Will MOD Cancel Warrior CSP?

[Gravelbelly]

First, I think your description is misrepresenting the original post. It specifically puffed up the ability to switch types of target without ceasing fire. That isn't just an autoloader, which is perfectly sensible. I still hold it is overengineered, unless someone can argue otherwise. It fulfills a requirement that is, at best, extremely limited. If that is the stated selling point, then caveat emptor!

It's a dual-feed system. You know, just like all the Bushmasters. Being able to switch ammunition natures without having to first unload the weapon seems... entirely obvious, given that just about every other Western turret is already doing it. Insisting that it be done manually, just because a fifty-year-old clip-loaded RARDEN does it that way, seems downright Luddite.

Take a ten-year technology gap - are you going to insist that the Centurion is "overengineered" compared to the Matilda? Or de Havilland Vampire compared to the Gloster Gladiator? Maybe the Vulcan compared to the Lancaster? You appear to be insisting that anything more complicated than a five-decade-old cannon is "overengineered", which would have meant a Cold War fought with the Mk IV Tank...

All of the projects are also, to my mind, totally overengineered given those (predictable) characteristics. A £150m stealth jet will still get shot down by a £20m one if its secure comms don't work properly, and assuming equal budgets translating into force ratios, the enemy will have 6.5 more tries to do so!

Rather a lot of oversimplification there. By your measure, Type 26 is a waste, we just need five times as many River class. F-35 is a waste, let's just buy more Harriers. Picking an edge-case (broken radio! plane loss! eleventy!!!) and using it for a wider assertion is what St. Sharkey does...

...note also that the key, overriding, limiting factor on our Armed Forces isn't the headline price of the kit, it's the manpower cost. That F-18A looked pretty damn good next to that F-14D when you discovered that its maintenance burden was a sixth of the older kit; suddenly, a 450-person squadron that couldn't quite keep half its aircraft available, turned into a 250-person squadron that could keep over three-quarters in flying condition.

We're short of people. If the extra cost was driven by research and trials into maintainability, then that means fewer people digging out to fix kit, less time on the tank park. Compare CR2 availability with Chieftain. If that money went into safety, then more people live - compare how many pilots have been killed flying a Typhoon, with the number who died flying the Meteor. Or the Lightning. Or the Harrier. Or the Jaguar.

You're now suggesting we somehow find 6.5 times more ships' complements, 6.5 times more aircrew, 6.5 times more AFV crews. How, exactly, are you going to find an Army of over 400,000 and a navy of nearly 200,000? What colour is the sky on your planet?

Safety and compatibility and maintainability engineering don't come for free. Yes, zero risk is unattainable, and ALARP is sensible, but if you produce "cheap kit, quickly", you'll get sh!te that kills soldiers. Skimp on the trials, and you'll end up like the Americans - radio headsets that didn't fit under the issue helmet.

Remind me again about BOWMAN - aside from the political pressure to put a factory in a Welsh marginal, wasn't it a serving Brigadier who led the IPT? Refused to acknowledge infantry needs? Swore blind it was fit for purpose in the face of all opposing proof?

Our 80s and 90s NATO strategy of technology overmatch has failed. Our approach to industry means our tech is now too expensive, too old, and too little.

Make kit simpler, more basic, cheaper, and faster, and make it with corporals sitting in the program, with the designers, from the start. Don't make SA80s. Make AK-47s.

Utter pish. It worked bloody well. Remind me how NATO equipment fared on GRANBY and TELIC, when outnumbered by cheap, simple, and plentiful types. Do tell how many "too expensive" Challengers were killed by the simple, reliable, and rugged T-62 / T-72 / RPG-7. Do remind us how the AKM overmatches L85 / L129 with its accuracy and awesome accessories. I mean, its night-vision system must be great. Reassure us with tales of that fantastic, cheap, and rugged 58-pattern webbing and 68-pattern combat suits.

Remind me - who, exactly, decides the staffing of trials and development units? Who, exactly, decides the skills required of military personnel posted onto procurement projects (and how long they remain in post)?

You've already got those Corporals sitting in the room, and you always had. Along with the deep technical expertise Warrant Officer types. If they're being given a stiff ignoring by an SO2(Tech), or overruled by a grouchy Colonel whose last turret seat was a Saracen, whose fault is that?

...and what future guff BAE's professional services dept can convinced them they will really, really need.

Bollocks. All of the lunacy requirements come out of nutjob Staff Officers who think that somehow, a one-year conversion course at Shrivenham on top of their dimly-remembered Arts degree (or an OU MBA) means that they can indulge requirement skills better-suited to the jotter of a 12-year-old with guns an' turrets an' wings an' paratroopers daggadaggadagga tank battle.

Why certainly, it should have armour capable of stopping an RPG, a TM-83, or a TM-62; hold a full section, mount a medium-calibre gun, and fit into a Hercules. What do you mean, you canna break the rules of Physics, Captain?

Go on, tell us how well FRES was managed. How well that "medium-weight doctrine" is coming along. What about the current equipment scales and doctrine/training packages are for Mountain, Jungle, and Arctic Warfare. If the f***ing Army can't even figure out what it wants, and how it should be using it, it's a bit rich to insist that it's all the fault of some mythical BAE Info Ops team. Why not blame 77X on BAE while you're at it?

Some types of infrastructure or requirements suit command driven economies: see, trains. If that is what Defence is going to do in practice (it is), then at least make it work for service personnel, rather than for the Glasgow local economy or BAE shareholders.

Cracking. You'll need to reform all of the research faculties that the Army shrank and closed, and recruit all of the technical expertise that you got rid of (see debates on the Army's utter inability to manage specialist skills). Say, five or six billion, a complete reorg of APC and the Officers' Career Structure, and twenty years should be enough to start?

Military Vehicles and Engineering Establishment - Wikipedia
Fort Halstead - Wikipedia

Buying back Qinetiq is a start, that should only cost £1.5 billion or so...

 

[rickshaw-major]

Cracking. You'll need to reform all of the research faculties that the Army shrank and closed, and recruit all of the technical expertise that you got rid of (see debates on the Army's utter inability to manage specialist skills). Say, five or six billion, a complete reorg of APC and the Officers' Career Structure, and twenty years should be enough to start?

Buying back Qinetiq is a start, that should cost £1.5 billion or so...

I doubt the know-how can be brought back. I watched QinetiQ fcuk up world class P&EE and then hidebound themselves with unsafe H&S practices manned by failed and totally useless ex civil Servants who were now
businessmen.

 

[TamH70]

SA80 worked well, did it? Which version are you talking about? Certainly not ones I ever got to use, thanks to factors that have been exhaustively detailed both here and elsewhere, and didn't finally get their throats stamped on until H und K did the work that led to the A2, and which only came into being after I'd left the forces. Work that successive generations of British engineers couldn't perform either because they weren't capable or they were just shit at their jobs. And comparisons between the AKM and the L129 are frankly ridiculous - as you well know they serve a completely different need for their respective forces.

FYI if the SA80 A1 was soooo good at its job, in Granby, we'd never have heard of the LANDSET report as that document wouldn't have been needed.

 

[Bravo_Bravo]

SA80 worked well, did it? Which version are you talking about? Certainly not ones I ever got to use, thanks to factors that have been exhaustively detailed both here and elsewhere, and didn't finally get their throats stamped on until H und K did the work that led to the A2, and which only came into being after I'd left the forces. Work that successive generations of British engineers couldn't perform either because they weren't capable or they were just shit at their jobs. And comparisons between the AKM and the L129 are frankly ridiculous - as you well know they serve a completely different need for their respective forces.

FYI if the SA80 A1 was soooo good at its job, in Granby, we'd never have heard of the LANDSET report as that document wouldn't have been needed.

Even I know that the A2 is one of the most reliable assault rifles going. Also, AIUI, when H&K got involved. they were owned by... BAE...

All of which is way OT.

 

[TamH70]

Even I know that the A2 is one of the most reliable assault rifles going. Also, AIUI, when H&K got involved. they were owned by... BAE...

All of which is way OT.

I know that, I read Wikipedia too. As well as Combat and Survival back in the day. And the Firearm Blog.

 

[Bravo_Bravo]

I know that, I read Wikipedia too. As well as Combat and Survival back in the day. And the Firearm Blog.

Jolly good.

Oddly enough I didn't get my information from Wiki, etc. Its pretty common knowledge.

 

[Tired_Tech]

Is it actually worth this mod of warrior?

Is it not time to build another vehicle?

Rip the turrets off, or not, and use for other tasks.

 

[incendiarycutlery]

Is it actually worth this mod of warrior?

Is it not time to build another vehicle?

To start with, or now?

Rip the turrets off, or not, and use for other tasks.

Which ones? The original ones or the new ones?

I always thought that it would have been the best solution to replace the armoured infantry's Warriors with Warrior 2000 and relegate the older vehicles (with or without turrets) to support and utility roles. But we had, it seems, to have CT40, along with a brand new turret, stuck on the old hulls.

I'm no fan of the CT40 - much of what it claims as new and amazing either isn't or is of more limited utility due to other factors. It's automatic, but the original MTIP turret had 42 rounds split between two natures. The Cased Telescopic round is not innovative, but something the US had been trying to make work for two decades or more* before CTAI even started. It has "low turret intrusion, but manages that by moving a large part of the gun** to a position along the trunnion axis, constraining how you can mount the thing. It has dual feed, but then so does every other cannon.

*There's a very interesting document from the US government audit office that summarises the development work looking to see if it was a waste of money
** that's never included in any of the comparison pictures

 

[rampant]

Particularly since the world and his dog has had this feature for decades, with (for instance) the BMP-2 and the M2/M3 Bradley, among many others, having dual-feed with a simple switch on the gunner's panel to choose between AP and HE. IIRC (it's been a while) the older systems then left you remembering which graticule to aim with, the newer ones simply change the equations used for "point, lase, aim, fire" for the different ballistics.

Does the CTA40 finally give us a feature that we could have had on the original Warrior if we'd wanted it (albeit that with RARDEN your "dual feed" was grabbing a three-round clip of a different nature), or is there meant to be some microseconds-shaving technology that means the switchover is even faster (with no evidence to indicate there's a pressing need...)

I'm concerned that, as well as the image and/or reality of "Anyone But BAE", the bigger issue is that by obsessing about CTA40 (it's cost a fortune to develop, so we have to use it, so it's the preferred solution even though it's a unique and rather exquisite solution nobody else seems to be joining us in, and having chosen CTA40 as the future recce/IFV gun we've now got no money or weight for ATGM or overwatch, so we're reduced to spinning dits about how CTA40 can kill "some main battle tanks"...) we're painting ourselves into a corner with a unique weapon, expensive ammunition, and limited ability to adopt innovations others come up with.

Not entirely sure if I agree wiyh you here, but you are closer to these things than me so are more aware of issues that I won't be party too, so I may be a bit off with my interpretation of your post. But are you suggesting that the obsession with, and ecpense of CTA40 has been to the complete cost of other offensive systems, ATGW etc, because, it appears to me as an outsider that the the majority of the spending failures can be tied into the whole FRES debacle itself the chopping and changing of requirements, postponements, cancellations, interferance etc rather than the gun per se. In fact looking at Lands handling of development of its offensive systems across the board has been a lesson in incompetence: we should have taken the opportunity to acquire/upgrade to Warrior 2000 when the opportunity first arose, no clear development programmes for Ch2, AS90 etc etc.

 

[tearsbeforebedtime]

SA80 worked well, did it? Which version are you talking about? Certainly not ones I ever got to use, thanks to factors that have been exhaustively detailed both here and elsewhere, and didn't finally get their throats stamped on until H und K did the work that led to the A2, and which only came into being after I'd left the forces. Work that successive generations of British engineers couldn't perform either because they weren't capable or they were just shit at their jobs. And comparisons between the AKM and the L129 are frankly ridiculous - as you well know they serve a completely different need for their respective forces.

FYI if the SA80 A1 was soooo good at its job, in Granby, we'd never have heard of the LANDSET report as that document wouldn't have been needed.

Thanks for chipping in with 15+ year old knowledge relevant only due to being fixed by HK/BAE.

ETA: @Bravo_Bravo got there first... Soz.

 

[TamH70]

Thanks for chipping in with 15+ year old knowledge relevant only due to being fixed by HK/BAE.

ETA: @Bravo_Bravo got there first... Soz.

Yeah, he did. Thanks for playing anyway.

 

[vampireuk]

Try it with no ear defs. Not pleasant, my own fault, last man bombing up.

I had the joy of a couple of HMG going off when firing was supposed to have ceased, took ear defenders off to have a chat with the drum major and they sparked up again those were bad enough.

 

[jrwlynch]

But are you suggesting that the obsession with, and ecpense of CTA40 has been to the complete cost of other offensive systems, ATGW etc, because, it appears to me as an outsider that the the majority of the spending failures can be tied into the whole FRES debacle itself the chopping and changing of requirements, postponements, cancellations, interferance etc rather than the gun per se.

It's not just the gun, of course, but it does seem to have been a convenient excuse and distraction. "We're going to carry on being almost the only people using an IFV that doesn't have ATGW on it, because we know better than everyone else and our uber-super-duper gun will kill everything you'd need an antitank missile to kill except for actual tanks..." followed by "sorting out overwatch, which we've proved is really useful in combat - twice - is going to take some time and effort, so let's chin it off and declare that our IFVs and recce vehicles won't meet tanks, and if they do they'll vapourise them with fin rounds from CTA40, so we can ditch that version..."

I'm beginning to wonder if the answer to upgunning Challenger 2 will end up being... replacing L30 with CTA40...

 

[incendiarycutlery]

I'm beginning to wonder if the answer to upgunning Challenger 2 will end up being... replacing L30 with CTA40...

You may speak in jest, but I've seen it advocated.

Admittedly as some kind of mono-purposed BMP-T-alike, but still...

 

[ObnoxiousJockGit]

@jrwlynch
I think it's a good idea personally.
French have thought about it.

 

[Gravelbelly]

I'm beginning to wonder if the answer to upgunning Challenger 2 will end up being... replacing L30 with CTA40...

Nahhh, it'll be Merkava 4, Namer, and Sholef. After all, if it's good enough for the USA...

 

[incendiarycutlery]

I think it's a good idea personally.

But.....
Why?

 

[Themanwho]

But.....
Why?

Share prices?

 

[ObnoxiousJockGit]

But.....
Why?

We cut up and melted down 100 hulls that could have been re purposed. A vehicle that would have weighed what, 15t less than the original with loads of room for batteries, computers etc and the running gear lasting longer. Plus you could carry loads of beer. Oh yeah and a 3 man person crew.

 

[ObnoxiousJockGit]

Nahhh, it'll be Merkava 4, Namer, and Sholef. After all, if it's good enough for the USA...

Think they are made there but no plans to acquire any.