Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnews!cbnews!military From: denbeste@spdcc.com (Steven Den Beste) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Equipment comparison Message-ID: <1991Mar6.043546.26190@cbnews.att.com> Date: 6 Mar 91 04:35:46 GMT References: <1991Mar4.205506.5700@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (william.b.thacker) Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA Lines: 91 Approved: military@att.att.com From: denbeste@spdcc.com (Steven Den Beste) In article <1991Mar4.205506.5700@cbnews.att.com> cga66@ihlpy.att.com (Patrick V Kauffold) writes: >From a dim memory, I recall a story or TV piece on the Desert >Warfare School detailing how the "OPFOR" was equipped with some >borrowed Soviet equipment, and, using Soviet tactics, was able >to defeat the US forces during training exercises. If anyone >on the net knows more, I'd like to hear about it. (Looks like >there are enough undamaged T72s in US hands to outfit an OPFOR >brigade; should make for more realistic training. LtGen Kelley >called them "spoils of war.") > >From "The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine" by Andrew Cockburn, copyright 1983: "Civilians who drive on the public roads which crisscross Fort Hood, the enormous US Army base in the rolling countryside of central Texas, get used to passing tanks. Enormous steel vehicles, measuring about 25 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 10 feet high -- all tanks project an impression of raw power. ... Most of them are American, either M-60s, the main American tank for twenty years, or newer and larger M-1s, which emit a high-pitched whine from their gas-turbine engines, quite unlike the throaty rumble of the diesel-powered M-60s. Sometimes the passersby notice tanks that look different, un-American. These tanks are smaller and lower, with rounded egg-shaped turrets and a very long cannon that imparts a streamlined appearance missing from the more boxlike M-60s. It is not surprising that they should look different. They were designed and built in the Soviet Union. These Soviet tanks have reached Fort Hood by a long and roundabout route. Produced at the great plants in Kharkov or Nizhny Tagil, they were supplied by the Soviets to their Syrian and Egyptian allies in the Middle East. Thrown into battle against the Israeli army, they were captured undamaged and passed on to the U.S. Army as a small recompense for the vast shipments of American weaponry dispatched in the opposite direction. Along with other examples of captured Soviet equipment ... these tanks can give the U.S. forces hard data on the actual performance and characteristics of their enemy's equipment. However, they are used for more than mere education of the intelligence specialists. The Army maintains Opfors (Opposing Forces) units at bases around the country consisting of American soldiers who wear quasi-Soviet uniforms, operate and maintain the Soviet equipment and "fight" in exercises against ordinary U.S. units according to the precepts of Soviet tactical manuals. ...Seen up close, Soviet tanks project an air of sinister elegance. Like most Russian weapons, they look dangerous, unstoppable. But once one climbs inside, the perspective changes. All tanks induce, in this writer at any rate, a feeling of acute claustrophobia. Even when engaged in an exercise no more warlike than a spin about the Fort Hood firing range, members of a tank crew go about their duties in conditions more cramped than those of even the smallest sports car. ...A U.S. Army public affairs officer who once showed me around an M-1 commented briskly on the "unequalled space and comfort afforded the crew" by this, the army's most up-to-date tank. Even so, I could only think of how hellish it would be to be bolded up inside, hardly able to move, while unseed enemies outside were trying to kill me. Yet that M-1 had interior space of ballroom proportions compared to the Soviet T-62 tank I explored at Fort Hood. I was unable to find out what it is like to sit inside with the hatch closed because I am over 6 feet tall, and Soviet tanks are so small that there is no headroom for anyone taller than 5 feet 6 inches. ...A Soviet tank gun loader's job is not an enviable one. He must manhandle heavy, 50-pound, shells either from a rack near his feet or from the main storage area behind him into the breech of the main gun. To ram the shell home in the breech, he must get behind it and use both hands and then get out of the way very quickly before the gunner fires, since the gun recoils with lethal force. On a T-62, an automatic mechanism ejects the heavy casing of the spent shell through a small porthole in the rear of the turret each time the gun fires. But the casing often misses the porthole, in which case it ricochets back inside the tank. The commander has a metal guard to protect his head if this happens. The loader does not. The perils of his position are further increased if a device called a gyrostabilizer is switched on. This device is supposed to keep the gun trained on a target while the tank is moving, which means that the gun breech and turret can swing about unexpectedly, crushing the loader if he is not quick on his feet." The remainder of chapter 8, titled "Tanks and other armor" discusses the unreliability of the tank engines, their transmissions, and generally the over-all shitty engineering appearing throughout the design. Though now a little dated, this is a VERY interesting book - especially since now that the cold war is over it seems he was a lot closer to the truth then people at the time wanted to admit. (His contention was that the Soviet military was much less of a threat than the military-industrial complex wanted to admit, since such an admission would have decreased military spending in this country.)