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Defense One, USA</address>
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Dynamic armor and cross-domain (cross-domain) firepower are just some of the items in the list that US ground forces have to have.
23.05.2016
Patrick Tucker (Patrick Tucker)
When Lieutenant General McMaster (H. R. McMaster) holds a meeting, this is very similar to that, like General Patton delivers a lecture at the conference the non-profit Foundation Technology Entertainment Design (TED) is a dominant physical presence, coupled with a sharp intellectual intensity.
These days, the charismatic head of the command of the land forces of the United States training and doctrine (U. S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command) is heavily involved in the project called “Russian war of a new generation” (The Russia’s New Generation Warfare), which is an analysis of how Russia in the mud of Eastern Ukraine change the shape of the conducting ground combat actions. Recently, speaking at the Center for strategic and international studies (Center for Strategic and International Studies) in Washington, D.C., McMaster said the two-year conflict has shown the superiority of the Russian artillery in combat vehicles (infantry), and also showed their skillful use of unmanned aerial vehicles for tactical purposes. If the armed forces of the United States will be involved in a ground war with Russia, they would likely have to fundamentally get rid of their illusions.
“We spent a lot of time talking about winning in a duel with rockets of distant radius of action,” said McMaster. However, with the help of rockets of distant radius of action, you can only enter through the front door. But then the question arises — what will you do once you get there?
“Look at taken by the enemy countermeasures,” he said, drawing attention to Russia’s use of nominally semi-professional armed forces able “to scatter, to hide, to blend in with the civilian population…, they have the ability to violate our network impact, accurate navigation and time coordination”. All this means that you are likely to be involved in the melee… the Achievement of excellence in close combat — this is an area which we have neglected, because we believe that excellence we provided.”
But how to regain lost superiority? Prescription that occurs on the battlefield in Ukraine, consists in the following — more guns and artillery the best quality, and the combination of old and new.
Cross-domain firing
“We are lagging behind in many such systems, and they use improved conventional munitions, which we refuse. Soon there will be a reduction of 40-60% deadly influence of those systems that we have, ” he said. — Don’t forget that we have less artillery systems. And now it’s a smaller number of artillery systems will be even less effective compared to the weapons available to the enemy. That is, we now need to do something in this regard”.
To remedy the situation MacMaster is drawn to a new region called “cross-domain firepower” (cross domain fires), by which ground units will have the opportunity to hit a broader set of goals. “When the army’s firepower someplace, they have to possess arms ground-to-air, surface-to-surface and shore-ship. We are now developing these, indeed, promising opportunities,” he said.
Although the full report is not available to the General public, “much of it is in the public domain, including in the works of Phil Karber (Karber, Phil),” said McMaster.
Karber, who is President of the research organization Potomac Foundation, went last year with a mission of fact-finding to Ukraine and came back with the conclusion that the United States for a long time paid too much attention to the high-precision artillery of the battlefield to the detriment of the ability to conduct a massive fire. Since the 1980’s the United States began to lose its qualitative superiority, mainly because of the rejection of cluster munitions, he said in October last year, speaking at a meeting of the Association of the US army (the Association for the United States Army).
Since that time, in the field of munitions there has been an incredible leapfrog development. One of the most horrific weapons used by the Russians on the battlefield, are the thermobaric warhead is the ammunition, which consists almost entirely of combustible materials, they burn longer and with greater intensity than other types of projectiles.
“Within three minutes of Russian artillery fire completely destroyed two mechanized battalion through the combined use of the damaging the top of munitions and thermobaric warheads, said Karber. — If you haven’t experienced the effects of a thermobaric ammunition or not seen, as it happens, you start to read them carefully. Soon they may be on the theater of operations near you”.
Karber also said that the Russian armed forces very actively and in an integrated mode used electronic warfare. They are used to determine the source of fire and location of command posts, and also to block voice communication and data transmission. In the Northern sector “all tactical radio (Ukrainian armed forces) was broken by the powerful Russian electronic warfare units of the sectoral scale,” he said. Using other means of warfare were disabled Ukrainian quadcopters. Another system was used for exposure to the electric fuses in the Ukrainian artillery shells, and so “when they reach goals, they do not cause any damage,” he said.
According to Karber, the Pro-Russian forces in the Donbass in the use of mobile radar with overlapping range (overlapping mobile radar), and new portable anti-aircraft missile systems — they are “integrated into their system, and they cannot be misled by using (infrared) traps” and light flashes.
Infantry fighting vehicles and their protection
Problems exist not only with rockets and missiles, says McMaster. All the American war machine lost its advantage. “(Infantry fighting vehicle) Bradley gorgeous, he said, ” but today we see that our enemies have caught up with us. They have invested in the development of infantry fighting vehicles. They have invested in the development of protection systems and active protection systems. We must once again take the forefront in the development of combat vehicles (infantry)”.
If the war in Eastern Ukraine would be a test in real conditions, the Russian tank T-90 would have passed it without any problems. This tank was used in Dagestan and Syria, however, particularly effective use was in the Ukraine. Ukrainians, according to Karber, “failed to record a single case of hitting the T-90. He installed a new French optics. Russian, in fact, these tanks are designed in such a way to have an advantage in dim light, in fog and in winter conditions”.
What makes the T-90 so persistent? Let’s start with the fact that it is installed with dynamic protection (explosive reactive armor). If you send this missile tank, then placed it on the metal plates and explosives react. The explosive charge compresses the plate, and therefore the missile can not penetrate the body.
But this happens only if the missile can be at a sufficiently close distance from the tank. The newest thing in his defense is the active protection system (APS), which automatically classifies incoming shells, sends them to meet electronic interference, or just hits them. “This system uses electronics to “confuse” the flying projectile and can guide a large number of objects (bullets and missiles) to destroy the incoming projectiles before they get too close,” — said the head of the Department of basic studies of the U.S. army, Jeff singleton (Jeff Singleton) in response to e-mailed a reporter’s question Defense One.
Active protection system T-90 is called “Blind -1” is a complex (opto-electronic) suppression. “I talked with Ukrainian anti-tank gunners, said Karber. They say: “I sent a shell (my tank installation) directly on the tank, he flew up to him, but there arose this amazing shield. And suddenly my anti-tank rocket changed trajectory and just flew into the sky”.
The Pentagon is significantly behind in this area from some other countries. The Israeli military said in 2009 about adopting its active protection system Trophy, which is installed on the tanks in 2010, and since that time it actively used to protect Israeli soldiers from rockets manufactured by Hamas militants.
According to singleton, the United States wants to put on their Abrams tanks with the Trophy system, which uses ammunition, similar to grapeshot, to destroy incoming projectiles without damaging nearby soldiers.
The US army also conducted experiments with established in Israel like the active protection system, dubbed “the Iron curtain” (Iron Curtain) for the Stryker armored vehicle, and another system is being tested for combat vehicle (corps) Bradley, but she doesn’t have a name. Raytheon developed the Quick Kill system, which uses a scanning antenna field, and a small missile to destroy the incoming rockets.
Protection from drones
One of the characteristics of warfare in Eastern Ukraine is using both sides of the drones — not to destroy leaders of terrorist organizations, and to manage the fire – just as the military used the first combat aircraft during the first world war.
The past has a strange quality, allowing it to recreate itself, says McMaster. “I have in my whole career never had the need to look up and ask: “Is friendly or enemy?”, and it’s all thanks to the air force of the United States. But now we have to do it, ” said McMaster. — Our air force has provided us with an unprecedented period of air superiority… which changed the dynamics of the fighting ground troops. But now we can no longer count on it”.
Pro-Russian forces are using 16 types of drones to designate targets.
As is known, Russian armed forces have a “reactive system of volley fire with a range of 90 kilometers — the projectile is fired, then the parachute opens, and then it appears from an unmanned aerial vehicle, opens its wings and begins to fly around, and the result is the ability to hit a moving target”, says Karber. He could not say definitely that such systems are used in Ukraine.
The merits of Carbury in the field of accuracy are not particularly shiny, as noted in Foreign Policy magazine, Jeffrey Lewis (Jeffrey Lewis). At various times he was exaggerating China’s nuclear Arsenal — with 300 units (based on declassified estimate) to 3 million supposedly hidden in the mysterious tunnels, and this statement many have been able to refute. In 2014 he handed over the pictures to Senator James Inhofe (James Inhofe) of the Senate armed services Committee, and he then argued that we are talking about recently made photographs of the Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine. It turned out that they were pictures of Agency AP made in 2008.
“We were in a hurry to the airport and tried to respond quickly to last minute urgent request, said Karber as a kind of justification. — I made a mistake, because it seemed to me that we are talking about the same photos… and I didn’t think about the fact that three photographs with images on them of Russian armor were part of this collection, and what they discussed.”
Technical solutions with protection against the fool does not exist
All of these technologies are likely to determine the future field of battle, but none of them is a kind of silver bullet. In addition, according to McMaster, the new technology does not diminish the importance of the man during the seizure, retention and the changing situation on the ground in accordance with the purposes of the operation.
As shown by the current debate regarding the permission to use armed forces in Iraq, the deployment of a significant number of American soldiers became politically impossible for both parties. In the absence of political willingness to give up the fight soldier, lead role there will be to play multi-faith, multi-ethnic armed forces, as is done today in Iraq and in Syria.
“You need a political agreement, this is what should happen, if we do not conduct operations and thus plan to conduct military campaigns that there is a need for political coordination,” he said. — The most important step will be mediation efforts to reach a political cease-fire and mutual understanding”.
Sometimes these kind of things happen at the end of a tank gun.
