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Innovation

There, FTYF ;)

Defence Budget​

  • The Department of National Defence (DND) is the second largest department within the federal government in terms of budget and the largest in terms of size. In 2023-24, DND’s budget accounted for approximately 6.1% of the total Main Estimates for Canada.

There’s a very large amount of creativity in that single statement.

Size? WGAF? And that’s not even true unless you pretend that the Federal Public Service, at 367,000430% the size of the CAF’s 85,000 (63,000 RegF/22,000 PRes) doesn’t count as a ‘Department’ (weasel words for sure, if someone says it’s not a de facto department).

Budget? 2nd largest? Discretionary budget at best, and conveniently keeps separate the Dept of Crown-Indigenous Relations & Northern Affairs and Dept of Indian Affairs, which together have a larger budget than DND, and the Depts of Finance (4.5x bigger than DND), Economic and Social Development (3x bigger than DND), etc. but they are less wholly discretionary (slushy fundy)…More weasel words/assessment

The key factor that a Federal Government never says openly is DNd is the biggest chunk of money that it can direct/imfkuence/control where the money is spent, than any other chunk of money
 
I really don’t understand why you keep saying that given their IRD Budgets dwarf the CAF budget.

The efforts to innovate are predicated on maintaining their pre-eminence. They work to maintain the status quo.

The Ukrainians innovate to disrupt.
 
Further to my last

Entropy - a concept central to the second law of thermodynamics that expresses the measure of the disorder of a system that occurs over a period of time when there is no energy applied to keep order in the system. Think of a playroom in a preschool; if no energy is put into keeping it tidy, it quickly becomes disordered with toys all over the floor, a state of high entropy. If energy is put in via cleaning up and organizing the room once the children leave, then the room returns to a state of order and low entropy.

The natural tendency of the universe is to disorder, also known as chaos.

The military mind is devoted to order.

It is attracted to the Sun King's gardens.

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It aspires to the Household Division on Parade

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To tanks in warehouses, ships in harbour and aircraft on runways

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But all of those are unnatural states. All that is required to reduce that order back to chaos is a small band of anti-social reprobates and drunks with dreams of glory and a cheque book.

1725573813563.png...

....

The Western Military Industrial Complex is predicated on creating space for all those troops, tanks, ships and planes to be created and ordered, creating a safe-space free from David Stirling and Paddy Mayne (and their Polish compadre Popski ).

In order to keep that space safe a lot of good ideas have been buried because they would threaten that well ordered vision. I am always drawn to the fight against ATGMs, Merlins, FOG-Ms, Netfires with its LAMs and PAMs. It is those very weapons that are now being built in a hurry, at low cost, and being employed to great effect against the highly ordered Russians.

....

And the Ukrainian way of war is winning. Winning in the sense that it is preventing the Russians from winning. And the US Army seems to be observing and deciding that even their highly ordered solutions would struggle in the Ukrainian environment.

It appears to be a given that concentration of forces is going to be hard to achieve, that it will take time and it will require moving forces in small numbers over long distances discretely. Tanks will not move in regiments, or even squadrons, but will be infiltrated in twos and threes, in penny-packets.

The fight is a dispersed fight with small units facing each other and working to prevent the other side organizing a break through force. The struggle is to impose order on an increasingly chaotic battle space.

....

There is an alternative. Learn to live with chaos. Accept that imposing order may be difficult if not impossible and learn to work around the edges. The alternative view to Versailles is the English Country Garden

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Reduce the scale, work with what is given to you, accept the chaos and manage it round the edges. Work to prevent being overwhelmed.

....

Thornal also said that the 101st had more sense and strike capabilities than units that the opposing force previously fought so they tried to change their own behavior as well.

“When we were infiltrating the area of operations, we had to use converging routes methods, so using multiple routes to make it harder to identify the main effort,” he said. “We had to serialize our movements so instead of sending eight tanks in at once — two here, two here, two here — it made us much slower.”

The takeaway for both sides, Thornal said, is the importance of concealment, dispersion, camouflage, and displacement. In layman’s terms that means moving quickly and quietly with smaller units to avoid detection by enemy forces via drone or having little to no signature on the electromagnetic spectrum which can be used to determine the size or makeup of a military’s assets like a refueling point or a battalion headquarters.


....

We have done ourselves no service by creating safe-spaces for tanks and aircraft and ships. We should have been learning how to make use of them when David Stirling's mates were running rampant and taking advantage of any available technology.
 
The efforts to innovate are predicated on maintaining their pre-eminence. They work to maintain the status quo.

The Ukrainians innovate to disrupt.
You really don't understand those companies then.

The issue with the Big 3-5 is that they do not want to show anything before it is 110% ready - either due to concerns of others stealing their work - but also not wanting to be seen failing. You don't devote tens (and hundreds) of Billions to Internal R&D if you aren't looking to be a disruptor.
 
You really don't understand those companies then.

The issue with the Big 3-5 is that they do not want to show anything before it is 110% ready - either due to concerns of others stealing their work - but also not wanting to be seen failing. You don't devote tens (and hundreds) of Billions to Internal R&D if you aren't looking to be a disruptor.

And I don't think you understand the inertia associated with sunk costs.

The push is to produce the best tank, not to render the tank obsolete and have it follow the horse and the chariot into history.
 
And I don't think you understand the inertia associated with sunk costs.

The push is to produce the best tank, not to render the tank obsolete and have it follow the horse and the chariot into history.
You've mentioned the obsolescence of tanks a few times now, I don't think you quite understand the absolutely vital role they play on the battlefield. Nitpicky on my part but it's worth stating.
 
You've mentioned the obsolescence of tanks a few times now, I don't think you quite understand the absolutely vital role they play on the battlefield. Nitpicky on my part but it's worth stating.

I'm no stating that tanks are obsolete, or even obsolescent.
I am stating that tanks are not obsolete as an act of will.

I agree that tanks are a key element in taking ground and that taking ground is absolutely necessary if you wish to impose your will on the enemy by winning battles.

My contention is that the tank has been under threat since 1973 and the Yom Kippur War. Suitcase Saggers scared the heck out of the tankies.
They also gave the infantry new life. And put some new ideas into play.

During the Cold War NATO faced down the Warsaw Pact tank armies. The Russians had more tanks and more soldiers as a result of devoting more of their economy to WW2 technology. NATO wanted to buy cars and fridges as well as tanks. It needed an asymmetric solution to the Soviet Tank Armies.

AirLand Battle came out of that . AirLand Battle - Wikipedia

Other bright ideas followed. Neutron bombs were amongst them. Neutron bomb - Wikipedia. Kill the tankies. Save the tank.

Another bright idea was DARPA's Assault Breaker programme. Assault Breaker - Wikipedia.

Assault Breaker was a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program begun in 1978 to integrate a number of technologies including lasers, electro-optical sensors, microelectronics, data processors and radars important for precision guided munitions (PGMs).

Assault Breaker was conceived to attack moving, rear echelon armor massed deep behind enemy lines. At the time the program commenced the only means for attacking these targets was by the use of manned, penetrating aircraft. The perceived advantage of Assault Breaker was that it would permit attacking these targets with standoff weapons.

Over a four-year period, Assault Breaker laid the technological foundation for several smart-weapon systems that were ultimately fielded. Among these systems were the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), which integrated PGMs with advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems developed with DARPA support; the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles; a United States Air Force air-to-ground missile with terminally guided submunitions; the Army Tactical Missile System (ATMS), which featured all-weather, day/night capability effective against mobile and other targets; and the Brilliant Anti-Tank (BAT) submunition, which used acoustic sensors on its wings to detect and target tanks.<a href="Assault Breaker - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></a>

Other bright ideas included:

Merlin, Strix and Brimstone PGMs guided by MMW Radar - seeking their own targets autonomously once in the backfield.
FOG-M, EFOG-M and Polyphem Fibre Optic Guided Missiles - from which the Spike N-LOS system evolved.
NETFIRES vertical launch autonomous systems with PGMs and LAMs (Loitering Attack Munitions).
Javelin and N-LAWs
Excaliburs and PGM kits for 155s
Cruise missiles.

Many of those ideas are currently finding expression in the Ukrainian conflict after being cancelled or slow-walked by the military establishment.

There is no shortage of ideas when it comes to attriting heavy forces. There is a shortage of actual manufactured systems.

I can build tank killers faster and cheaper than you can build tanks.

The fact that the Ukrainians, and Americans, are short of tank killing systems, comes down to the same reason that the US is short of 155mm ammunition, ATACMs and missiles of all sorts.

They chose not to build them.

....

Agincourt, Crecy and Poitiers were won by fletchers of England that supplied the bowmen with more arrows than the French knights could absorb.

The fletchers made the armoured knight obsolete.

That was a choice.
 
The Hedgehog strategy, based on the superiority of the defence, doesn't serve the interests of those that would strive to impose their order on others.

If the defence is supreme then every country gets to make its own rules.
 
The US Army discovering Kaizen?



 
And I don't think you understand the inertia associated with sunk costs.

The push is to produce the best tank, not to render the tank obsolete and have it follow the horse and the chariot into history.
I think you tend to wish away some realities.

You mistake the role of the tank, and why the efforts to render it obsolete won’t occur / at least until we have energy shields and plasma weapons on the battlefield.

Sunk costs keep certain things going, but if you think that RTX, LM, GD, Boeing, BAE, etc are sitting around pushing their legacy systems you have no inkling as to their methodology.




I'm no stating that tanks are obsolete, or even obsolescent.
I am stating that tanks are not obsolete as an act of will.

I agree that tanks are a key element in taking ground and that taking ground is absolutely necessary if you wish to impose your will on the enemy by winning battles.

My contention is that the tank has been under threat since 1973 and the Yom Kippur War. Suitcase Saggers scared the heck out of the tankies.
They also gave the infantry new life. And put some new ideas into play.

During the Cold War NATO faced down the Warsaw Pact tank armies. The Russians had more tanks and more soldiers as a result of devoting more of their economy to WW2 technology. NATO wanted to buy cars and fridges as well as tanks. It needed an asymmetric solution to the Soviet Tank Armies.

AirLand Battle came out of that . AirLand Battle - Wikipedia

Other bright ideas followed. Neutron bombs were amongst them. Neutron bomb - Wikipedia. Kill the tankies. Save the tank.

Another bright idea was DARPA's Assault Breaker programme. Assault Breaker - Wikipedia.





Other bright ideas included:

Merlin, Strix and Brimstone PGMs guided by MMW Radar - seeking their own targets autonomously once in the backfield.
Ask yourself who came up with that concept.
If you don’t answer a JV between LocMart and RTX, you’re not only wrong but not even in the same playing field.

FOG-M, EFOG-M and Polyphem Fibre Optic Guided Missiles - from which the Spike N-LOS system evolved.
NETFIRES vertical launch autonomous systems with PGMs and LAMs (Loitering Attack Munitions).
Javelin and N-LAWs
Excaliburs and PGM kits for 155s
Cruise missiles.

Many of those ideas are currently finding expression in the Ukrainian conflict after being cancelled or slow-walked by the military establishment.
I’m curious what color the sky is in your world at times.

There is no shortage of ideas when it comes to attriting heavy forces. There is a shortage of actual manufactured systems.

I can build tank killers faster and cheaper than you can build tanks.
I don’t think you understand how hard it is to actually kill at NATO MBT.

Consider how many Challengers, Abram’s and Leo2’s have been actually destroyed by Russia, and realize it is simply a fraction of those sent, and how much it took them to do so. It was not a very economical method for Russia for what they have gotten.

The fact that the Ukrainians, and Americans, are short of tank killing systems, comes down to the same reason that the US is short of 155mm ammunition, ATACMs and missiles of all sorts.

They chose not to build them.
Sort in terms of what? We go to war with the USAF and USN as well. Ukraine doesn’t have all the resources that we do down here. So they have needed a lot more of certain munitions -
....

Agincourt, Crecy and Poitiers were won by fletchers of England that supplied the bowmen with more arrows than the French knights could absorb.

The fletchers made the armoured knight obsolete.

That was a choice.
We have a plethora of anti missile systems that make your analogy a little weak.

You keep seeing the Ukrainian conflict as a mirror to a LSCO involving the US and the rest of NATO, and while there are some aspects that are interesting, the fact remains that it isn’t a good example.
 
During the 1990s, the U.S. defense industry underwent drastic consolidation. As an example, the number of aerospace and defense prime contractors shrank from 51 to 5: Lockheed Martin (LM), Raytheon, General Dynamics (GD), Northrop Grumman (NG), and Boeing.5 The trend toward consolidation has continued in the last five years, due to vertical and horizontal integrations and the entry of private equity firms performing roll ups.


During the Cold War there was a lot more room for innovation. A lot more companies pitching ideas rather than waiting for detailed RFPs from the bureaucrats.
 
A proposal to spur more innovation by financing more competitors to the Big 5.


Reversion to status quo ante 1992.
 
“Rather than striving for perfection before delivering to the frontline, capabilities at 60-80% of their full potential will be provided to the user, allowing early application, and subsequent improvements to reach their full potential.”

Essentially, this plan eases the stress on UK industry to supply much-needed military systems at pace at the cost of buying bespoke alterations, instead the Government has opted for systems off-the-shelf.


British Army

  • 120 mm mortars to replace the 81 mm L16
  • Brimstone to be added to supply Fire and Forget Assault Breaker PGM (ground launch, naval launch, air launch) - Apache will use the JAGM
  • British army to introduce the 70mm rocket into service as a cheap multi-role alternative. (76 mm Thales Martlet might be an alternative)

....




....


I assume that despite the Brimstone family being in widespread use in all services that the American JAGM solution is the preferred solution for compatibilty with the American AH-64E Apache.
 
You will get NODLR and VECTOR hand downs and like it ;)

Sad fact those 200 aren’t even enough for the Reg Force with a reasonable scale of issue.
Bold of you to assume we still get to use our NODLRs lol. They removed everything but the cases from most units scales of issue...the case works decent as a range box, don't make me tell you how I know lol.

The old VECTORs would be sick though, something at least.
 
You will get NODLR and VECTOR hand downs and like it ;)

Sad fact those 200 aren’t even enough for the Reg Force with a reasonable scale of issue.

Don't tease us, we would do terrible, terrible things to get even a single working VECTOR.
 
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