobile infantry (North)), and then WW1 seeing cavalry as being nearly useless.
The development of armor was more an attempt to break the impasse of the infantry/artillery/machine guns, and it did that very, very well. Not because it was heavy cavalry, really, but because it was able to operationally break a line, then exploit itself. Heavy cavalry is the closest analogy, but it is (IMO) only an analogy. Armor was something different, because it's utility was beyond that battlefield itself. It wasn't useful because it could break a line, it was dominant because it made forming a line in its presence much harder to do - it could get inside the decision cycle of the enemy operationally, making those lines actually a liability.
But that was reliant on them being largely invulnerable to infantry, not entirely so, of course, but largely so.
The battle back and forth between armor's ability to defend itself, and new AT weapons as been going on since the beginning. AT Rifles were the shit when they were developed in the aftermath of WW1, after all. But it turned out that you could add more armor to tanks (and the engines to move them) faster then you could up the penetration power of an AT rifle, and by WW2 they were largely useless.
Maybe armor will come up with something to deal with the Javelins and NLaws, and the balance will be preserved for a while longer. But it seems to me that battlefield lethality just keeps getting higher and higher across the board, and we are largely moving into a realm where if you can see it, you can kill it, so not being seen will become too important for something as bulky as the "tank".
As long as there's infantry fighting in the field, I feel there's going to be a desire to have mobile heavy firepower with protection there with them. Armor may develop new countermeasures, or completely new designs, or remote controlled ones, but I don't think that the basic idea will disappear. We may see less of tank divisions charging the enemy rear and more of their role as infantry support and a means to overcome strongpoints.
Just a reminder that a combined arms approach includes artillery. It is still the obvious queen of the battle field and an infantryman pissing himself under drum fire will not fire light AT at tanks on the other side of the fire curtain. And once the drum fire stops he will have infantry supported by armoured vehicles on top of him.
Prepared peer war is not the same as US soldiers going up against irregulars or Russian tanks rushing along single file on high ways.
I see a lot of videos from drones filming or correcting artillery fire.
How far away from the target are they? Are they visible from the ground?
Quote from: Berkut on April 18, 2022, 10:18:43 AMI am not sure the development line from heavy cavalry to tanks is all that clear at all.
I think the US Civil War and WW1 saw a clear break in the utility of cavalry, and basically there was no heavy cavalry at all during either war (heavy cavalry being defined as cavalry with the armor and weapons necessary to fight from horseback as shock troops, rather then skirmishers, scouts, or mounted/mobile infantry).
I think of it more like the Napoleonic Wars seeing the beginning of the re-ascendancy of the infantry as the primary battlefield weapon system, that being solidified in the US Civil War (where cavalry was strictly scout/harassment (South) or scout/mobile infantry (North)), and then WW1 seeing cavalry as being nearly useless.
The development of armor was more an attempt to break the impasse of the infantry/artillery/machine guns, and it did that very, very well. Not because it was heavy cavalry, really, but because it was able to operationally break a line, then exploit itself. Heavy cavalry is the closest analogy, but it is (IMO) only an analogy. Armor was something different, because it's utility was beyond that battlefield itself. It wasn't useful because it could break a line, it was dominant because it made forming a line in its presence much harder to do - it could get inside the decision cycle of the enemy operationally, making those lines actually a liability.
But that was reliant on them being largely invulnerable to infantry, not entirely so, of course, but largely so.
The battle back and forth between armor's ability to defend itself, and new AT weapons as been going on since the beginning. AT Rifles were the shit when they were developed in the aftermath of WW1, after all. But it turned out that you could add more armor to tanks (and the engines to move them) faster then you could up the penetration power of an AT rifle, and by WW2 they were largely useless.
Maybe armor will come up with something to deal with the Javelins and NLaws, and the balance will be preserved for a while longer. But it seems to me that battlefield lethality just keeps getting higher and higher across the board, and we are largely moving into a realm where if you can see it, you can kill it, so not being seen will become too important for something as bulky as the "tank".
Not sure what you are saying is really different from what I was saying - I too believe heavy cavalry became obsolete on the 'modern' battlefield, and that tanks were the functional replacement, in that it combined mobility with armour. Obviously the analogy isn't exact, and I agree there was a historical gap between the use of the two.
The next wave also won't, I think, be exactly analogous to tanks. Whatever replaces them will definitely have mobility. But they may not have "armour" like we think of armour - or rather, only be armoured against certain threats and not others. Or, perhaps, armour will be mostly on the form of electronic countermeasures designed to confuse targeting systems - so "armoured" against small projectiles, with tricks to confuse the targeting systems of larger ones.
I also think they are going to get smaller, and so more concealable. Meaning they can't be manned. They still have to be large enough to carry weapon systems though - so maybe that will be the trade off; size and concealability versus firepower.
Problem with drones is that their controls can be jammed or hacked ...
The war of the present, in my mind, looks like this.
An attack needs air operations, preferably superiority to suppress enemy artillery. Artillery to suppress enemy infantry and armoured infantry to lick the fire curtain followed by regular infantry to mop up. This goes on, in the style of WWI take and hold, until the artillery cannot suppress any more. Then the artillery moves up and rinse and repeat.
Extremely materiel expensive and if air superiority cannot be guaranteed presumably extremely manpower expensive.
Obviously tanks are an important part of this and, in my mind, the only necessary part of the armoured infantry. The rest of the plethora of different "stuff" are good, but not a necessity.
And of course it can be done without tanks, just pay more lives for the objective.
My $0.02:
Artillery is great because it can blow up things very well, but it can't take and hold ground. You need infantry for that. Infantry often does better when supported by heavy firepower with situational awareness, and tanks do a pretty good job of that. Rock solid air superiority is great, but probably shouldn't be taken for granted (except possibly by the US, but this thread is about non-US actors as well).
I expect that as long as it makes sense to mount infantry in APCs and IFVs, then there'll be scenarios where it'll make sense to back them up with tanks where available.
That said, I'd expect doctrine to change to take the potential wide availability of man-portable anti-tank weaponry into account. So I'd expect the parameters of tank-deployment to change, both in terms of when and how to deploy them.
It's kind of amazing and depressing we are still coming up with novel ways to murder each other.
On a tangent....
There has been a lot of talk about how this war has kind of woken the West up to the idea that defense is actually still important, and that maybe not nearly as much has changed as everyone thinks.
But maybe that is a mistake, or at least too broad. Maybe the reality is that things HAVE changed, that war is a obsolete idea, and what we are seeing now isn't a reminder that war is forever, but the last reactionary backlashes from authoritarians as they die away. Because it is the case that is still appears to be true that western liberal democracies do not go to war with each other.
The problem is that not everyone appears to want to be a western liberal democracy. It used to be thought that those who don't are either crazy (North Korea), too religiously indoctrinated (Islamist states), or simply "on the way" to becoming western liberal democracies (Russai/USSR, China), or at least something close enough that they would fall into the broad abandonment of war as a means to resolve disputes between liberal powers. Or not developed enough (Third World).
The crazies were seen as just something that would have to be contained until they hopefully collapse themselves.
Is this broad idea at all relevant anymore, if it ever was?
Does this war tell us that Russia will *never* join the western liberal order, or at least not soon enough that it matters?
I do think it doesn't look like China will (or at least is on path to) ever be liberalish enough to matter.
I guess I am saying that not paying enough attention to defense is a grave error. On the other hand, paying too much attention to it is a error as well. Tanks and missiles and nukes are all opportunity costs bled away.
I think it's clear that the "inevitable march towards the logic of liberal democracy" is if not an illusion, then at the very least a very long road ahead.
Whatever progress Russia may have had, it appears to have been mostly illusory. China is moving towards autocratic control and onto a path of conflict with the liberal world order. For much of the non-Western world the argument between liberalism and autocracy seems to be primarily about positional advantage for local elites, responding to local political imperatives. So yeah, I don't think there's anything inevitable about the the ascendancy of liberal logic.
I do agree that spending on the military and war engenders an opportunity cost for social and political development. Luckily, I think the advantages of open societies are enough that we can potentially find the right balance between robust defense and societal growth that still outpaces the autocrats.
This probably merits a different topic, but the results of the Russian war to date seem to reinforce the Fukuyama thesis. To the extent Putinism sought to pose as a viable alternative to the liberal democratic Western model, it has been badly discredited.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 18, 2022, 01:55:38 PMThis probably merits a different topic, but the results of the Russian war to date seem to reinforce the Fukuyama thesis. To the extent Putinism sought to pose as a viable alternative to the liberal democratic Western model, it has been badly discredited.
As I see it, the liberal democratic Western model has proven the most efficient in producing a whole bunch of positive results - including economic growth, innovation, and general well being.
What is not clear to me is that that efficiency is means that the world will trend towards a liberal democratic social order, that the liberal democratic order will avoid collapse from internal stresses, or that we will necessarily prevail over challengers.
The West is better than China et. al., yes. That does not mean that China will not defeat the West, that the West won't kill itself somehow, or that unaligned countries will prefer the Western model over the Chinese one.
On topic my thoughts are:
1) I would be careful about drawing very broad conclusion from 60 days of fighting by these particular forces in this particular war.
2) The costs of military procurement are driven to a great extent by figuring out the newest and best means to enclose human beings inside computerized hunks of metal of different sizes and shapes with different weapons attached - planes, ships, vehicles. A lot of cost and vulnerability is driven by the need to enclose, protect and sustain the human beings inside. Although there are difficult control and networking issues involved in having the human beings be outside rather inside the hunks of metal, there are very big potential returns.
As far as drones go, I understand that they're far for invulnerable, but can they be countered in a cost-effective manner? I can imagine a scenario where a strategy is to zerg rush with with cheap drones, both for military effect as well as for psychological effect (every drone the enemy sees can be a spotter for artillery aiming for you, but most aren't). Can you take a cheap drone down with cheap means?
Quote from: Jacob on April 18, 2022, 02:08:04 PMWhat is not clear to me is that that efficiency is means that the world will trend towards a liberal democratic social order, that the liberal democratic order will avoid collapse from internal stresses, or that we will necessarily prevail over challengers.
It's a debatable point, but IMO the last 60 days have moved the needle towards the LD order. Military performance was supposed to be one of the defining positive attributes of Putinism and that has been badly exposed. On the flip side, the members of the LD order have displayed an ability to engage in effective collective action that some believed it no longer had. And while Ukraine may be fighting for nation and kin, the fact that they choose to define themselves as fighting for and as a part of the LD order is telling as to its continuing attractive pull.
Quote from: Zoupa on April 18, 2022, 10:52:34 AMI see a lot of videos from drones filming or correcting artillery fire.
How far away from the target are they? Are they visible from the ground?
If they're only being used for filming they can be pretty high and far away, so they're hardly visible at all from the ground.
For instance, this is the Polish made FlyEye, which the Ukrainian army has been using since 2015 as a spotter drone for its artillery:
(https://www.19fortyfive.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FlyeEye.jpg)
It has a wingspan of 3'6 m., and a length of 1'8 m. when fully set-up. It weighs 12 kg. and it can be launched by hand. It can be carried dismantled in a backpack and mounted in the field, and once launched it can operate for 2-3 hours, flying at 60 km/h at altitudes of up to 3 thousand m.
So, with that size and operating at that speed and altitude it can be assumed that nobody in the ground is even aware of it being there.
Quote from: DGuller on April 18, 2022, 02:13:30 PMAs far as drones go, I understand that they're far for invulnerable, but can they be countered in a cost-effective manner? I can imagine a scenario where a strategy is to zerg rush with with cheap drones, both for military effect as well as for psychological effect (every drone the enemy sees can be a spotter for artillery aiming for you, but most aren't). Can you take a cheap drone down with cheap means?
AFAIK the preferred counter-drone measure is jamming them, which can be done at considerable range, but can mess up your own communications, as well as any drones you might be flying yourself. A zerg rush style attack could, I think, be easily countered by mass jamming, if you're properly equipped for it.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 18, 2022, 02:15:26 PMQuote from: Jacob on April 18, 2022, 02:08:04 PMWhat is not clear to me is that that efficiency is means that the world will trend towards a liberal democratic social order, that the liberal democratic order will avoid collapse from internal stresses, or that we will necessarily prevail over challengers.
It's a debatable point, but IMO the last 60 days have moved the needle towards the LD order. Military performance was supposed to be one of the defining positive attributes of Putinism and that has been badly exposed. On the flip side, the members of the LD order have displayed an ability to engage in effective collective action that some believed it no longer had. And while Ukraine may be fighting for nation and kin, the fact that they choose to define themselves as fighting for and as a part of the LD order is telling as to its continuing attractive pull.
It seems to me that certain types of dictatorships have proved themselves bad at warfare in the modern world.
Perhaps the very things that allow the dictator to rise to power inhibit the ability to function well in war.
An addiction to lying, to the point that the truth becomes unimportant. Appointing cronies to important positions, and removing people of talent and ability who may become rivals. In military matters, preferring prestige projects designed to awe and intimidate, rather than concentrating on the boring and largely invisible-to-the-public fundamentals (like establishing a loyal an efficient NCO class, and an honest logistic corps).
Call it the Nasser effect. Or the Mussolini effect ... or the Putin effect.
Is there any technical limitation to making drones fully autonomous? I mean there is obviously ethical considerations. But technology should allow auto-piloting the drone, acquisition of targets and launching of weapons. The hardest bit is probably sensors, but identifying military vehicles seems straightforward enough.
Quote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 12:36:31 AMIs there any technical limitation to making drones fully autonomous? I mean there is obviously ethical considerations. But technology should allow auto-piloting the drone, acquisition of targets and launching of weapons. The hardest bit is probably sensors, but identifying military vehicles seems straightforward enough.
I'd imagine all the same limitations behind self driving cars multiplied by 1000.
AI is not great at messy unpredictable situations.
Quote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 12:36:31 AMIs there any technical limitation to making drones fully autonomous? I mean there is obviously ethical considerations. But technology should allow auto-piloting the drone, acquisition of targets and launching of weapons. The hardest bit is probably sensors, but identifying military vehicles seems straightforward enough.
Some parts of drone operations can and already are automated. For instance you can set one of these spotter drones to do an area patrol mission, and I guess that automatically dispatching target info to a base could also be automated in some way. Then that base has to dispatch towards the selecter target or targets a separate drone to do the bombing itself (for instance a... Bayraktar!). Now, how much that decision-making of deciding which targets to dispatch attacks to can be automated I don't know. I guess it's possible, but don't know how desireable it is.
Quote from: Josquius on April 19, 2022, 02:14:50 AMQuote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 12:36:31 AMIs there any technical limitation to making drones fully autonomous? I mean there is obviously ethical considerations. But technology should allow auto-piloting the drone, acquisition of targets and launching of weapons. The hardest bit is probably sensors, but identifying military vehicles seems straightforward enough.
I'd imagine all the same limitations behind self driving cars multiplied by 1000.
AI is not great at messy unpredictable situations.
Well, not quite. Aerospace is far easier to navigate than roads.
I think acquiring and deciding which targets to engage would be the most troublesome bit.
Quote from: celedhring on April 19, 2022, 06:23:11 AMQuote from: Josquius on April 19, 2022, 02:14:50 AMQuote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 12:36:31 AMIs there any technical limitation to making drones fully autonomous? I mean there is obviously ethical considerations. But technology should allow auto-piloting the drone, acquisition of targets and launching of weapons. The hardest bit is probably sensors, but identifying military vehicles seems straightforward enough.
I'd imagine all the same limitations behind self driving cars multiplied by 1000.
AI is not great at messy unpredictable situations.
Well, not quite. Aerospace is far easier to navigate than roads.
I think acquiring and deciding which targets to engage would be the most troublesome bit.
Target acquisition should be easy. It's deciding on engagements that is the tricky part. I doubt an AI can properly decide on which target's destruction brings the larger tactical advantage, you need a person to do that kind of decisions, as it's rather subjective.
As long as e.g. facial recognition is having issues with more heavily pigmented faces, I'm loathe to trust an automated recognition of enemy fighting vehicles and people. :P
Quote from: Syt on April 19, 2022, 06:48:02 AMAs long as e.g. facial recognition is having issues with more heavily pigmented faces, I'm loathe to trust an automated recognition of enemy fighting vehicles and people. :P
For vehicles I'd assume that thermal cameras are more practical, as a running engine is going to be much hotter than anything in the background (unless you're in an extremely hot environment). Now, I doubt that a camera can tell apart a, say, supply truck, from a tank.
Quote from: The Larch on April 19, 2022, 06:57:58 AMQuote from: Syt on April 19, 2022, 06:48:02 AMAs long as e.g. facial recognition is having issues with more heavily pigmented faces, I'm loathe to trust an automated recognition of enemy fighting vehicles and people. :P
For vehicles I'd assume that thermal cameras are more practical, as a running engine is going to be much hotter than anything in the background (unless you're in an extremely hot environment). Now, I doubt that a camera can tell apart a, say, supply truck, from a tank.
Supply truck and tank is easier, I suppose, than a truck with infantry in the back vs. a school bus, or a truck with crates of beer.
If air supremacy is achieved and there's a total war going on you might have drones circling roads and rail tracks automatically shooting everything that moves a few km behind enemy lines.
Very useful for interdiction in a total war scenario. Not so useful if there are friendly civilians behind enemy lines or a not total war scenario.
Also very useful if you are an evil dictatorship conducting a war.
I don't think Russia or this war tells us anything about the future of Liberal democracy. After the collapse of communism Russia was never on track to be a liberal democratic state. The error the liberal democratic West made was thinking that liberal democracy was the only alternative as we watched Russia become a kleptocracy.
The future of liberal democracy is not going to be decided in this war, or Russia or China. The future of the Liberal Democracy Will be decided by whether the liberal democratic west continues to be governed by liberal democratic institutions.
I don't have a great deal of confidence that is going to continue but I have hope.
Quote from: Josquius on April 19, 2022, 02:14:50 AMQuote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 12:36:31 AMIs there any technical limitation to making drones fully autonomous? I mean there is obviously ethical considerations. But technology should allow auto-piloting the drone, acquisition of targets and launching of weapons. The hardest bit is probably sensors, but identifying military vehicles seems straightforward enough.
I'd imagine all the same limitations behind self driving cars multiplied by 1000.
AI is not great at messy unpredictable situations.
I think it would be the opposite. Self-driving cars are a much more difficult problem to solve than self-flying planes. I think planes have been able to fly and land themselves automatically for at least 50 years.
You can teach a visual AI anything you want. Open source solutions are already extremely accurate a differentiating between different vehicles. You just need time & computer power.
Imo, decision making is the technological hurdle right now.
Quote from: Josquius on April 19, 2022, 02:14:50 AMQuote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 12:36:31 AMIs there any technical limitation to making drones fully autonomous? I mean there is obviously ethical considerations. But technology should allow auto-piloting the drone, acquisition of targets and launching of weapons. The hardest bit is probably sensors, but identifying military vehicles seems straightforward enough.
I'd imagine all the same limitations behind self driving cars multiplied by 1000.
AI is not great at messy unpredictable situations.
Actually AI is really damn good at messy unpredictable situations.
Hell, self driving cars are not even that unpredictable. There are very easily defined limits on what they can do all based on simple physics.
Another reason why I think it's not right to compare the difficulty of getting self-driving cars on the road to drone warfare is that for self-driving cars, the difficult part is going from 99% reliable to 99.999% that the public demands. I think that in war, the tolerance for failure is quite a bit higher, for obvious pragmatic reasons, as long as on balance you're still doing more damage to the enemy than to your own side.
QuoteActually AI is really damn good at messy unpredictable situations.
Not really. It's an area where development of AI is having big problems, going beyond direct teaching and in using past experiences to decide on something completely new. This is in the path of true AI.
Quote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 08:15:37 AMQuote from: Josquius on April 19, 2022, 02:14:50 AMQuote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 12:36:31 AMIs there any technical limitation to making drones fully autonomous? I mean there is obviously ethical considerations. But technology should allow auto-piloting the drone, acquisition of targets and launching of weapons. The hardest bit is probably sensors, but identifying military vehicles seems straightforward enough.
I'd imagine all the same limitations behind self driving cars multiplied by 1000.
AI is not great at messy unpredictable situations.
I think it would be the opposite. Self-driving cars are a much more difficult problem to solve than self-flying planes. I think planes have been able to fly and land themselves automatically for at least 50 years.
Self flying planes are easy because the sky is pretty empty and simple.
Drones by their nature deal with the ground. Which is messy.
I think you need to deal with the ground to some degree when you land, and yet a passenger plane built in 1970ies could already do it.
Quote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 08:30:25 AMAnother reason why I think it's not right to compare the difficulty of getting self-driving cars on the road to drone warfare is that for self-driving cars, the difficult part is going from 99% reliable to 99.999% that the public demands. I think that in war, the tolerance for failure is quite a bit higher, for obvious pragmatic reasons, as long as on balance you're still doing more damage to the enemy than to your own side.
Agreed.
And in war, there is another element. I have no personal experience in being in combat but from second-hand accounts, studies, and common sense, I understand that being exposed to lethal fire can have a negative impact on decision making. AI routines don't care if they are being shot at, except to the extent they are programmed to respond as desired.
Quote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 11:37:13 AMI think you need to deal with the ground to some degree when you land, and yet a passenger plane built in 1970ies could already do it.
I expect there are orders of magnitude more complexity in dealing with having to assess everything on the ground compared to executing a pre-calculated flight path in an environment where everything is mapped out to the Nth degree and where you can fall back on human operators if any variables are outside of expectations
70s aircraft landing at an airport do not have to be concerned about the movement of civilians, the application of camouflage and baffling techniques, the uncertainty about the enemy you're facing, or the evaluation of priorities (is this target of opportunity worth more than the initial target? Is the fact that the characteristics of the planned target diverges 25% from expectations sufficient to hold fire? etc) to name just a few things.
Quote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 11:37:13 AMI think you need to deal with the ground to some degree when you land, and yet a passenger plane built in 1970ies could already do it.
That's a very controlled situation with a pre-expected specific scenario.
All together different to interacting with the whole ground.
And really disagreed that the margin of error is less with military vehicles than civilian. Its far far more. You're directly choosing to kill people with drones. Actively choosing to blow up a convoy of refugees.
Quote from: Josquius on April 19, 2022, 11:53:31 AMActively choosing to blow up a convoy of refugees.
... not to mention actively chosing to blow up your own people, say because you got a misread of the armbands, becaues vehicle markings got obscured etc.
Quote from: Josquius on April 19, 2022, 11:53:31 AMAnd really disagreed that the margin of error is less with military vehicles than civilian. Its far far more. You're directly choosing to kill people with drones. Actively choosing to blow up a convoy of refugees.
Again the relevant comparison is not against some Platonic ideal of perfect military targeting but against how human manned systems perform. I.e what % margin of error is needed to match Blackwater contractors?
Quote from: Jacob on April 19, 2022, 11:57:11 AMQuote from: Josquius on April 19, 2022, 11:53:31 AMActively choosing to blow up a convoy of refugees.
... not to mention actively chosing to blow up your own people, say because you got a misread of the armbands, becaues vehicle markings got obscured etc.
Friendly fire is a fact of life. If you deploy artillery or bombers, you're going to kill your own people sometimes, and yet no one is considering to not use them for those reasons.
I don't think the military shares the risk aversion expressed here. The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100, you're going to use it as much as you can. Unreasonable risk aversion is not a luxury you can afford in an endeavor where people die a lot.
The notion that friendly fire deaths are an accepted risk if more of the enemy are generally killed is not accurate. When Canadian soldiers were killed by friendly American fire in Afghanistan in 2002 two separate board of inquiry were held which led to changes in the way these things were planned and coordinated.
The response was definitely not to simply accept that more of the enemy is killed and so all was fine.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2022, 12:51:35 PMThe notion that friendly fire deaths are an accepted risk if more of the enemy are generally killed is not accurate. When Canadian soldiers were killed by friendly American fire in Afghanistan in 2002 two separate board of inquiry were held which led to changes in the way these things were planned and coordinated.
The response was definitely not to simply accept that more of the enemy is killed and so all was fine.
FWIW I think the notion DG mentioned is a more relevant one.
Quote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 12:04:52 PMFriendly fire is a fact of life. If you deploy artillery or bombers, you're going to kill your own people sometimes, and yet no one is considering to not use them for those reasons.
I don't think the military shares the risk aversion expressed here. The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100, you're going to use it as much as you can. Unreasonable risk aversion is not a luxury you can afford in an endeavor where people die a lot.
While I understand your point, I very much doubt that western militaries would find a 10:1 ratio of extra enemy casualties to friendly fire casualties acceptable.
And are there any autonomous military drones that are completely autonomous in terms of firing? Do they still not all require a human to "pull the trigger" first?
As we just see in Ukraine, at least the Russians do not care for collateral damage among civilians. Indeed, they purposefully seem to inflict it. In such a scenario, a drone misfiring occasionally seems completely irrelevant.
Quote from: Barrister on April 19, 2022, 01:08:05 PMQuote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 12:04:52 PMFriendly fire is a fact of life. If you deploy artillery or bombers, you're going to kill your own people sometimes, and yet no one is considering to not use them for those reasons.
I don't think the military shares the risk aversion expressed here. The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100, you're going to use it as much as you can. Unreasonable risk aversion is not a luxury you can afford in an endeavor where people die a lot.
While I understand your point, I very much doubt that western militaries would find a 10:1 ratio of extra enemy casualties to friendly fire casualties acceptable.
And are there any autonomous military drones that are completely autonomous in terms of firing? Do they still not all require a human to "pull the trigger" first?
Don't people read anymore?
Quote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 12:04:52 PMFriendly fire is a fact of life. If you deploy artillery or bombers, you're going to kill your own people sometimes, and yet no one is considering to not use them for those reasons.
I don't think the military shares the risk aversion expressed here. The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100, you're going to use it as much as you can. Unreasonable risk aversion is not a luxury you can afford in an endeavor where people die a lot.
The argument is not that the military is particularly averse or not averse to friendly fire incidents to achieve whatever goal. The argument is that the "ground complexity" in combat operations is orders of magnitudes more complex than it is for landing commercial aircraft.
Quote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 01:11:39 PMAs we just see in Ukraine, at least the Russians do not care for collateral damage among civilians. Indeed, they purposefully seem to inflict it. In such a scenario, a drone misfiring occasionally seems completely irrelevant.
Indeed.
However, they're not - as I understand it - on the cutting edges of AI or drone technology.
There are existing IFF mechanisms that would used to decrease the likelihood of friendly fire losses from autonomous drones.
In general, it's just a question of threshold for the human programmer of the drone. Let the sensors and AI calculate a probability that whatever it detects need to be fought and then set the threshold of what magnitude of error you are willing to accept. Democratic militaries would likely set this higher, but also have better sensors/AI, authoritarian militaries might set it lower as they might be less averse to collateral damage.
Quote from: Jacob on April 19, 2022, 01:17:14 PMQuote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 01:11:39 PMAs we just see in Ukraine, at least the Russians do not care for collateral damage among civilians. Indeed, they purposefully seem to inflict it. In such a scenario, a drone misfiring occasionally seems completely irrelevant.
Indeed.
However, they're not - as I understand it - on the cutting edges of AI and drone technology.
No, but China is.
A couple of additional thoughts:
1) I don't think the challenges of the complexities of the battle space - including the difficulties in distinguishing between friendlies, hostiles, and civilians - is not just about finding the acceptable ratio of enemie casualties to friendly fire ones. It is also about the vulnerability to being actively spoofed or baffled.
So continuing from that thought, I suppose autonomous AI drones may be easier to implement in, say, a naval context where there are fewer actors and elements compared to fighting on land.
2) I believe that one of the current lessons from the Ukrainian-Russian war is that the Western way of war is superior to the Russian one due to a highly professional core of NCOs able to make autonomous decisions, able to understand the large tactical and strategic objectives (make decisions two levels above their rank, I believe people are saying), and to act independently on their own initiative. This type of decision making is even harder to program competently compared to even "fly around and kill all the enemies you see, according to this list of priority targets, while avoiding killing civilians or our own people."
Quote from: Barrister on April 19, 2022, 01:08:05 PMQuote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 12:04:52 PMFriendly fire is a fact of life. If you deploy artillery or bombers, you're going to kill your own people sometimes, and yet no one is considering to not use them for those reasons.
I don't think the military shares the risk aversion expressed here. The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100, you're going to use it as much as you can. Unreasonable risk aversion is not a luxury you can afford in an endeavor where people die a lot.
While I understand your point, I very much doubt that western militaries would find a 10:1 ratio of extra enemy casualties to friendly fire casualties acceptable.
" The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100"
He is saying that if you can PREVENT 1000 friends getting kills at the cost of 100 friendly fire casualties, you should do that.
Similar to the potential lower bar for autonomous AI for surface (or sub-surface) naval warfare compared to ground warfare, I suppose there may be a lower bar of entry for autonomous AI for contesting air supremacy.
Quote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 01:33:56 PMQuote from: Barrister on April 19, 2022, 01:08:05 PMQuote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 12:04:52 PMFriendly fire is a fact of life. If you deploy artillery or bombers, you're going to kill your own people sometimes, and yet no one is considering to not use them for those reasons.
I don't think the military shares the risk aversion expressed here. The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100, you're going to use it as much as you can. Unreasonable risk aversion is not a luxury you can afford in an endeavor where people die a lot.
While I understand your point, I very much doubt that western militaries would find a 10:1 ratio of extra enemy casualties to friendly fire casualties acceptable.
" The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100"
He is saying that if you can PREVENT 1000 friends getting kills at the cost of 100 friendly fire casualties, you should do that.
Yes, but that reasoning is fallacious if it is possible to bring down the friendly kills to a lower number. Just as the military now attempts to do. No one plans an operation which accepts that a 10% friendly fire kill rate is possible. Quite the contrary, friendly fire events are avoided as much as possible.
Quote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 01:17:47 PMNo, but China is.
I understand they're purchasing a fair bit of cutting edge stuff from the US, yes.
But fair point, China is trying to go all in on AI and they may be willing to accept a higher ratio of friendly fire and civilian casualties than the West.
Still, I think the problem of complexity is not so much about kill ratios (though that shouldn't be discounted as an issue) but about vulnerability and efficacy. Highly complex dynamic environments with many edge cases create the risk of non-desired behaviour as well as vulnerabilities to exploits (as players of many online games can attest to). This, of course, can be iterated through, but that too is a non-trivial task.
Quote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 01:33:56 PM" The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100"
He is saying that if you can PREVENT 1000 friends getting kills at the cost of 100 friendly fire casualties, you should do that.
OK, fair enough.
Intellectually, sure. But in the real world you never see those 1000 deaths prevented, you only see the 100 friendly fire casualties.
My understanding is that while friendly fire incidents will inevitably happen, modern militaries work very very hard to minimize them.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2022, 02:08:19 PMQuote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 01:33:56 PMQuote from: Barrister on April 19, 2022, 01:08:05 PMQuote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 12:04:52 PMFriendly fire is a fact of life. If you deploy artillery or bombers, you're going to kill your own people sometimes, and yet no one is considering to not use them for those reasons.
I don't think the military shares the risk aversion expressed here. The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100, you're going to use it as much as you can. Unreasonable risk aversion is not a luxury you can afford in an endeavor where people die a lot.
While I understand your point, I very much doubt that western militaries would find a 10:1 ratio of extra enemy casualties to friendly fire casualties acceptable.
" The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100"
He is saying that if you can PREVENT 1000 friends getting kills at the cost of 100 friendly fire casualties, you should do that.
Yes, but that reasoning is fallacious if it is possible to bring down the friendly kills to a lower number. Just as the military now attempts to do. No one plans an operation which accepts that a 10% friendly fire kill rate is possible. Quite the contrary, friendly fire events are avoided as much as possible.
Thanks, I am sure nobody realized that friendly fire was something that everyone tries to avoid and minimize.
Quote from: Barrister on April 19, 2022, 02:11:21 PMQuote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 01:33:56 PM" The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100"
He is saying that if you can PREVENT 1000 friends getting kills at the cost of 100 friendly fire casualties, you should do that.
OK, fair enough.
Intellectually, sure. But in the real world you never see those 1000 deaths prevented, you only see the 100 friendly fire casualties.
My understanding is that while friendly fire incidents will inevitably happen, modern militaries work very very hard to minimize them.
Of course. But they don't work THAT hard. I mean, they could reduce them to zero obviously, by just not shooting, ever.
And I would dispute the idea that in the "real world" you don't see the 1000 deaths prevented. I in fact think in the "real world" they very much do - in the media world? The civilian world? Maybe not so much.
Modern militaries certainly do work very hard to minimize them. Vast effort is spent doing so. But at the end of the day, war is about violence, and DG was exactly right. Once you decide to engage in war, there are going to be mistakes and friendly fire. Over-emphasizing the avoidance of that would be a mistake if it meant that more friendly die in the long run because you are worried about preventing friendly fire in the short run.
This was pretty well understood when we engaged in serious wars. Danger close artillery is, well, danger close. Sometimes "danger" means "Ooops, our guys are dead".
Quote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 02:26:14 PMAnd I would dispute the idea that in the "real world" you don't see the 1000 deaths prevented. I in fact think in the "real world" they very much do - in the media world? The civilian world? Maybe not so much.
Modern militaries certainly do work very hard to minimize them. Vast effort is spent doing so. But at the end of the day, war is about violence, and DG was exactly right. Once you decide to engage in war, there are going to be mistakes and friendly fire. Over-emphasizing the avoidance of that would be a mistake if it meant that more friendly die in the long run because you are worried about preventing friendly fire in the short run.
This was pretty well understood when we engaged in serious wars. Danger close artillery is, well, danger close. Sometimes "danger" means "Ooops, our guys are dead".
What I mean by you don't "see" those saved lives is this:
Covid-19 vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of human lives. But nobody knows who those "saved lives" are. Nobody gets a text message saying 'you would have died if you didn't get your Covid vaccine'. Same things for those saved casualties. Intellectually you might know that those saved lives exist, but you can never put a face to them.
And it's not just about fighting "serious wars". Friendly fire incidents are terrible for morale, and have a real impact on a unit's ability to fight effectively.
Which goes back to my point that I don't think a military would accept the "we'll save 1000 lives in exchange for 100 dying from friendly fire", even if you could quantify it that way.
Quote from: Barrister on April 19, 2022, 02:35:47 PMQuote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 02:26:14 PMAnd I would dispute the idea that in the "real world" you don't see the 1000 deaths prevented. I in fact think in the "real world" they very much do - in the media world? The civilian world? Maybe not so much.
Modern militaries certainly do work very hard to minimize them. Vast effort is spent doing so. But at the end of the day, war is about violence, and DG was exactly right. Once you decide to engage in war, there are going to be mistakes and friendly fire. Over-emphasizing the avoidance of that would be a mistake if it meant that more friendly die in the long run because you are worried about preventing friendly fire in the short run.
This was pretty well understood when we engaged in serious wars. Danger close artillery is, well, danger close. Sometimes "danger" means "Ooops, our guys are dead".
What I mean by you don't "see" those saved lives is this:
Covid-19 vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of human lives. But nobody knows who those "saved lives" are. Nobody gets a text message saying 'you would have died if you didn't get your Covid vaccine'. Same things for those saved casualties. Intellectually you might know that those saved lives exist, but you can never put a face to them.
And it's not just about fighting "serious wars". Friendly fire incidents are terrible for morale, and have a real impact on a unit's ability to fight effectively.
Which goes back to my point that I don't think a military would accept the "we'll save 1000 lives in exchange for 100 dying from friendly fire", even if you could quantify it that way.
I think every military everywhere accepts exactly that, because to not accept that (or something like that) would mean that you simply do not engage.
And my point about serious war was just that in those the acceptance is much more, well, accepted. In a more transparent manner. There are multiple examples where the US Army ordered things done that they 100% knew would result in significant friendly fire casualties, but did so anyway.
In a "less serious" war, they do the same thing, but just not in as transparent a manner, because there is less political tolerance for acceptance of that reality. But it still happens just the same.
I agree with the folks who are saying that militaries are going to be willing to sacrifice X number of their own assets (be they people or materiel) for Y gain when it comes to AI drones - or any other military technology for that matter. And I think it's non-controversial to say that different militaries and societies will have different ratios they consider acceptable, dependent on their social and strategic situations.
As I see it, friendly fire incidents are only one failure mode of AI. FF definitely has the potential to be an obstacle to adaptation, depending on how and when they occur (PR does affect procurement, I'm pretty sure). That said, I think real challenge is to consistently (at whatever success rate) avoid not just FF but all the failure modes inherent in the highly complex and dynamic situation of an actual battle space - which I believe is much more complex than road traffic or landing commercial aircraft. Maybe that's close to being a solved problem, but it's certainly not something that I've see evidence of (though I'd be very interested in seeing such evidence).
It's an interesting area to watch, for sure, but my expectation is that we're still quite a while away from seeing autonomous AI in actual battle - even as an experiment.
Quote from: Jacob on April 19, 2022, 01:31:12 PM2) I believe that one of the current lessons from the Ukrainian-Russian war is that the Western way of war is superior to the Russian one due to a highly professional core of NCOs able to make autonomous decisions, able to understand the large tactical and strategic objectives (make decisions two levels above their rank, I believe people are saying), and to act independently on their own initiative. This type of decision making is even harder to program competently compared to even "fly around and kill all the enemies you see, according to this list of priority targets, while avoiding killing civilians or our own people."
Sure if the fight is between two conventional human armies, the one with better NCOs and officers is going to have an advantage.
But let's say you are in charge of a country that sees itself as potentially adversarial to the US and NATO, but one that is better resourced in Russia and smart enough to possibly learn some lessons. For the sake of convenience, lets refer to this purely hypothetical country by the name: "China"
"China" might be well advised to invest their efforts in building up strong NCOs and developing smart junior officers, however, there are some concerns:
+ It takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money to do right.
+ "China" cannot easily access training from well-established armies that have these attributes
+ How do you know if and when you have succeeded in your goal? From the policymaker perspective, you can throw money at the problem and run exercises, but can you really be sure of the strength of your personnel until tested?
+ Historically, some unfree regimes have been wary about taking this approach, because historically plenty of such regimes have been overthrown by junior officers supported by their loyal NCOs. That's the problem with creating a talented, disciplined officer corps and giving them fancy tools of war; one day they may decide they can run things a lot better than the corrupt idiots at the top.
On the other hand - imagine that "China" - while lacking a strong modern military tradition and an educational system that emphasized independence of action and thought - happens to be pretty darn good at manufacturing all sorts of stuff at scale, and is already investing huge resources into AI and robotics. It might be tempting to pour resources into unmmaned and autonomous systems to take advantage of those strengths. True, that would mean accepting that rival militaries might have superior officers and NCOs. Then again, if positions and bases occupied by those fine individuals were flooded with attacks by cheap autonomous platforms, their effective numbers would dwindle and they would be replaced by less effective replacements. Whereas the manufacturing lines churning out the unmanned systems would be just as effective as before - perhaps more so as upgrades were added in response to events on the battlefield.
Just a thought.
Quote from: Jacob on April 19, 2022, 01:36:43 PMSimilar to the potential lower bar for autonomous AI for surface (or sub-surface) naval warfare compared to ground warfare, I suppose there may be a lower bar of entry for autonomous AI for contesting air supremacy.
A fire and forget air-to-air missle like a Sidewinder is already a mostly autonomous weapon. You lock in a target and then it does the rest itself, no more human attention needed. If you then let the platform from which it is fired fly (semi-)autonomous and fire missles based on own algorithms or input from say a human crewed Awacs, you have a mostly or fully autonomous air supremacy weapon. No need for expensive and rare pilots, no limitation on G the aircraft can sustain on maneuvering, no space wasted for the human compartment...
Quote from: Jacob on April 19, 2022, 01:31:12 PM2) I believe that one of the current lessons from the Ukrainian-Russian war is that the Western way of war is superior to the Russian one due to a highly professional core of NCOs able to make autonomous decisions, able to understand the large tactical and strategic objectives (make decisions two levels above their rank, I believe people are saying), and to act independently on their own initiative. This type of decision making is even harder to program competently compared to even "fly around and kill all the enemies you see, according to this list of priority targets, while avoiding killing civilians or our own people."
Let the NCOs command either directly the drones or a small team of drone pilots. No need to do away with the concept.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 19, 2022, 03:09:24 PM+ Historically, some unfree regimes have been wary about taking this approach, because historically plenty of such regimes have been overthrown by junior officers supported by their loyal NCOs. That's the problem with creating a talented, disciplined officer corps and giving them fancy tools of war; one day they may decide they can run things a lot better than the corrupt idiots at the top.
Yeah, I wanted to say the top-down, highly hierarchical nature of the Russian military is a feature, not a bug. The last thing Putin wants is an army that can think for itself. That's why the Russians didn't have a general in overall charge of the Ukrainian campaign until very recently - it all had to go through Putin.
Quote from: Jacob on April 19, 2022, 02:10:43 PMStill, I think the problem of complexity is not so much about kill ratios (though that shouldn't be discounted as an issue) but about vulnerability and efficacy. Highly complex dynamic environments with many edge cases create the risk of non-desired behaviour as well as vulnerabilities to exploits (as players of many online games can attest to). This, of course, can be iterated through, but that too is a non-trivial task.
Just make 10.000 reasonably cheap drones. Even if one percent is lost to dege cases that you did not consider, you still have 9.900 drones left. Even if half of them are lost, your enemy still has to deal with 5.000 drones...
Quote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 03:55:27 PMA fire and forget air-to-air missle like a Sidewinder is already a mostly autonomous weapon. You lock in a target and then it does the rest itself, no more human attention needed. If you then let the platform from which it is fired fly (semi-)autonomous and fire missles based on own algorithms or input from say a human crewed Awacs, you have a mostly or fully autonomous air supremacy weapon. No need for expensive and rare pilots, no limitation on G the aircraft can sustain on maneuvering, no space wasted for the human compartment...
Quote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 03:56:57 PMLet the NCOs command either directly the drones or a small team of drone pilots. No need to do away with the concept.
No disagreement there. The target selection and NCO parts is the part that I think AI will struggle the most with, so keeping the NCO in the loop for selecting targets makes a whole lot of sense to me.
Quote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 04:03:24 PMJust make 10.000 reasonably cheap drones. Even if one percent is lost to dege cases that you did not consider, you still have 9.900 drones left. Even if half of them are lost, your enemy still has to deal with 5.000 drones...
Easy enough. Release the
dogs of war flocks of Languish Lethal Lemmings Mk 1.0!
What do you think the role of these 10,000 reasonably cheap drones darkening the sky are going to be? Are they a replacement for artillery? For infantry? Tanks? Helicopters? Jets? All of the above?
What's the cost difference between a ground-attack drone and an anti-drone drone?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 19, 2022, 03:09:24 PM... Just a thought.
That's a reasonably plausible scenario. Flooding the battle space with replacable "good enough for the mission" autonomous AI drones seems a winning move for whoever can do it. Maybe China can. It'll be interesting to see what sort of timelines are required for doing that
Seems like Taiwan should invest in their own drone fleet, as well as counter drone capabilities.
Quote from: Jacob on April 19, 2022, 04:11:53 PMQuote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 04:03:24 PMJust make 10.000 reasonably cheap drones. Even if one percent is lost to dege cases that you did not consider, you still have 9.900 drones left. Even if half of them are lost, your enemy still has to deal with 5.000 drones...
Easy enough. Release the dogs of war flocks of Languish Lethal Lemmings Mk 1.0!
What do you think the role of these 10,000 reasonably cheap drones darkening the sky are going to be? Are they a replacement for artillery? For infantry? Tanks? Helicopters? Jets? All of the above?
I feel that drones can mainly replace helicopters and jets, not so much infantry or artillery and could render tanks of little use. And as Brain says, drones need to be able to fight other drones.
Quote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 02:41:40 PMQuote from: Barrister on April 19, 2022, 02:35:47 PMQuote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 02:26:14 PMAnd I would dispute the idea that in the "real world" you don't see the 1000 deaths prevented. I in fact think in the "real world" they very much do - in the media world? The civilian world? Maybe not so much.
Modern militaries certainly do work very hard to minimize them. Vast effort is spent doing so. But at the end of the day, war is about violence, and DG was exactly right. Once you decide to engage in war, there are going to be mistakes and friendly fire. Over-emphasizing the avoidance of that would be a mistake if it meant that more friendly die in the long run because you are worried about preventing friendly fire in the short run.
This was pretty well understood when we engaged in serious wars. Danger close artillery is, well, danger close. Sometimes "danger" means "Ooops, our guys are dead".
What I mean by you don't "see" those saved lives is this:
Covid-19 vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of human lives. But nobody knows who those "saved lives" are. Nobody gets a text message saying 'you would have died if you didn't get your Covid vaccine'. Same things for those saved casualties. Intellectually you might know that those saved lives exist, but you can never put a face to them.
And it's not just about fighting "serious wars". Friendly fire incidents are terrible for morale, and have a real impact on a unit's ability to fight effectively.
Which goes back to my point that I don't think a military would accept the "we'll save 1000 lives in exchange for 100 dying from friendly fire", even if you could quantify it that way.
I think every military everywhere accepts exactly that, because to not accept that (or something like that) would mean that you simply do not engage.
And my point about serious war was just that in those the acceptance is much more, well, accepted. In a more transparent manner. There are multiple examples where the US Army ordered things done that they 100% knew would result in significant friendly fire casualties, but did so anyway.
In a "less serious" war, they do the same thing, but just not in as transparent a manner, because there is less political tolerance for acceptance of that reality. But it still happens just the same.
Anyone who has read the book or seen the movie "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young" probably remembers an actual case of exactly what you are talking about. The Broken Arrow artillery and air response was overwhelming, and broke a NVA attack that was about to overrun the US position and kill some 400 troopers. It also killed the US troops that were closely engaged with those enemy soldiers, and LCOL Moore knew it would, but deemed the cost acceptable because of the lives to be saved. I've never heard a single word of criticism about his decision.
Quote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 02:21:45 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2022, 02:08:19 PMQuote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 01:33:56 PMQuote from: Barrister on April 19, 2022, 01:08:05 PMQuote from: DGuller on April 19, 2022, 12:04:52 PMFriendly fire is a fact of life. If you deploy artillery or bombers, you're going to kill your own people sometimes, and yet no one is considering to not use them for those reasons.
I don't think the military shares the risk aversion expressed here. The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100, you're going to use it as much as you can. Unreasonable risk aversion is not a luxury you can afford in an endeavor where people die a lot.
While I understand your point, I very much doubt that western militaries would find a 10:1 ratio of extra enemy casualties to friendly fire casualties acceptable.
" The cold reality is that if you have a weapons system that prevents 1000 kills of your own by the enemy at the cost of increasing friendly fire kills by 100"
He is saying that if you can PREVENT 1000 friends getting kills at the cost of 100 friendly fire casualties, you should do that.
Yes, but that reasoning is fallacious if it is possible to bring down the friendly kills to a lower number. Just as the military now attempts to do. No one plans an operation which accepts that a 10% friendly fire kill rate is possible. Quite the contrary, friendly fire events are avoided as much as possible.
Thanks, I am sure nobody realized that friendly fire was something that everyone tries to avoid and minimize.
Thanks. Given his comment somebody had to say the obvious. Too many people were actually agreeing with him.
Quote from: grumbler on April 19, 2022, 05:19:57 PMQuote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 02:41:40 PMQuote from: Barrister on April 19, 2022, 02:35:47 PMQuote from: Berkut on April 19, 2022, 02:26:14 PMAnd I would dispute the idea that in the "real world" you don't see the 1000 deaths prevented. I in fact think in the "real world" they very much do - in the media world? The civilian world? Maybe not so much.
Modern militaries certainly do work very hard to minimize them. Vast effort is spent doing so. But at the end of the day, war is about violence, and DG was exactly right. Once you decide to engage in war, there are going to be mistakes and friendly fire. Over-emphasizing the avoidance of that would be a mistake if it meant that more friendly die in the long run because you are worried about preventing friendly fire in the short run.
This was pretty well understood when we engaged in serious wars. Danger close artillery is, well, danger close. Sometimes "danger" means "Ooops, our guys are dead".
What I mean by you don't "see" those saved lives is this:
Covid-19 vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of human lives. But nobody knows who those "saved lives" are. Nobody gets a text message saying 'you would have died if you didn't get your Covid vaccine'. Same things for those saved casualties. Intellectually you might know that those saved lives exist, but you can never put a face to them.
And it's not just about fighting "serious wars". Friendly fire incidents are terrible for morale, and have a real impact on a unit's ability to fight effectively.
Which goes back to my point that I don't think a military would accept the "we'll save 1000 lives in exchange for 100 dying from friendly fire", even if you could quantify it that way.
I think every military everywhere accepts exactly that, because to not accept that (or something like that) would mean that you simply do not engage.
And my point about serious war was just that in those the acceptance is much more, well, accepted. In a more transparent manner. There are multiple examples where the US Army ordered things done that they 100% knew would result in significant friendly fire casualties, but did so anyway.
In a "less serious" war, they do the same thing, but just not in as transparent a manner, because there is less political tolerance for acceptance of that reality. But it still happens just the same.
Anyone who has read the book or seen the movie "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young" probably remembers an actual case of exactly what you are talking about. The Broken Arrow artillery and air response was overwhelming, and broke a NVA attack that was about to overrun the US position and kill some 400 troopers. It also killed the US troops that were closely engaged with those enemy soldiers, and LCOL Moore knew it would, but deemed the cost acceptable because of the lives to be saved. I've never heard a single word of criticism about his decision.
Right! A very good example of a situation specific decision that is in No part of the normal planning for that operation. Rather it was, by definition, an extreme event.
Proposition being discussed here is that kind of friendly fire being excepted as a matter of course.
Quote from: Jacob on April 19, 2022, 04:11:53 PMQuote from: Zanza on April 19, 2022, 04:03:24 PMJust make 10.000 reasonably cheap drones. Even if one percent is lost to dege cases that you did not consider, you still have 9.900 drones left. Even if half of them are lost, your enemy still has to deal with 5.000 drones...
Easy enough. Release the dogs of war flocks of Languish Lethal Lemmings Mk 1.0!
What do you think the role of these 10,000 reasonably cheap drones darkening the sky are going to be? Are they a replacement for artillery? For infantry? Tanks? Helicopters? Jets? All of the above?
I don't know but this is a tech still in its early stages. A mechanical military system could take any form, any size, any combination of weapons or capabilities that can be imagined and implemented.
I agree that it's too early to say. I think drones have the potential to became the next airplane: a weapons system that fundamentally changes the game, rather than a system that replaces one of the pieces in the existing game. I think the drones right now are at the level of biplanes with pilots tossing bombs with their hands: already useful, but barely scratching the surface of possible.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 19, 2022, 08:39:19 PMI don't know but this is a tech still in its early stages. A mechanical military system could take any form, any size, any combination of weapons or capabilities that can be imagined and implemented.
Yeah, autonomous AI drones are going to utterly disrupt war-fighting and create a complete paradigm shift if they perform as imagined. I'm just a little more skeptical about the ease of implementation than some of the other folks in this thread.
A simple drone using GPS or radio guidance with a rifle underneath can fly around at 300m and kill everything that moves in a given area.
Could probably be built for $1-2000 a piece or so at scale production. Quadruple the cost and make them solar powered for increased loitering time.
If I were an evil dictator an a hypothetical evil empire with huge production capacity and resources I would build hundreds of thousands of something like that, augmented by more serious versions for AA suppression and AT capability. What do I care about civilian casualties?
Civilian casualties is something that western democracies care about, Commie-China wouldn't care one iota if every citizen of the RoC were to die with a bullet hole in the skull, there are lots of other Chinese that can replace them. The same with Russia with regards to everyone else, but luckily they are a technological basket case.
Quote from: crazy canuckProposition being discussed here is that kind of friendly fire being excepted as a matter of course.
(https://i.imgflip.com/5aqoih.jpg)
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 18, 2022, 01:55:38 PMThis probably merits a different topic, but the results of the Russian war to date seem to reinforce the Fukuyama thesis. To the extent Putinism sought to pose as a viable alternative to the liberal democratic Western model, it has been badly discredited.
I thought Tooze's take in the New Statesman that to the extent anyone has broken out of the end of history it's Zelensky and Ukraine. Putin's war was not, as he expected, a post-modern Baudrillard style simulation of a war, but instead turned out to be a real one for national survival.
The 19th century figure is not Putin (who thought you could topple a state with some paratroopers and a few days of conflict), but Zelensky who I think taps into that legacy of liberal nationalism and self-determination. The response overseas is not dissimilar to Kossuth in America or one of Garibaldi's tours.
And linked to that is this interesting piece arguing that the radical centre of Czechia and Slovakia is where Europe should look for a new form of liberal idealism, not, perhaps, the Fukuyama liberal democracy that becomes either the EU or a Japanese tea ceremony (until someone overturns it all out of boredom):
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/are-czechia-and-slovakia-eus-new-radical-centre
This on the Slovaks is particularly interesting as, today, Fico was arrested for organising corrupt gangs within the police force so it is quite the shift:
QuoteFor Slovakia and Czechia, however, things look rather different. In Bratislava, Prime Minister Eduard Heger has emerged from inauspicious beginnings – taking over from a scandal-hit party-colleague in April 2021 – to become a surprisingly staunch liberal internationalist. His OL'aNO party started as an anti-corruption, anti-establishment and even anti-political movement with little interest in foreign affairs. Yet Heger's steady hand helped steer Slovakia through the tumultuous early days of the crisis, ensuring refugees were welcomed and that Slovakia's defences were bolstered by allies as the country welcomed a NATO Enhanced Forward Presence for the first time.
Warming to the role, Heger, in concert with Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad' and Foreign Minister Ivan Korčok, moved to step up support to Ukraine. Having ensured that their air defence would be backfilled with Patriot missiles, the Slovak leadership agreed to transfer their S-300 air defence system to Ukraine, thus providing some of the heaviest weaponry sent by a NATO state so far.
Significantly, Heger grounded this move in liberal solidarity, arguing that 'The Ukrainian nation is bravely defending its sovereignty – and [ours] too. It is our duty to help, not to stay put and be ignorant to the loss of human lives under Russian aggression'. He also travelled to Kyiv and to Bucha, leading a Slovak media outlet to note an unfamiliar feeling: 'This is how it feels to be proud of your Prime Minister'.
I've been thinking about the ebb and flow of military development lately. Most this don't apply to the US seeing as they are in their own league.
Modern militaries are a bit like the old Anglo-Saxon militaries. Well trained professional and relatively small armies that more or less fight each other special forces style. Kind of like the 18th century armies. In both of those cases they were crushed by an enemy with numerically superior and perhaps slightly less trained mass armies, the great heathen army and the revolutionary armies.
Very broad generalizations here, but it seems that we are in the middle of a swing the other way. Soldiers are expensive and we are seeing a total war where a nation of 40 million or so that can't put more than a few 100' in the field due to expense. Professional and well equipped armies seem to be far superior to somewhat trained mass armies.
The same argument can be made for fortresses. The haven't been in vogue for 80 years or so, but Mariupol and Azovstal seem to imply that fortresses might have a future. Lack of precision ammunition and heavy weapons would make it difficult to siege anything and at the same time have an offensive going. A fortress is also a force multiplier, making worse equipped and trained troops be of some use.
So kind of like in the 17th century the cost of armies are sky-rocketing right now, we will be forced to create new solutions to be able to finance it. Back then the western nations developed the modern state and bureaucracy.
Quote from: Threviel on May 20, 2022, 02:33:47 AMI've been thinking about the ebb and flow of military development lately. Most this don't apply to the US seeing as they are in their own league.
Modern militaries are a bit like the old Anglo-Saxon militaries. Well trained professional and relatively small armies that more or less fight each other special forces style. Kind of like the 18th century armies. In both of those cases they were crushed by an enemy with numerically superior and perhaps slightly less trained mass armies, the great heathen army and the revolutionary armies.
Very broad generalizations here, but it seems that we are in the middle of a swing the other way. Soldiers are expensive and we are seeing a total war where a nation of 40 million or so that can't put more than a few 100' in the field due to expense. Professional and well equipped armies seem to be far superior to somewhat trained mass armies.
The same argument can be made for fortresses. The haven't been in vogue for 80 years or so, but Mariupol and Azovstal seem to imply that fortresses might have a future. Lack of precision ammunition and heavy weapons would make it difficult to siege anything and at the same time have an offensive going. A fortress is also a force multiplier, making worse equipped and trained troops be of some use.
So kind of like in the 17th century the cost of armies are sky-rocketing right now, we will be forced to create new solutions to be able to finance it. Back then the western nations developed the modern state and bureaucracy.
I think that your analogy is very useful. In the 17th Century it wasn't the manpower that cost so much, it was the hand-crafted firearms and cannon, as well as gunpowder. Today, manpower is expensive to recruit, train, and pay but it is the equipment costs that are going to limit military size.
The Russians are seeing this with their new T-14 tank. It looks like real costs are almost 20 times that of a T-72 and twice that of a T-90SM. The result is that they cannot afford to field effective numbers of them. Over the last 7 years they have built about 25 T-14 tanks.
Quote from: Threviel on May 20, 2022, 02:33:47 AMVery broad generalizations here, but it seems that we are in the middle of a swing the other way. . . . Professional and well equipped armies seem to be far superior to somewhat trained mass armies.
Maybe.
The optimal size of armies is as you indicate a function of both the ability to mobilize economic and manpower resources - both physically and socially, and of the military technology of the age. Armies appear relatively small now because the prevailing military technology involves heavy use of hideously expensive and complex equipment that requires lots of training and expertise to use effectively. But clearly the capacity exists to mobilize manpower to a much greater degree if that manpower could be deployed to militarily useful purposes:
1) The focus on the number of troops holding front line position misses the continuing expansion in the numbers, significance and roles of support and rear area personnel since the world wars. One of the reasons Russia is losing the war is that even though it appears they have numerical parity or better on the front lines, they are in reality vastly outnumbered by a Ukraine that has mobilized much of its entire population in the war effort, and is being reinforced by highly skilled and resourced NATO country personnel in areas like intelligence, recon, logistical support, information warfare etc.
The "column of doom" in the drive of Kyiv illustrated how counter-productive it can be to send large numbers of combat troops forward without proper support and planning. But the failure of the slapdash Russian effort doesn't mean that any effort to support large numbers of combat troops an advance is doomed to failure.
2) In a combat space where drones and cyber-warfare acquires greater significance, that raises the prospect of a different kind of mass warfare. One of the many interesting stories to come of Ukraine was the civilian enthusiast club that turned their drone hobby to military purposes. The skills required to operate and maintain that technology is not trivial, but it is well within the capacities of many individuals with modern educations, and that kinds of equipment that group was operating is cheap to mass produce.
Future conflicts could involve mass human mobilization in similar degree to WW1/WW2, but the deployment of that manpower may differ - with more people behind computer screens and operator consoles than in trenches clutching rifles.
QuoteThe same argument can be made for fortresses. The haven't been in vogue for 80 years or so, but Mariupol and Azovstal seem to imply that fortresses might have a future. Lack of precision ammunition and heavy weapons would make it difficult to siege anything and at the same time have an offensive going. A fortress is also a force multiplier, making worse equipped and trained troops be of some use.
This is true. Albeit for very dubious reasons that I doubt anyone is keen on.
Even with Russia as the aggressor the civilians around Azovstal are a big blocker on how much power they can bring to bear, they can't just completely level it and have to at least pretend to be careful.
By investing in fortresses a nation is essentially admitting that it is investing in human shields which...is a iffy look. Especially if you live next door to said fortress.
Also a problem with forts is they're useful in very specific cases where the town where they sit is itself the target. They can still be ignored and bypassed if an invading army wants. I can see them being a useful investment for e.g. Estonia whose entire war planning scenario must revolve around try to survive until reinforcements come and make the inevitable occupation as painful as possible, but for most there's no reason to consider it.
But yes. As said the Gulf War was the big lesson for those nations that still invested in quantity over quality. Its a wonder so many nations still put so much into national service. Hopefully the Ukraine war experience will show the error of this.
Quote from: grumbler on May 20, 2022, 09:11:58 AMIn the 17th Century it wasn't the manpower that cost so much, it was the hand-crafted firearms and cannon, as well as gunpowder.
That's a big part of it, but even if equipment costs were lower, 17th century states wouldn't have been mobilizing en masse because in an era of regular subsistence crises they needed to keep the masses of peasants on the farm producing food and because the polities would have been wary of the social implications of mass mobilization. That is why army sizes were still relatively restrained into the late 18th century when the costs of producing small arms on a standardized plan had become more manageable.
Quote from: grumbler on May 20, 2022, 09:11:58 AMThe Russians are seeing this with their new T-14 tank. It looks like real costs are almost 20 times that of a T-72 and twice that of a T-90SM. The result is that they cannot afford to field effective numbers of them. Over the last 7 years they have built about 25 T-14 tanks.
Speaking of that, does the figure of $500,000 as the cost of T-72 tank pass the smell test? I know they're not good tanks as far as tanks go, but they're still a tank. It just seems hard to fathom how you can build such a war machine for half a million dollars. I've also read a few accounts claiming that T-90 is just a T-72 with a facelift, so where is the 10-fold difference in price coming from?
Quote from: DGuller on May 20, 2022, 10:16:26 AMQuote from: grumbler on May 20, 2022, 09:11:58 AMThe Russians are seeing this with their new T-14 tank. It looks like real costs are almost 20 times that of a T-72 and twice that of a T-90SM. The result is that they cannot afford to field effective numbers of them. Over the last 7 years they have built about 25 T-14 tanks.
Speaking of that, does the figure of $500,000 as the cost of T-72 tank pass the smell test? I know they're not good tanks as far as tanks go, but they're still a tank. It just seems hard to fathom how you can build such a war machine for half a million dollars. I've also read a few accounts claiming that T-90 is just a T-72 with a facelift, so where is the 10-fold difference in price coming from?
German tank museum had an interesting video on that, explaining that much of the T-series are mostly evolutionary changes, not different generations as one would intuit. They drew a parallel to German Leopards and their Leo-1 => Leo-2A7 evolution (not in terms of combat efficiency, just the idea of an original design undergoing constant development over decades).
Quote from: DGuller on May 20, 2022, 10:16:26 AMSpeaking of that, does the figure of $500,000 as the cost of T-72 tank pass the smell test? I know they're not good tanks as far as tanks go, but they're still a tank. It just seems hard to fathom how you can build such a war machine for half a million dollars. I've also read a few accounts claiming that T-90 is just a T-72 with a facelift, so where is the 10-fold difference in price coming from?
Nobody is building T-70s any more, but the $500k figure comes from the foreign military sales figures (and is in then-year dollars). Those could be subsidized to some extent, for sure, but those are the numbers we have. In a command economy, budget figures don't mean much.
Quote from: Syt on May 20, 2022, 10:27:04 AMGerman tank museum had an interesting video on that, explaining that much of the T-series are mostly evolutionary changes, not different generations as one would intuit. They drew a parallel to German Leopards and their Leo-1 => Leo-2A7 evolution (not in terms of combat efficiency, just the idea of an original design undergoing constant development over decades).
The US was doing much the same for almost forty years with the T-12/M-26/M-46/M-60 series. It's well into the fourth decade of the M-1 series. Replacement tank research programs fail far more often than they succeed. Hell, the Stryker is in the mid-20s in years spent as the "interim" IFV.
To me it seems like there's great potential for economies of scale. European Nato ought to get together and develop families of stuff. Have at least one factory for everything running at all times to be able to to scale up in the event of a conflict. One factory (or more) delivering a common tank or a common APC or a common logistics truck.
If we had some factories building tanks they could be able to switch to three-shifts and up production significantly to ship to Ukraine. Make ability to scale up production a requirement in the contracts.
Costs on equipment would go down and every country would be able to field better equipped armies with a common logistics footprint.
That way we would be able to supply Ukraine without haggling about 40 year old artillery systems or decades old Leopard Is. Just set the factories to full speed and start shipping.
Feasible?
No, way too many national vested interests.
Yes. In the 21st century jobs are finite and military manufacturing jobs seem to be amongst the few all governments want to protect.
Unifying production would increase jobs as unit costs come down. Germany might lose 3,000 jobs in tank building, but might gain 6,000 jobs building APCs. The problem is that countries would rather keep inefficient production at home than their fair share of efficient production for the alliance. It's not the jobs, it is the financial control and the increased opportunities for kickbacks and cushy retirement jobs.
I was thinking of the froggies and their new investments in personals arms. There is no current industrial level producer of rifles in France, so they are going with German weapons IIRC. Something so basic and fundamental as the soldiers rifles can't be produced in a top 10 world military power.
Or British tanks, or ammunition for anyone, or missiles for the air forces, or whatever. The militaries start a project, create the necessary stuff to build the things. Build far too few since they are expensive, dismantle the stuff and then start anew with something else. Such a waste of resources and institutional knowledge.
You need an economy the size of the US to be able to keep a production line going of even the most basic stuff a modern army need. It is very much in the interest of the European powers to make procurement more effective, cheaper and stream lined otherwise any European military response will be a hodge podge of stuff making the Wehrmacht look like masters of logistics.
Most European defence projects are already shared between multiple countries,but there is no continental scale.
There are initiatives like PESCO to drive this further:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Structured_Cooperation
The problem is not just dispersed production capability, but having 27+ different armed forces, each with their own requirements. And they all want their own special stuff.
Yes, that's a problem. Sweden for example delayed delivery and hugely increased expanse of NH90 helicopters because it was absolutely imperative that they had a 10 cm higher cabin. Probably with good reasons, but I wonder if we couldn't make do with the regular cabins.
The same with Volkswagen minibuses to the militia, imperative that they have a higher cabin so increased costs and a special run of production.
I don't really have a solution, Swedish purchases fit Swedish doctrines and Swedish environments, but it is quite clear from Ukraine that when shit hits the fan the Swedish military will fight with whatever can be scrounged up, like any military. The peacetime supply of stuff gets eaten up a few weeks or months in and then it would be awfully nice if new stuff of the same kind could be delivered instead of sprinklings of dozens of different type of stuff.
I feel that western militaries* have been living under the umbrella of nuclear arms a bit much, we could afford expensive peace keeper armies since any serious war would go nuclear anyways and peacekeeper forces are enough for any not serious war.
If Europe is to have any military relevance going forward we need at least a common European procurement system, or even better, a common Nato procurement system. In my fever dreams I see that a common system could be designed where Nato for example has a family of tracked vehicles that the members buy and where all development resources are spent on making that family the super duper best family of tracked vehicles. Then when it's time to deliver weapons to Vietnam, India or ROC for their showdown with Commie China we can send a lot of stuff and greatly ramp up production of that stuff. Nato ought to be an arsenal of democracy.
*This discussion excludes the US since it is in a league of its own 10 leagues above everyone else.
The only big war in the near to medium term that the US that is likely to get into that would strain it's capabilities is against China. Therefore we should focus on building up to meet the challenges offered by it. These are principally naval.
We should focus on developing Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and more submarines. We need to improve our anti-ship missile capability.
I'm not exactly thinking about direct wars but rather proxy wars.
An India-Pakistan war or an India-China war or something like that. Or for that matter some shenanigans in Africa where China supports some country against a budding democracy. Cold war stuff. Ukraine level stuff. We (Europe) need to be able to support the good guys with stuff.
And also thinking about Europe, the US is still in a league of its own. If Europe does everything rationally and perfect we might get half the power of the US or something like that.
The thought oF Swedish militia toodling around in minibuses gives me a chuckle.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 23, 2022, 12:36:29 AMThe thought oF Swedish militia toodling around in minibuses gives me a chuckle.
https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/sv/information-och-fakta/materiel-och-teknik/mark/personbil-8/ (https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/sv/information-och-fakta/materiel-och-teknik/mark/personbil-8/)