The Utility of Paratroopers in Future Conflicts?

[Sea Skimmer]

But it works and gives the Russians an unsurpassed capability to deliver a hard hitting force to a critical area in the enemy's rear where it can do a lot of damage and hold long enough for its main force to arrive.

Not really. Having armored vehicles simplifies only a few things about conducting airborne operations, while vastly increasing the airlift and logistical requirements in general (things Russia sucked at) and conversely the Russian military was and is weak on helicopters for its size, and had no usefully night capable attack helicopters until the past decade. Every US division had as many helicopters as a Soviet Army in the 1980s. Some had significantly more, and US army corps typically had several additional Apache battalions.

If something works an gives you an advantage, you're foolish not to use it.

Except you still have to pay for it. Idiot logic like this is how the USSR imploded on armaments spending.

When you think about it, what group is likely to last longer against a strong armored counter attack till their relief gets to them:

82nd Airborne Battalion paradropped on a key road junction with light Humvees and TOWs or a Soviet BMD Battalion backed by some 2S25s?

Irrelevant and stupid comparison, and since the American airborne unit has twice as many men it actually stands a far greater chance of holding any position on the defensive. But I bet you had no idea of that, and never considered the implications of the BMD series holding so few men when equipped with a major caliber weapon.

The US Airborne get their anti armor firepower from missiles, and from being designed as part of a larger integrated unit with a large number of attack helicopters, able to operate from a remote location in support of isolated units. That also makes their artillery highly mobile. Resupplying and vacuating by helicopter is far fucking more realistic then BMDs landed with zero logistical support ever escaping by tracks. That is also against Soviet doctrine. The Soviets were willing to consider expending units on suicide distraction units, the US was not interested in such wasteful tactics, it was interested in units that could sustain a fight. NATO units in general were far better supported then Soviet anything, and worth several Soviet units of like size in a real battle because by intentional design Soviet units could not sustain combat.

Also you realize some armor on a BMD is only 7mm thick aluminum right? The thing averages about half the armor of an M113 and has less effective protection then some armored hummer models.

Being amphibious was nice certainly, that could make planning certain airborne operations easier since a small waterway could be between the objective and the landing zone, but again, American units had shitloads of helicopters to cover situations like that. And all combat since the 1970s has indicated that amphibious vehicles will be massively destroyed in combat, and are unfit for it. The BMD series is vulnerable to literally everything past frag grenades.

[Sea Skimmer]

The US hasn't had an air-droppable tank since the Sheridan, and that was an unmitigated disaster, with their last air-droppable anti-tank vehicle, the Ontos, only being marginally better in combat.

You've got to be insane to think Sheridan was worse then something as stupid as the Ontos. Sheridan though could have been much better, a huge number of improvements and variants were designed, had production not simply been halted in the 1970s for budget reasons. But the US could measure the costs of its weapons and like, take actual decisions on that basis. One of those was that the stuff that became Bradley was a better place to focus resources, and Sheridan was intended for armored cav and not just airborne use. And of course we see that the worst problems of the Bradley came from the stupid requirement for it to float to compete with Soviet floating.

Is the Stryker/LAV family of vehicles air-droppable, or merely air-transportable?

Air dropped in tests in several different configurations, but none of the kits have been fielded for service. Some LAVs are also helicopter mobile with the CH-53E, but the LAV-25 got too heavy for that with its armor upgrade (funny how people always end up uparmoring amphibious crap when they value the crew's lifespan), I am not sure if the hook rating on the CH-53K is going to be high enough to resolve that, certainly the aircraft has the brute power to do it.

When you have 800+ Apaches, and now GPS/laser guided 120mm mortar rounds among other things, not to mention the amazing upgrade that was Javelin over prior ATGMs, it tends to suppress the desire for airborne anti tank armor that might be felt in a technologically inferior army. Though the US Army is still interested in a replacement for the XM-8, its really low on the priorities list, and basically as an assault vehicle.Aka primarily to kill stuff that isn't tanks, they are talking about sticking with a 105mm gun for that reason. The US Army has tank killing itself very well handled, indeed its cancelled numerous high end anti tank systems because the need for them just doesn't really exist. LOSAT for example, still nobody could build a tank to withstand that. It physically tore the turrets off M60s.

[K. A. Pital]

The USSR had a vast array of other requirements to armored troop transports. Not only a hard limit of 20 tons to be air-transportable, but they also had to be able to float (BTR and recon BMRD).

Evacuation is not relevant when the army is built for nuclear war.

Of course, the criticism of the airborne AFVs is relevant in hypothetical scenarios of defending something or evacuating troops. These were not the situations envisioned by the Soviet command. The plan of strategical offensive in a nuclear war contained a projection for a "strategic airboned assault" with a depth of up to 1000 km behind enemy frontlines. This has to be seen in context, as the Soviet Army envisioned an attack tempo covering 100 km per day (and 1000 km within barely more than a week). To quash anti-air units, a bombing campaign involving more than 1000 strike and bomber aircraft was planned.

After several mass drills, this was corrected to the less optimistic "50 km per day" and the maximum depth of airborne assaults to 750 km in total. Also, the idea of a non-nuclear global conflict started to be seriously considered by the leadership.

Evacuating the units was irrelevant as the only way to "win", if that even could be considered a victory, was to roll over the US forces in continental Europe in a short term and turn the parts that are left outside the scope of attack (i.e. Great Britain) into glassy classy wasteland.

The aircraft requirments for such operations were only 70% achieved, though.

[Simon_Jester]

Designing major things like airborne AFV capability around the idea of a non-nuclear global conflict is a stupid idea. Because there was only a low probability of it ever occurring. If you spend billions of dollars on a weapon system that has only a 10% or 20% chance of being useful even if World War III happens, you're uselessly crippling yourself.

If the Soviets were assuming that non-nuclear global conflict was highly likely, that was also a stupid idea, because it was based on profoundly unrealistic ideas about whether NATO would use nuclear weapons to stop Warsaw Pact invasion forces.

Moreover, you're wrong that the criticism is about "defending something or evacuating troops." The original given example may involve tactical defense but it is typical of offensive airborne operations. The airborne troops are being landed to seize key terrain ahead of a larger invasion force, remember? That only works if you're on the offensive. And airborne light armor still doesn't help much, especially if the enemy has attack helicopters that can casually chew up your light armor.

[K. A. Pital]

Where did you get this from in my posts? Actually, the airborne AFV concept was developed much earlier (works initiated in the 1950s and 1960s) when "non-nuclear global war" was not seriously considered by anyone at all. If anything, the perception of utility of airborne formations in a non-nuclear conflict seems to have been reduced. The average lifetime of the airborne division in total war combat conditions was calculated to be 5 days or thereabout. In that time, the invasion force had to advance far enough, clearing the way with nuclear strikes.

Defensive actions with airborne units... were not really considered much. The idea of NATO forces advancing inside Soviet territory during a global conflict... Well, quite unlikely. That's why the USSR had a massive buffer zone of E. European states, after all.

The concept of "light armor not helping much" comes from overestimating the role of light armor. Its role is not to serve as protection from dedicated anti-tank weapons, for god's sake. This is clear.

[Simon_Jester]

1) A lot of people had airborne AFVs in the '50s and '60s; my point is that this is no longer a particularly desirable capability. Whereas Honorius (for instance) was playing this up as an important modern capability, one significant enough to make it worthwhile to equip airborne divisions with armored fighting vehicles even if this greatly reduces the numbers of troops that can be deployed and increases the risks associated with carrying the vehicle in the transport plane. Arguing that airborne armor made sense in 1952 is not the same as arguing that it made sense in 1972 or 1992 or 2012.

2) I think we have some kind of language disconnect when talking about offensive and defensive operations. A lot of the classic airborne operations historically have been strategically offensive but tactically defensive. That is to say, the strategy they fit into is offensive in nature (the airborne troops deploy into enemy territory). But the tactics they carry out are defensive (they seize undefended terrain and make the enemy come to them).

Soviet doctrine during the Cold War was very much offensive in strategic terms; that does not mean that every battle would have the Soviet forces on the tactical offensive. Moreover, Honorius' original example of seizing a bridge and holding it against counterattack was an example of a tactically defensive mission!

3) I am aware that light armor does not serve as protection from heavy weapons or antitank weapons. The problem is that since the Second World War, antitank capability has proliferated to where it makes light armor considerably less useful.

[K. A. Pital]

I did not mean to say that the BTRs or BMPs were never meant to be used in tactical defense. However, the role of these vehicles was to make at least some of troops more mobile after landing (going somewhere on foot is, after all, very limited mobility!), and this capability is useful regardless of whether the vehicles are vulnerable to HMG or ATGM fire.

After all, normal (non-airborne) AFVs are also vulnerable to ATGMs and HMGs, but they cannot offer air-dropped troops mobility as they are not air-droppable themselves.

Deploying a whole airborne division worth of troops without any transports is deploying a unit with extremely limited mobility. The air-drop has to be very precise and the situation on the ground should be fairly stable, as such a unit would not be able to send rapid recon on vehicles forward, or use vehicles to capture key points.

Dropping jeeps is a fine tactic to give these units some mobility, but unlike most Soviet light AFVs, they are not floatable (BMRD, BMP etc are), so crossing water rapidly here snd there may be a problem for the unit. Given the limited equipment such units usually have, it is a useful option, no?

Still thinking that this is a "solution in search of a problem"?