Feldgrau.net

Tracker vehicles seemed to be the thing at one time. That is, they seemed to get all the glory and romance of shootin' matches. But rubber-wheeled vehicles seem more fitted for the present in that they are easier to ship to areas of concern and more mobile in the field. With the advent of the attack helicopter where one chopper can zap a platoon of tanks before you can say "Mien Gott!" the role of the armored vehicle now seems to favor rubber-wheeled vehicles.

How do you feel about this choice?

Should read "tracked vehicles" not "tracker vehicles."

L., I think it's more that "today" our hostilities of choice...ahem...require dual-role vehicles - AFVs that are both practical APCs and infantry section carriers wiv turrets on in the modern battlefield....AND can be used as impressive "policing" vehicles". Our fault for not picking the right wars...

In reality the British Army left wheeled APCs behind for Western European conditions in the 1980s with the Saxon, a strange four-wheeled throwback - many years after they'd retired the four-wheeled Humber Pig and six-wheeled Saracen from front line duties as APCs....but althought we DID equip a couple of infantry battalions in West Germany with the Saxon, it was mostly used in Northern Ireland on "internal security" duties

IIRC, the logic for multi-wheeled vehicles I.E. six or eight wheelers - in the immediate pre-war period...was their gap-crossing ability offroad. As WW2 progressed we discovered that while multi-wheel 6x6 or at a pinch 4x4 vehicles DID have some decent offroad capability, the gap-crossing ability offroad wasn't all that was promised - and the tracked AFV provided this better.

I don't know quite enough about the course of U.S. military vehicle development after about 1950 until the 1980s to comment on that, but the British experience was tempered EARLY post-WW2 by a need to concentrate as much on the real, actual, happening "policing" role the Army had to fulfil, with it getting involved in a whole range of post-colonial insurgencies - from Malaya to Northern Ireland by way of Aden, Kenya and a host of others...where the need was for rough road-capable far more than true offroad ability. Even if the Cold War British Army had ever gone to war in Western Europe - it would STILL have done so in an environment tamed by two thousand years of farming, road development etc.. "Offroad" wasn't ever going to mean truly trackless in Western Europe...

L. Kafka wrote:... But rubber-wheeled vehicles seem more fitted for the present in that they are easier to ship to areas of concern and more mobile in the field.

Wheeled vehicles being "more mobile in the field" is certainly a disputeable statement. They are better on roads and on a few types of terrain but in general I suspect that the reverse is true.

With the advent of the attack helicopter where one chopper can zap a platoon of tanks before you can say "Mien Gott!" the role of the armored vehicle now seems to favor rubber-wheeled vehicles.

Attack helicopters are also quite vulnerable. Combined arms has been the key to winning battles for a long time and is likely to remain so for quite a while.

...@#%."
signed,
Guderian

Greetings to both brother L. Kafka and the community as a whole. Howdy L.K.! Well sir, in respect to your vintage introductory posting of Thursday - August 21, 2014 - 5:02pm, old yours truly has always leaned more to tracked vehicles rather than wheeled vehicles. When it comes down to cross country performance in sand, mud or snow, you are much less likely to run into mobility issues with the use of tracks. Wheeled vehicles are more likely to become mired or bogged down under similar circumstances. If I recollect, the Wehrmacht discovered much of the same operating conditions in the hinterlands of the western Soviet Union and in the Sahara Desert in North Africa. However, I will duly concede that maintenance is far less involved with a wheeled vehicle than it is with a tracked vehicle. Finally, there is the not so inconsequential matter of financial cost. Within this realm, the wheeled vehicle is, without a doubt, the more cost effective choice over a tracked vehicle. Well, that's my initial two cents worth on this topic down mechanized lane - for now anyway. In any case, I would like to bid you an especially copacetic day up in the Evergreen State of Washington.

Best Regards,
Uncle Bob