The Utility of Paratroopers in Future Conflicts?

[Sea Skimmer]

Put hydraulic jacks on the turret that can be deployed to hold it up after landing, then drive the hull under it. Then you dump the jack gear. You could also just use a crane vehicle, but that's undesirable since then you have to further link up all three pieces on the ground after landing. I mean this is not a great idea, but engineering wise it wouldn't be very difficult to implement. The hydraulic pump would just be a bigger version of the existing turret hydraulic drive system.

[Starglider]

Since the detached turret isn't going to benefit from any cushioning from the vehicle's suspension, you'd probably want to (partially) deploy the jacks before landing and make them function as shock absorbers, in addition to the usual crushable pallet.

[Sea Skimmer]

Your going to need big shocks between the pallet rig and the turret, which is directly under it. When you go to lift this to get the hull under it you would need the jacks on the sides, so something can slide under. The needs of a shock are also more then a bit different then a lifting jack, lifting 30 tons of whatever 3 feet isn't a very big deal with modern hydrualics. Two systems make more sense. Also keep in mind you'll have little clearance around the vehicle in flight on a C-17 or C-5 so you probably can't line the sides of it with deployed equipment. Its gotta be compact when rigged to drop.

The shocks could be one use in combat and recovered for repacking in training. The jacks I'm actually musing now, might well be integral because it seems like they actually won't need to be very big at all for the cylinders. If you unfold them after landing you could also take a little time to attach a big foot. And hope the ground isn't too boggy.

If I was insane the solution to boggy ground would be to air drop the tank hull with only battery power, the battery being part of the flank armor and we can assume a hybrid power train already, while the turret and engine would be one unit as a container with the lifting gear. The engine would be a gas turbine with an added blower stage for the drop and be air dropped with a HOVERSKIRT. This would not only cushion the landing with help (ACV landing gear was a thing once....) but provide a way to skim the turret assembly out of bad ground as a hoverbarge, pulled by the hull with a winch or what not, we will use a DRONE to fly the cable from the hull to the turret-hoverbarge ensuring an utter minimal loss of time.

[Adam Reynolds]

What about something like the M8 Buford, with larger quantities of additional armor that can be added in the field. You would likely never reach the same level of protection as an Abrams, but it is certainly better than nothing.

Though I am also not sure just how much armor could be added in the field with that design. I recall the Stryker requires welding to add armor in most cases.

[Sea Skimmer]

That's already what the M8 did to the limit of its chassis with the level III kit. A much bigger chassis with a much bigger engine would be needed to support usefully heavier armor. Then you hit a new problem, the modules end up big and heavy, to the point you'll need mechanized equipment on the ground to assemble it and this will take a lot of time and require a secure location. At that point simply air landing tanks is simpler.

Remember while a lot of hits and damage are probablistic, most anti tank threats are either fairly light,which the M8 or an improved model of such could defeat, or heavy enough that you really DO need at least MBT level armoring to matter. Thus the leap towards 50 ton or heavier infantry carriers by everyone starting in the 1980s and now rapidly accelerating world wide. Some intermediate level of armor might help against a 125mm sabot round at say, 8km range where a hit would be all but random without guidance. In that vital 1-3km band of combat meanwhile its got to be MBT armor. Mind you the difference in MV at those ranges is not great, roughly 75m/s loss per kilometer of travel early on. This might make a difference on the flank armor at a steep angle but not so much for frontal penetration. A vehicle that is only somewhat heavier is just not going to gain much measurable protection if the enemy is capable of a heavy anti tank defense.

The hope these days is that active protection can tone down the ATGM threats, which seems like its panning out at least in simple engagements, but no convincing kill mechanism exists to let a small active interceptor destroy a sabot round, bursts of small caliber ones, in a catastrophic manner. You might damage the round, but its still going to hit mostly solid. They are after all already intended to smash into solid metal! A total kill would require something on par with hitting them with themselves to cause total mutual erosion.

Quick Kill proposed to solve this by intercepting at 1km range to make incoming 120mm class sabots crash before they could hit instead of destroying them, but the fire control problem involved with doing THAT is obvious. And it requires a much bigger missile then ~10m range interceptors. It was like half a Stinger in size. The Quick Kill program BTW is still alive under a different name, but moving very slowly.

So basically a lot of it does boil down too, do you care about stopping enemy tank fire? Keeping in mind that even 100mm rounds from a T-54 will utterly destroy a vehicle armored like the Bradley. The 43 ton German Puma claims some frontal resistance to 1980s 105mm threats and so should hold up to obsolete Soviet ammo but it would be vapor against anything with a modern tank gun.

Something else though, a sound tactical reason exists to want a reallyheavy vehicles, because it can pretty well smash anything in the assault role, and simply stand up to collective damage better because the suspension is all built heavier. Something like M8 can roll over car wrecks but it won't be effective against deliberate barriers like chained together bus hulks or a berm. With the world growing ever more urbanized that kind of problem is to be the expectation even in low intensity conflicts. Bigger vehicles are also less vulnerable to large explosions simply though mass; relevant against the unending suicide vehicle bomb hoards of ISIL and friends. Syria is outright siege warfare in contrast. Trenches hundreds of yards long dug for tanks, double stacked bus walls and whole buildings filled with earth and sand to become walls and firing platforms. In the 2013 Damascus fighting where Assad almost lost the war some rebel positions had already dug tunnels, under buildings no less, big enough to shelter technicals in.

If your landing a airborne force that might face very uncertain opposition or a fast changing ground situation having a few heavy tanks creates a lot more tactical options. Your odds of actually being blocked are going to be much much lower which creates more confidence in ever launching such an operation. Which is the whole problem with airborne troops, you by nature have no way to recover them the way you do with helicopter assaults. Indeed proper airmobile operations highly exploit this and withdrawl is often a positive. Paratroopers jump out of the damn plane and then god knows what happens.

[Balrog]

Dropping people out of an aircraft, especially at night, is still a great way to get a few people into an area without attracting a lot of attention, at least in some circumstances. So yes, they retain some utility.

I figured it went without saying that covert insertions via parachute would always be useful, the question was more directed at bigger combat drops, which I think people have answered.

If I was insane the solution to boggy ground would be to air drop the tank hull with only battery power, the battery being part of the flank armor and we can assume a hybrid power train already, while the turret and engine would be one unit as a container with the lifting gear. The engine would be a gas turbine with an added blower stage for the drop and be air dropped with a HOVERSKIRT. This would not only cushion the landing with help (ACV landing gear was a thing once....) but provide a way to skim the turret assembly out of bad ground as a hoverbarge, pulled by the hull with a winch or what not, we will use a DRONE to fly the cable from the hull to the turret-hoverbarge ensuring an utter minimal loss of time.

Crazy thought, what about an AFV whose primary means of locomotion is via air-cushion? It uses its blowers (along with parachutes) to make a soft-enough landing, then immediately speed off without having to put itself together. Couldn't slap too much armor on it, but a liberal use of active defense could mitigate that somewhat and it can travel over shitty ground quick.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

You'd have to come up with an armoring scheme for the skirts; otherwise they would be even an easier, more vunerable target than the treads on a track-laying tank.

[Adam Reynolds]

There actually was a combat hovercraft design used in Vietnam, serving a similar purpose to swift boats. But they really only operated on and around rivers. This hypothetical design would really only have utility in an environment like this.

Hovercraft have horrible maneuverability relative to a tracked or wheeled vehicle, with the LCAC's turning radius being in the thousands of yards. It also requires massively greater engine power in relative terms. An LCAC has ten times the engine power of an Abrams, to be able to carry twice the weight of one(including the weight of the hovercraft). I doubt that could scale down to something tank sized all that effectively.

A hovercraft also cannot climb over obstacles the way a tank can, both because lifting off the ground causes a loss of lift, as well as because the skirt would likely be damaged by any such attempt. Armoring the skirt would also be problematic because it would make it less flexible and thus less useful in that sense.

On top of that, I seriously doubt that it would give enough of a performance boost when being dropped from high altitude. Hovercraft are a great landing craft, as they can land on nearly any beach in the world. But they aren't actually all that useful for anything else. If they were, someone would have used it for that purpose by now. They actually haven't even totally replaced conventional landing craft, as the USN still uses the LCU.

For an alternative insane solution, why not use a C-5 Credible Sport II?

[Venator]

With air landing its almost certainly just going to be one plane at a time, and since you probably don't have much ramp space on the ground for C-17 sized aircraft the total operating rate just can't be that high. That was crippling to the Haiti airlift after the earthquake for a prime example. Building up any real force by air landing takes days.

When you say ramp space, are you talking about the physical size of ramp/unloading gear needed for a plane that size cutting into use of the airfield? Clarification for a relative logistics rookie.

What immediately came to mind was a cargo plane with a detachable cargo/passenger compartment a la fixed-wing S-64 where all you need to offload traditionally are a couple tow trucks from the first plane, after which you have the other planes do drop-and-go with the tow vehicles moving the containers around and offloading them out of the way so you can keep planes landing.

For rapidity of deployment, you could even keep container-sections with nonperishable goods, medical supplies, etc. pre-loaded.

Hovercraft have horrible maneuverability relative to a tracked or wheeled vehicle, with the LCAC's turning radius being in the thousands of yards. It also requires massively greater engine power in relative terms. An LCAC has ten times the engine power of an Abrams, to be able to carry twice the weight of one(including the weight of the hovercraft). I doubt that could scale down to something tank sized all that effectively.

Being a twin-engine hovercraft, can't it just kick one fan into reverse and rotate? Or does that not scale effectively with the weight and size of the LCAC.

Given the engine power, I'm assuming fuel consumption and thus operating range on the LCAC is also dreadful?

[Sea Skimmer]

When you say ramp space, are you talking about the physical size of ramp/unloading gear needed for a plane that size cutting into use of the airfield? Clarification for a relative logistics rookie.

Ramp space is the space for parking planes on the ground. Tends to be small or even not exist as a dedicated space on remote third world airfields.

What immediately came to mind was a cargo plane with a detachable cargo/passenger compartment a la fixed-wing S-64 where all you need to offload traditionally are a couple tow trucks from the first plane, after which you have the other planes do drop-and-go with the tow vehicles moving the containers around and offloading them out of the way so you can keep planes landing.

Many planes have been designed on paper like that. None have been built. It will end up making the plane heavier and produce more drag compared to a normal cargo hold to a non trivial degree. The last thing you want on a plane for rough/short field capability is more empty weight.

Vehicles do exist to allow very rapid unloading of pallet cargo, see 60k Tunner Aircraft loader, much better vehicle to land then a tractor. Armored vehicles are always going to be slow unloading because you need so damn many chains to hold them down. And they aren't going to mesh well with huge detaching cargo containers, the amount of dead weight will be enormous.

Honestly one gets back to "TANK GLIDER" with this kind of thinking. Instead of making every plane specialist we make a specialist means to land specific cargo that needs help.

For rapidity of deployment, you could even keep container-sections with nonperishable goods, medical supplies, etc. pre-loaded.

No real point for the cost, you can and to a point the US Army does keep stuff like that on pallets though. And then they can choose to rig those for air drop, or just air land them as needed. But its pretty hard to know what you'll really need, and what do you need will be more the 'fuel ammo, critical parts' avenue then 'food' that's a fairly stable requirement.

Being a twin-engine hovercraft, can't it just kick one fan into reverse and rotate? Or does that not scale effectively with the weight and size of the LCAC.

It won't scale well. The LCAC turns by a combination of rudders and variable throttle blast deflectors forward that are piped off the lift fans. The loosing design for what became the LCAC (as seen in the game COMMAND AND CONQUER) had four fans which could turn 360 degrees and turned better, but it lost out because it was more complex and heavier in terms of empty weight.

With hovercraft this big you really shouldn't think in terms of turn in place but more, how big of a single story house can I run over with it.

Given the engine power, I'm assuming fuel consumption and thus operating range on the LCAC is also dreadful?

Think of it like an 180 ton helicopter. ...well seriously while not that bad hovercraft in general are pretty aircraft like in fuel consumption and operating costs in general. The lifespan of the engines between overhauls for example is aircraft like. But we like them because they cost much less then helicopters up front , and don't have crazy operational problems that huge helicopters. LCAC maximum range with full payload is about 200nm, it uses 5,000 gallons of fuel to do that. In realistic operations the radius of action is about 50-75nm.

It isn't for nothing that only a few of the top navies in the world have anything like hovercraft this scale.

[Elheru Aran]

For rapidity of deployment, you could even keep container-sections with nonperishable goods, medical supplies, etc. pre-loaded.

No real point for the cost, you can and to a point the US Army does keep stuff like that on pallets though. And then they can choose to rig those for air drop, or just air land them as needed. But its pretty hard to know what you'll really need, and what do you need will be more the 'fuel ammo, critical parts' avenue then 'food' that's a fairly stable requirement.

While regrettably callous, armies can fight for a (short) period without food; fighting without water is another story. It's nearly impossible for them to fight without sufficient ammunition and fuel, though. So, obviously, resupplying those is marginally a greater tactical concern than food.

MRE's and such are fairly light (less than half a pound per pack?), so it's not an issue to air-drop a few crates of those if necessary, even somewhat accurately.

Though speaking of air dropping...

Skimmer (and/or anybody else in the know), isn't there some technique where:

C-130 (or 17, or 5, whatever) flies *really* low and slow over an airfield, ramp open.

Airman inside throws out drogue chute and gets the hell out of the way.

Drogue chute opens a larger parachute, which drags out a vehicle on some kind of pallet. Vehicle lands on airfield, presumably with rather a thump.

I'm guessing that this isn't a viable delivery method for MBT's, given their weight?

[Sea Skimmer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgg3iRaVnbw

LAPES, and it won't work for a main battle tank because the tank suspension wouldn't survive hitting the runway. Also it would be absurdly dangerous to actually fly the profile required for LAPES with a C-17 sized aircraft shoving ~80 tons of tank and pallet out the back. More then one C-130 has been wrecked training for this, and cargoes get smashed all the time. I'm not sure if C-17 crews are even trained for this anymore, though the aircraft is certainly capable of carrying out such a mission with lighter cargoes.

LAPES mind you solves little when you have a functional runway anyway. Because now your cargo is scattered blocking the runway.... LAPES can be very useful for air delivering cargo onto non airfield landing zones (being more accurate, better payload then paradrop for) and for delivering cargo onto hot runways under enemy fire where a landing is too simply risky.

It can also sometimes be randomly useful for dropping cargo onto roads, generally in special operations situations, but that goes back to point 2) of a landing simply being too vulnerable.

[Elheru Aran]

It still strikes me as potentially useful for an emergency delivery to a hot LZ, where if the aircraft actually lands it might get destroyed quickly.

Of course, if the LZ is *that* hot, flying low and slow over the drop zone would probably get the aircraft pranged in short order anyway. So yeah, forget that.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah that's kind of the problem. LAPES is far better known and reported on then it is ever used in combat.

At Kah Shan for example used it a few dozen times before it was decided even doing that was too much risk, and smashing too many supplies. If you don't precisely release the cargo well...its going over 100mph and can be flung mighty far, like into your own troops and positions. 2.5 ton pallets going 100mph can wreck a lot of stuff.

Then they tried a modified form in which the LAPES rig was triggered by a hook snared on a wire strung across the runway, similar to a carrier landing trap, but after a few tries at that it was abandon too and all major resupply became air drop. Only C-7s and C-123s landed in small numbers to move personal in and out, and certain supplies like blood that didn't like air drop. LAPES can make sense for tactical assaults, but its hard to see how it could ever work out as a regular thing.

Lots of air drop has been used in Afghanistan to resupply bases as its outright cheaper then moving huge vehicle convoys through the canyons, but I'm not sure LAPES has been used even once.

[Honorius]

Supposedly the US Army did trials in the 1950s and 60s to try to find a way to air drop a medium tank, and splattered a couple of Sherman and M48 hulls in the process. Load simply too big for a parachute rig you can get to deploy and still stow on the plane (clearly external carriage on tank-pylons would improve the situation!). The Russians retro rocket approach to landing the BMDs is pretty neat but the USAF rightly rejects the idea of having a shitload of fused and primed rockets rigged up in the cargo bay like that. It doesn't scale up well either, you start to need active flight control.

But it works and gives the Russians an unsurpassed capability to deliver a hard hitting force to a critical area in the enemy's rear where it can do a lot of damage and hold long enough for its main force to arrive.

If something works an gives you an advantage, you're foolish not to use it. Till we get something like Thunderhawk Transporters from 40K verse, its the only way to get a reasonably powerful mechanized force that can defend itself behind enemy lines to seize and hold a critical objective till your main force arrives.

When you think about it, what group is likely to last longer against a strong armored counter attack till their relief gets to them:

82nd Airborne Battalion paradropped on a key road junction with light Humvees and TOWs or a Soviet BMD Battalion backed by some 2S25s?

I'll place money on the BMD Battalion as it has greater organic firepower and enough armor to last just long enough for relief to arrive and if for whatever reason they got to bail, they are light enough and amphibious to make an escape attempt with their vehicles while the 82nd would be on foot.

[K. A. Pital]

The Russian airborne forces are planning to get light tanks with the same gun as the T-90 in the near future. Firepower matters. If the US can't air-drop stuff other than Humvees (and even these routinely get splattered in the process), that's only their problem.

[Simon_Jester]

Supposedly the US Army did trials in the 1950s and 60s to try to find a way to air drop a medium tank, and splattered a couple of Sherman and M48 hulls in the process. Load simply too big for a parachute rig you can get to deploy and still stow on the plane (clearly external carriage on tank-pylons would improve the situation!). The Russians retro rocket approach to landing the BMDs is pretty neat but the USAF rightly rejects the idea of having a shitload of fused and primed rockets rigged up in the cargo bay like that. It doesn't scale up well either, you start to need active flight control.

But it works and gives the Russians an unsurpassed capability to deliver a hard hitting force to a critical area in the enemy's rear where it can do a lot of damage and hold long enough for its main force to arrive.

Alternatively, if it doesn't work, one stray bit of shrapnel penetrating the cargo bay sets off the solid-fuel rockets you're using to slow down the tanks as they hit the ground. The transport plane goes up in a fireball and takes the tank(s) with it. And yes, that's theoretically a risk no matter what you do, but it's a much greater risk this way.

While the Russians' military strategy certainly isn't any kind of crude 'human wave' nonsense, they do tend to do things which are gambles with the survival of their men, especially in the face of a competent opponent.

If something works an gives you an advantage, you're foolish not to use it. Till we get something like Thunderhawk Transporters from 40K verse, its the only way to get a reasonably powerful mechanized force that can defend itself behind enemy lines to seize and hold a critical objective till your main force arrives.

Bluntly, what it comes down to is risk versus reward. Not all capabilities and advantages are worth the price in lives and military hardware you have to pay, in order to to achieve them.

What matters is not just the firepower and "AWESOME FACTOR" of a military weapon system. What also matters is the logistics, how many you can physically get to the battlefield, with how much, and how quickly. And whether it's affordable and survivable to sustain that force once you get it there.

Sure, it would be great if every soldier could fly and shoot lasers from their eyes. But if it cost a billion dollars to deploy each soldier, or if you had to accept 99 casualties for every one super-soldier you got into the field, it wouldn't matter. You still couldn't do it, or couldn't do it reliably and effectively enough to win a war.

When you think about it, what group is likely to last longer against a strong armored counter attack till their relief gets to them:

82nd Airborne Battalion paradropped on a key road junction with light Humvees and TOWs or a Soviet BMD Battalion backed by some 2S25s?

What if an attack helicopter shows up? The airborne infantry may well do better, since they aren't as dependent on big conspicuous vehicles. Moreover, each BMD or other BMP-based vehicle weighs fifteen to twenty tons. That's 15-20 tons of other supplies and troops you didn't just airdrop on the target. So if you have the same amount of airlift capability in either case, it's more likely to be a choice between airdropping one battalion of Soviet light armor versus two battalions of US airborne infantry.

It sounds to me like in this case there's a good chance that under heavy counterattack, the Soviet battalion starts losing vehicles to antitank missiles from long range, then gets whittled down quickly by the counterattack when the Lanchester Square Law comes into play. If one battalion has to hold out against a regiment it gets squashed a lot faster than two battalions do.

I'll place money on the BMD Battalion as it has greater organic firepower and enough armor to last just long enough for relief to arrive and if for whatever reason they got to bail, they are light enough and amphibious to make an escape attempt with their vehicles while the 82nd would be on foot.

And in either event, while it would be desirable for an airborne force to be able to hold off an armored counterattack, this is not an indispensable capability.

[Zwinmar]

The LCAC provides a solution to what happened at Tarawa, since it stays on top of the water Marines aren't drowning when it hits a reef. Though a grunt nowdays knows to waterproof his pack and use it as a flotation device.

For every tank that can be airlifted in, how many SMAW/Javelins/Stingers etc., can be brought in instead?

[K. A. Pital]

18-19 tons is the maximum weight of equipment that can be airdropped with the current capabilities of the Russian forces.

However, 18-19 tons of light armor are not equivalent to 18-19 tons of supplies and/or ammunition (otherwise there'd be no reason to develop such technology by perhaps the only Army in the world that was seriously preparing to fight a world war for survival instead of curbstomping some Third World nations), it is just that developing the technology to air-drop such heavy vehicles requires giving a lot of effort, which the US was apparently unwilling to do. Or they just suck at folding parachutes.

[Simon_Jester]

For every tank that can be airlifted in, how many SMAW/Javelins/Stingers etc., can be brought in instead?

Agreed; that was basically my point, too. In the context of air-dropping airborne forces behind enemy lines, you're limited in terms of mass, because you can only sortie so many transport planes so many times during the airdrop.

If one BMT weighs as much, physically, as a platoon of infantry, then the decision to send a BMT corresponds to the decision not to send a platoon of infantry.

If the mission involves holding a static position against counterattack until reinforcements can arrive (a typical WWII-era airborne mission), then adding a platoon of infantry with modern heavy weapons are likely to do the job better than adding a fifteen-ton AFV.

However, 18-19 tons of light armor are not equivalent to 18-19 tons of supplies and/or ammunition (otherwise there'd be no reason to develop such technology by perhaps the only Army in the world that was seriously preparing to fight a world war for survival instead of curbstomping some Third World nations), it is just that developing the technology to air-drop such heavy vehicles requires giving a lot of effort, which the US was apparently unwilling to do. Or they just suck at folding parachutes.

The ability to airdrop light armor is much more useful if the enemy does not have a healthy supply of AA and antitank weapons, where being extremely mobile is more important than numbers and survivability. In other words, in exactly the sort of "curbstomping some Third World nations" you decry.

[Adam Reynolds]

18-19 tons is the maximum weight of equipment that can be airdropped with the current capabilities of the Russian forces.

However, 18-19 tons of light armor are not equivalent to 18-19 tons of supplies and/or ammunition (otherwise there'd be no reason to develop such technology by perhaps the only Army in the world that was seriously preparing to fight a world war for survival instead of curbstomping some Third World nations), it is just that developing the technology to air-drop such heavy vehicles requires giving a lot of effort, which the US was apparently unwilling to do. Or they just suck at folding parachutes.

Fighting a world war for survival in an era with nuclear weapons is utterly impossible. Not to mention that most of those "armored" vehicles are vulnerable to modern heavy machine gun fire. Which is why the US reasonably doesn't even have any amphibious armor left, let alone airborne.

On top of that, wasting resources to develop things or somewhat marginal utility like the ability to airdrop armored fighting vehicles is partially why the Soviet Union failed in the first place. The US abandoned its proposed vehicles that do this for a reason, the cost isn't really worth the benefit.

The ability to airdrop light armor is much more useful if the enemy does not have a healthy supply of AA and antitank weapons, where being extremely mobile is more important than numbers and survivability. In other words, in exactly the sort of "curbstomping some Third World nations" you decry.

Given the problem with IEDs in Iraq, I doubt it even has much utility there. Even worse, If the group you are up against is as well equipped as Hezbollah was against Israel, you should completely forget bringing anything with less armor than an upgraded Bradley. Even then, your armor is taking casualties.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, if you don't mind taking some casualties, there's a lot of benefit to building vehicles that are at least armored against light shrapnel and small arms. They act as a profound force multiplier, because only a handful of the enemy's heaviest weapons and special ambush tactics can even threaten them. For instance, a group of ten men with rifles and grenades can hope to pin down and meaningfully harm an infantry platoon. They'll lose a straight-up fight with the platoon eventually if they don't have a way to escape the area, but they can inflict a few casualties and slow the platoon down significantly.

The squad of riflemen has no realistic chance of doing the same against a platoon of light tanks. It's simply pointless; they'll get the crud blasted out of them to little or no effect, unless they have a rocket launcher. Even if they do, it's a nontrivial challenge to get into a firing position and inflict significant damage.

This is one reason the American strategy of building medium tanks worked well in Normandy and resulted in the US advancing, despite the Germans having famously heavier and tougher tanks that would beat an American medium one to one. The difference between having a strong tank and having a weak tank on your side, in a small scale infantry action, is much narrower than the difference between having any tank versus having no tank at all. The Americans consistently had tank support, while the Germans had support from stronger tanks, but much less frequently. Thus, while one German heavy was beating one American medium in one place, five more American mediums were busy rolling up their parts of the line while the German infantry in those areas screamed for armor support and didn't get it.

Also, swarms of light armor tend to favor attack over defense (note that the Soviets planned to attack in Europe during the Cold War). They have less trouble advancing over damaged infrastructure, they're generally easier to support logistically, and the lack of protection matters less when they're NOT constantly up against the enemy's heaviest firepower.

This is why I thought the idea of paradropping light armor in to hold a road junction was a bad idea. One of light armor's greatest strengths is its tactical mobility; why would you throw that away by assigning it to defend a static location? That's an infantry mission, isn't it?

...

The catch is that while having a lot of relatively light vehicle support does help you in a concrete way, you have to commit to the war knowing you're going to take noticeable attritional casualties, lose materiel and men to the enemy's heavy weapons, accepting that as the cost of doing business.

This is basically the mindset that, for instance, the US went into Vietnam with its conscript army with- which is why the US was rolling around with M113s, M551s, and so on- light tanks and APCs that could be used amphibiously or as airborne units.

Those vehicles were in fact useful... but they took casualties. Which was accepted; American generals (whose mindset was set in large part by World War Two experience) were willing. to take casualties to win

Trouble is, this resulted in the US losing the war on the home front. Because while the American military-political establishment might accept casualties as the cost of doing business, the American public didn't see why it was worth fifty thousand dead or more to maintain an American puppet state in South Vietnam.

[K. A. Pital]

Air-dropped armored vehicles make sense when fighting against a real enemy - even if their lifetime in combat is extremely short (in intense combat, the lifetime of just about every piece of technology is extremely short). They don't make much sense in a curbstomp war as the aviation and normal advances of the ground forces quickly subdue the enemy and after that it is essentially an insurency. Being extremely mobile is relevant when the theatre of operations is large.

I think that the actual problems faced by the Soviet Army in Afghanistan demonstrated well enough that it was built around a concept of a world war, not for local counter-insurgency operations.

Fighting a world war for survival in an era with nuclear weapons is utterly impossible.

That may very well be, I only said it was the way the army was built. It is a Dr Strangelove-like situation where the perception of the military establishment determines the shape of the forces, and not the reality - what's really possible or impossible. Mineshaft gap, all that.

The light tanks were not meant to last. They were meant to be wiped out along with the rest of the hardware in the flames of global war.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Which is why the US reasonably doesn't even have any amphibious armor left.

The USMC still uses the AAV, but no, no amphibious tanks.

The US hasn't had an air-droppable tank since the Sheridan, and that was an unmitigated disaster, with their last air-droppable anti-tank vehicle, the Ontos, only being marginally better in combat.

Is the Stryker/LAV family of vehicles air-droppable, or merely air-transportable?

[Simon_Jester]

Air-dropped armored vehicles make sense when fighting against a real enemy - even if their lifetime in combat is extremely short (in intense combat, the lifetime of just about every piece of technology is extremely short). They don't make much sense in a curbstomp war as the aviation and normal advances of the ground forces quickly subdue the enemy and after that it is essentially an insurency. Being extremely mobile is relevant when the theatre of operations is large.

Being extremely mobile is relevant not just when the theater of operations is large, but when the ratio of force to space is small. When overwhelming force is present, it matters little if the space involved is large. And World War Three blowing up in Central Europe would have been characterized by a great deal of (nuclear and conventional) force in a very limited physical space.

I think that the actual problems faced by the Soviet Army in Afghanistan demonstrated well enough that it was built around a concept of a world war, not for local counter-insurgency operations.

The problem is not that the Soviet Army failed to be intended for fighting a world war. The problem is that even within that context, air-dropping tanks is a questionable move. It is a capability that struggles to find utility, a solution in search of a problem, when the alternative is to drop more infantry.

Fighting a world war for survival in an era with nuclear weapons is utterly impossible.

That may very well be, I only said it was the way the army was built. It is a Dr Strangelove-like situation where the perception of the military establishment determines the shape of the forces, and not the reality - what's really possible or impossible. Mineshaft gap, all that.

The catch is that this can be a profoundly cost-ineffective way to organize a military, because you spend great sums on capabilities that are largely worthless, both in peacetime and in wartime.

So that does not really address the criticism that air-dropped armor formations don't make very much strategic sense.

The light tanks were not meant to last. They were meant to be wiped out along with the rest of the hardware in the flames of global war.

The problem is that even in that context, airdropping them makes relatively little sense, because when everything is expendable, you want to expend minimum resources in exchange for maximum results, in order to secure the maximum results possible overall.

The only way they DO start to make sense is if you just stop even trying to calculate how costly it is to operate things. Which is very possible to do under the Soviet system because of the way budgeting works in a command economy, but which is obviously not a good idea.

And remember, my criticism of air-dropped armored formations is that they are counterproductive. Not that they are somehow inconsistent with the idiom of the Soviet military.