Comments

1. Scipio Americanus says:

   May 3, 2013 at 1:24 pm

   Not a bad look inside how the post-McNamara acquisitions process works, but in the interest of dramatic narrative it leaves out some important points.

   The most important is the conceptual war of the Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) proponents vs Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) proponents. The first design for the Bradley that you see is an APC: a battle taxi armored against anything up to machine-guns and artillery fragments designed to move infantry around the battlefield rapidly and keep them safe from radiological/chemical/biological contaminants until they near the ultimate Area of Operation (AO), but keep itself out of the fight as much as possible. This is consistent with prior American practice, the M-113 being a good example of the approach.

   The IFV concept, developed pretty much everywhere but first implemented by the USSR, does things differently. The main innovation is to observe that APCs carry around infantry, including heavy-weapon support elements (heavy machine-guns, rockets, anti-tank missiles, etc) and to wonder why you shouldn’t get rid of that non bullet-proof support unit made up of men slowly lugging around a heavy crew-served weapon and replace it with more armor and heavier weapons on the vehicle. The IFV ferries around fewer infantry, but adds its firepower to theirs in the main line of combat by following behind them with its heavy weapons.

   Of course, both ideas have benefits and drawbacks. The battle-taxi idea works best in open terrain, and while the M-113s gave good service in Vietnam, they took a drubbing in the close, jungle terrain of that nation. So much so that many crews, rather than remain inside the vehicle and trust to only a few sets of eyes (the crew) to keep them alive, built sandbag forts on top of them and rode around on the roof. Doing that also meant that the entire squad wouldn’t be killed if the vehicle was hit. IFV concepts often suffer from tank-envy, to the point (seen in the video) where the actual mission suffers. Also, on a battlefield where even the heaviest tank’s armor is barely adequate to protect it against the threats it faces, the concept of a vehicle not nearly as heavily armored taking the close infantry support role is considered dubious by some.

   The appearance of the Russian BMP-1 IFV gave the Western defense community fits, with its decent armor, good gun, anti-tank missile capability, and amphibious capability (sound familiar?). The BMP was a little more towards the APC side of the spectrum than the Bradley turned out, with lighter armor and more carrying capacity, but then it’s just like the Americans to out-BMP the BMP.

   I mostly just wanted to point out that the evolution of the vehicle was due to more than acquisition-board generals playing word-association games, which is the impression one might get from the movie.
2. Space Nookie says:

   May 3, 2013 at 4:18 pm

   Yeah, this clip gives a totally false impression of where the specs for the Bradley came from. The specs are basically copied from the BMP-1 fighting vehicle, which was first shown to the west in 1967.

   The Bradley is really just a mediocrity that happened to be produced because it was ready to go at the time of the Reagan defense buildup. It had plenty of critics during the development process and was effectively canceled in 1978. People knew it just wasn’t that good.
3. Lucklucky says:

   May 15, 2013 at 2:21 am

   Commenters are essentially correct. And the USA was late to the party, 10 years later than West Germany with the Marder — and the French came out with the AMX10P in the beginning of the 1970s.

   I must disagree with Space Nookie. The Bradley specs are more in line with the West German Marder IFV — heavier IFV, better armored, and general design — than BMP1 and AMX.

   I also think it is not a mediocrity; it is more of a choice based on tactical and operational doctrine. Something better could be designed? Maybe, but would it have the same flexibility? A 30mm gun would be better? Maybe, but that means fewer rounds, and the Marines would put a 30mm gun in wheeled LAVs to retain commonality?

   All countries have IFVs except one notable exception: Israel, which is also one of the few countries to have infantry transport vehicles with the armor of a tank. They are indeed based on the Merkava tank — and their predecessor heavy APC was based on the captured T-55 tank. But it doesn’t have a light gun, only machine guns. So it is called an APC instead of an IFV.
4. Space Nookie says:

   May 18, 2013 at 7:58 pm

   Marder had more conservative specs; it was not amphibious and not equipped with ATGM (until 1975).
5. Lucklucky says:

   May 19, 2013 at 3:36 am

   You can’t say that an earlier vehicle is more “conservative” than another when they have 10 years difference. The critique looses all propose.

   For example being build in steel (Marder) instead of aluminum Bradley like M113 is more or less conservative?

   Amphibious is a requirement that is seldom employed if at all, like the mostly useless infantry firing ports they were nixed with uparmor. So Bradley is not amphibious anymore.

   The ATGM was later because that was when Germans could get enough Milan missiles for vehicles after supplying the infantry.