The Army plans to fire guns, rockets and cannons at prototypes of the emerging Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle to prepare the fast-tracked platform for major mechanized warfare, service officials explained.
The attacks, expected to include RPGs, crew-served weapons, small arms fire and various kinds of cannons and land-rockets, are intended to fully and accurately replicate combat as part of upcoming soldier “lethality tests” of its new MPF platform, Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, Director, NGCV Cross-Functional Team, told reporters.
If it isn't protected enough to survive on the battlefield it is neither mobile nor capable of providing firepower. And this limitation on the very justification for the MPF vehicle is mind boggling:
Army assessments found that Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs) lack the maneuverable firepower needed to destroy fortified enemy positions, bunkers, light armored vehicles and heavy machine gun positions.
When the new focus on peer competitors and conventional combat is supposed to drive our military development, why does that threat assessment leave out enemy heavy tanks?
And if our infantry might have to face tanks, shouldn't we give our infantry tanks? Which would also do really well attacking fortifications, light armor, and machine guns, in addition to being able to attack enemy tanks..
Oh, and this Congressional Research Service justification cited in the article for the MPF light tank is just ludicrous:
“The IBCT lacks the ability to decisively close with and destroy the enemy under restricted terrains such as mountains, littorals, jungles, subterranean areas, and urban areas,” the CRS report states.
That's got to be an old piece of evidence despite being in a 2018 report given that it has been a very long time since our Stryker brigades were called Interim Brigade Combat Teams.
But just on the face of it, it is ridiculous as a justification. Light tanks can go up mountains better than heavy tanks? Or littoral (coastal) regions (then why does the Marine Corps have Abrams tanks and include them in their MEUs forward deployed afloat?)? And in jungles? In World War II we used our primary medium tanks there. Further, Abrams functioned very well in cities in the Iraq War--and we even have a version to better enable city operations.
I don't even know what to make of a defense of light tanks for underground operations. I mean other than to laugh hysterically.
Oh, and any defense of light tanks as being something needed to support "fast moving" leg infantry is just fantasy-level thinking.
If the tests don't prove that the proposed MPF vehicle is a Future Burned Out Hulk, I don't know what value they have.
