Russia has been pouring a lot of men and resources into capturing Avdiivka, a town just north of Donetsk, to evidently very little gain. The best overview of the situation I’ve seen is this Twitter post:
After days of intense combat in Avdiivka, I've decided to make a preliminary analysis of the ongoing events. I'm looking at the bigger picture, aiming to spot key patterns and notable signs that can help us understand the situation better. This analysis will cover both the… pic.twitter.com/jXmGblcbMZ
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) October 14, 2023
The scale of the Russian assault on Avdiivka underscores their determination to achieve their objectives. Russians have deployed what I’ve identified as at least two mechanized battalions or two battalion-tactical groups in the primary attack directions, alongside smaller units in other areas, constituting an operation of approximately regimental size. This represents a significant departure from the smaller company and platoon-sized tactical groups that both sides have employed in recent months.
Based on information from various sources, it appears that the Russians have deployed a substantial number of units, potentially constituting a force of at least a few brigades. However, the exact total number is difficult to accurately assess at this time.
One group advanced from the South-West of Avdiivka, while another attempted to advance from the North-Eastern side of Avdiivka. The group originating from Krasnohorivka initially made progress, overrunning defensive positions in the North, with some elements even reaching the railroad. Both groups suffered losses, but the northern group achieved tangible results, primarily due to the element of surprise and the concentrated firepower of a mechanized force.
Positive Aspects:
– A conservative estimate from our team, based on visual evidence, indicates that Russian forces lost a minimum of 45 vehicles, predominantly tanks and IFVs, by the morning of October 12th. The actual number is likely higher, as we lacked visuals from some areas, especially the South and South-Western regions of Avdiivka.
– The initial Russian assault did not seem to achieve the desired results of securing areas beyond the railroad in the north and seizing Sieverne and Tonenke in the south, which would significantly impact the operational environment for Ukraine.
– This operation appears to be primarily politically motivated rather than militarily necessary. Following the loss of Pisky and most of Mariinka, Avdiivka remains the only sizable settlement under Ukrainian control in close proximity to Donetsk. However, given the realities of warfare, it is unlikely that Ukraine will launch a ground offensive into Donetsk from this location in the near future. Avdiivka is well-fortified, and the Russians have suffered significant losses in multiple attempts to capture it since 2022. The Russian motivation appears to be securing a substantial public victory before winter, in contrast to the limited successes of the Ukrainian army in liberating territories in 2023 and the loss of Bakhmut.
– Despite the initial challenges and the element of surprise, Ukrainian soldiers on the ground demonstrated remarkable resilience and managed to halt the progress of the mechanized enemy groups. This achievement can be attributed to individual acts of heroism, skill, and determination to hold their positions.
– From a combination of sources, including photographs, drone videos, and personal accounts, Russian mechanized units have incurred significant losses as a result of Ukrainian drones, which have been supplied by volunteers and regular citizens, properly set mines, timely deployed AT teams, and artillery fire.
Negative Aspects:
– Despite prior knowledge of the enemy’s buildup for an offensive operation, the attack still caught Ukrainian forces off guard, and it appears that some areas were ill-prepared for such an assault, revealing some vulnerabilities.
– The Russians executed a regiment-sized operation by deploying several battalions and smaller auxiliary forces. This demonstrates their capacity to conduct larger-scale operations and access to sufficient resources.
– They managed to penetrate the rear and flank areas of Avdiivka. While this does not necessarily guarantee an immediate encirclement, it presents a perilous situation and an unwelcome development. The Bakhmut operation also began with substantial and seemingly unsustainable losses for the Russians, but after securing control over the flanks, the situation deteriorated for Ukrainian forces. While the operational context is different, we cannot yet assert that the situation is stable.
MSMS reports seem to reflect the same lack of Russian progress:
A top Ukrainian commander has claimed that Russia’s biggest offensive in months – involving tanks, thousands of soldiers and armoured vehicles in an attack on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka – is failing, as he admitted Kyiv’s own attempts to advance in the south were proving “difficult”.
Russian forces have pummelled the town over the past week, a key bulge surrounded by Russian-held territory on the eastern Donbas front.
It is one of the largest assaults by Moscow since last year’s full-scale invasion and comes at a time when Ukraine’s counteroffensive is moving slowly, and the world is focused on the imminent Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.
At least three Russian battalions, each supported by an estimated 2,000-3,000 troops, began a dawn attack on Tuesday. Drone footage showed a line of military vehicles trundling forward. There has been intense fighting ever since. Russia has bombarded the city with relentless artillery fire and airstrikes.
Ukrainian military officials say Moscow’s goal is to encircle Avdiivka, but so far the attackers have made modest gains. Russia’s 25th combined arms army pushed forward from the south and north. It seized the nearby village of Berdychi and closed in on a 150-metre high slag heap next to the town’s coke and chemical factory.
The Russians have suffered serious losses. At least 36 Russian tanks and armoured vehicles were destroyed in the first 24 hours. According to the Kyiv Post, that figure has risen to 102 tanks and 183 armoured vehicles lost, with 2,840 troops killed. There were chaotic scenes. One tank fell off a pontoon bridge into a river. Another crushed a Russian soldier as it reversed; a Ukrainian munition then blew it up.
Here’s a Suchomimus video showing the Russian vehicle losses:
For a bit of comic relief, he also has a video of The Russian Armored Recovery Vehicle That Decided To Become A Submarine:
Though the early part of the offensive saw something of return of combined arms attacks, utilizing helicopter air power, Russia appears to have reverted almost immediately to their classic tactics of stupidity. “The Russian military appears to be using human wave tactics where they throw masses of poorly trained soldiers right into the battlefield without proper equipment, and apparently without proper training and preparation.”
Russia seems to have lost a lot of armor for very little gain in territory.
Tags: Avdiivka, Military, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Suchomimus, tanks, Ukraine, video
“Despite prior knowledge of the enemy’s buildup for an offensive operation, the attack still caught Ukrainian forces off guard, and it appears that some areas were ill-prepared for such an assault, revealing some vulnerabilities.”
Germany’s attack through the Ardennes Forest leading to the siege of Bastogne was similarly surprising. This does not diminish the martial aptitude of Eisenhower or Patton; it simply reflects the unlikelihood of a counteroffensive by the German army.
Having already lost Kharkiv and Kherson, the recent strike towards Tokmak suggests Russian forces have lost combat power. The attempted encirclement of Avdiivka is an attempt to recover the initiative. I suspect it will prove to be equally futile as the Battle of the Bulge.
Suchomimus’s sarcastic video of the Russian tank falling off the girder bridge laid by an MTU-72 Armored Vehicle Launched Bridge (AVLB) engineering vehicle demonstrates the author’s total ignorance of combat engineering operations and what is actually occurring in the video.
The subject bridge is not a pontoon bridge. It is a girder bridge laid by an MTU-72 AVLB. The red boxed vehicle in the video had just laid this bridge. The MTU-72 is a turretless T-72 equipped with an 18 meter fold out girder bridge for crossing obstacles just like this canal. Its performance is fully equal to the U.S. M60 AVLB, whose bridge would have suffered the same footing failure.
The tank fell off the girder bridge because the right near footing gave way. A common problem with AVLB girder bridges when used at maximum and one of the unavoidable risks of operating tanks on soft ground.
The real story here is that a 50 Military Load Classification (MLC) Russian tank could not cross this girder bridge safely. So think about the bridge traversing prospects of the 80 MLC western super tanks now being supplied to Ukraine. The area being fought over is flat as a billiards table with poor drainage and the ground is not suitable for heavy vehicle operations most of the year, even outside of the Rasputitsa.
10X25 again displays his half-knowledge.
That’s not a “footing failure”; if it were, then you’d be able to see that the bridge itself twisted and lifted up on the off side from where the vehicle on it went off. You see no such lifting in the video.
What you do see here is the driver of the armored vehicle getting cross-wise on the poorly-laid bridge and then driving off the edge. Which I would speculate is more likely due to piss-poor training of said driver and crew, who’re likely paying the price for their poor training and preparation somewhere in hell, being as those vehicles are notoriously hard to get out of, once flipped onto their tops. In water? We probably just watched a crew drown.
That was a spectacularly poor place to try and bridge with an AVLB; you do not want to have to have your tankers come at those things on a turn like that, because it’s really difficult to line up properly with the narrow bridge. Especially when buttoned-up under closed hatches. Ideally, you have a nice straight path right onto the bridge so that the driver can get lined up and tracking; you set up your bridge so that you have to hook a turn right at the point you have to get on it, like here? You’re gonna have problems at that crossing site.
Putting in an AVLB portable bridge is an art; one you have to practice, practice, practice. Whoever directed this operation didn’t have the requisite experience or understanding of what they were needing to do. Planning was bad, crew training was worse. If you’d have told me to do that site, I’d have been like “Yeah, you’re gonna have to have ground guides, and we won’t be doing this under fire… Also, my best crew is putting that one in…”
Also, “girder bridge” is a non-starter in this context; an AVLB launches a “portable bridge”, while a “Medium Girder Bridge” is a totally different beast, consisting of a kit of Lego-like parts that has to be assembled on-site by 12C bridge crewman, with possible labor assistance coming from 12B combat engineers. It’s not a “combat bridge”, either… The MGB is more a line-of-communications asset, not something you’d be putting in under fire. Hopefully. Has been done; not a preferred technique.
[…] THAT’S THE STORY OF PUTIN’S ENTIRE WAR SO FAR: Russia’s Avdiivka Offensive: Lots Of Pain, Little Gain. […]
Actually, that was not a bridge laid over water. The bridging equipment had been destroyed some days earlier and the bridge had just been dragged off to the side of the road. However, it wasn’t far enough off the road, and so it created an obstacle on the side of the road that cause the mine clearer (yes, that was a mine clearing vehicle leading their assault column for some unfathomable reason) to flip over into a small depression.
“Planning was bad, crew training was worse.”
It is a vast improvement over what preceded it.
This recent deployment saw the loss of only one armored vehicle. In May of 2022, Russia lost an entire Battalion Tactical Group at the battle of the Siverskyi Donets. It seems the Russians are slowly learning how to navigate water hazards.
I’ll grant you that the video ain’t exactly crystalline-clear, but that’s pretty much what it looks like… A bridge going over a gap. You don’t just do those “over water”, they go in anywhere that the tanks can’t go, even anti-tank ditches if need be.
What’s going on there, in that specific case? Without better images and more video on either side of the event, you have a hard time making it out. My take on it is that they’re trying to get over the lockwork from that flood-control impoundment, and the bridge was laid to do that. Unfortunately, it had to be laid at the angle it was, and because of that angle, the crew on that lead vehicle, whatever it was, got themselves cross-wise on the bridge, resulting in them flipping over into the water.
Either way, lousy bridge-site selection, lousy laying of the bridge, and even lousier armored vehicle driving.
Like I said, if you’re going to be forced into doing something like that, you almost have to have ground guides down and leading the vehicles to line up on the bridge. Without having the straight shot that you typically want to have going at the portable bridge, you really do not want the driver getting all wrong-footed on the bridge itself. Which is what I’m pretty sure happened here; he got the vehicle all “catty-wampus”, as one of my Southern guys would have put it, and then that was all she wrote.
A lot of these operations look really, really simple when you’re briefing them. Then, you get out on the site and discover that the bridge ain’t exactly all that easy to drive over with an M1 Abrams, ‘cos the driver can’t see sh*t with his hatch closed, and the TC (Tank Commander) is too high up and far back to really help. Also, the inexperienced crew is going to have issues with coordinating things… “Go a little left… No, no… Right!! GO RIGHT!!!! OHF*CKOHF*CK…Glubblubglubblub…”
Ain’t nothing as easy as it looks when you brief it. It sure as hell ain’t as easy as it looks on TV or the movies… The most profoundly humbling experience of my young NCO life was trying to conduct a night movement on foot through a few thousand meters of dense forest with just my squad. Oh, sure… Ya, you betcha, we can do it easy-peasy. Then, you lose a guy who nobody notices falling into an old homestead root cellar, and you’re trying to find his ass in the pitch dark without giving up your position in any way, sooooo… Yeah. It ain’t rocket science, but it also ain’t what I’d term in any way, shape, or form “Easy”.
“That’s not a “footing failure”; if it were, then you’d be able to see that the bridge itself twisted and lifted up on the off side from where the vehicle on it went off. You see no such lifting in the video.”
It was a footing failure. These plate girder bridges have high axial beam stiffness, but low axial torsional stiffness. The MTU-72 plate girder bridge flexed elastically in axial torsion under the ill-fated tank as the near right foot support provided an inadequate reaction force. Then the bridge sprang back instantaneously once the tank weight was off the bridge. It only takes a few degrees of roll on a slippery bridge deck for a Russian tank to slide transversely because the Russians do not field their tanks with rubber grouser pads.
“Also, “girder bridge” is a non-starter in this context; an AVLB launches a “portable bridge”, while a “Medium Girder Bridge” is a totally different beast, consisting of a kit of Lego-like parts that has to be assembled on-site by 12C bridge crewman, with possible labor assistance coming from 12B combat engineers. It’s not a “combat bridge”, either… The MGB is more a line-of-communications asset, not something you’d be putting in under fire. Hopefully. Has been done; not a preferred technique.”
The second generation MTU-72 bridge in this incident is properly a ‘plate girder bridge’ according to centuries old English language engineering terminology. The “Medium Girder Bridge” you reference is actually a ‘deck truss bridge’ according to even longer established English language engineering terminology – regardless of what the U.S. Army calls it.
Zero lift on the bridge. The vehicle is cross-ways on the bridge before it drives off.
None of your BS fantasy is present in this video, nor can I find any additional footage elsewhere.
Nobody in the US Army or Marine Corps refers to a portable bridge as anything other than a portable bridge unit or a scissors bridge. The “girder bridge” is a totally different class of equipment, namely the MGB LOC bridging set.
I did this for 25 years; I know whereof I speak. You obviously do not. There is no “footing failure” seen in the video posted here; if there were, you’d see the bridge lift on the left side, which it does not. All that you see is an inexperienced driver doing what inexperienced drivers do when their leadership sets them up for failure by improper selection of a bridge site and subsequent attempt at crossing. That last little hook to the left and need for precision alignment on the bridge is what killed this crew, not some fantasy “footing failure”.
The bridges are generally pretty stable once on the ground; the “footing failure” mode you’re talking about, trying to sound smart, is generally what happens when the launching vehicle (which has that great rectangular “foot” out in front to stabilize things) fails to select a good site for launching the bridge. If the “foot”, generally referred to as an “outrigger”, seen at about 1:30 in this video:
https://youtu.be/vfzpq8tBORs?si=6DpgZmvyCp4DpzZS
isn’t on solid soil, then the whole thing can go sideways, taking the AVLB and bridge with it. There’s a tremendous amount of weight and force entailed in launching these bridges, especially in the CL 70 ones the US Army is currently deploying. They are comparatively heavier than the ones that the former Soviet states deploy, because their tanks are lighter by far.
I have no idea what you’re basing this line of BS on, but it’s nothing I’ve ever seen or experienced as a Combat Engineer. Based on what I know, that Russian vehicle got off alignment, tried to correct, overcorrected, and effectively committed suicide by driving off the bridge. That’s more than likely down to poor crew communication and inadequate Russian driver training, something we’ve seen them display continuously since 24 February 2022.
It’s not helped by the fact that most Soviet-style bridges like this don’t have curbs on them, which at least give a slight hint to the driver that they’re off-track during the crossing.
If you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, then don’t open your mouth. Resorting to “general English language engineering terminology” as an excuse for getting military terminology wrong is a lame-ass excuse.
I’d also be curious to know precisely why you feel qualified to pronounce on this subject, when you obviously have no experience with it whatsoever. “Internet Expert” syndrome, perhaps?
There remains zero evidence of “footing failure” causing lifting in that video, and considerable evidence of the driver screwing it up by the numbers. Being as that’s all I’ve got to go on, I’m gonna have to continue to call you out on this BS of yours.
Oh, and by the way? The “correct engineering technology term” for that “footing” of yours? That would be “abutment”, which is used whether or not there’s anything prepared there.
[…] attempt to force UA troops out of the Avdiivka salient has been another case of “Lots Of Pain, Little Gain.” Even with high losses (Twitter is filled with geolocated videos of burning Russian […]
“Nobody in the US Army or Marine Corps refers to a portable bridge as anything other than a portable bridge unit or a scissors bridge. The “girder bridge” is a totally different class of equipment, namely the MGB LOC bridging set.”
We are discussing Russian military equipment, not U.S. Army equipment. American engineering terminology for the MTU-72 plate girder bridge has been well established since before WW I. See:
History of Bridge Engineering by Henry Grattan Tyrrell, 1911; page 195
&
Bridge Engineering, Volume 1 by J. A. L. Waddell, 1916; page 409
Both available for download on archive.org.
The U.S. military has a long history of mislabeling. Their latest deceit is to call men in skirts “women”. I refuse to acknowledge their many deceits, preferring to use the terms of my (now ancient) education and past professional practice.
“I’d also be curious to know precisely why you feel qualified to pronounce on this subject, when you obviously have no experience with it whatsoever. “Internet Expert” syndrome, perhaps?”
I have been a registered professional engineer for 47 years and worked on a diverse variety of military vehicle programs, automotive components, and structures. Was on both the original M-1 tank program and the original Bradley IFV/CFV programs. Developed armor, weapons stations, suspension systems, propulsions systems, and manufacturing technology for these weapons and other weapons systems.
You?
10×25: “The tank fell off the girder bridge.”
Kirk: “What you do see here is the driver of the armored vehicle getting cross-wise on the poorly-laid bridge and then driving off the edge.”
Either the tank fell or was driven off the bridge.
The passive voice “fell” removes agency from the driver; “driving off” assigns blame to human agency.
If Russia is squarely to blame for the war in Ukraine and I were a Russian apologist, my every effort would be turned toward denying or minimizing Russian culpability. Whether defending sins if omission (poor training) or sins if commission (war crimes), I would bury injurious evidence beneath a pile of rhetoric, quibble about the meaning of words and employ esoteric terminology to obscure any remaining truth that has escaped my efforts to cover for the criminal actors.
[…] attempt to force UA (Ukrainian) troops out of the Avdiivka salient has been another case of “Lots Of Pain, Little Gain.” Even with high losses (Twitter is filled with geolocated videos of burning Russian vehicles), […]
@10X25,
25 years experience as an end-user; a tour on the Sidewinder Observer/Controller team at the NTC.
We’re the people who told your lot when and where you’d screwed the pooch, from actual experience using your shit.
You ain’t all that. You’re part of the bunch of absolute f*cking tools that told us that we needn’t worry about uparmor kits for the FMTV family “…because they’re not combat vehicles…”, and would never see a threat environment behind the FLOT. You’re also from the lot that told us we needn’t procure any MRAP or armored route clearance gear, ‘cos, again, “…we’ll never be so stupid as to get into a war like the South Africans did…”
You’re ohsoveryproud of your “expertise”, which consists of sitting in an office and occasionally coming out to look at how your equipment is used and worked with. I spent a career trying to make that crap work, and I’m here to tell you, as an end-user? You’re not all that great at designing or producing equipment. You also never, ever listen to anyone with, ya know… Actual experience with it. ‘Cos you, of course, know better.
Your arrogance and utter stupidity on display here is pretty much completely in line with your having worked in the US defense industry, to be honest. So, I fully believe that. It’s just that your background doesn’t really mean what you think it does.
My analysis of what happened to that vehicle and bridge is informed by decades of actual experience working with those systems. Actual. Experience.
Yours is informed by… Theory. Get back to me when you’ve actually conducted a breach or two with an AVLB.
Malthus, what you’re missing is the analysis of cause; it is important to determine precisely why something like that happened, in order to gauge what is going on in the Russian military system.
The passive voice “the vehicle fell off the bridge” conceals the reality of it being an indicator of poor crew training, poor leadership, and a vast reservoir of inexperience all along the line.
Were you to tell a US Army AVLB crewman of my era that they should put their bridge in at that location, the tyro officer giving that order would have been offered a quick lesson on why that was a really, really bad idea. His platoon sergeant, having lived a life working with that gear, would have seconded whatever the AVLB crewman told the LT, and there would have been revolt in the ranks had said junior officer tried to enforce his will.
This sort of thing is what separates a professional military from a conscript force that’s more a facade than an armed force; the guys at the coalface have the experience to identify a bad idea and then tell the boss. The system also ensures that those “voices of experience” get a say in what goes on.
This obviously did not happen here. The guys operating the bridging equipment did not know or understand how hard it would be to make that final turn to align on the bridge itself, and I’d be willing to bet that if we were to see the footage from before what is available to us here, you’d see the vehicle line up as best it could on the bridge, probably while still buttoned-up, and then figuring out that the vehicle was off-center somewhat, over-correcting, and then… Bang. Off the bridge, flipped, and probably drowned. Very unpleasant way to go; I’ve seen similar things happen in training during my career. Driving a tank or any other tracked vehicle ain’t like driving a sports car.
So… Correct analysis of this event tells us a bunch of different things: One, the crew of that MTU-72 didn’t know any better than to put the bridge where they did. Two, neither did their leadership. This placement almost guaranteed something like this happening. Three, the driver wasn’t either properly trained or properly led by his vehicle commander, which speaks to a lack of effective and detailed operational training. Similarly, whoever planned this operation did not take any of these factors into account, and basically sent this vehicle off to be wrecked and the crew killed.
This speaks volumes as to the state of the Russian Army, if only you know to look and how to interpret what you see. It’s just like the utter lack of 360-degree security and airguards you didn’t see during the abortive advance to Kyiv; it’s a telling thing, that.
Modern armies cannot afford “on-the-job-training”. That’s what the Russians are trying to do, right now, and it is eating them alive. Little details like this one are the telling ones; you go to assess a unit coming in to the National Training Center, and you can form a very solid idea of how they’re going to do, just by walking around “the shades” where they’re unloading and preparing for the exercise. Good units show a lot of indicators that they’re prepped and ready; similarly, units that are going to perform poorly show opposite indicators that tell you they’re going to have a hard time just getting out of the cantonment area and into the exercise.
It’s not a pedantic exercise; it’s a question of knowing what you’re looking at and going from there. 10X25’s puerile analysis and wording slides right by the real problem, which is that the Russian soldiers at the point of the spear here did not get properly trained, nor did their leadership. That bridge site was primed for this sort of failure, and that’s something you only know from experience of having done those things a bunch. You never, ever want buttoned-up vehicles having to make a last-minute turn onto something like that; you want to make sure they’ve got a long straight stretch to line up on it, and clear navigational markings that a guy inside a vehicle can see in order to stay lined up on that bridge deck. You don’t do that? You’re gonna lose vehicles to exactly what happened here, and it’s not due to some “footing failure”, either. It’s purely siting and training, which both tie in together. A trained and experienced set of leadership+crew would have found another site, or come up with another way of getting around that ditch.
I’d presume that someone thought they were pretty smart doing what they did, because the other options were likely mined, and the Ukrainian defenders had looked that site over and said “Naah… Nobody would be so stupid as to try that…”
I did that once, myself. On a defense, we “overlooked” one route that literally went up the side of a set of mountains and then petered out into an impassible box valley that showed a road out on the maps. I have no idea where that road went, but when I was at that training area, it did not exist. OPFOR scouts found the road going in, didn’t confirm that there was an egress, and we waited for most of a day overwatching our defenses. The enemy never showed, and we later saw a bunch of recovery vehicles and so forth headed up into that box valley, in order to recover the thoroughly-mired vehicles. Our commander was a bit put out that we hadn’t bothered to put observation on that, because if we had, the exercise would have ended looking about like the Highway of Death during Desert Storm. Never occurred to any of us doing the defense prep that anyone would try taking that route without recon, but… There ya go; the enemy often outsmarts himself, and if you’re not there to take advantage of it, it’s rather like a tactical Schrodinger’s Cat.
Mommy and Daddy are fighting again. /s
Seriously, though, I find it interesting that most of the vitriol seemed to be over differing semantics and nomenclature between staff engineers and field officers (and yes, the Army does have a well-documented history of nonsense labeling; see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb_a7u3K8Bo ). It’s also interesting that rather than blaming each other’s field, you’re each blaming Russian mistakes in *your* area of expertise. I’m tempted to embrace the healing power of “and”, here.
It’s possible that the bridge was poorly designed or constructed, but with N=1, I can’t speak to that. Poor Russian planning and driving, however, has been observed on many occasions. So… yeah.
“The passive voice “the vehicle fell off the bridge” conceals the reality of it being an indicator of poor crew training, poor leadership, and a vast reservoir of inexperience all along the line.”
You said what I said—a sin of omission.
“Your arrogance and utter stupidity on display here is pretty much completely in line with your having worked in the US defense industry, to be honest. So, I fully believe that. It’s just that your background doesn’t really mean what you think it does.”
You fail to acknowledge that the defense manufacturing industry has many masters, but those who authorize and sign the contracts are the paramount masters. In my era, the defense industry was presented with an RFQ which laid out in great detail what was desired and engineers worked diligently to meet those RFQ requirements. So you didn’t get “uparmor kits for the FMTV family”, “MRAPs”, or “route clearance gear”. They weren’t in the contract and diverting contract dollars on unapproved features and programs got you either fired (best case) or a long stretch at Leavenworth. Arguing with Congressmen and contract officers only got you a termination.
The various uparmor kits deserve special mention. They have dramatically compromised mobility and made suspension failures the major out of service cause for vehicles so equipped.
You also fail to understand that the end users are not the only community who have a valid say in military products. The logistics people have a serious interest in fuel and consumables consumption. The transport people want equipment which can actually be delivered to the scene of battle. The contract officers have congressionally limited budgets and have to follow DFARs to the letter.
No fuel or ammunition – the vehicle gets abandoned or captured.
No transport – the vehicle is a domestic museum piece which never reaches combat.
Cost overruns – the program gets cancelled and the end users get stuck with the same old obsolete equipment for another 20 years.
Doubt me on this? Consider the MBT-70 program’s fate. Or DIVADS. Or the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. Or Crusader. Or the Future Combat System. The history of American military vehicle engineering is littered with corpses of the fantasy programs pushed by end users.
“The passive voice “fell” removes agency from the driver; “driving off” assigns blame to human agency.”
Engineers use the passive voice until a thorough, competent failure analysis determines the actual cause(s) and the responsible party(ies).
This is an issue of fairness to all parties (worldwide), and a critical legal issue in domestic (American) incidents.
No, 10X25, the raw facts are that your ilk flat-out told us we were wrong for worrying about little details like cab-forward design on the FMTV, because that put the lead axle right under the crew compartment. The word we got back after writing a white paper for people like you was that we weren’t smart enough to understand that a cab-forward design was more compact, and that we needn’t worry our little heads about taking those vehicles into combat because they weren’t meant for combat, the were line-of-communication assets only.
Yet, in 2003, all and sundry were awakened to the fact that yes, indeed, there was an IED threat as we’d warned, and that we weren’t prepared for it. At. All. Despite a decade of warning, the geniuses that had told us not to worry about such details were now telling us to line the cabs with sandbags and improvised steel armor cut out of wrecked Iraqi armored vehicles. This was the situation from 2003 until late in 2005, when the MRAP vehicles and uparmor kits started to show up.
Then, of course, we were treated to the Little Jack Horner self-congratulations from all the assholes that told us not to worry, ‘cos they were such good boys and pulled the plum from out of their pies to get us the gear we’d told them we’d need starting about, oh… What was it? 1992? Shortly after the after-actions reviews from Somalia came in?
There’s a reason you engender contempt from me, and that sort of mentality is why. I’ve sat through I don’t know how many briefings where we told your sort what was wrong with the gear they designed, and then watched as not a damn thing was acted on, when we were issued the identical unworkable POS that some dude in a white lab coat came up with because he thought it would work.
I could run down the list, but the night is short and my blood pressure is already high enough. The most amusing one I can think of, off-hand, was the certified geeen-ious group from Natick that came down to us at Fort Lewis back when it was the High-Technology Light Testbed, and asked for ideas from the troops.
One of them was a rather brilliant little innovation that one of our medics came up with, which was a bladder from a wine box, parts from an IV, and a canteen cap he’d grafted on. Basically, what he offered up to the veritable god-like ones from Natick was… A Camelbak. Some seven-ten years before such things actually existed. The Natick team laughed him out of the room, saying that such a device was not only unnecessary, but ludicrously unneeded.
Circa the mid-1990s, the same jackasses were paying Camelbak royalties for the right to include their product in the MOLLE program.
Huh. Go figure.
Y’alls track record is nothing short of abysmal. I don’t know how many damn times I’ve risked my life un-f*cking something like a misfired MICLIC, a device that never should have been procured for what it was, but there you are. I can honestly state that I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a single representative of “the system” that would actually listen to user feedback or implement much in the way of changes to their vaunted products, whether they were vehicles or weapons.
System’s broken. And, men like you are the main reason. I’m sitting here telling you what happened, and why, and you’re telling me I’m wrong, that something that there is no evidence for being the cause, but because you flippantly made up your mind, you must be right. Appeal to your own authority, because you’ve never actually conducted a breach with an AVLB… I don’t know how many times I’ve run into that syndrome, because you’re not the first jackass I’ve seen displaying it. You don’t do, but you can damn sure imagine what it’s like… Inside your own mind.
Ah, well… It’ll catch up to us all. Nature has a way of doing that, when things become ridiculously out of touch with reality.
“No, 10X25, the raw facts are that your ilk flat-out told us we were wrong for worrying about little details like cab-forward design on the FMTV, because that put the lead axle right under the crew compartment. The word we got back after writing a white paper for people like you was that we weren’t smart enough to understand that a cab-forward design was more compact, and that we needn’t worry our little heads about taking those vehicles into combat because they weren’t meant for combat, the were line-of-communication assets only.”
Your bete noir, the FMTV, was engineered in Austria by Steyr. The Steyr M90 was selected by the U.S. Army in the MTT competition over several American engineered competitors.
American engineers had nothing to do with the selection and design of this vehicle, except for its engine and transmission.
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