The Cellar - View Single Post - 5/3/2002 [EXTRA]: Crusader Self-Propelled Howitzer

MaggieL · 05-06-2002, 08:16 AM

(Aside to jag--the pretty picture is a credit to the photographer rather than the Crusader; any projectile-throwing weapon down to a handgun can deliver pretty pictures like that)

Seems to me I heard the same kinds of criticisims of The Abrams and the Bradley that I'm now hearing about the Crusader. It's all well and good to claim that "armored warfare is over"...but that same claim was made after the Soviet Blok crumbled *before* Desert Storm. And yet the Abrhams and the Bradley turned out to be handy things to have. As far as I can see Abrams is to M60 as Crusader is to Paladin...to the point that versions of the Crusaider and Abrams now in development will use a common engine.

The alternative is to ditch Crusader now, and hope the Paladin holds up as well as the B-52 has (or that tw is right and armored warfare and artillery are *really* dead this time) .

My point still stands that the development and acquisions cycle for weapons systems is still *way* too long to follow the shifting patterns of threat right now; that "the world is no longer the same as it was when Crusader was originally designed" applies to *any* significant weapons system currently under development.

It's true: the major threats today appear to be rooted in asymmetric warfare; what kind of weapons systems it takes to fight that kind of conflict from the fat end of the assymetry are still being figured out.

The usefullness of systems to down airliners (and agplanes, apparently) will depend on our ability to figure out *which* airliners and agplanes should be targeted..or work out ways to make airliners and agplanes harder to commandeer. We probably can't set up Patriot batteries to protect every high-value domestic target...I do remeber when every major city had a Nike installation or two, but that seemed more like desperation rather than a finely-wrought strategy.

But having attention focused on terrorism doesn't mean conventional warfare is over either--a state that shelters, houses and trains terrorists (like the Afghani Taliban regime) is a *conventional* warfare target.

That said, the way DoD specifies and buys hardware is expensive, graft-ridden, slow, inefficient and clumsy. And it's been that way for hundreds of years. How do you folks think it should be changed to fix it?

05-06-2002, 08:16 AM	#12
MaggieL in the Hour of Scampering Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Jeffersonville PA (15 mi NW of Philadelphia) Posts: 4,060	(Aside to jag--the pretty picture is a credit to the photographer rather than the Crusader; any projectile-throwing weapon down to a handgun can deliver pretty pictures like that) Seems to me I heard the same kinds of criticisims of The Abrams and the Bradley that I'm now hearing about the Crusader. It's all well and good to claim that "armored warfare is over"...but that same claim was made after the Soviet Blok crumbled before Desert Storm. And yet the Abrhams and the Bradley turned out to be handy things to have. As far as I can see Abrams is to M60 as Crusader is to Paladin...to the point that versions of the Crusaider and Abrams now in development will use a common engine. The alternative is to ditch Crusader now, and hope the Paladin holds up as well as the B-52 has (or that tw is right and armored warfare and artillery are really dead this time) . My point still stands that the development and acquisions cycle for weapons systems is still way too long to follow the shifting patterns of threat right now; that "the world is no longer the same as it was when Crusader was originally designed" applies to any significant weapons system currently under development. It's true: the major threats today appear to be rooted in asymmetric warfare; what kind of weapons systems it takes to fight that kind of conflict from the fat end of the assymetry are still being figured out. The usefullness of systems to down airliners (and agplanes, apparently) will depend on our ability to figure out which airliners and agplanes should be targeted..or work out ways to make airliners and agplanes harder to commandeer. We probably can't set up Patriot batteries to protect every high-value domestic target...I do remeber when every major city had a Nike installation or two, but that seemed more like desperation rather than a finely-wrought strategy. But having attention focused on terrorism doesn't mean conventional warfare is over either--a state that shelters, houses and trains terrorists (like the Afghani Taliban regime) is a conventional warfare target. That said, the way DoD specifies and buys hardware is expensive, graft-ridden, slow, inefficient and clumsy. And it's been that way for hundreds of years. How do you folks think it should be changed to fix it? __________________ "Neither can his Mind be thought to be in Tune,whose words do jarre; nor his reason In frame, whose sentence is preposterous..."