Good afternoon, all ~
Apologies I’ve been away. Let me catch up on some replies.
@limburger: “high maintenance drama queen” … isn’t that true of a lot of western/american hardware? ... and … The Soviets otoh appear to have gear that can be maintained by the average farmer (and equally low requirements for crews).
Very true. Again, each army has to develop equipment that will work with its doctrine. Armies are overall systems. These systems, in turn, are reflections of the societies and cultures from which the armies are drawn. Thus, the army, doctrine, and in turn, the equipment has to “fit” the strengths, weaknesses, and characteristics of that culture.
So the American Abrams / British Challenger / German Leopard 2 have to deal with the same basic merits and flaws. On the pro side, these nations have a lot of money to spend, a great technology market, and a highly-educated recruitment base from which to draw their crews, officers, and support staff. On the con side, they are volunteer-only armies, so will never have enough people to match potential enemies man-to-man. The civilian populace of these countries will not stand for mass casualties the way they would in Russia or China. High-tech personnel are expensive to train, so again, they’ll always come up short in the numbers game.
Also, this may sound cold, but there are disadvantages in running an organization of smart people, you can’t lie to them and tell t hem their tank is the best … when it isn’t. Morale is harder to keep up because smart people will see through your bullshit, etc. In short, smart people aren’t as easy to manipulate.
Long story short, they have to build the best tanks (just a small example) they can, because their tanks will always have to defeat three, five or ten times as many opponents.
There’s also a reason the American Mk 67 fragmentation grenade was designed at the weight, size, and shape of an American baseball, and (for a more modern example) some drone controls often resemble Playtstation or XBox controllers … Military designers and engineers have to factor the culture of their expected user base in their thought process.
Just another reason I’d be very interested in an academic sense (but I would dread in a real life application) to see things like M1A1 Abrams MBTs in active combat service by export client armies like the Egyptians.
@suetoniuspaullinus – great question. I don’t know too much about 28mm miniatures, @grimwolfuk is our expert on that, but from a military perspective … It’s true that for baseline military forces, the evolution of weapons and equipment have started to “apex evolve” into a relatively narrow range of options. All the first-line tanks of the world basically fire thee kinds of ammo, 125mm Soviet, 120mm British or German, or 105mm in lighter tanks AFVs. All military ammo is now basically four or five calibers, 5.56 NATO, 5.45mm, 7.62mm COMBLOC, 9mm Parabellum, etc.
So it would seem that some kind of generic operator miniature set would start to emerge?
The counterpoint is that within these ranges of general characteristics, there is a “counter-intuitive” trend of increasing specialization. When we went into Iraq in 2003, most Americans were carrying M16A2 service rifles or M4 carbines (like we see in your Project Z photo). By the end it seemed no two M4s looked alike with all the attachments, accessories, and fittings … although of course they always fired the same 5.56mm NATO / .223 Remington. So the rules would be the same, although I would wager the miniatures would look very different.
Then of course there’s all kinds of special rounds like the .50 cal “big boy” sniper rifles, and God knows what else. This is why I tend to stick with the 99.9% “main force” militaries, all the SpecOps stuff gets too confusing for an old man like me. 😀
There’s still talk in US military circles about shifting ammo to some kind of intermediate round, the .680 SPC (special purpose cartridge) or 6.8mm Grendel, although they’ve been saying that since at least 2005. So I’m not exactly holding my breath.
