About tanks, and why they're a necessity in modern ground forces

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I intended to write about this topic (What's a tank good for, and does its end near?) for a while. A reply written by me on a forum turned out to be so long and exhaustive that it's really what I had planned for the blog. Lazy as I am, I'll copy it.

[...] however my confusion remains. What is/ where is the utility and value of the MBT?

The Main Battle Tank is a vehicle that was developed for intentional use in line-of-sight combat. its crew is capable of justifying the investment into the tank team and the hardware by exploiting the degree of protection offered by the tank for the critical mass of survivability on the battlefield.

This critical mass does not include invulnerability, but rather vastly reduced or entirely negated effectiveness of most threat weapons. The tank is still vulnerable to few threat weapons - crew training and tank tactics are required to counter these threats for additional survivability on the mission.

The high survivability in comparison to "light" forces (especially on open ground) in combination with the internal combustion engine's power offer a high mobility (with a heavyweight weaponry and ammunition) on the battlefield.

This high practical mobility in face of many threats can be exploited by large unit and formation tactics to great effect.

Tanks can also be used with assault gun tactics; in this case they serve on the offence as fire support platforms with weapons and ammunitions heavier than practical for dismounted troops.

The best targets for a tank are those which justify the expenditure of scarce ammunition and the risk involved. Hostile main battle tanks are sometimes in this category, sometimes not. It depends on the other forces' ability to deal with them (does your army have enough effective threats against hostile tanks?).

(This ability was in doubt since 1940. Anti-tank guns were largely immobile, dedicated tank destroyers/Jagdpanzer were a kind of tank themselves, infantry and engineer anti-tank munitions were very rarely able to withstand concentrated breakthrough attempts.

The problem continued during the Cold War when shaped charge-based weapons were able to penetrate tanks mostly with unpredictable effect. Their employment either required vicinity (and weighed down the dismounted troops) or depended on missile guidances and long flight times - both offering countermeasure opportunities to the enemy.

In short; there was little trust in the non-tank-based anti-tank capabilities.)

 

[End of forum reply]

Positions such as "it's necessary for Blitzkrieg" or "it's the best anti-tank weapon" fall short of really explaining the military-technical phenomenon of the tank. Armoured combat vehicles (not necessarily only main battle tanks) fill a niche for which there's no satisfactory substitute. That's why they don't go away.

Some tank designs can prove to be unsatisfactory - especially if they don't reach the critical mass of protection. This explains the demise of the light tank since WW2. Other tanks prove unsatisfactory because they aren't efficient enough or don't fit into the operational doctrine any more (such as short-legged heavy tanks as the T-10).

Finally, there's the main battle tank which actually evolved into a very mobile heavy tank during the 70's when the Leopard 2 was developed.

Quote "Jane's Weapon Systems 1976":

Previously, when a tank had better armour the performance and mobility declined; in designing the Leopard 2 the Germans have reversed this trend, the end result being a superior vehicle.

Leopard 2A4, externally similar to the early Leopard 2 as introduced in '79.

So the tank is here to stay (although in much-reduced quantity as it seems). Countermeasures against it provoke counter-countermeasures. This seems to be unavoidable because modern armies need to fill the armoured combat vehicle's niche and there's simply no satisfactory substitute.

Tanks are dying and becoming obsolete all the time - but there will always appear some (new models or upgrades) that are not obsolete (yet).

Sven Ortmann

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The sense of smell for reconnaissance

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Some people (apparently with a better sense of smell than I have) swear that it's important to eat what the enemy eats, wash with what the enemy washes and not to smoke if you shall go on a patrol in a forest. Your different smell could otherwise give away your presence to the enemy.

That may very well be true. The sense of smell has nevertheless a very restricted utility for armies.

Again and again and again some developers attempt to develop some explosive sniffer tool or similar for the military. Even worse; they even get funds for this nonsense. Here's a recent example: Danger Room: "Secret New Sensors Sniff For Afghanistan's fertilizer Bombs"

Let's be frank (even more than usual): That's a waste, crap, a rip-off. Such sensors are useless. To grant funds for such projects is an evidence for stupidity and incompetence.

A simple, short anecdote from WW2 can explain (and prove) it:

Soviet partisans mined railways to destroy German supply trains. The Germans reacted by deploying dog teams with dogs trained to sniff for the mines. They found some mines. The partisans observed this and dispersed small quantities of explosives almost everywhere on the tracks. The great sense of smell of the dogs was rendered useless, utterly useless. The false alarm rate made the whole "sniffing" approach 100% useless. It's still 100% useless.

Engineers who attempt to develop smell-based explosive detection tools for general or route reconnaissance are wasting time and money. Thsi is especially obvious if it's not done in perfect secrecy.

Sven Ortmann

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Protection against air power (army)

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(I have absolutely zero motivation to search and include some nice pictures for a more pleasant reading today. This is a long, not exactly easy text. Brace yourself. ;-) )

Maybe it's a good time for a general article about protection against air power on the battlefield. The topic is quite encompassing, and the approaches vary a lot even among NATO allies.

First, let's have a look at the priorities as I see them. Some readers might disagree with this prioritisation, having the assumption of NATO or U.S. air supremacy in mind. Well, that's not cast in stone and even if it was; this article is a bit more encompassing than about classic aircraft (manned or unmanned).

- - - - -

Protection against air threats is first and foremost about measures that reduce the vulnerability to attempts of detection and attack.

This is mostly about passive measures - the basics of camouflage, concealment, deception and radio discipline as practised by all competent ground forces. There's nevertheless also the possibility that active jammers could be employed. Such equipment tends to be rather centralized and ranges from radar jammers (the Russians have a model to counter the E-8 J-STARS, for example) to satellite-blinding lasers.

Next comes the necessity to reduce the air threat's repertoire.

Force the hostiles to fly high, to fly in less efficient strike packages, to fly with partially defensive payload, to minimize the number of attack runs and to attack from a long distance. The desired effect is a reduction of the hostile air power's effect on our remaining vulnerabilities.

Third come the actually destructive responses.

This is about the damaging and destruction of both platforms and munitions.

Laymen often overemphasize the third aspect.

Navies emphasize the very last aspect (intercept of munitions) while air forces and armies neglect it. They had few really high value targets (HQs, pivotal bridges) to protect while navies had to protect expensive and difficult to replace warships and had little hope of hiding on the open, flat sea.

- - - - -

Now let's look about topics of importance:

There was the general trend of miniaturization since the invention of transistors. We're now at a point where two pound flying drones might be enabled to seek and kill (with EFP warhead, for example) individual soldiers. Other loitering killer drones can be sent against vehicles (Germany researched this for thirty years and would have fielded such a drone years ago if the Cold War hadn't ended).

Non-lethal drones are still more important, though; reconnaissance and electronic warfare drones are especially interesting.

Such miniaturized, quantity produced drones can be useful and cheap at once. A drone (target) can reach a critical threshold where it costs the same as the munition meant to destroy it. The defence with said munition becomes unaffordable in all but a few extreme situations (even before that threshold was reached).

Modern battlefield air defences are primarily if not exclusively meant to destroy platforms, not munitions. Critical parameters such as sensor capabilities, minimum firing range and cost per kill (both in weight and money) are acceptable for the defence against helicopters and low-flying combat aircraft, but a lightweight aerial drone could slip by many battlefield air defences without being identified as something different than a bird.

The problem begins with their low speed (radars use the Doppler effect to ignore everything that doesn't move quickly enough in order to minimize false alarms) and extends through their small size to their infra-red signature (different temperatures than combat aircraft).

The problem of smallish aerial drones is a problem all-troops air defence; no centralised defence system will be able to handle tiny hostile drones. I repeat myself: Bird-like drones require bird hunting ammunition; shotgun ammunition.

Larger drones can fly and be useful beyond machine gun range and require a form of countermeasure that is affordable and offers enough coverage. Today's battlefield air defences are quite unlikely to succeed in this role, save for a few autocannon designs with timed frag or shrapnel projectiles. Guns of 35-76mm calibre seem to be a promising choice; the anti-air artillery (AAA) may experience a revival on an unexpected scale.

Such a revival might in turn diminish the relevance of the drones, or push them on a path of development towards more sophisticated, expensive and survivable designs.

AAA has proved its multi-role capabilities in WW2 when AA weapons from 20 to 88mm calibre proved their worth in ground combat. We might become enticed to consider this for future AAA as a feature. Heavy (armoured) forces might use medium calibre tank guns and infantry fighting vehicle autocannons as AAA (with the necessary ground/air sensor technology).

"Light" formations with a focus on the dismounted fight such as infantry units might become interested in multi-role guns for both indirect artillery fire and air defence. A quick-firing 76mm gun not much unlike WW2 AAA designs might be worth a look.

Some machine guns had dedicated flip sights for ground/air fires (such as the MG3 "Fliegervisier"). These were known to almost useless against modern combat aircraft and even against attack helicopters. They might become almost self-evident in the future. A possible alternative is the use of tracer cartridges.

- - - - -

OK, that was about the long-since emerged challenge of aerial drones. Drones are borderline between platforms and munitions. Another challenge for modern air defence forces is beyond this border; munitions as targets.

The dedicated, classic battlefield air defences are in need of a reform. We need to look more into the interception of ammunitions instead of primarily the interception of platforms.

The advances in sensors and miniaturization have enabled stand-off precision attack capabilities. The best reason for buying such stand-off equipment is of course the desire to avoid the kill zone of air defences. It's all quite tricky, but the widespread readiness to invest in such stand-off capabilities points strongly towards the conclusion that this stuff is effective. That is bad news for classic battlefield air defences, of course.

Battlefield air defences can hardly be numerous and capable enough at once to defeat platforms beyond their attack range. Well, unless we consider semi-mobile air defence units such as Patriot or Aster batteries as "battlefield" air defences.

This is indeed a possible answer to the stand-off munitions challenge; set up air defences with a greater range than stand-off missile-equipped aerial attackers can have.

This might indeed work - at least partially. We will not have air defences that can out-range a 250 km air launched missile. Such missiles are still a threat to stationary targets; critical infrastructure such as bridges. Tank crews do not really need to fear such long-range missiles.

Is it feasible to protect every army brigade with a full-blown air defence battery of 20+ km effective radius?

The existing force structures point out that no army has allocated such heavy air defence assets to a brigade or division yet (as far as I know). The classic battlefield air defences fit into the short and very short range air defence bracket (ShorAD, VShorAD) instead. Missiles with ranges such as 5 to 15 km are typical.

Maybe we could pull it off technologically. maybe we could have de facto mobile air defence batteries with protected 8x8 trucks. They might even be dispersed, connected only by radio and power by APUs. A swarm-like cloud of air defence trucks (C4, sensor & launcher models) might maintain a permanent protective umbrella of medium range surface-to-air missiles - even during a brigade march (few 8x8 trucks moving at once).

An optimistic army might expect that such a setup could survive. Less optimistic air forces might be plagued by the idea that a competent opponent usually finds a way to hit such a basket full of eggs.

This leads back to the necessity of killing munitions instead of platforms. Few battlefield air defence systems have an officially claimed and useful capability against missiles. Some types of air defence munitions and fuses are even unsuitable for the intercept of missiles by design. This affects especially the hit-to-kill munitions (both shell and missiles); incoming munitions tend to be too small for a reliable direct hit.

The widespread interest in 35-40mm guns with shrapnel or air burst shells can be explained with this defence problem.

The intercept of munitions also knows a high end; the rise of precision guided artillery projectiles and missiles demands for an effective answer on part of the defence. Radio controlled missiles tend to be among the very cheapest missiles capable of hitting moving targets. Radio control partially fell out of favour for the defence against platforms because those platforms are expensive and often equipped with emitters capable of countering such a guidance. Incoming missiles are not equipped with such emitters, though. The Swedish RBS-23 system is an example for a ShorAD system with a claimed capability to intercept even supersonic anti-radar missiles (one of the most difficult targets).

The ability to intercept Mach 3 missiles is close to the ability to intercept guided artillery munitions. Again, the defender's ammunition should not be more expensive than the attacker's ammunition.

The critical threshold is complicated, though. The whole affair is close to the counter-artillery business of the artillery (again, air defence and artillery meet!). The artillery's radars can detect and track mortar, artillery and rocket munitions in flight. This helps friendly firing units because they get feedback about the drift of their dumb munitions. It does also enable the detection of hostile firing units (by calculating the trajectory of dumb munitions back to their origin - this doesn't work as well for guided ones).

Finally, it enables a quick assessment whether the incoming munitions will hit anything of relevance or miss. This could even lead to GPS/radio-based early warning systems for troops. Many troops and vehicles already carry a lot of electronic gadgets with them - why not give them a software-based acoustic early warning if they're about to be hit by artillery in fifteen seconds?

At this point it should be visible that you do not need to intercept all incoming munitions - you could ignore those which are going to miss. This in turn influences the affordability threshold for defensive vs. offensive munitions.

Counter artillery rocket mortar (C-RAM) systems have so far mostly been based on existing hardware. It began probably with a 114mm cannon shell being hit by a naval Sea Wolf SAM sometime around '80. Today's systems are rather short-ranged; one system is based on a six-barrelled 20mm Gatling gun and another one is based on 35mm autocannons with shrapnel munition. There were also tests with self-propelled howitzers attempting to intercept other howitzer's shells in flight.

The efforts of Israel are quite outstanding. their objective is more political than military in nature and they developed several missile types for the intercept of dumb rockets.

Numerous other projects surely exist without striving for as much publicity.

Very short-range C-RAM systems seem to dominate in NATO today because today's mission profile is about the defence of fortified camps in guerrilla warfare against the weapons of guerrillas (mostly short-ranged mortars and very compact rocket launchers). This hardware won't help us much in a possible great war when we might face pulsing saturation attacks from competent "shoot & scoot" artillery forces.

The technical problems are certainly formidable; how could we develop a really cheap munition capable of hitting a supersonic manoeuvring munition in flight? It seems that the necessary answer is that we must not in any case launch a development project to meet this challenge. That would be the worst possible move because of the embarrassing inefficiency of NATO members' military hardware procurement agencies. The industry might develop such a system on its own initiative, on order by an export customer or maybe the Israelis, or Swedes end up developing an adequate hardware solution.

- - - - -

This is a great moment to recall the prioritisation:

Protection against air threat is first and foremost about measures that reduce the vulnerability to attempts of detection and attack.

[...]

Next comes the necessity to reduce the air threat's repertoire.

[...]

Third come the actually destructive responses.

It makes sense to keep the active defence priority in regard to rocket, artillery and mortar threats low because this kind of response is likely the least cost-efficient one. A low budget for R&D as well as procurement does not exclude a good effort at tactics and theory about hard kill defences, though. Navies had defend themselves against munitions since the 70's (and should better have done so since the 40's!). Air forces should have a close look at the topic as well. Land forces should at the very least recognize its relevance to the artillery fight and the protection of key infrastructure (the famous 'critical bridge').

Sven Ortmann
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The first week of a peer vs. peer air war; a dilemma

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It's been a classic dilemma of the Cold War: What should be done early on in an air war?

* Should the air forces focus on the air superiority fight (fighter vs. fighter) at first?

* Should they focus on the destruction of enemy air defences first?

* Maybe attack enemy airfields?

* Maybe blow up some important bridges?

* Attacks on hostile troops on road marches?

* Attacks on hostile troops in contact with friendly troops?

* Should squadrons relocate to more survivable airfields or stay at their home airbases?

* What kind of mix would be optimal?

The Israelis had this kind of dilemma - especially in the surprising Yom Kippur War 1973. They seem to have improvised. The substantial losses of their attack aircraft forced a campaign against hostile battlefield air defences on them in the midst of the conflict. In the end, lots of technological changes and special conditions prevent the Yom Kippur example from giving us reliable guidance about how to answer the dilemma.

The dilemma wasn't nearly as serious in the conflict against Iraq. The Iraq was simply no peer and not capable of immediate decisive action on the ground or air. Fighting against Iraqis was even less than a sparring match in comparison to WW3 expectations. Again, there's little to learn from the campaigns against Iraqi forces in regard to the basic prioritization dilemma.

- - - - -

There might be an answer to the dilemma, though: Surprisingly, this may be a technological answer (and we should be sceptical about it for this reason).

It's obvious that several of the aforementioned options are related to the survivability of combat aircraft. Survivability against hostile fighters, against hostile attack aircraft (when on the ground) and against hostile air defences.

Now what if we were able to take this out of the equation? Let's assume we had a silver bullet that can strike operational level targets (typically 50-500 km depth, for example) while the artillery can strike close targets (and substitute for lacking close air support).

The air forces would then be able to fight for air war superiority, fight air force vs. air force. They would have the best probability of success, could later turn on the hostile ground forces and deliver a strong argument for the politicians who hopefully keep negotiating about an end of the folly.

OK, which weapon or munition could render fighters, air defences and attacks on friendly airfields quite irrelevant? The (quasi-) ballistic missile!

Such missiles are very survivable against most air defence systems, have a useful range for the operational level of war (the longer the range the faster - and thus more survivable!) and nowadays such missiles have the necessary pinpoint accuracy for the destruction of stationary (fixed and reconnoitered semi-mobile) targets: Air fields, long-range air defence batteries, bridges).

NATO air forces (and navies) have understood their potential, their potency as threat - and accordingly spent a great deal of attention and money on hard kill defences against such missiles.

They did not embrace the (quasi-)ballistic missile themselves, though. Missile types with less than 500 km range would fit into the treaties that are in force (except possibly ICOC 3-3).

It may be a prejudice, but maybe it's simply bureaucratic inertia coupled with conservativeness and special interests (fighter pilot generals wanting more fighter wings, not more unsexy missile batteries) that keeps these missiles outside of NATO air forces.

Foreign policy strategy (promotion of ICOC & BM counter-proliferation efforts in general) might play a role as well.

The exposure to Third World ballistic missiles based on Russian 1950's technology has distorted the perception of the (quasi-)ballistic missile threat. Such missiles are at times interpreted as useful only with non-conventional warheads.

It's almost forgotten that NATO had such battlefield missiles with conventional warheads in service during the Cold War!

- - - - -

There are several modern designs of accurate (quasi-)ballistic missiles:

The U.S. ATACMS Block II missile:

supposedly 300 k range

The Russian Iskander missile:

supposedly 400 km range.

The Israeli LORA missile:

Supposedly 300 km range.

The payload is several hundred kilograms each - enough.

The most obvious choice for NATO forces would probably be to introduce (more) ATACMS Block II into Corps- or Division-level army artillery units and to produce in license a longer-range version of LORA (to be honest, its's most likely cheaper to let them develop a LORA 2 and to buy a license than to develop a missile of our own!).

The dilemma could then be solved quite easily; NATO air forces could alternate between defensive (defence with fighters and air defences) and offensive (additional strike packages against battlefield air defences and relatively easily accessible installations) phases until it has a won the air power vs. air power contest in one shape or another.

Strike missions against airfields, fixed and semi-mobile area air defence assets, bridges and the like (ministries?) would be substituted for with the fires from 300-500 km (quasi-)ballistic missile regiments.

Close air support could early on be substituted for with army aviation and artillery fires.

So far, the Western air forces don't seem to believe that this is necessary, though. They prefer air-launched cruise missiles of about 250-300 km range instead. Such cruise missiles require sorties just as the classic strike packages would do.

Maybe we should pay more attention to (quasi-)ballistic missiles as a gap in our air forces instead of paying obedient attention to other big ticket projects (fighters, bombers, air launched cruise missiles) and to the role of ballistic missiles as threats only.

F-35 and Typhoon critics are numerous - how many critical remarks about the lack of SRBMs in Western air forces did you see (except here)?

Sven Ortmann
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The 24/7 air attack paradox

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I could swear I wrote about this a long time ago, but I never find the article whenever I search for the post with my search function.

Well, here's it (again?), in short:

I see a problem in modern air/ground attack technology, and it takes a long look back to the prime time of air power to explain this.

The German army was almost completely unable to move in daylight on the Western Front from June 1944 till the end of WW2. Few exceptions proved the rule, and all of them were tied to poor weather phases.

The Western Allies achieved this with several thousand tactical aircraft that roamed the skies during daylight (very, very few were on non-strategic missions during the night). Every move in daylight even by small units was possible only along certain roads - especially roads that offered concealment (trees) in short intervals. The troops were then able to sprint into concealment once aircrafts were spotted. Even that was pointless if hostile aircraft were overhead all the time, of course.

The result was a huge problem on the tactical level, but it was an unmitigated disaster on the operational level. Reserves moved extremely slow and counter-attacks were much delayed. German operational art died the death of lags and slowness.

The critical component in this historical case was the Allies' inability to achieve a similar effect at night. There would have been no reason to restrict necessary marches to poor visibility phases if that had not offered effective concealment.

- - - - -

This is where I see a problem in today's air/ground attack avionics. We turned the night into day, supposedly because this was an improvement. The avionics and training costs for the night attack ability were quite high - were they worth it?

Our enemies would not be motivated to restrict themselves to night marches. They would be willing to march 24/7. The extremely valuable slowness and lag factors would not be in effect (at least not as much as back then). Instead, we could expend a limited quantity of expensive precision munitions against a much larger quantity of mobile targets.

Maybe that would suffice to compensate for the lack of the slowness & lag factors. I tend to believe that it would not if we really fought against a peer instead of against a 4th rate developing country military equipped with 'monkey model' hardware.

In short; I don't consider air/ground night attack capability as a desirable feature for a large share of NATO air/ground capable combat aircraft. It's also very questionable for attack helicopters, mostly for fratricide concerns.

The night air/ground capability looks like a prime candidate for luxury spending and gold-plating awards to me. It was very fashionable during the 80's and 90's and has become quite self-evident since then, but somehow I doubt that the operational consequences are really understood.

Sven Ortmann

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Hexawheel concept

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There's a new concept car (likely still only in CAD version) about a concept that could be called "active articulated truck". It's the answer to a question I've never heard ("How can a light truck climb a 1.5 m obstacle?"), but it's still interesting.

http://www.emercedesbenz.com/...

(I'm not sure whether this is actually a Mercedes Benz concept.)

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A little bit German artillery and anti-tank defence history

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The German army had a serious anti-tank defence problem back in 1940-1945. It's today possible to guess the ideal mix of material and organisations* to cope with their anti-tank problem, but they didn't do a good job back then.

The problem surfaced during the short campaign in France 1940 for the first time. Both French Char B-1bis and British Mathilda tanks had thick enough armour plates to withstand the German standard AT guns (3,7 cm Pak 36; a commercially very successful and often-copied model that had nevertheless outlived its usefulness before the war. The gun was good in comparison to foreign counterparts, but not good enough by far).

The later camapaign in Russia confirmed the problem when the Russian T-34 and KV-1 tanks proved to be too well-protected as well. The German standard AT gun was performing well only against the huge inventory of old and new Russian light tanks (T-26, BT-5 & BT-7, T-60, T-70).

The roots of the problem date back by many years.

Tanks weren't "shell-proof", but only "bullet-proof" back in the 20's. New tank designs began to reach good speeds (30 km/h) only at around 1930. The increased speed meant that normal artillery (field howitzers with muzzle velocities of about 500 m/s) was increasingly reduced in its ability to hit those new tanks at long ranges (a flight time of about 2.2 sec was later considered to be OK for AT purposes by NATO).

The first shell-proof (at least against frontal hits) tanks appeared in the mid-1930's and shell-proof tank frontal armour wasn't standard until about 1942.

So the 30's were a phase of rapid technological and conceptual change. The German dedicated motorised anti-tank units (Panzerjäger) were planned to be equipped with 3.7 cm guns - and this plan was carried out with bureaucratic momentum despite the growing obsolescence of the gun.

Critics of the German anti-tank effort in WW2 usually point at this failure; the failure to replace the 3.7 cm gun early with a 5 or 7.5 cm AT gun. (This failure is actually explainable by the pursuit of squeeze-bore technology guns. This technology was unusable in wartime because of its consumption of rare tungsten.)

The anti-tank effort wasn't only an effort of the Panzerjäger, though. The Soviets used their artillery in concentrations to break German armour attacks and the French had similar, initially promising efforts in the later phase of the 1940 campaign.

Why wasn't this possible for the German army?

Anti-tank fires require a rather high muzzle velocity. This improves the hit chance against moving targets at long range and it also gives the shell more kinetic energy. Cannons (lower maximum elevation, higher muzzle velocity and smaller calibre for same gun weight than howitzers) were therefore better suited for anti-tank defence than howitzers. Gun-howitzers (a mixture of both categories) were satisfactory until about early 1943.

Germany's light field artillery began to move from cannons in the 7.5-8.8 cm range to 10.5 cm howitzers even before the First World War, a few years after the quick-firing gun revolution. This trend towards heavier shells and higher angle of fire (and thus shell descent) had intensified during the war. 7.5 cm light field cannons were still in use during the Weimar Republic's Reichswehr time, but they finally dropped out of favour during the army build-up of the 1930's and were considered to be obsolete (although they were kept in service due to a generally inadequate production output.

There were good reasons for this from the artillery branch's point of view:

* The higher maximum elevation made howitzers more useful in forest terrain.

* The higher angle of fire and thus shell descent created a superior fragmentation pattern of the shell.

* Light field cannons had only small explosive effect per shell.

* Howitzers were able to penetrate overhead cover of field fortifications in direct hits.

* Artillery had to use indirect fire (without line-of-sight) most often for its own survivability, and howitzers were more suitable to this in general.

The howitzers retained shields and were thus easily capable of disposing enemy tanks back in WWI and up to the mid-30's. It seemed as if dropping the 7.5 cm light field cannon out of production in favour of more 10.5 cm light field howitzers was a smart move.

So it happened - the newest 7.5 cm light field cannon design - 7.5 cm WFK L/42 with a long barrel (unusually high muzzle velocity of 701 m/s and thus a good range of 13.500 m), a good max. elevation of 42° and a barely tolerable weight of 1625 kg wasn't put into production.

The 10,5 cm leFH 18 became instead the standard ordnance of the light artillery detachments of German artillery regiments.

The Russians introduced an even better light field cannon (76,2 mm Pushka obr. 1936g) with 1.350 kg deployed weight, 706 m/s, 13.6 km and an incredible 75° max. elevation in 1936. (German artillery desigers had a reputation to be a bit on the heavy side while Russians had the reputation of being a bit on the light side.)

This 7.62 cm gun was later captured in1 941 in great quantities and adopted by the German army as Pak 36(r) because it was one of the greatest anti-tank guns of the war.

The Russians later introduced a lighter (1120 kg deployed) gun with less max. elevation (37°) - the ZiS-3 gun. The most incredibly fact about this gun was the insane production quantity. It was also very popular (once captured) in the German army and was adopted as Fk 288(r). It was lighter than the German 7.5 cm Pak 40 of the time and almost as easy to handle in the field as the German 5 cm Pak 38.

The British had also an anti-tank problem in WW2, but this was concealed until 1942 by its fine standard field artillery piece, the 25 pdr (8.76 cm) gun-howitzer. Its muzzle velocity of about 532 m/s wasn't good, but it was still capable of being used in an emergency anti-tank role until early 1943.

Well, what had happened? Much of the German anti-tank defence problem of WW2 has its roots reaching back to the 1900's, before the invention of tanks. The artillery branch had optimised itself for its core role of indirect fires and not paid attention to the emerging threat of shell-proof armour. The German artillery was therefore not as effective in the German anti-tank effort of WW2 as it would have been necessary. Attempts to correct this (such as the use of captured guns and 7.5 cm anti-tank guns in German artillery units and the creation of assault gun detachments as part of the artillery branch) were signficant, but obviously not enough.

The German artillery branch failed to meet wartime expectations (in WW2) because it wasn't versatile enough due to its pursuit of maximum effectiveness in its core mission.

This didn't influence the early Bundeswehr much. The early Bundeswehr had to use foreign Western ordnance and didn't pay much attention to an anti-tank role for the artillery until the 1970's with the rise of dual purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) and after the war the "smart" SMArt155 guided AT munition for 155 mm howitzers.

Sven Ortmann

*: My take on this:

Panzerfaust for all troops, Panzerschreck at Platoon (or infantry in defence: Squad) level, enough AT bar mines, motorised 7.5cm AT guns in divisional Panzerjägerabteilung, one 7.5 cm field cannon leichte Abteilung in divisional artillery regiment, assault gun battalion (Sturmgeschützabteilung) with 7.5cm casemate gun AFVs (assault guns) for Army Corps and several of the same directly available to Army (2-4 Army Corps) Commander with a move from 7.5 to 8.8 cm calibre beginning in 1943.

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