The Army made the decision in The '60s to go all in on missiles. The result was the "Mauler". It failed because computers and radar weren't there.

The 40mm hung on for a bit, but after The '70s, the Army was mostly missiles: TOW, Stinger, Chaparral, (sucesses), ADAT, Roland, Redeye, (also-rans and misses).

I suspect that Sgt. York burned the Army badly. Many brass thought it was the fail of the complex rat's nest feed mechanism and the old M-48 chassis when it was the whole program.

The Vulcan air defense gun did have it's US swan song in The Gulf War. One of my instructors was a vulcan gunner on the M163. Yeah, More Dakka indeed, he mowed down a battalion of advancing Republican Guards. The Avenger had an M3 flavor of the Ma Deuce. The Bradley Linebacker had the 25mm Bushmaster and a 4 short Stinger pod. There is the LAV-AD.

The thinking is that anything over 20mm is useless against jets. And a good .50 cal will keep helicopters off your back (unless it's an attack helicopter!).

Given the success of the Javelin and the lack of a credible air threat (for now...). I don't see the Army pushing a big gun (over 25mm) or a large machine gun like the 14.7.

Time will tell.

edited 23rd Aug '14 2:15:16 PM by TairaMai

Taira: I beg to differ on the 20mm commentary. Especially given that there are several systems that use calibers larger then that for defensive systems. A prime example would be the Goal Keeper CIWS which is purpose built to engage fast and maneuverable cruise missiles, aircraft, and other similar threats. It is based off of the Gau-8 gun system.

edited 23rd Aug '14 2:23:49 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Relevant:

Any more thoughts on Part II of my History Channel takedown?

What kind of helicopters are we planning on fighting with .50 cal? Hinds stop those like nobodies business.

I don't think they Hind can stop a .50 cal all that well especially the various AP .50 cal rounds. It will absorb a lot of small arms fire though.

Added a little bit further up the page...

@Tuffel: I'm talking about the US Army's current thinking, the boys in the Puzzle Palace, the E-ring perfumed princes who make these decisions. They loves them some missiles.

The Goalkeeper would have been awesome as a SHORAD (short range air defense) and a C-RAM. As it stands, the US Army has the Phalanx C-RAM (Counter Rocket Artillery and Mortar), but is too cheap to have an MOS to fix the actual gun, they love to use Navy guys to fix the gun, but Army guys to fire it and work the radars.

I think that the Army went with the 20mm Phalanx because the Navy had it (and could pull them off ships headed to the breakers) and the "not invented here syndrome". It would have been easy as pie to produce Goalkeepers in the US and get some GAU-8's. But the Army is loathe to do anything new that isn't for Army, Infantry or costly and flashy.

HIMAD got MEADS and THAAD (we kept THAAD, MEADS was too costly). SLAMRAAM was to have been the future of Short Range AD, but again it fell to the budget axe. Thus pissing off many State Governors who now had National Guard units with no mission.

There are flack systems that use 40mm and even 75mm. Again, missiles are seen as cost effective and "better".

edited 23rd Aug '14 2:33:20 PM by TairaMai

re: Achaemenid: I loved it. I'm surprised by just how highly the Sherman rated against the Panther in terms of overall combat efficiency.

re: flak weapons: most of the countries that haven't given up on short-range flak have settled on 30mm to 35mm, with a few holdouts still using 40mm L/70s. (Now Bofors live forever, and the forty-mil just the same...) The larger caliber has greater range and hitting power.

I was always told that the main body and titanium rotors of the Hind can stop .50 cal just fine but that the cockpit could still get punched through.

Body was resistant to anything short of 23mm supposedly.

edited 23rd Aug '14 2:33:21 PM by LeGarcon

Taira: Ahh my mistake big sis. For the goal keeper there is a land based trailer system for it.

Le Garcon: Found it actually. Resistant to standard .50cal. Their own 14.5mm would chew it up pretty quickly as well. Given the AP .50cal can go through a fair bit of RHA the hind would have to have some seriously thick armor to stop it. SLAP and API alone are pretty good at penetrating steel armor. The .50 cal SLAP can penetrate 19mm of steel armor at 1,500 yds.

edited 23rd Aug '14 2:42:06 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Again, until China showed the world it's Attack Chopper, most assumed that there was no air threat outside of a few Hinds that the Air Force could slap from the sky.

One fellow 14E AIT classmates joked that the first Mi-28 or CAIC Z-10 pilots who muscle past today's meager Army SHORAD will be Aces in a few hours.

Taira: Our SHORAD really does need some improvement. Both static and Mobile models. I hate to say it but Russia has a lot of good ideas in that regard.

No real shame to admit it. The main thing we're missing is something to fill the gap between Stinger and Patriot, and something gun-based to complement Stinger. The Europeans have both well in hand: Crotale, Roland, Rapier, et cetera for the missile component, and the Flakpanzer Gepard/Marksman series for the gun component.

The thing is, even with those gaps in capability, it's usually agreed that SHORAD is a fairly low priority, since US troops haven't had to contend with a serious opfor air presence since WWII, so it might be a while until it's filled. Doesn't stop some of us from drawing up theoretical L/70 armed Super Dusters (PIVADS radar optional) or an upgraded Vulcan based on the 25mm Equalizer, of course.

Note that this is mostly on the ground front. The Navy, due to several decades of having screaming nightmares about Soviet cruise missiles, packs some of the best SAM systems you can find. ESSM alone can do everything from point-defense to area defense at 50km range.

edited 23rd Aug '14 3:42:36 PM by SabresEdge

Funny you should mention the US Navy, the new Standard 6 missile has an AMRAAM seeker head, I posted a story on it a page or two back.

Yeah, the Stryker doesn't have an AD variant, and neither did the FCS or the American Maus, er "Ground Combat Vehicle".

There was an attempt to save the Avenger, but again Big Army was all about "we don't need SHORAD". So now there are only 2 Avenger battalions and one battery in the active army and the Guard has maybe 3-4 battalions at that. Most Avenger "Battalions" are mixed and have fewer and fewer actual Avenger HMMWV's.

Stingers have been phased out, the Army no longer teaches the MANPADS MOS, 14M. Most National Guard 14M units are now support, infantry or MP.

edited 23rd Aug '14 5:18:44 PM by TairaMai

Re: Army gunners and Navy maintainers for the Phalanx CIWS: Sounds like they should split the difference and have the whole system run by the Marines. They'd probably try to mount it in a truck and use it for convoy escort and "recon in force" gun runs.

Taira: It is really odd there are not ADA strykers considering the LAV-25 has a variant that is both gun and missile.

Here it is firing◊ That is a 25mm Gatling gun.

edited 23rd Aug '14 7:07:12 PM by TuefelHundenIV

They should mount a Phalanx on an M113.

I always found gun-based anti-air vehicles such as the Gepard and Shilka to be amongst the most tactically ubiquitous of military vehicles; apart from their obvious original duties of air defense, they can be absolutely terrifying at ground combat with a simple lowering of their 35mm or so guns, which are more than capable of ripping apart infantry, penetrating through most structures, and Swiss cheesing anything short of another armored vehicle. Such factors make them particularly useful against an infantry-based enemy as typically seen in counter-insurgency campaigns, and the Soviets/Russians historically have been fond of deploying them in such manners in Afghanistan and Chechnya.

I'm sure that the National Guard still has mountainous stockpiles of old MIM-23 Hawks though; despite The Other Wiki stating that the last U.S users were the Marines in 2002, I recall catching a glimpse of some of the Guardsmen at the local armory of a neighboring city from home towing around a suspicious looking object draped in a poncho to a storage warehouse several months ago. It's outline was much too jagged and edgy to be a crate, and the poncho seemed to fold in at the sides indicating that the object must've been tubular to an extent. My guess was that it was a stockpiled Hawk.

They actually sort of did; only that it was a Vulcan instead. It's been decommissioned since the Gulf War however, although I suspect that the National Guard must have put into storage as well. Ironically given its official role, its most useful function was serving the ground-attack role that I mentioned against pesky Viet Cong and NVA towards the end in Vietnam and providing support in the streets of Panama City.

edited 23rd Aug '14 8:51:43 PM by FluffyMcChicken

Philippine Navy sailors are now shellbacks. And if I recall correctly, they're the first (and thus far) only shellbacks. Or if I'm wrong, there's certainly not many of them, going south of the equator isn't a common occurrence for them...

Today I learned that antifreeze is delicious.

...Yeah don't drink the anti freeze or the cool aide mate you will kill brain cells doing that.

Today I learned that antifreeze is delicious.

I already knew AF tasted sweet, actually.

Not from personal experience, mind you, but from people talking about why you should be careful to clean up any spills of same if you have a pet. It's just as poisonous to them as to humans, and it doesn't take as much to be harmful given their lower body mass.

edited 23rd Aug '14 11:08:43 PM by Nohbody

Apparently, the Russians knew about drinking antifreeze long before; it was rather popular for clever Soviet mechanics and ground crew to find ways of treating and distilling the anti-freeze issued for vehicles as to make it barely safe enough to drink; as with other militaries, alcohol was strictly barred on-duty, and lucky brewers who didn't poison their customers and themselves outright could find a lucrative way to make some easy money and favors by selling their moonshine. .

I heard that they drank Katyusha fuel at some in WW 2 but I dunno the truth of that.