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02 Jan 19. New in 2019: From tanks to Strykers, major brigade combat team conversions are coming this year. Just as the Army shifted from a division-level focus to “modular” brigade combats teamsearly in the Iraq war for post-9/11 combat, the service has begun changes to the existing BCTs to pivot back to the near-peer fight. This year will bring more of the changes that have been ongoing in recent years as a Stryker BCT morphs into an armored BCT. The 1st Armored Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team at Fort Bliss, Texas, will convert from Stryker to armored in 2019.
The base of the ABCT relies on the Abrams tank, Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Paladin artillery piece. And in spring 2020, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado, will convert from infantry to Stryker. Fort Bliss and Fort Carson won out primarily for two reasons: their extensive training areas and their ability to provide force projection, or deploy rapidly or move equipment to theater, said Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations, or G-3.
He said at the time of the announcement that previous thinking looked at a division that included one of each type of brigade combat team — infantry, Stryker and armored. But experience has shown flaws with that model.
“What we learned over time was when you tried to deploy BCTs where you only have one like kind on an installation, it’s hard on some of our manning numbers,” Anderson said.
Due to training requirements, non-deployable statuses and other factors, individual units from that installation couldn’t always build a full-strength unit to get out the door for the mission, he said.
These latest brigade conversions come after last year’s conversion of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 2nd BCT at Fort Stewart, Georgia, from an infantry brigade to an armored brigade.
Work to convert these next two BCTs is already underway.
The equipment and infrastructure refurbishing and refitting will take an estimated 18 to 24 months.
Simultaneously, individual soldier movement, training and, later, unit training to build BCT readiness for combat training center rotations will continue.
Secretary of the Army Mark Esper said in September that the conversion “ensures the Army remains the world’s most lethal ground combat force, able to deploy, fight and win against any adversary, anytime and anywhere.”
It also offers some shuffling opportunities for soldiers in those units and job fields. Some soldiers will stay on post and shift to the new units, some new soldiers will come in from the various career courses and initial training. Others may decide to retrain or re-enlist to join the new units. The changes over the past few years and those coming up will put the Army at a total of 31 BCTs in the regular Army, comprised of 11 armored. 13 infantry and seven Stryker brigades once complete.
The Army National Guard will hold 27 BCTs, among them five armored, 20 infantry and two Stryker brigades. This gives the total Army 58 BCTs. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Army Times)
02 Jan 19. First T-90S MBTs arrive in Vietnam. The first Russian-made T-90S main battle tanks (MBTs) ordered by Vietnam in 2016 have arrived in the Southeast Asian country, and are expected to be delivered to the army in the next few days, a Vietnamese military source told Jane’s on 2 January.
“The first batch of T-90S MBTs – totalling no fewer than 30 platforms – was delivered to a Vietnamese seaport in December,” said the source, adding that the first Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) armoured units to be equipped with these tanks, which are painted in a new three-colour camouflage scheme, will enter service in the first half of 2019. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
31 Dec 18. US Army looks for a few good robots, sparks industry battle. The Army is looking for a few good robots. Not to fight — not yet, at least — but to help the men and women who do. These robots aren’t taking up arms, but the companies making them have waged a different kind of battle. At stake is a contract worth almost half a billion dollars for 3,000 backpack-sized robots that can defuse bombs and scout enemy positions. Competition for the work has spilled over into Congress and federal court. The project and others like it could someday help troops “look around the corner, over the next hillside and let the robot be in harm’s way and let the robot get shot,” said Paul Scharre, a military technology expert at the Center for a New American Security.
The big fight over small robots opens a window into the intersection of technology and national defense and shows how fear that China could surpass the U.S. drives even small tech startups to play geopolitics to outmaneuver rivals. It also raises questions about whether defense technology should be sourced solely to American companies to avoid the risk of tampering by foreign adversaries.
Regardless of which companies prevail, the competition foreshadows a future in which robots, which are already familiar military tools, become even more common. The Army’s immediate plans alone envision a new fleet of 5,000 ground robots of varying sizes and levels of autonomy. The Marines, Navy and Air Force are making similar investments.
“My personal estimate is that robots will play a significant role in combat inside of a decade or a decade and a half,” the chief of the Army, Gen. Mark Milley, said in May at a Senate hearing where he appealed for more money to modernize the force.
Milley warned that adversaries like China and Russia “are investing heavily and very quickly” in the use of aerial, sea and ground robots. And now, he added, “we are doing the same.”
Such a shift will be a “huge game-changer for combat,” said Scharre, who credits Milley’s leadership for the push.
The promise of such big Pentagon investments in robotics has been a boon for U.S. defense contractors and technology startups. But the situation is murkier for firms with foreign ties.
Concerns that popular commercial drones made by Chinese company DJI could be vulnerable to spying led the Army to ban their use by soldiers in 2017. And in August, the Pentagon published a report that said China is conducting espionage to acquire foreign military technologies — sometimes by using students or researchers as “procurement agents and intermediaries.” At a December defense expo in Egypt, some U.S. firms spotted what they viewed as Chinese knock-offs of their robots.
The China fears came to a head in a bitter competition between Israeli firm Roboteam and Massachusetts-based Endeavor Robotics over a series of major contracts to build the Army’s next generation of ground robots. Those machines will be designed to be smarter and easier to deploy than the remote-controlled rovers that have helped troops disable bombs for more than 15 years.
The biggest contract — worth $429m — calls for mass producing 25-pound robots that are light, easily maneuverable and can be “carried by infantry for long distances without taxing the soldier,” said Bryan McVeigh, project manager for force projection at the Army’s research and contracting center in Warren, Michigan.
Other bulkier prototypes are tank-sized unmanned supply vehicles that have been tested in recent weeks in the rough and wintry terrain outside Fort Drum, New York.
A third $100m contract — won by Endeavor in late 2017 — is for a midsized reconnaissance and bomb-disabling robot nicknamed the Centaur.
The competition escalated into a legal fight when Roboteam accused Endeavor, a spinoff of iRobot, which makes Roomba vacuum cleaners, of dooming its prospects for those contracts by hiring a lobbying firm that spread false information to politicians about the Israeli firm’s Chinese investors.
A federal judge dismissed Roboteam’s lawsuit in April.
“They alleged that we had somehow defamed them,” said Endeavor CEO Sean Bielat, a former Marine who twice ran for Congress as a Republican. “What we had done was taken publicly available documents and presented them to members of Congress because we think there’s a reason to be concerned about Chinese influence on defense technologies.”
The lobbying firm, Boston-based Sachem Strategies, circulated a memo to members of the House Armed Services Committee. Taking up Endeavor’s cause was Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat — and, like Bielat, a Marine veteran — who wrote a letter to a top military official in December 2016 urging the Army to “examine the evidence of Chinese influence” before awarding the robot contracts.
Six other lawmakers later raised similar concerns.
Roboteam CEO Elad Levy declined to comment on the dispute but said the firm is still “working very closely with U.S. forces,” including the Air Force, and other countries. But it’s no longer in the running for the lucrative Army opportunities.
Endeavor is. Looking something like a miniature forklift on tank treads, its prototype called the Scorpion has been zipping around a test track behind an office park in a Boston suburb.
The only other finalist is just 20 miles away at the former Massachusetts headquarters of Foster-Miller, now a part of British defense contractor Qinetiq. The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The contract is expected to be awarded in early 2019.
Both Endeavor and Qinetiq have strong track records with the U.S. military, having supplied it with its earlier generation of ground robots such as Endeavor’s Packbot and Qinetiq’s Talon and Dragon Runner.
After hiding the Scorpion behind a shroud at a recent Army conference, Bielat and engineers at Endeavor showed it for the first time publicly to The Associated Press in November. Using a touchscreen controller that taps into the machine’s multiple cameras, an engineer navigated it through tunnels, over a playground-like structure and through an icy pool of water, and used its grabber to pick up objects.
It’s a smaller version of its predecessor, the Packbot, which was first used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2002 and later became one of soldiers’ essential tools for safely disabling improvised explosives in Iraq. Bielat said the newer Scorpion and Centaur robots are designed to be easier for the average soldier to use quickly without advanced technical training.
“Their primary job is to be a rifle squad member,” Bielat said. “They don’t have time to mess with the robot. They’re going to demand greater levels of autonomy.”
It will be a while, however, before any of these robots become fully autonomous. The Defense Department is cautious about developing battlefield machines that make their own decisions. That sets the U.S. apart from efforts by China and Russia to design artificially intelligent warfighting arsenals.
A November report from the Congressional Research Service said that despite the Pentagon’s “insistence” that a human must always be in the loop, the military could soon feel compelled to develop fully autonomous systems if rivals do the same. Or, as with drones, humans will still pull the trigger, but a far-away robot will lob the bombs.
Said P.W. Singer, a strategist for the New America Foundation think tank: “China has showed off armed ones. Russia has showed them off. It’s coming.” (Source: Defense News)
31 Dec 18. Chinese army inducts Type 15 lightweight tank. China’s Ministry of National Defence (MND) revealed on 27 December that the Type 15 (also commonly referred to as ZTQ-15) lightweight battle tank has officially entered service with the People’s Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF).
During a press conference in Beijing, MND spokesperson Senior Colonel Wu Qian said, “As for the Type 15 lightweight tank, according to my information, it has been handed over to our troops.” No further details were provided.
The announcement came after an image emerged on Chinese online forums in July suggesting that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) may also be equipping its marine corps with the locally developed tank. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
27 Dec 18. Qatar sends 24 armoured vehicles to Mali. Qatar has airlifted 24 armoured vehicles to Mali, in a move it said would help the countries of the African Sahel region combat terrorism. Qatar has increased efforts to show it is a force for good in international security since its Gulf Arab neighbours imposed a diplomatic and economic boycott on it in June 2017, accusing it of supporting terrorism. Qatari military planes delivered the vehicles, its foreign ministry said, adding the shipment would help “combat terrorism and establish security not only in the Republic of Mali but also in the African Sahel countries known as the G5.” The G5 of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania last year created a military taskforce to root out jihadist violence. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have agreed to provide about $150m (£118.3m) to the G5 Sahel force. (Source: Reuters)
21 Dec 18. MPF Light Tank Profits Estimated ~$495m. The Army’s said it wants 504 of the MPF light tanks. But analyst Byron Callan is betting that either the Marine Corps or foreign buyers (or both) add another 106, bringing the total to 610 machines. When you Google any kind of military hardware, odds are the autocomplete algorithm will suggest “for sale.” Of course, pricing weapons systems isn’t actually so straightforward. Whatever autocomplete may think, you can’t actually buy a fighter jet or tank online, and trying to buy one anywhere as a private individual is a good path to prison. The Pentagon announces budget figures and contract values, but how do you figure out what a program will cost before that data’s public?
One of our favorite defense industry analysts, Capital Alpha’s poetically named Byron Callan, just came up with an estimate for the Mobile Protected Firepower program. The Army just announced Monday that established arms makers BAE Systems and General Dynamics will build competing prototypes of the new armored vehicle, with a final winner picked in 2022.
Now, MPF is effectively a light tank to accompany airborne troops and other infantry where the massive M1 Abrams cannot go. The Army’s said it wants 504 of the vehicles, 14 per infantry brigade (both active-duty and National Guard) plus spares and training vehicles. But Callan is betting that either the Marine Corps or foreign buyers (or both) add another 106 tanks, bringing the total to 610 machines.
Callan then makes some well-informed assumptions about future inflation (2 percent), tax rates (18 percent), and the initial value per vehicle in 2019 dollars ($7.1m) to generate the sales figures and after-tax profits. Overall, he predicts $5.14bn in revenue, of which $495m is profit. Since you discount future earnings when determining present values of companies, however, this boils down to the Net Present Value of the winning company — whether that’s BAE or General Dynamics — going up by $226m.
That’s hardly Joint Strike Fighter figures, but it’s still respectable, even in the often bloated world of defense contracting. What’s more — and beyond Callan’s calculations — is that good performance on the Mobile Protected Firepower program might help the winning company secure further Army business. That, in fact, is the apparent strategy of General Dynamics, which is offering different turrets on the same Griffin chassis for both MPF and the proposed replacement for the M2 Bradley troop carrier, the future Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle. (Source: Defense News Early Bird/Breaking Defense)
20 Dec 18. Burkina Faso shows new Cobra armoured vehicles. The Burkinabe Army paraded four Otokar Cobra armoured personnel carriers (APCs) during Burkina Faso’s 11 December Independence Day parade in Manga, making it the latest known user of the Turkish-made vehicle. A Burkinabe military source told Jane’s that an undisclosed number of Cobras have been delivered since September, with several currently deployed in the East Region, where counter-terrorist operations are ongoing. The source added that the first Cobras are operated by Commando Infantry Regiments (RIC) of the Burkinabe Army, but additional vehicles are expected to be delivered to the Combined Regiments (RIA). Burkina fields two such units, which combine armoured cavalry squadrons and motorised infantry companies. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
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Millbrook, based in Bedfordshire, UK, makes a significant contribution to the quality and performance of military vehicles worldwide. Its specialist expertise is focussed in two distinct areas: test programmes to help armed services and their suppliers ensure that their vehicles and systems work as the specification requires; and design and build work to upgrade new or existing vehicles, evaluate vehicle capability and investigate in-service failures. Complementing these is driver and service training and a hospitality business that allows customers to use selected areas of Millbrook’s remarkable facilities for demonstrations and exhibitions.
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