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Originally posted by Hubris Boy
What idiot claimed that?
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tw said " Accurately noted is that Crusader is a weapon for armored warfare. That type of war ended with the Gulf."
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Nobody disputes the need for a heavy main battle tank like Abrams.
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Good, 'cause we used them already, and once you drive them off the lot, you can't return them.
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No... the alternative is to ditch Crusader now and rely on MLRS, HIMARS and Paladin until a truly useful self-propelled artillery system can be developed and deployed. (One that actually meets the mobility and deployability criteria of the Army's FCS program, maybe? Hmmmm??)
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The first Paladins went out the door in Chambersburg in 1994.
"The envisioned [FCS] Objective Force must provide the Army with a significant combat overmatch against all foreseeable enemies extending through the 2025 timeframe... [T]he program will select a single contractor team to build and test an FCS demonstrator. The information gained through this demonstration and experimentation effort will allow the Army to make a decision regarding Engineering and Manufacturing Development in fiscal 2006, with the first system fielding in 2012."
So...for FCS to provide a Paladin replacement, we're talking about a minimum 18 year service life for Paladin <i>if FCS delivers systems on schedule</i>. FCS is a pretty ambitious high-concept program, and talks about a lot of nifty things. Do *you* think it will deliver a (robotic?) mobile artillery piece on that schedule? If it slips, how close will we be to asking Paladin to serve as sucessfully as the B-52 has? (Bear in mind that B-52 is the most successful of the last *four* heavy bomber programs, including B-70, B-1 and B-2.)
I haven't heard much bad said about MLRS, and HIMARS looks like "MLRS lite" in a lot of ways. But to somebody who's an aviator and a software engineer rather than an artilleryman, they look like they do a somewhat different mission than Crusader and Paladin do.