For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_(countermeasure)

But yeah - for reasons I suspect few have been deployed 

Edited March 4, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[TheSaint]

3 hours ago, K^2 said:

But then do you really need a tank? Or do you want a light APC with active defense and just enough armor to withstand kinetic rounds from anything light enough to be carried? I'm sure that would lead to a bit of a resurgence of recoilless rifles with purely kinetic rounds, but these weapons are inherently unguided, and so the effectiveness won't be nearly as high as that of modern anti-tank missiles.

Depends on who you're fighting. If you're fighting insurgents in an asymmetric warfare scenario, sure. If you're fighting MBTs in a peer adversary scenario, maybe not. Because large-caliber kinetic rounds won't be intercepted by active defense systems any time soon. 

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Ummm... 

There is some hope for Active Defense moving forward... But there are lots of pictures of tanks without turrets popping up on the internet these days - and some have AD systems (or at least reactive armor). 

The tradeoff is that the AD system (and reactive armor) that saves the tank from a hit kills the friendly infantry.  And in an urban or mixed environment, a tank without infantry support is a dead thing.   FWIW, infantry really like having tanks with them in the fight... But not if they are in as much danger from the friend as the enemy. 

(if anyone is going to solve these issues - it would most likely be the Israelis.  They have some really innovative stuff). 

Well, couple things:

1. Point of order: Reactive armor is not active defense. Two totally different concepts. Reactive armor enhances the armor's protective effect against HEAT rounds and some kinetic rounds. Active defense works to prevent the vehicle from ever being hit by a guided missile/rocket in the first place. So, a defeated tank with reactive armor does not discredit active defense systems like Iron Fist or Trophy.

2. Yes, active defense creates a danger zone around the vehicle. At the moment. 

3. There are no perfect solutions.

[K^2]

11 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

If you're fighting MBTs in a peer adversary scenario, maybe not.

I would argue that if you're a military capable of producing APCs with active defense systems in mass quantities, and you come across a peer adversary's MBTs that you have not neutralized with drone and air strikes yet, you are doing modern warfare very, very wrong.

13 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Point of order: Reactive armor is not active defense.

Counterpoint of chaos: I don't think anyone so far has been confused about that. I certainly didn't read @JoeSchmuckatelli as implying they are the same, and I'm also confident he's well aware of the difference. But, I suppose, it does no harm to reiterate for casual reader.

16 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Yes, active defense creates a danger zone around the vehicle. At the moment.

That's definitely a good point, and you'd have to build tactics around that. But a) that problem already existed with reactive armor, and b) a heat round going off next to you might not be as bad as anti-personnel fragmentation grenade, but it's still bad news. So infantry moving with armor has to respect the distance regardless. You have to move a little further from a tank with reactive armor, and a little further yet if it's an active defense.

Besides, if your armored units are built more around light APCs than heavy artillery units, and you rely on air support for strikes, you can probably get away with your infantry spending more time inside, where they are protected by the active defense, rather than outside, where they are threatened by it. That, of course, is all highly situational. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

28 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Reactive armor is not active defense

Point of order acknowledged.  I knowingly conflated the two because both are hard on infantry - to make that point. 

(I started out as an Infantry Officer before I became an Armor Officer - so I have legacy sympathies against killing Blue Team grunts!).  

 

[monophonic]

21 hours ago, ARS said:

Could MANPADS locks on grounded aircraft? (Either with engine turned on or not) is there a minimum altitude limit where MANPADS couldn't lock to aircraft? and if the missile is heatseeking type, could it be aimed at tanks with running engine to be used as a makeshift (albeit ineffective) AT missile?

Others have covered most aspects already, but I'll add some tidbits. RBS-70 warhead has a small HEAT component primarily meant against the armour on attack helicopters. Regardless it can also penetrate lightly armored vehicles like the BMP-2. As a laser beamrider it is also trivial to guide at ground targets.

Also the reciprocal approach exists. The Javelin anti-tank missile has a direct attack mode for attacking buildings, tanks under cover e.g. bridges, or too close for the top attack mode. In that mode it can also be fired at and hit low flying helicopters.

16 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I don't know about tanks specifically, but Soviet R-3S air-to-air missiles (reverse engineered AIM-9B Sidewinder) were capable of being fired at ground targets with a high heat signature, and tests conducted were successful at hitting the target accurately.

That was with 1st generation IR missiles (the ones that regularly flew off towards the sun and had a horrendous performance record in Vietnam), so presumably modern MANPADS could do the same thing. I can't confirm that, however.

EDIT- It should be noted that MANPADS have HE warheads, so it wouldn't do anything to the tank, although maybe if it hits near an exhaust vent, it might set the engine on fire. Again, I can't confirm that, I am just theorizing.

Shooting ground targets at night was tested in Vietnam with 1st gen Sidewinders too. Modern tank engines are protected against incendiary weapons so they are unlikely to get set on fire by Molotov's let alone small HE charge like in a MANPAD. Like already said the weakest part is the crew: scare them and they might retreat. Next comes the tracks and optics.

Fun fact: The original R-3 was so close a copy of the AIM-9B that you could take apart an example of both, randomly mix the subassemblies from them and end up with a fully functioning missile. After all, why try to fix perfection?

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Counterpoint of chaos

This is my new favorite saying.    Thank you. 

[DDE]

4 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Reactive armor is not active defense. Two totally different concepts.

I think one of the French systems has already merged the two - setting ERA off ahead of impact...

[SunlitZelkova]

Q1: Guns/cannons would need a significant redesign to fire on the Moon, but what about unguided aircraft rockets like the HYDRA-70 and S-8KO? Would fitting one of the smaller pods (I think they had ones for the HYDRA with as few as 5 rockets per pod) in place of landing gear on a lunar lander have been feasible to create (an albeit limited in capability) "attack spacecraft"?

Q2: In the opinion of whoever chooses to reply, do you think it would have been possible for space exploration to *become a thing* and advance without WWII and the Cold War? Or would it have taken far longer?

In regards to Q3, I myself am only able to form half an opinion. The activities of rocket enthusiasts during the interwar era were rather simple and only began to pick up pace when rearmament began. The A-4 would have taken far longer to come together if it hadn't had military funding. On the other hand, the engineering was there so at the very least, it would have existed on paper.

But for getting in to orbital flight, I am unaware of just how massive an army of human computers both sides utilized to create their first ICBMs, and then I am also unfamiliar with computer history as it relates to engineering within the context of how its development was influenced by the war and Cold War, so I can't say what less emphasis on computers without a dire need to break codes means down the line for using computers to get to the Moon.

[lrd.Helmet]

35 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Q1: Guns/cannons would need a significant redesign to fire on the Moon, but what about unguided aircraft rockets like the HYDRA-70 and S-8KO? Would fitting one of the smaller pods (I think they had ones for the HYDRA with as few as 5 rockets per pod) in place of landing gear on a lunar lander have been feasible to create (an albeit limited in capability) "attack spacecraft"?

Q2: In the opinion of whoever chooses to reply, do you think it would have been possible for space exploration to *become a thing* and advance without WWII and the Cold War? Or would it have taken far longer?

In regards to Q3, I myself am only able to form half an opinion. The activities of rocket enthusiasts during the interwar era were rather simple and only began to pick up pace when rearmament began. The A-4 would have taken far longer to come together if it hadn't had military funding. On the other hand, the engineering was there so at the very least, it would have existed on paper.

But for getting in to orbital flight, I am unaware of just how massive an army of human computers both sides utilized to create their first ICBMs, and then I am also unfamiliar with computer history as it relates to engineering within the context of how its development was influenced by the war and Cold War, so I can't say what less emphasis on computers without a dire need to break codes means down the line for using computers to get to the Moon.

A2: Without WW2 there would probably be no European Union, so I'd think there would be less cooperation. However war costs a lot of money and lives, so you would have more to spend on research and development and you'd probably haven't killed off a large group of smart people. I wouldn't know which of these would have more of an impact on progress. However because no ww2 there is no east vs west Europe so probably no need to have the space race, so probably no people on the moon. Satelites and stuff would be developed eventually because there is a specific use for them.

I'm not a historian or anything so take my analysis with a grain of salt.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Things are consequences of other things... 

One argument for why Age of Empire Europeans were able to out compete other civilizations is how nasty the competition between countries within Europe.  This leads to the argument that despite the hardship of 'competition' between nations... Where they don't annihilate one another - its kinda good for the species. Or perhaps we (as a species) are simply good at making good things out of bad; people may have developed Radar to help them become better at killing other people... But now I can use that tech to heat up my burrito. 

... 

So - if you posit an absence of a Cold War between the West and Soviets... What fills the vacuum? 

When looking at the absence of a WW2 - you have to ask whether Europe was willing to continue with the results of WW1... And do you need to change the ending of WW1 (plus the follow-on political and economic realities) to prevent WW2... And so what does that world look like? 

Edited March 4, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Terwin]

According to this video, a post-office worker who was always denied the opportunity to build an electronic sorting machine put a lot of his own money into building a huge code cracking computer to counter Enigma.  After the war, his Post office superiors continued to refuse permission to build the sorting machine because it was larger than thought possible, but many of those that worked on the anti-enigma machine went on to be foundational in creating general digital computers

 

So, considering that the man with the vision to start the process only did so due to the war(using his own money for the first version after getting turned down by the war office because it was deemed impossible), it is entirely possible that general digital computers would still not be a thing if not for WW2 code breaking.

I cannot imagine this would have been good for rocketry.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

10 hours ago, K^2 said:

I would argue that if you're a military capable of producing APCs with active defense systems in mass quantities, and you come across a peer adversary's MBTs that you have not neutralized with drone and air strikes yet, you are doing modern warfare very, very wrong.

This made me laugh - and I agree wholeheartedly!

 

10 hours ago, K^2 said:

your infantry spending more time inside, where they are protected by the active defense, rather than outside, where they are threatened by it. That, of course, is all highly situational. 

This is an interesting thing.  On one hand, if your infantry is inside the vehicle, not only are they in grave danger... they're arguably not infantry (you simply have an AFV until you have a hot communal coffin).

...

<Much pontificating about warfare deleted>

...

I think what you can expect from the future is that along with Tanks, AFVs and other 'infantry' assets are there to transport you and keep you somewhat alive between the battlegrounds, which most will be urban areas moving forward.  This is to the detriment of us all.  Fighters engaged in asymmetrical warfare have learned to cling to difficult terrain for their own defense... and currently that's cities; where the civilians live.  A 'clean' war (myth) is one where militaries meet outside the cities and resolve their differences with little harm to civilian populations.  That bubble is being popped.

 

....

 

 

EDIT: Damnit - I wish this had not merged!

.

 

 

...

32 minutes ago, Terwin said:

According to this video, a post-office worker who was always denied the opportunity to build an electronic sorting machine put a lot of his own money into building a huge code cracking computer to counter Enigma.  After the war, his Post office superiors continued to refuse permission to build the sorting machine because it was larger than thought possible, but many of those that worked on the anti-enigma machine went on to be foundational in creating general digital computers

 

So, considering that the man with the vision to start the process only did so due to the war(using his own money for the first version after getting turned down by the war office because it was deemed impossible), it is entirely possible that general digital computers would still not be a thing if not for WW2 code breaking.

I cannot imagine this would have been good for rocketry.

I love stories of humans making plows out of swords!  Thanks!

Edited March 4, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[TheSaint]

9 hours ago, K^2 said:

I would argue that if you're a military capable of producing APCs with active defense systems in mass quantities, and you come across a peer adversary's MBTs that you have not neutralized with drone and air strikes yet, you are doing modern warfare very, very wrong.

<snip>

Besides, if your armored units are built more around light APCs than heavy artillery units, and you rely on air support for strikes, you can probably get away with your infantry spending more time inside, where they are protected by the active defense, rather than outside, where they are threatened by it. That, of course, is all highly situational. 

One problem: We're discussing a peer adversary scenario. At a minimum you should be assuming that you're fighting your ground war under contested airspace with inconsistent air support. And your worst case scenario will be fighting (offensively or defensively) without air superiority. So if you are left without air support, and only have thin-skinned armor which is dependent on air support for its survival, you may be in trouble.

(TBH, I think this is exactly where the US Army is right now. They've spent the last 20 years focused on asymmetric warfare, so their AFV development has been focused on LAVs and MRAPs; vehicles which work great in an environment which has completely uncontested airspace and no opposing AFV elements. And I think they got a huge wake-up call last week. But I digress.) 

Also, the entire point of the discussion was what would happen if armor-based active defense systems rendered low-velocity anti-tank weapons, such as ATGMs or RPGs, obsolete. What are your drones and air strikes firing? (And, TBH, this is kinda half counterpoint and half serious question. What would they be firing? I don't think a recoilless round would be fast enough to defeat a mature active defense system. I guess everything would just be BBBRRRRTTTT from there on out?)

And, again, there are no perfect solutions. If they create a new defense, a new offense will be created to defeat it. Then someone creates a new defense to defeat that. The point is that I don't think the heavily-armored, high-velocity main gun MBT is going away anytime soon.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

26 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

I don't think the heavily-armored, high-velocity main gun MBT is going away anytime soon.

True - but its role is changing... and highly theater dependent.  Europe, Africa and the Middle East (and NA, should it come to that) are all passable tank country.  SEA and the Pacific?  They have a role, but not a leading one.  Yes, the high velocity penetrator is still king at killing other tanks... but against soft trucks?  HE (variants) are still the way to go.  If you really want to scare yourself, consider what drone swarms can do.  Take an aircraft or missile capable of delivering a 2,000 lb bomb, have it pop a munition carrying 30-40 50lb drone bombs over an area; and you don't have banned cluster munitions, you have multiple precision guided munitions that not only find their own targets they coordinate with one another to maximize coverage.  Give them a variable upgraded HE load, such that the warhead can 'choose' between shaped charge or not (smart warhead) depending on the target... and you've got big problems for exposed vehicles and troops.  (For comparison, 40mm grenades weighing 1/2 lb can penetrate 3 inches of steel with a shaped charge).

 

37 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

They've spent the last 20 years focused on asymmetric warfare, so their AFV development has been focused on LAVs and MRAPs; vehicles which work great in an environment which has completely uncontested airspace and no opposing AFV elements. And I think they got a huge wake-up call last week.

This is a trope in American (and possibly the world) militaries - we're always preparing to fight the last war.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

FWIW - "Javelin Cages" are now a thing.  Don't know yet if they work 

 

 

 

 

(My guess is 'Nope')

Edited March 4, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[tomf]

2 hours ago, Terwin said:

According to this video, a post-office worker who was always denied the opportunity to build an electronic sorting machine put a lot of his own money into building a huge code cracking computer to counter Enigma.  After the war, his Post office superiors continued to refuse permission to build the sorting machine because it was larger than thought possible, but many of those that worked on the anti-enigma machine went on to be foundational in creating general digital computer

 

Colossus wasn't particularly influential though because it was kept secret for 30 years.

After the war Britain and the US continued to recommend enigma to other governments a a "secure" encryption system

[K^2]

1 hour ago, TheSaint said:

One problem: We're discussing a peer adversary scenario. At a minimum you should be assuming that you're fighting your ground war under contested airspace with inconsistent air support.

Enemy having MBTs you can't destroy isn't just "contested". It means they're winning the air war, and you're barely holding on. If that's the case, your decision to also produce MBTs would have led you to losing the air war outright, because a country can only produce so much military hardware.

And why were you even considering sending in ground forces in an area where you can't provide air support? That seems rather irresponsible. You need a much better control of the airspace to properly protect your own troops than you need to clear the area of enemy MBTs.

[Nightside]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

we're always preparing to fight the last war

last as in previous - or

last as in final?

[DDE]

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Q2: In the opinion of whoever chooses to reply, do you think it would have been possible for space exploration to *become a thing* and advance without WWII and the Cold War? Or would it have taken far longer?

In regards to Q3, I myself am only able to form half an opinion. The activities of rocket enthusiasts during the interwar era were rather simple and only began to pick up pace when rearmament began. The A-4 would have taken far longer to come together if it hadn't had military funding. On the other hand, the engineering was there so at the very least, it would have existed on paper.

But for getting in to orbital flight, I am unaware of just how massive an army of human computers both sides utilized to create their first ICBMs, and then I am also unfamiliar with computer history as it relates to engineering within the context of how its development was influenced by the war and Cold War, so I can't say what less emphasis on computers without a dire need to break codes means down the line for using computers to get to the Moon.

I wouldn't rule out the possibility. The initial wave of Interbellum spaceflight ethusiasm had nothing to do with WWII.

The usual argument is that the A-4 bootstrapped the upscaling of technology; the Soviets meanwhile did everything possible to sideline themselves - both the Purges, and small things like shuttering the development of gas generators in favour of engine crankshaft-powered pumps because the Soviet military was mainly interested in rocket-boosted propeller aircraft - but then made enormous leaps because of bomber force inferiority. Thus the key steps appear to be flukes, urged on by the ambitions of infamous megalomaniacs; indeed, one narrative is that spaceflight is solely the product of ambitions of totalitarians.

But I'm not so sure. The attraction of higher ground would probably get a military onboard eventually. What's interesting is that, depending on the dynamics of the other big invention, the A-bomb, the missileers/artillerymen might be late to the party, and you'd get a more rocketpunk or even spaceplane-dominated setting ratger than ICBMs retrofitted with Kerbalcans.

Any deeper analysis requires going full alt-history in order to avoid a WWII and a world split into power blocks. I think we've already been naughty enough this last month.

Edited March 4, 2022 by DDE

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, Nightside said:

last as in previous - or

last as in final?

No one is prepared for the Final 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 3/3/2022 at 2:33 PM, FleshJeb said:

I doubt you're going to find any freely-accessible resources. Professionally, I often have a hard time getting good high-res imagery / orthophotography.

There's probably something down this rabbit hole: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2021/11/09/first-steps-to-getting-started-in-open-source-research/

Thanks (maybe?) for this link

 

(Found a whole rabbit Warren) 

 

 

[Terwin]

2 hours ago, tomf said:

Colossus wasn't particularly influential though because it was kept secret for 30 years.

After the war Britain and the US continued to recommend enigma to other governments a a "secure" encryption system

Near the end of the video, they mention a number of people that worked on Colossus who then went on to do big things with advancing computers.

While many people who were not involved in Colossus still considered electronic machines of that scale to be impossible/unfeasible.

[magnemoe]

14 hours ago, K^2 said:

I would argue that if you're a military capable of producing APCs with active defense systems in mass quantities, and you come across a peer adversary's MBTs that you have not neutralized with drone and air strikes yet, you are doing modern warfare very, very wrong.

Counterpoint of chaos: I don't think anyone so far has been confused about that. I certainly didn't read @JoeSchmuckatelli as implying they are the same, and I'm also confident he's well aware of the difference. But, I suppose, it does no harm to reiterate for casual reader.

That's definitely a good point, and you'd have to build tactics around that. But a) that problem already existed with reactive armor, and b) a heat round going off next to you might not be as bad as anti-personnel fragmentation grenade, but it's still bad news. So infantry moving with armor has to respect the distance regardless. You have to move a little further from a tank with reactive armor, and a little further yet if it's an active defense.

Besides, if your armored units are built more around light APCs than heavy artillery units, and you rely on air support for strikes, you can probably get away with your infantry spending more time inside, where they are protected by the active defense, rather than outside, where they are threatened by it. That, of course, is all highly situational. 

You can hide tanks pretty well, and as other pointed out drones and planes mostly use subsonic missiles. 
Now it was one plan for an missile who used an kinetic kill projectile hitting at mach 3, this got canceled but is something you could bring back. 

The problem with infantry in APC is that they are not infantry but passengers. Their main benefit is that you have an fast vehicle who is hard to ambush with machine guns or artillery who light skinned stuff like trucks is and also provides fire support. 
Now they also protect you from friendly fragments then you hitting targets, this works better with smart weapons as you can get much closer to the target so you hit an target with a bomb or two then kick in the door couple of seconds later, but walls does that too. 

But I agree that armored vehicles will probably become lighter and rely more on active defenses. Now this makes the gun caliber to go down and more an focus on missiles mirroring the navy development after WW 2. 
You run out of active defenses long before an 40 mm gun run out of ammo even if you could intercept them all however.

[K^2]

31 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

But I agree that armored vehicles will probably become lighter and rely more on active defenses.

Yeah, there are certainly a lot of caveats here, but that's basically the main point. Calling that vehicle APC might be a stretch on my part. I certainly expect it to be well armed and have at least one turret with respectable caliber - I just expect that to be an autocannon rather than artillery.

[Hyperspace Industries]

If you had a plasma magnet sail (which is not a light sail but rather a solar wind (charged particle) sail) and put it in an orbit inside the van Allen belts of earth, would the belts speed it up as with the solar wind, or would they make it orbit slower and fall back to earth?

More info about plasma magnet sails is available in engine list 1 on the atomic rockets website, in the category of sail propulsion under the name 'plasma magnet.'