От Василий Фофанов
К All
Дата 24.04.2001 16:34:44
Рубрики Современность; Танки; Флот; Армия;

Таки зарубят Крусэйдер похоже. А также и DD-21 Эксетера, и М1А2, и Брэдли.

Что радует. Но амеры козлы. Отрадно видеть что не нас одних история не учит.

Извиняюсь за длину, оригинал только подписчикам, так что приведу целиком.

Это из NY Times.

Pentagon Panel Urges Scuttling Howitzer System

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON, April 22 — An advisory panel appointed by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has recommended canceling production of the Army's new mobile artillery system, the Crusader, along with an array of other weapons programs designed, in the panel's view, for cold-war-like battles, officials said.

The panel's recommendations — outlined in a briefing for Mr. Rumsfeld on Saturday — are expected to become a test of the Bush administration's pledges to reshape the military for the
21st century, pitting supporters of overhauls against supporters of service traditions, defense contractors and jobs.

While President Bush has pledged to abandon programs that make only what he termed marginal improvements in existing weapons, the Crusader has powerful allies in the Army and on
Capitol Hill. So does virtually every other program the Pentagon has, making any cuts politically difficult, at best.

Representative J. C. Watts Jr. of Oklahoma, the chairman of the House Republican Conference, has already made a personal appeal to Mr. Rumsfeld to preserve the Crusader, which
would be assembled in a new factory in his district. On Wednesday, Mr. Watts went to Arizona to watch a Crusader prototype in a firing demonstration at the Yuma Proving Grounds.

"I'm obviously sold on this system," Mr. Watts said in a telephone interview on Saturday. "And so is the Army."

The Army plans to spend $11.1 billion to build 480 Crusaders, which are self-propelled 155-millimeter howitzers that come with automated resupply vehicles, enabling them to fire farther and faster than the Army's existing artillery system, known as the Paladin.

Army commanders contend that the Crusader, the first of which is not scheduled to reach the field before 2008, is critical to ensuring combat superiority in land battles for years to come. It is built by United Defense L.P., a contractor based in Arlington, Va., and owned by the Carlyle Group, an investment firm led by Frank C. Carlucci, a secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan.

Despite the Army's advocacy, the advisory panel concluded that the Crusader was ill-suited for a new military strategy focused on projecting military power over long distances with air and naval forces.

The panel also recommended scuttling plans to modernize other Army weapons, including the M1-A2 Abrams tank and the Bradley armored combat vehicle, as well as the Air Force's B-1
bomber.

And it proposed not moving ahead with the Navy's new destroyer, the DD-21, contending that the destroyer, like the Crusader, did not represent a technological leap forward but simply a modest improvement on today's so-called legacy force.

"The Crusader effectively got the ax from the panel because it didn't fit the agenda," one official involved in the panel's deliberations said. "It's a wonderful system — for a legacy world."

Pentagon and administration officials emphasized that no final decisions had been made on any programs, including the Crusader. An administration official acknowledged that the Office of Management and Budget had asked the Army to calculate the costs of killing the Crusader program but noted that proposed cuts were going on and coming off the table in a flurry of accounting adjustments as the Pentagon's budget was being completed.

The advisory panel — led by David C. Gompert, a vice president at the Rand Corporation and a national security aide in the first Bush administration — is one of more than a dozen Mr. Rumsfeld has assigned to review various defense strategies and programs, including nuclear weapons, missile defense and conventional forces.

A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, said that none of the panels had submitted a final report, though some were expected to soon. A broad strategy review led by
Andrew W. Marshall, director the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, is expected to be among the first to be made public. That review does not address specific weapons programs.

All the panels are conducting their reviews virtually in secret, which underscores the political risks of proposed cuts in military programs. It is not clear how Mr. Rumsfeld — and ultimately President Bush — will integrate the various panels' recommendations, which in some cases appear to be contradictory.

"Cross-fertilization is fairly ad hoc," one panel member said. "As a result, there is overlap — and confusion."

Another panel focused on "transformation" had endorsed nearly all the major weapons programs from the Clinton administration, though it made no recommendation on the Crusader. It did so despite Mr. Bush's pledges to "skip a generation" of technologies to devote resources to more advanced weapons.

"Our goal is to move beyond marginal improvements to harness new technologies that will support a new strategy," Mr. Bush said in a speech in February at the Norfolk Naval Station in
Virginia.

The Crusader question is typical of the debate over which weapons the military will need in battles that are not expected to reflect cold-war-era strategies, like confronting the Soviet Union on the plains of central Europe or Iraqi forces in the Persian Gulf.

The Army describes the Crusader as a technological leap over its current artillery systems, which were developed some 40 years ago. It is designed to fire shells 24 to 30 miles —
compared with 18 miles for the current system — at a rate of 10 to 12 shells a minute. The Paladin system, officials say, is too slow and cumbersome to keep up with the rest of an armored division, slowing the speed of its attacks.

The Crusader's problem is its size and weight. It is a heavy, track- driven armored vehicle designed at a time when the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, has proposed an
ambitious shift to lighter, more agile forces fighting in a yet-to-be- designed "future combat system."

Under General Shinseki's plan, the Army has already cut the program in half and redesigned the system, reducing the weight of the howitzer along with its resupply vehicle to 76 to 84 tons from 110 tons.

A senior Army officer said the Crusader would remain an important part of a division's firepower in combat until General Shinseki's "objective force" becomes a reality.

"It's a poster child for what's wrong with the Army," the officer said. "It's heavy. It's tracked. All that's well and good. If you assume we're not going to go to war for the next 20 years, or if you're willing to take the risk, then that's a fair argument."

Intense lobbying has already begun, along with interservice jockeying. The senior Army officer complained, for example, that Mr. Rumsfeld's panels had a disproportionate representation from advocates of the Air Force.

"We have this romance with air power that blinds us to everything else," the officer said.

As the panels complete their work, the battles over specific programs are expected to spill into the open. "Everybody's going to think their system has a strong story to tell," Representative Watts said.

С уважением, Василий Фофанов, http://members.dencity.com/fofanov/Tanks
От А.Никольский
К Василий Фофанов (24.04.2001 16:34:44)
Дата 24.04.2001 17:18:29

А чем здесь амеров история не научила? (-)
От Василий Фофанов
К А.Никольский (24.04.2001 17:18:29)
Дата 24.04.2001 17:27:05

Не видишь аналогий с довоенными и послевоенными настроениями?

И во вторую мировую, и в Корею следовали неприятные открытия

С уважением, Василий Фофанов, http://members.dencity.com/fofanov/Tanks