Word: armor
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...overpower an enemy along fixed fronts. Even the new Rapid Deployment Force has become bogged down with such weapons as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. John Boyd, a leading tactician in the reformers' camp, argues that battles are usually won by maneuver, speed and surprise. Instead of heavy armor like the M-1 tank, which requires fleets of fuel trucks and frequent maintenance, the Army should rely on light infantry units...
...pound, which sharply limited its potential destructive power. The size of the rocket motor was also reduced to cut blast noise. By the time the contractor finished redesigning it, the Vipers cost not $75, but $787 apiece. Worse yet, the scaled-down warhead could no longer penetrate the front armor of modern battle tanks nor stop Soviet tanks headon. The Kafkaesque solution: if the weapon will not do what it is supposed to do, redefine its mission. The Army decided the Viper should be used to snipe at tanks from the side or the rear, however limiting that might seem...
...Bradley is a behemoth, so wide that it cannot readily fit into the standard C-141 military transport plane; it has to be partially disassembled. Its 5½-in.-thick armor adds some protection, but on the battlefield, critics charge, the vehicle would be a death trap. Its width and excessive height (10 ft.) offer an inviting target to enemy gunners. At times it even has to be a stationary target: the Bradley must come to a complete stop to fire its antitank missile. Its 25-mm gun also has a problem: it is said to be highly inaccurate...
Hand-carried, cheap (average cost: $150) antitank rockets, which are now standard equipment for every infantry squad in the Warsaw Pact armies, rip through the Bradley's aluminum armor like a welder's torch. Unlike steel, the aluminum vaporizes and burns, adding immense heat to the explosion inside and producing a fireball. That is not a theoretical danger. The M113 also is made of aluminum, and M113s carrying Israeli troops went up in flames in Lebanon. During the invasion, Israeli troops rode on the exposed areas of the M113-not inside it. Since the Bradley is designed...
...relatively slow A-10 Thunderbolt is a "close-support" aircraft, intended to swoop in low over a battlefield and savage the enemy's infantry and armor. When the prototype jets started flying in 1975, some Air Force brass were worried that its GAU8 antitank cannon was not up to snuff. The nose-mounted, 30-mm weapon was like a Gatling gun, with seven rotating barrels. And like a Gatling gun, it seemed a little oldfashioned, unworthy of a state-of-the-art Air Force. Colonel Bob Dilger was ordered to Dayton to take over the GAU8 program...