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On Tue, 5/17/16, Richard Aiken <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] New toy- "switchblade" loitering munition
 To: "tml" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
 Date: Tuesday, May 17, 2016, 8:15 PM

 On Tue, May 17, 2016 at
 9:48 PM, Joseph Paul <xxxxxx@sbcglobal.net>
 wrote:

     Think there wasn't a discussion of the
 opportunity
       costs concerning the decision to not have an HE round
 for the US
       Army and what that did to future deployed force
 structures? Search
       up the cost of the DM11 - it is being used by the US
 Marines.
       Apparently they had a different discussion about the
 opportunity
       costs of various rounds.
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 Without researching it, I expect
 that the reason the Army decided against HE and the Marines
 for it was the different anticipated Armor missions. The
 Army expects to mainly (perhaps even solely) to use it's
 armor to fight opposing armor, making basic HE rounds a
 useless item. The Marines - on the other hand - expect to
 fight infantry in dug-in but not actually armored positions,
 making HE rounds an essential item. 
 Of course, they both might be wrong,
 particularly the Army. I remember reading a book called
 "Tank Sergeant," written by a guy who crewed an
 M-60 tank in Vietnam. He had spent his entire career prior
 to that point learning to fight Soviet T-72s at 1000 yards
 in Europe . . . only to have his entire combat experience
 turn out to be against lightly-armed infantry fighting from
 jungle revetments, which were generally encountered at
 touching distance.
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Shelby Stanton in his opus magnus detailing the various combat units deployed in VietNam, mentioned that, "armor was initially thought to be a detriment to fighting in jungle. (Note: this was directly contradicted by experience in the pacific theater of WWII) By the time this was found to be false the force structure had already been determined." <sic> (Note: I interpret this to mean, "carved in stone".) Interestingly the marines brought along their tank battalions, as per their doctrine & were glad thy did. Army units varied, some had armor, most didn't, the Ist InfDiv deployed from the USA w/ it's integral armor batt & also two mech inf (M113) batts. An armored cav regiment was also sent & it proved invaluable.

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