Limits of technology

Here's an interesting article on what tricks the 'Opposing Force' at the US
National Training Center uses to beat high-tech US forces with
lower-tech
equipment.
http://63.99.108.76/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003715.html
Go down the page to the first article

Food for thought, both with regards to real-life operations and gaming
scenarios, especially DSII.

Greetings Karl Heinz

> At 1:50 PM +0100 12/11/02, K.H.Ranitzsch wrote:

Wow! It looks like Op-For gets to have even more fun than I thought.
They're a bunch of bloody creative bastards aren't they?

> --- Ryan M Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:

> Wow! It looks like Op-For gets to have even more fun

As I understand it, Blufor isn't allowed to send their barrage jammers to hell
like they would in real life. Barrage jammers by their very nature have an
electronic signature that's downright silly. Our EW guys pick it up, pass the
targeting data to people like Don, and BOOM goes the jammer. That's why the
Russkies massed hundreds in East Germany--they
expected to loose a lot. Who today has that many jammers?

Oh, and their "accurate, long range fires"?? There's no counterbattery either,
and no USAF playing. Between Counterbattery and the USAF, no one shoots arty
at the US and lives to brag about it. Ask those handful of ballsy Iraqi
gunners.

Or you could if any of them hadn't been killed by MLRS
fire and A-10s.

The other problem is that the density of recon assets at NTC is artificially
low. No one would get away with most of those tricks if there were eyes on the
ground. See: Afghanistan, where a handful of forward observers could direct
the Air Club for Men right onto real targets.

NTC is an artificial game where the rules are heavily slanted in OPFOR's
favor. The reason is that if things were played 'real world' style, OPFOR
wouldn't stand a hope in hell. SAM traps?? Since the '60s the Air Force has
put a lot of effort into SEAD, and they ain't half bad at it. Not as good as
artillery is (exposed rockets like on most WarPac SAM launchers
don't react well to fragments of red-hot metal), but
not bad either. All OPFOR weapons have exaggerated ranges, hit percentages,
and ability to kill what they hit. All US equipment is underrated in all three
categories. I mean really, does anyone REALISTICALLY
think that a T-72 can kill an M-1A1 frontally at 3km?
Or that the M-1A1's max effective range vs. T-72
frontally is 2000m? I know some guys would beg to differ based on the Greatest
Ever Desert Firepower
Demonstration.  Or the performance of the AT-5???
This is the OPFOR longrange (4-5km) killer, yet In
Real Life, the M-1 series is more or less immune to
ATGMs except across the rear or coming from the top.

> At 10:11 AM 12/13/2002 -0800, you wrote:

> --- Ryan M Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:

However, you have to balance this against the fact that in one exercise,

the OPFOR commander, having used completely unprepared for tactics at sea
(fishing vessels with missiles), ending up with half the US fleet sunk or
damaged, was told that he wasn't playing fair ("They won't do that in real
life"). They 'restarted' the simulation....

Actually the NTC site lists the MILES rating for the T-80 main gun as
2400M which is a number that most places list as the effective range, although
the maximum range is 4500M. Using other listings for a number for the M256
120mm smoothbore of the M1A2, the effective range using APFSDS is 3500M while
HEAT is only 2000M. HEAT has been found to be
less effective against reactive armor which equipped the T-72's that
OPFOR used.

NTC currently only fields the T-80 for OPFOR, the T-72 considered
obsolete.

Also from the NTC site ( http://www.irwin.army.mil/ )are listed other
OPFOR weapons:

AT-8 ATGM with 3750M range
AT-5 ATGM with 4000M range
AT-3 ATGM with 3000M range

the ATGM's list that the launcher must remain stationary for 8-10
seconds when firing for guidance.

Some other sites mention that the AT-5 uses the same MILES stats as the
TOW.  I would assume that the AT-5B with the tandem warhead would be
rated with similar numbers as the TOW-2 or 2A with tandem warheads.
Rated penetration for tandem warheads is 925mm of RHA (roughly three feet).
Obviously new composite armors are a tougher material vs. HEAT, but still a
couple of feet of penetration is not insignificant. I don't
know if the AT-5 has been uprated to top-attack like the TOW-2B.

--Binhan

> -----Original Message-----
<<SNIP>>
> NTC is an artificial game where the rules are heavily

> --- B Lin <lin@rxkinetix.com> wrote:

> AT-8 ATGM with 3750M range

Fired from 125mm smoothbore.  IE: T-72/-80.  It's the
same gun.  Now way in hell an AT-8 is going to kill an
M-1.

> --- John Sowerby <sowerbyj@fiu.edu> wrote:

Well, that wasn't at NTC. Let me be the first to tell you there are no FISHING
VESSELS within effective range of BluFor in the middle of the Goddamn Mojave
Desert.

From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com>

> As I understand it, Blufor isn't allowed to send their

From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com>

> Well, that wasn't at NTC. Let me be the first to tell

Ah, they're *very well stealthed* Fishing Vessels.... <g>

I think that he meant Phishing vessels. You know, VW busses loaded with
joint... er... rockets.

> On Friday, December 13, 2002, at 04:29 PM, Alan and Carmel Brain wrote:

> From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com>

--- Alan and Carmel Brain <aebrain@webone.com.au>
wrote:

> We do. Expendables. Often in artillery shells (why

Short-term, I presume?

> The Australian armed forces have been doing a LOT of

Somehow I don't see a US-Australian war in my
lifetime.

From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com>

> > We do. Expendables. Often in artillery shells (why

Minutes to days, no longer. Usually an hour or so. Depends upon power and
frequency spread.

I'll see if I can find a URL or two.
http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR930/MR-930.ch5.pdf
for example.

Think of what a volley of a dozen of these, each with an effective range of
500m or so, would do if fired in the general area of an attack. Even if they
only last 30 minutes before you need to refresh.

> Somehow I don't see a US-Australian war in my

Naturally we'd have to shoot you first. Combat engineers are top priority
targets, along with

> John Atkinson wrote:

> >We do. Expendables. Often in artillery shells (why

Sure. But jamming doesn't need to be long-term to be effective - indeed,

vehicle-mounted barrage jammers aren't particularly long-term :-/ Even
short C3 disruptions (a few hours or so) can be quite disastrous if they

prevent you from reacting fast enough to an enemy attack.

> >The Australian armed forces have been doing a LOT of

Do you seriously believe that Australia is the only country which has this
type of artillery-delivered jamming capability? If so, think again.
There are several other countries who have it too... including some which I
could see the US fight in our lifetime, and some which would sell this
technology
to countries the US appearently plan to fight in near-time.

Regards,

From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>

> John Atkinson wrote:

> > >The Australian armed forces have been doing a LOT of
There
> are several other countries who have it too... including some which I

(cough)France(cough). Though the German ones are better (at least going by
what the sales brochures say). Of the Swedish ones, Oerjan will know better
than myself, it's been some years since I had to evaluate them. Yes, they've
been around for over half a decade, even if the US hasn't quite adjusted to
the concept yet.

One problem that the USA suffers is the NIH syndrome: if the USA doesn't have
it / hasn't thought of it / can't build it then it doesn't exist. I
might add that this problem is not confined to the USA. When I was doing some
work at Hollandse Signaal, I was repeatedly told certain technical tasks
couldn't be done using the hardware of the time. When we'd been doing it with
far less computational resources for years, and the US for almost as long or
in a few cases longer.
That was in the mid-80's, and I have no reason to believe things have
changed.

John A. will naturally be aware of this: compare, say, ACE with some of the
European combat engineer equipment. Even the ex-Soviet stuff. A lot of
the US's technical superiority is based upon having the money to buy and
deploy
vast quantities of 2nd-rate gear, and thereby test it so the bugs are
out. (Or in the case of ACE, ignore the bugs as it's made in the USA).
A lot of European gear is, frankly, vastly superior - but exists in such
small quantities that its effect is negligible, or there aren't enough

> Alan Brain wrote:

> >>Somehow I don't see a US-Australian war in my lifetime.
There
> >are several other countries who have it too... including some which I

Them too, yes. I was thinking more of Russia and Ukraine though... especially
Ukraine, after their recent SAM sales to a certain
middle-eastern state :-/

> One problem that the USA suffers is the NIH syndrome: if the USA

That's very true, yes.

Another side of the "NIH" syndrom is the "Must Have Been Invented Here"
syndrom, ie. if a technical gadget is good, Americans have a tendency to

believe that it is American-built even when it is imported. So far I've
encountered it twice: once when a Mid-western family bragged about their

new "American-built" fridge (brand name Electrolux...), not quite
believing that we had such things in Sweden. It took them quite a long time to
realise that Electrolux is in fact a Swedish company, but when they saw the
"Made in Sweden" mark in the handbook they folded :-/

The second time was some years back when US officers visited a Swedish
mechanised unit up in Boden and saw the vast quantities of AT4s and Carl

Gustaf RCLs, whereupon they commented "Oh, so you're buying anti-tank
weapons from us!" Of course we do buy weapons from the US - TOWs,
Sidewinders etc. - but not these specific weapons which caused their
comments <g>

Later,

--- Alan and Carmel Brain <aebrain@webone.com.au>
wrote:

> John A. will naturally be aware of this: compare,

Most of the ex-Sov stuff looks like junk to me.  But,
for instance, the Wolverine is the marraige of the M-1
chassis (automotive commonality) with the hydraulics
and bridge off of the German Leopard-chassis
bridgelayer. Wolverine is Near and Dear to me right. We pick up ours next
week.:) SEE truck is Mercedes, too.

> The comparison is not therefore between ACE and, say

Well, the Griz is more or less dead, a victim of the "lighter is better"
moronic mentality infecting our senior ossifers.

> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

> Do you seriously believe that Australia is the only

No--but I do think it'll take a gutsy artilleryman to
shoot 'em at us.:) Seriously, that's an interesting idea. What is being looked
at as a countermeasure?

The flop side of this is that if someone else does it, we can do it too. First
time these puppies are used against us, we'll probably decide they are useful
enough to put in inventory. That's one of the few ways to get our attention if
the idea didn't come from the US.

> John Atkinson wrote:

> >Do you seriously believe that Australia is the only country which has
There
> >are several other countries who have it too... including some which I
:)

As long as you don't use GPS-guided rounds or bombs to try and hit them
with ;-) And let's hope that the comm links from the artillery tracking
radars aren't jammed, too <g>

> Seriously, that's an interesting idea. What is being looked at as a

Apart from "more jam-resistant comm systems", I'm afraid I can't tell
you
much :-(

> The flop side of this is that if someone else does it, we can do it

Certainly - but most others don't rely quite as much on high-capacity
comm networks and GPS navigation as you do (especially with your new networked
C4I systems), so you might not get as large an effect out of your jammers as
they got from theirs.

Later,

> Somehow I don't see a US-Australian war in my

Well, good.

I work for a large manufacturing company, with plants worldwide, and the

Australians are *by far* the most pleasant remote customers to deal with. And
have been ever since we launched their facilities in 1994.

Good awnya, sports!

In a message dated 12/14/02 3:57:32 AM Mountain Standard Time,
> aebrain@webone.com.au writes:

> One problem that the USA suffers is the NIH syndrome: if the USA

Oh so true in many cases....
Take for example the Hyper-X, which NASA is saying will be the "first"
operational scram-jet. (Never mind the ANZAC's already did it :o)

> I might add that this problem is not confined to the USA.

Again true. Take for example the ESA's publicity blitz on it's "never before
done" Ion-engine probe. (Deep Space 1 anyone? :o)

National pride does quite well overcoming inconvenient things like facts

quite readily:o)

Randy

From: <ShldWulf@aol.com>

> > One problem that the USA suffers is the NIH syndrome

> National pride does quite well overcoming inconvenient things like

I've also come across (many, many times) a phenomenon identified by Oerjan: If
it works well, then obviously it must be of US origin.

e.g. AT-4, AV-8A, Nulka and many, many Israeli weapons. It can be
slightly amusing to have a piece of kit you've worked on, and now being
manufactured (actually just being assembled) in the USA, described as
"American
Know-how".
And it can be darned frustrating when some US security weenie blocks
export of far-too-advanced-for-foreigners-even-allies technology when
bits are supposed to be sent back here to the manufacturer for inspection and
repair.

OTOH... the US taxpayer gets good value from various arms of the US
government. Billions of dollars of 2nd-rate US-originated stuff gets
sold overseas despite adverse evaluations (compared with European competitors)
due entirely to state department pressure.

"Put simply, the Boeing system being installed cannot be transformed to an
effective performance level without much of the software and some of the
hardware being replaced or superceded."

See http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/s328290.htm and
http://old.smh.com.au/news/0107/13/national/national7.html
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/s328295.htm

or just google search with the words "submarine Collins STN"

To see the difference in technology, just compare the Pictures: Current
Collins (advanced, but doesn't work too well)
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/collins/collins9.html
vs Current Israeli. Also German, Swedish (Sonar), Chile (Sonar), Italy,
Greece, Turkey....
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/dolphin/dolphin3.html
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/type_2123.html
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/type_2124.html
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/scorpene/scorpene6.html
The Swedish boat has a (Swedish) Combat System - but if you look
carefully at the consoles towards the back, you'll see the sonar
is, in fact, a cut-down ISUS system
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/gotland/gotland4.html

Then there's the latest from the US....
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/seawolf/seawolf6.html

[quoted original message omitted]

From: "K.H.Ranitzsch" <KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de>

> I guess anybody who re-invents the wheel thinks he is damn clever :-)

Especially if they make it triangular - as in the Wankel Rotary Engine.

> Merry Christmas

Frohes Fest, AEB

--- Alan and Carmel Brain <aebrain@webone.com.au>
wrote:
> OTOH... the US taxpayer gets good value from various

The third hand in the scenario is that the U.S. taxpayer is buying this stuff
for the foreign government through 'aid' packages.

Bye for now,