NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Type 08

[Siegom]

Before I start working on my countries military formations and equipment and all that stuff I'm going to write up a military doctrine and I was wondering if there was any validity to a few of the key ideas I'm planning on building my doctrine around;
(keep in mind my military is a 1990s Peoples Liberation Army styled force with an extremely huge amount of manpower but very little in the way of modern equipment and a bunch of other problems, although in my case they are being addressed as part of a major reform plan)

SPA - Siegomese Peoples Army

• Pressure everywhere - On the strategic level my the SPA is to apply pressure in every area is can with the objective of finding a weakened area in the hostile front
• Mass application of forces in concentrated areas - As soon as a weak area is located as many forces as can possibly be massed against it must be massed against it
• Supply and support abundance - Supply must be proactive and a large reserve must be kept in and around the front at all times, especially so that in the event of a breakthrough being achieved it can be exploited to its fullest without having to wait for large amounts of supplies to be shifted from other areas. Support in the form of artillery, service workshops, anti air equipment, engineering forces etc must always be readily available, especially on the strategic level
• Strategic level maneuver is paramount/ tactical level is minor - The main focus of planners and commanders should be on the strategic level while the tactical level should remain a comparatively minor concern.
• Operational level is to be dictated by the strategic situation - The operational level is only to serve the needs of the strategic level.
• Achieving numerical superiority of forces must always be sought - Given the lack of advanced equipment and the fairly simplistic level of training necessitated by a very large army the SPA must always seek to have an advantage in the number of troops and the amount of equipment in a battle. Also applies to the support of ground forces by artillery and other support arms
• Constant knowledge of the enemy's locations and forces on the strategic and operational levels must be a major priority

Just reposting so that it doesn't get missed at the bottom of the page

[The Kievan People]

Air strikes will continue to be directed by ground controllers, in vicinity of friendly forces. So in that sense CAS is still alive and kicking. With GPS and Laser guided munitions that can be directed by ground troops with no intermediary it is in some ways in a golden age. The future, when they may be able to directly control whole drones, may enhance their capability to call for aerial fires further still. The A-10 debate has distorted the issue because A-10 supporters tend to insist every characteristic of the A-10 is a vital and indispensable part of the CAS mission.

On the CAS debate:

How effective was the usage of high-altitude strategic bombers in the role of conventional bombing on enemy forces in Vietnam, and was it successful enough to warrant more of the same should the need arise? Operations like Arclight and Rolling Thunder seem to have been effective at killing a lot of people, but obviously that wasn't the way to win that war.

It can be...

Heavy bombers have been used to attack "tactical" targets since WWII and the results have generally been good, in terms of damage.

Their main limitation has historically been that high command keeps them on a tight leash and they are usually only available for big set pieces operations. For example during the preparations for Operation Goodwood the Allies launched what was at that point the largest bomber offensive ever on the German defenders. The results were, by all accounts, devastating. But the Allies waited hours before pushing forward with the ground offensive, and in at that time many German units that had been damaged and completely disrupted by the bomber waves had already reconstituted fighting forces.

Those times they have worked in close concert with ground troops, like during the siege of Khe Sanh, or more recently in Iraq & Afghanistan, they are super effective.

[Schwere Panzer Abieltung 502]

Air strikes will continue to be directed by ground controllers, in vicinity of friendly forces. So in that sense CAS is still alive and kicking. With GPS and Laser guided munitions that can be directed by ground troops with no intermediary it is in some ways in a golden age. The future, when they may be able to directly control whole drones, may enhance their capability to call for aerial fires further still. The A-10 debate has distorted the issue because A-10 supporters tend to insist every characteristic of the A-10 is a vital and indispensable part of the CAS mission.

On the CAS debate:

How effective was the usage of high-altitude strategic bombers in the role of conventional bombing on enemy forces in Vietnam, and was it successful enough to warrant more of the same should the need arise? Operations like Arclight and Rolling Thunder seem to have been effective at killing a lot of people, but obviously that wasn't the way to win that war.

It can be...

Heavy bombers have been used to attack "tactical" targets since WWII and the results have generally been good, in terms of damage.

Their main limitation has historically been that high command keeps them on a tight leash and they are usually only available for big set pieces operations. For example during the preparations for Operation Goodwood the Allies launched what was at that point the largest bomber offensive ever on the German defenders. The results were, by all accounts, devastating. But the Allies waited hours before pushing forward with the ground offensive, and in at that time many German units that had been damaged and completely disrupted by the bomber waves had already reconstituted fighting forces.

Those times they have worked in close concert with ground troops, like during the siege of Khe Sanh, or more recently in Iraq & Afghanistan, they are super effective.

Was it recommended to use B-52s for danger close bombing runs even at high altitude?

[The Kievan People]

http://iiwiki.com/wiki/Commonwealth_Army_Doctrine#Reconnaissance

Is this about right? Or should the correct emphasis of Formation Recce be on sneaking and providing the higher-ups with information?

Well it's kind of hard to "sneak" with a tank formation. Not impossible, but hard.

[The Kievan People]

Was it recommended to use B-52s for danger close bombing runs even at high altitude?

It doesn't really make a difference these days. A JDAM or Paveway doesn't really care which aircraft it came from.

Historically, it depends on how bold they were feeling. Armies have become progressively more intolerant of friendly fire since the end of the second world war. In WWII there were still many infantry officers and NCOs who believed (based mostly on WWI experience, which many were veterans of) that if infantry were NOT taking casualties from their supporting fire, it was too far away.

[Roski]

Where in the US divisional system should I place 60, 81, and 120mm mortars?

Which divisions?

Stryker brigades have 120 mm mortars at the company level.

Is there a typical level or is it completely dependent on the brigade types in the division?

[The Akasha Colony]

Which divisions?

Stryker brigades have 120 mm mortars at the company level.

Is there a typical level or is it completely dependent on the brigade types in the division?

60 mm is more common at the company level an 81 mm at the battalion level, but often mortars are added to a formation to increase firepower. This isn't necessary for armored brigades which already have plenty of firepower between their tanks and IFVs, but Stryker brigades add 120 mm self-propelled mortars (M1129 MCVs) at both the company and battalion level. These also carry either the 60 mm or 81 mm mortars along (depending on what level they're assigned to) and the same crew is responsible for the use of both (the smaller ones are used when dismounted, otherwise the 120 mm is used). Armored and mechanized infantry companies, IIRC, don't have mortars.

[Roski]

Is there a typical level or is it completely dependent on the brigade types in the division?

60 mm is more common at the company level an 81 mm at the battalion level, but often mortars are added to a formation to increase firepower. This isn't necessary for armored brigades which already have plenty of firepower between their tanks and IFVs, but Stryker brigades add 120 mm self-propelled mortars (M1129 MCVs) at both the company and battalion level. These also carry either the 60 mm or 81 mm mortars along (depending on what level they're assigned to) and the same crew is responsible for the use of both (the smaller ones are used when dismounted, otherwise the 120 mm is used). Armored and mechanized infantry companies, IIRC, don't have mortars.

Hmm.

Thank you very much.

[Nordiskforbund]

Could somebody please explain to me the purpose of single-shot disposable launchers? It seems like a waste of money, and I can't quite wrap my mind around it, but they've been around for decades so they must have some advantage over reloadable launchers.

[Gallia-]

Could somebody please explain to me the purpose of single-shot disposable launchers? It seems like a waste of money, and I can't quite wrap my mind around it, but they've been around for decades so they must have some advantage over reloadable launchers.

They're very cheap and generally more accurate than rifle grenades.

[The Kievan People]

Plastic tubes are not very valuable.

[The Kievan People]

Before I start working on my countries military formations and equipment and all that stuff I'm going to write up a military doctrine and I was wondering if there was any validity to a few of the key ideas I'm planning on building my doctrine around;
(keep in mind my military is a 1990s Peoples Liberation Army styled force with an extremely huge amount of manpower but very little in the way of modern equipment and a bunch of other problems, although in my case they are being addressed as part of a major reform plan)

SPA - Siegomese Peoples Army

• Pressure everywhere - On the strategic level my the SPA is to apply pressure in every area is can with the objective of finding a weakened area in the hostile front
• Mass application of forces in concentrated areas - As soon as a weak area is located as many forces as can possibly be massed against it must be massed against it
• Supply and support abundance - Supply must be proactive and a large reserve must be kept in and around the front at all times, especially so that in the event of a breakthrough being achieved it can be exploited to its fullest without having to wait for large amounts of supplies to be shifted from other areas. Support in the form of artillery, service workshops, anti air equipment, engineering forces etc must always be readily available, especially on the strategic level
• Strategic level maneuver is paramount/ tactical level is minor - The main focus of planners and commanders should be on the strategic level while the tactical level should remain a comparatively minor concern.
• Operational level is to be dictated by the strategic situation - The operational level is only to serve the needs of the strategic level.
• Achieving numerical superiority of forces must always be sought - Given the lack of advanced equipment and the fairly simplistic level of training necessitated by a very large army the SPA must always seek to have an advantage in the number of troops and the amount of equipment in a battle. Also applies to the support of ground forces by artillery and other support arms
• Constant knowledge of the enemy's locations and forces on the strategic and operational levels must be a major priority

Just reposting so that it doesn't get missed at the bottom of the page

Not bad but this is more a list of maxims, or ends.

A doctrine normally includes ends but it's meat is the means to those ends.

[HMS Vanguard]

The main utility of air forces is to attack strategic positions which are out of the range of artillery. Wars are won either at sea by naval forces or on the ground by ground forces.

Why wars are won is of course a complex question and perhaps not one either of us can answer with authority. It is not clear that strategic bombardment can't win a war; I accept there aren't any successful examples, and it has failed before, but nuclear war is essentially a form a strategic bombardment and it seemed to inspire enough fear to prevent wars. So we shall see.

Even disregarding the strategic element, though, most casualties throughout history have been inflicted by artillery. We might reasonably conclude, then, that artillery is an important branch of a land force. At sea, we have been now in an era for more than a century in which essentially all losses have been inflicted by artillery or by aircraft.

I argue that aircraft are a form of artillery. You seem to agree. The question whether aircraft are useful, then, is essentially a question of whether aircraft bring anything to the table that conventional artillery does not, and whether it is worth the price. They bring two things: first, wide field of vision, and second, short reaction times. Let us examine these.

Wide field of vision is genuinely unique to aircraft for fundamental physics reasons and this will never change. At best (from your point of view) we might see attacks conducted solely by ground based weapons, be they gun or missile artillery, but reconnaissance will still need to be conducted by aircraft. But any such system has another weakness: delay introduced by the need for all the separate components to communicate. Using aircraft also to attack shortens reaction times.

Short reaction times here does not mean that when requested from outside, they arrive the most quickly. It means that the aircraft itself can identify and attack a target on its own initiative without needing inputs from outside. The time it takes to pass an identification from some other unit to a command position, for the commanders to take a decision on whether to attack it, pass that instruction to artillery, and then have the artillery actually execute the attack, dramatically reduces the range of targets that artillery can engage, especially moving targets.

Ground-based artillery is used in response to requests from other units for support because this scenario best minimises artillery's weaknesses. It doesn't need wide field of vision because someone else found the target, and delays are less important because the combat is fixing the two units in place for a period of minutes, hours, or longer. Aircraft can also perform missions like that - but they can additionally perform missions artillery can't.

Targets most vulnerable to aircraft are large, mobile formations. These are generally not very vulnerable to artillery, because large movements generally don't take place in direct contact with the enemy, and they proceed rapidly enough that latency is important. Given enough latitude to operate, aircraft can shut down large formation movements. This places all initiative in the hands of the side that has air superiority.

As for claims of vulnerability, it is true that aircraft can be seen at long distances, at least in principle. That is necessarily so if they can also observe at long distances, which is a big advantage of aircraft. But it it not exactly "easy" to detect an aircraft at great distance, nor to attack one. Almost everything on the battlefield has little ability to detect or attack an aircraft. A long range air-search radar is not easy to build, move, or operate. It is an expensive, sophisticated, and vulnerable piece of equipment that can be built by only a handful of countries in the real world, and can only be operated by scarce and skilled personnel. It can also, when broadcasting, be detected at great distances. Air defence in fact has much the same vulnerabilities as aircraft themselves, but without the advantage that successful use provides one's own forces with a major advantage. Instead it just prevents the enemy gaining a major advantage over you.

[Imperializt Russia]

On the CAS debate:

How effective was the usage of high-altitude strategic bombers in the role of conventional bombing on enemy forces in Vietnam, and was it successful enough to warrant more of the same should the need arise? Operations like Arclight and Rolling Thunder seem to have been effective at killing a lot of people, but obviously that wasn't the way to win that war.

They failed to achieve much. The forces of the North had little infrastructure or materiel to be destroyed, and their morale was not broken.

It was a bit of an expensive waste.
Operations such as Junction City, with (airmobile) ground forces doing things, were substantially and evidently effective operations.

Before I start working on my countries military formations and equipment and all that stuff I'm going to write up a military doctrine and I was wondering if there was any validity to a few of the key ideas I'm planning on building my doctrine around;
(keep in mind my military is a 1990s Peoples Liberation Army styled force with an extremely huge amount of manpower but very little in the way of modern equipment and a bunch of other problems, although in my case they are being addressed as part of a major reform plan)

SPA - Siegomese Peoples Army

• Pressure everywhere - On the strategic level my the SPA is to apply pressure in every area is can with the objective of finding a weakened area in the hostile front
• Mass application of forces in concentrated areas - As soon as a weak area is located as many forces as can possibly be massed against it must be massed against it
• Supply and support abundance - Supply must be proactive and a large reserve must be kept in and around the front at all times, especially so that in the event of a breakthrough being achieved it can be exploited to its fullest without having to wait for large amounts of supplies to be shifted from other areas. Support in the form of artillery, service workshops, anti air equipment, engineering forces etc must always be readily available, especially on the strategic level
• Strategic level maneuver is paramount/ tactical level is minor - The main focus of planners and commanders should be on the strategic level while the tactical level should remain a comparatively minor concern.
• Operational level is to be dictated by the strategic situation - The operational level is only to serve the needs of the strategic level.
• Achieving numerical superiority of forces must always be sought - Given the lack of advanced equipment and the fairly simplistic level of training necessitated by a very large army the SPA must always seek to have an advantage in the number of troops and the amount of equipment in a battle. Also applies to the support of ground forces by artillery and other support arms
• Constant knowledge of the enemy's locations and forces on the strategic and operational levels must be a major priority

A doctrine focuses on the why, and why all of your hows are to be achieved.

It explains the reasoning. As Kyiv pointed out, this is less doctrinal discussion and more "useful pointers on manoeuvre warfare".

[Questers]

The main utility of air forces is to attack strategic positions which are out of the range of artillery. Wars are won either at sea by naval forces or on the ground by ground forces.

Why wars are won is of course a complex question and perhaps not one either of us can answer with authority. It is not clear that strategic bombardment can't win a war; I accept there aren't any successful examples, and it has failed before, but nuclear war is essentially a form a strategic bombardment and it seemed to inspire enough fear to prevent wars. So we shall see.

Even disregarding the strategic element, though, most casualties throughout history have been inflicted by artillery. We might reasonably conclude, then, that artillery is an important branch of a land force. At sea, we have been now in an era for more than a century in which essentially all losses have been inflicted by artillery or by aircraft.

I argue that aircraft are a form of artillery. You seem to agree. The question whether aircraft are useful, then, is essentially a question of whether aircraft bring anything to the table that conventional artillery does not, and whether it is worth the price. They bring two things: first, wide field of vision, and second, short reaction times. Let us examine these.

Wide field of vision is genuinely unique to aircraft for fundamental physics reasons and this will never change. At best (from your point of view) we might see attacks conducted solely by ground based weapons, be they gun or missile artillery, but reconnaissance will still need to be conducted by aircraft. But any such system has another weakness: delay introduced by the need for all the separate components to communicate. Using aircraft also to attack shortens reaction times.

Short reaction times here does not mean that when requested from outside, they arrive the most quickly. It means that the aircraft itself can identify and attack a target on its own initiative without needing inputs from outside. The time it takes to pass an identification from some other unit to a command position, for the commanders to take a decision on whether to attack it, pass that instruction to artillery, and then have the artillery actually execute the attack, dramatically reduces the range of targets that artillery can engage, especially moving targets.

Ground-based artillery is used in response to requests from other units for support because this scenario best minimises artillery's weaknesses. It doesn't need wide field of vision because someone else found the target, and delays are less important because the combat is fixing the two units in place for a period of minutes, hours, or longer. Aircraft can also perform missions like that - but they can additionally perform missions artillery can't.

Targets most vulnerable to aircraft are large, mobile formations. These are generally not very vulnerable to artillery, because large movements generally don't take place in direct contact with the enemy, and they proceed rapidly enough that latency is important. Given enough latitude to operate, aircraft can shut down large formation movements. This places all initiative in the hands of the side that has air superiority.

As for claims of vulnerability, it is true that aircraft can be seen at long distances, at least in principle. That is necessarily so if they can also observe at long distances, which is a big advantage of aircraft. But it it not exactly "easy" to detect an aircraft at great distance, nor to attack one. Almost everything on the battlefield has little ability to detect or attack an aircraft. A long range air-search radar is not easy to build, move, or operate. It is an expensive, sophisticated, and vulnerable piece of equipment that can be built by only a handful of countries in the real world, and can only be operated by scarce and skilled personnel. It can also, when broadcasting, be detected at great distances. Air defence in fact has much the same vulnerabilities as aircraft themselves, but without the advantage that successful use provides one's own forces with a major advantage. Instead it just prevents the enemy gaining a major advantage over you.

I don't think it's that complex—but like anything complex, it can be briefly summarised. The more broad the summary, the briefer—I would argue that Germany lost WW2 because of a strategic failure to contain its objectives within its means, for example. You can go all the way down and get real specific and say that since Germany lost its tungsten source by late 1943, it produced inferior tank ammunition. We can make broad judgments about why wars were won or lost, if we've the empirics.

Ok, so to address your points without breaking your quote up:

I agree aircraft are a form of artillery. You'll notice I agreed aircraft are still very useful for a certain number of things—reconnaissance, for which they're invaluable, I agree, and striking of targets that are beyond the range of artillery. I don't want to contest the field of view point.

The reaction time is true nominally but I feel like you're addressing it out of context. Aircraft can attack a target after themselves spotting it: I think this is a somewhat nebulous claim. They can attack targets that they themselves can identify via their own electronic intelligence. The coordination of other data requires centralised command and control, i.e. JSTARS. That information has to be fed back and collated in some useful way, and then taken into consideration as part of the broader plan. I would personally love to fight a person who simply threw aircraft over the battle and they attacked anything they found. That is dispersion of assets at its finest!

Aircraft can be on station to be called in by ground controllers. But in that sense there's no initiative at all: they are waiting to be called in.

I don't agree that aircraft can break up large formations from the air. I don't see any evidence for that, if I'm honest. The problem with aircraft themselves is their reaction time when given a task is low, which is what you alluded to. Against a competent and mobile opponent, I don't believe it's possible. Aircraft can strike targets and deliver a huge quantity of ordnance beyond artillery range. They have an important role in interdiction precisely because you can concentrate them and plan an operation, i.e. you can act. You can incorporate the destruction of bridges as part of an overall operational plan, and carry it out—direct all air forces to the support of this operation, fighters and SEAD, and attack the bridges at precisely the right time.

In summary: I argue that aircraft are an operational tool for the following reasons:
To scatter your aircraft around and have them target things they discover on their own initiative is a great waste because you lose concentration & mass. Combined arms means co-ordination of forces to work together on a tactical/operational level. Independent air operations are a waste for this reason, because they're not carried out in co-ordination in ground forces.

Aircraft can't break up offensives led by mobile formations because of their reaction time. Artillery can lay minefields and ICM type area-weapons over an advance because they can shoot so quickly and en-masse. Yes they are not in direct contact but intelligence passes between the battalion/regiment->division quicker than it passes from those assets to the aircraft formation. Aircraft have an AWFUL track record at penetration of tech/org parity air defences. I really want to cite Yom Kippur as an example of this. Proper SEAD takes time, which you do not have in that situation. In my view there's no justification in the belief that you can penetrate a Corps/Army level air barrier to launch some kind of devastating attack on an advancing ground force. You need time to work in SEAD, to gather proper intelligence, and to properly plan attack timetables.

My main argument, however, was NOT against the use of tactical aircraft!!! It was against the reliance of CAS/aerial assault breaker as part of an established rule to deal with a breakthrough. This is especially true of exploitations—tanks and MICVs are moving too fast to be countered by aircraft. You can't build up clear picture of enemy exploitation unless it stalls, in which case it's no longer an exploitation. In my view, exploitation attack is supported by TBM attacks on airfields and very dense jamming environment, as well as concentrated fighter cover. Fighters and SAM do not need to destroy aerial counter-attack, only turn it back. Here's also where it can be political: air force commander might not want to spend 100 aircraft or whatever to stop breakthrough. Ground forces commander will demand it. They will argue with supreme commander and whole process is delayed while tanks are moving through the rear area. This exploitation can be broken up and stalled by counter-attacks on its flanks supported by artillery.

I think CAS is important in breaking strongpoints as part of a breakthrough, not as part of defending against a breakthrough. You identify your main thrusts and assign them CAS aircraft to increase the speed at which the breakthrough occurs, because you're increasing the amount of firepower your penetrating units have to do their task.

I'm not impressed with any examples provided so far. Goodwood—where were the Luftwaffe's air defences? They were absent. Allies rained down bombs on stationary targets undefended. So what? I can not think of any example where one airforce was able to launch decisive counter-attacks to blunt an offensive. Let's take the allied counter-attack at Arras. According to people here, Rommel should have called in Luftwaffle to spam 50lb bombs and break up allied tank formations. what he actually did was skilfully position anti-tank guns and use his own panzers to break up this very threatening attack. Luftwaffle was restricted in whole campaign to bombing stationary targets or CAS of strongpoints or terror bombing civilians. And don't even mention Vietnam...

Would this tactic have worked against USSR? No. The air environment was too dense, jamming was too dense, Soviets had mass quantity of SAMs. Ground artillery was given the task of breaking up formations with JSTARs guided DPICM to do what air force had promised to do but actually couldn't.

[Arthurista]

Imagine I take a finned 155mm round, something like a Copperhead, and stick an IIR terminal guidance package on it to create a fire and forget AT weapon. Is that workable? Is the current state of IIR hardware robust enough to withstand being shot out of a field gun?

[Imperializt Russia]

Imagine I take a finned 155mm round, something like a Copperhead, and stick an IIR terminal guidance package on it to create a fire and forget AT weapon. Is that workable? Is the current state of IIR hardware robust enough to withstand being shot out of a field gun?

IIRC you've described Krasnopol, unless I'm confusing it and that's laser-guided.
I'm positive there is an IIR seeker concept six-inch shell.

[Arthurista]

Imagine I take a finned 155mm round, something like a Copperhead, and stick an IIR terminal guidance package on it to create a fire and forget AT weapon. Is that workable? Is the current state of IIR hardware robust enough to withstand being shot out of a field gun?

IIRC you've described Krasnopol, unless I'm confusing it and that's laser-guided.
I'm positive there is an IIR seeker concept six-inch shell.

Isn't the Krasnopol laser guided?

So something like an IIR 155mm shell will in all likelihood function, just rather pricey?

[Imperializt Russia]

Some extensive googling sees to suggest that I am misremembering and there are no functional concepts for IIR artillery shells. Maybe the seekers are too delicate. Of course, laser seekers are abundant in this field.

[The Akasha Colony]

Some extensive googling sees to suggest that I am misremembering and there are no functional concepts for IIR artillery shells. Maybe the seekers are too delicate. Of course, laser seekers are abundant in this field.

IIRC, one of the biggest issues is target selection. How does your IIR seeker know what to lock on to and hit? This is why most IIR seekers are locked on before launch (or immediately after launch on a target the launch platform had already selected in the case of LOAL SRAAMs). Laser guidance doesn't have this problem because it requires another platform to have already selected the target.

[Imperializt Russia]

Surely it'd just be the "kill whatever appears in your FOV" setting that most terminal seekers seem to be set to.

[The Akasha Colony]

Surely it'd just be the "kill whatever appears in your FOV" setting that most terminal seekers seem to be set to.

And if your expensive shell decides to go after a truck rather than that MBT sitting next to it? It gets even harder when dealing with IR ground clutter, which the sensor has a very limited amount of time to deal with before impact.

[Gallia-]

Imagine I take a finned 155mm round, something like a Copperhead, and stick an IIR terminal guidance package on it to create a fire and forget AT weapon. Is that workable? Is the current state of IIR hardware robust enough to withstand being shot out of a field gun?

IIRC you've described Krasnopol, unless I'm confusing it and that's laser-guided.
I'm positive there is an IIR seeker concept six-inch shell.

STRIX is the only IIR unitary round in production.

Excalibur in the future.

[Imperializt Russia]

Surely it'd just be the "kill whatever appears in your FOV" setting that most terminal seekers seem to be set to.

And if your expensive shell decides to go after a truck rather than that MBT sitting next to it? It gets even harder when dealing with IR ground clutter, which the sensor has a very limited amount of time to deal with before impact.

Works fine for SADARM, and I guess this is why we're using artillery and not MANPAT kit.

[The Akasha Colony]

Works fine for SADARM, and I guess this is why we're using artillery and not MANPAT kit.

SADARM has more time to identify its targets, and has an MMW sensor as well (which is not affected by clutter).