via Defense News.
Gen. George Casey said he thinks the future replacement for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle needs to be much lighter than the estimated 70 tons program officials are projecting that the new GCV will weigh.After we all said WTF! a 70 ton IFV, it seems that the Army Chief of Staff is walking this cluster back. Good for him. If the US Army actually stayed with a 70 ton IFV, then the USMC would be doing all the fighting ...well the USMC and the 82nd....
"I keep saying, 'Look, man, an MRAP [mine-resistant ambush-protected] is about 23 tons, and you're telling me this is going to be 70 tons, which is the same as an [M1] Abrams. Surely we can get a level of protection between that, that is closer to the MRAP than it is the M1,' " Casey said June 7. "It's not going to be a super heavyweight vehicle."
Casey's comments come less than a month after Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said at the Armor Conference at Fort Knox, Ky., that the GCV would weigh 50 to 70 tons.
Casey might have just saved his service.
Well about time someone showed evidence of common sense in the military. Although if Chiarelli or some other industry shill is picked to succeed Casey as COS then it might all be for naught..
ReplyDeleteAgree completely, Solomon. Lighter than 80,000 lbs is essential to get two on a C-17. If a EFV weighs 78,000 lbs and carries 17+3 Marines plus all the transformer stuff and huge engine, why on earth would a 9+3 GCV need to weigh 50 tons.
ReplyDeleteBottom line, someone in the armor community wanted tank-like direct fire protection for the GCV, I suspect.
The Isaeli 2006 Lebanon experience has been blown out of proportion as an example of future conflict. The IDF does not deploy overseas and has limited supply lines, so can accept Namer protection. They lost only 121 in 2006 and we lost considerably less in lighter armored Bradley and Marine LAVs/AAVs in Desert Storm and OIF, so not sure the threat justifies the amount of armor.
But beyond deployment headaches, and lack of armored threat justifying tank-like armor for GCVs, there is the fuel burden. As "On Point" cited in Chapter 6 in its history of OIF 1:
"To understand the scale of this effort, CFLCC expected to consume 40 million gallons of fuel by D+20, or about 10 April. By comparison, the Allies in WW I consumed 40 million gallons of gasoline during the four years of the war, a war that Winston Churchill described as having been won "on a sea of oil." By contrast, during World War II, the Allied fuel reserves in Normandy reached 7.5 million gallons only on D+21."
So we want to go from a 2 mpg Bradley to a 2 gallon per mile Abrams fuel consumption for the entire HBCT maneuver fleet?
If the weight-reduction order is carried through: very good news.
ReplyDelete