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Well we all have our hypotheses but I never found the soviet ones to be any more valid or realistic than NATO ones.
I 'do' remember all the 'hand-wringing'  & worrying just before the 1st Gulf War that turned out to be grossly unfounded & also remember that the US M1 tank faced criticism from some quarters even before it was deployed.

What you don't seem to realize is that one can come up a theory/hypothesis that pretty much justifies anything or everything.
The soviets were very good at that sort of 'theorizing'.
Actually executing it in practice is quite a different story.

p.s. I also remember when folks were talking about "the death of the MBT as a viable battlefield instrument" 'cuz improvements in HEAT warheads rendered their armor so vulnerable. But then 'chobham' armor was invented (by the brits, I believe) & the calculus was altered.

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On Tue, 6/16/15, Greg Chalik <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Question
 To: "xxxxxx@simplelists.com" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
 Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2015, 5:47 PM

 The thing about Tactics of
 Mistake is that it was written
 based on a very specific real-life ​understandings by
 Gordon Dickson, which are
 those of the Cold and Vietnam
 wars.

  

 However, neither he, nor
 the rest of the NATO professional
 military officer corps understood their enemies.

  

 Bruce is quite right to
 state that "A tank you cannot
 transport to the battlefield because it’s too large/heavy
 to use your
 infrastructure is a lump of useless metal. Expensive useless
 metal that will
 likely cause your troops to get killed because you
 couldn’t afford the tanks
 that could be transported."

  

 What Phil, and most people
 that write and read about 'tanks'
 (all AFVs) get wrong, is that they are not about trade-offs
 in mobility vs
 protection (survivability). In fact the entire survivability
 + mobility + lethality
 formula used by the US Army (with other NATO equivalents) is
 the least
 important part of the larger equation more pertinent in a
 greater-view of the
 Traveller universe: Affordability, Appropriateness,
 Availability, Elegance
 (ingeniously simple design), [Operational reach] Efficiency
 and [Tactical]
 Effectiveness (survivability+mobility+lethality). I call
 this the A3E3 formula, and the design
 thinking
 based on this as are all other consideration, are derived
 from the strategic  considerations that are all about
 the Economy of the society that owns the military force,
 whil​e​

 th​e​ critical
 Elegance in design is the engineering activity that helps to
 align the
 strategic application of the Efficiency and
 Effectiveness.

  

 The TAM tank was a better
 tank, when seen from the A3E3
 perspective than the M48/M60, Chieftain and the Leopard I
 designs.

  

 In terms of NATO
 requirements, the M48/M60 and Chieftain
 were bad designs.

 However, this wasn't
 the ​worst
 ​NATO problem.

  

 The French production of
 wheeled AFVs, including
 anti-tank-capable 'armoured cars' was necessitated
 by the strategic depth they
 would have had to transit in order to reach forward areas of
 battle in the
 eventuality of the Warsaw Pact attack. Wheels are better
 than tracks for this
 mission by the virtue of operational tempo + operational
 reach.

  

 T​h​is answers why Germans stopped

 building more heavy wheeled
 'armoured cars' in the later stages of the Second
 World War. Their strategic
 depth was substantially reduced by 1944, and they also lost
 air superiority on
 the Eastern and Western fronts, preventing effective use of
 the road networks.

  

 Of course any design are
 misused, but Phil, 'Russians',
 i.e. Soviet designers, didn't design AFVs for use in
 'Russia'.

 And, 'Russia' is
 not "You know, endless steppe &
 all that." A cursory look at the map of the Soviet
 Union will show that
 the endless steppe occupies mostly northern Ukraine and
 parts of southern
 Belarus and south-western Russia, i.e. parts not regarded as
 where offensives
 will be conducted; AFV design philosophy in Soviet Union was
 based on the
 offensive Strategy.

  

 There is a vast
 misunderstanding as to why the Soviet Army
 retained use of wheeled AFVs throughout the Cold War, and
 the Russian Army
 continues this.

 The simple explanation is
 that wheeled AFVs offer the
 capability to generate the offensive tempo and exploit
 operational reach that
 tracked-mounted forces can't match and counter.

 The reason tank divisions
 had BMP-mounted regiments is that
 these served as 'sabots', in that they would
 'peel-off' in the breach and
 establish anti-tank zones along the breakthrough path.
 BMP-mounted units are
 not really 'infantry' despite the vehicle's
 name, but anti-tank since 3/4 of
 the BMP crew and passengers are anti-tank weapon
 operators/users.

 The tank divisions however
 would follow in the wake of the
 Motor-rifle regimental Operational Manoeuvre Groups which
 were BTR-mounted to
 exploit West German autobahns and road networks. NATO forces
 were uniquely
 badly designed to cope with fast-moving wheeled opponents
 because by late 1960s
 false-economies thinking converted most of the NATO forces
 to being
 track-mounted.

 There was also a
 false-belief in air power to interdict
 these penetrations, but this was unwarranted because it
 didn't come with
 appropriate FFI technology.

  

 I'm going to leave the
 issue of the German use of captured
 T-34s for now. The short answer is that their discontinued
 use had more to do with
 cultural bias and lack of suitable ammunition than actual
 T-34 design.

  

 To get back to the TAM, it
 was far from helpless,
 particularly when the 105mm APFSDS ammunition became
 available.

 The thing about anti-tank
 tactics is that it doesn't
 necessarily require a 0-warning meeting engagement EVERY
 TIME to validate the
 heavy frontal armour tank design. Both the Germans and the
 Soviets during the
 Second World War successfully used lightly armoured
 anti-tank designs that
 fought from ambush positions in a combined arms tactical
 setting.

  

 To quote Wayne P. Hughes,
 a naval officer, "doctrine is
 the glue of good tactics." and "To know tactics,
 you must know
 weapons."

 Neither Gordon R. Dickson,
 nor Lieutenant Colonel Cletus
 Grahame knew either, but Dickson was a very good writer.

  

 On a final note, the F-35
 is a failed design. Those that
 care to learn the program history would know that the F-35
 started as a
 post-Vietnam project to design a single engine to serve both
 services that use
 jet aircraft, the 'universal engine'. The F-35 has
 this been in development
 since mid-1970s. The engine project was rolled into one
 closed (defunded)
 program after another, gathering other projects like flint
 to a comb, until it
 grew into a Joint Service Fighter.

  

 Based on the A3E3 it is
 unaffordable to fly, so no further
 progress should have been made by late 90s when first
 realistic cost estimates
 were voiced and told to shut up. Lockheed-Martin current
 statement is that
 "An F-35A purchased in 2018 and delivered in 2020 will
 be $85 million,
 which is the equivalent of $75 million in today’s
 dollars." To quote ADM.
 Mike Boorda "Occasionally it would be good if the
 target cost more than
 the bullet." A Su-27/35 as the most likely F-35A
 opponent in the next 20
 years costs US$30/65 million. A MiG-29 is US$29 million. It
 is not at all clear
 based on some simulation models that the F-35 can defeat
 advanced versions of
 either of these airframes (or their Chinese copies) when
 numerically
 outnumbered.

 It is an inappropriate
 design because a combat aircraft is
 not an analogy of a Swiss Army knife. It’s a design that
 is over two decades
 late in full service, which is not unusual for the US DoD
 where the average
 program delivery for a major system has been about 18 years
 since the
 mid-1960s. However, with aircraft, the airframes are not
 subject to
 reconditioning. Unknown to most, there is a steady issuing
 of contracts to
 replace entire parts of F-16s and F-15s because they can no
 longer be quality
 assured in flight. This should be attributed to the cost of
 the F-35 delivery
 delay that would increase the F-35 costs substantially over
 the production
 costs quoted above. Worst of all, the F-35 is anything but
 ingeniously simple
 as a design. Structural tolerances are such that ANY
 internal damage would
 effectively end aircraft's participation in combat for
 weeks even if it
 survives to land because repair requires technological
 qualifications way
 outside normal combat operations as practiced for the
 previous generations of
 aircraft.
 ​On a final note,
 mercenaries generally fight with what they have rather than
 what they want to have. Their 'saving grace' is the
 necessity of a want, necessity being the mother of
 invention. Military history proves that forces denied
 'advanced technology' of their opponents are more
 likely to be victorious due to greater need to innovate.
 This perhaps presents a paradox for the Traveller universe
 that a force with more advanced technology is more likely to
 be defeated​​.​

 ​Greg​



 On 16
 June 2015 at 23:58, Doug Grimes <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
 wrote:


 --------
 Original message --------------------------------------------On
 Tue, 6/16/15, xxxxxx@shadowgard.com
 <xxxxxx@shadowgard.com>
 wrote:

  Subject: Re: [TML]
 Question
  To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
  Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2015, 12:01 AM

  On 15 Jun 2015 at 18:07,
  Richard Aiken wrote:

  >
  On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at
 3:47 PM, Leslie Bates (via tml list)

  > <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
  wrote:
  >

 > 
     Is there a site that describes
 the
  organization of fictional ground
  > 
     force Dorsai
 units?

  I know that one of
 the books gives some info on
  units
 organization.
  Most likely Tactics of
  Mistake.


 Can't be more
  specific because I made
 those notes back in the 70s.

  --
  Leonard

 Erickson (aka shadow)
  shadow at
 shadowgard
  dot com

 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 I don't recall that
 'Tactics of Mistake' actually mentioned the
 dorsai.

 As I recall, it was
 an Army veteran (w/ a MOH!) from earth that used various
 trickery & misdirection accomplish his goals..

 Also, the earth was still
 'balkanized' politically..

 ===============================================================================================

 Tactics of Mistake
 was where that veteran founded the organized mercenary
 culture of the Dorsai. They'd been a planet of
 mercenaries before that, known as being better than average
 but still fairly disorganized beyond the company or even
 battalion level.
 Doug Grimes
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