You say you want to be stealthy, night foot patrols you will see allot more and your dispersion is far better. All vehicles are bullit and RPG magnets.

Rhyno called it, there are many places were there will be no vehicles anywhere off road. I don’t care what type of vehicles you may have to drive. There would be plenty convoy security and road patrol duties for an MRAP type vehicle in those areas.

BTW: Despite total surprise and being unprepared for the threat they faced the Israeli won the Yom Kippur war. How does that in any way show a lack on dominance on their part?

While we do currently dominate the armored battlefield, I’d talk to Ariel Sharon (except that he is currently not taking visitors) and people who were in the Israeli armored corps during the Yom Kippur War before I’d assume that we will always dominate that arena. As you recall, the Israeli’s crushed the combined armies of their neighbors in 1967 but got over confident. They had not foreseen the wire guided anti tank missile for one thing. Due to discipline and a lot of airlifted supplies they did win but they got surprised.

If we had to slug it out on the ground with North Korea for example, would you want to be riding in any MRAP version? Because that was what was available?

Large parts of Afghanistan are flat (and great for growing poppies) and so the MRAP will work there, but lots of it is very rough and I wonder if the somewhat tippy MRAP is going to work there.

Sadly, a lot of the work there in Afghanistan is building roads and providing water, just what the poppy farmers need to get their heroin to market. So it can be shipped to the US.

The US is so dominate in conventional warfare that enemies who try to fight us on the traditional battlefield get slaughtered. Desert Storm had less than four months of actual combat and cost us only a handful of casualties. The insurgent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone on for years and inficted hundreds of times as many casualties. Many of our losses are directly attributable to trying to use vehicles designed for the open battlefield (especially the armored hummer) in an enviroment for which they are not suited.

You can be sure that any enemy we might have to face in the future has taken note of the above. And, like it or not, the bad guys get a vote in what type of battles we have to fight. Since we are so overwhelming in the conventional arena they are going to try and shift the battle to areas where we are weak.

One big question is do we build a chassis for armored combat (low) or one for occupation duty (high). Or do we have the money for some of both?

Do our colleagues from the Armored corps (they seem to be out of favor right now) think that RPG, Sagger-type rockets, etc are still a danger in Blitzkrieg armored operations? Would a fighting vehicle need low profile and multiple layers of armor to defeat infantry weapons?

Roger, and corrected.

Thanks,

Greg

FCS was not cancelled. The manned ground vehicle portion was. The rest of the program, including the network, is being expanded and accelerated.
BTW I love your blog!

FCS was not cancelled. The manned ground vehicle portion was. The rest of the program, including the network, is being expanded and accelerated.

Ever heard a Hybrid Tahoe roll up on you. It’s quieter than a golf cart. High voltage is going to be the issue since 400 Volt systems will be needed. This will require more training levels for maintenance and safety.