Talk:Tank desant

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Contents 1 POV? 2 Desant vs. Riding 3 Unsubstantiated silliness 4 Citation for helicopter riding

[edit] POV?

...but this tactic was mostly used by forces with a low regard for their own soldiers' lives.

I would avoid formulations like this, sounds like POV for me. Also remember that in Vietnam many American soldiers felt safer when riding on their M113s, not in them, since it allowed faster dismounts in case of attack. A M113 of that era was death trap when attacked by RPGs. - Alureiter 09:47, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to compare the two. The U.S. soldiers chose to ride on top so they could dismount quickly in case of unexpected ambush—when expecting contact they would probably rather dismount before fighting. The Soviets would ride tanks into the assault.

The Soviet Army was a force that still routinely used mass human wave attacks during WWII, with political officers manning machine guns in the rear as morale boosters. They had made a conscious decision to build tanks and not half tracks or APCs, and continued to see this tactic as an option as long as it was possible.

Steven Zaloga writes "Infantry mechanization remained one of the singular failures of Red Army tactics in World War 2, and forced the adoption of wasteful and humanly-costly improvisations such as the use of tanks to transport troops into battle, so-called tank desant. The problems with tank-infantry cooperation in Spain could have acted as a catalyst to a debate on infantry mechanization, but the dilemma was not appreciated by the Red Army."[1]

Perhaps that could be reworded, but the concept is relevant here. Any suggestions? —Michael Z. 2005-11-9 15:11 Z

It strikes me there's some callousness either way. If the troops feel safer under enemy fire than in the vehicle, isn't that a reflection of poor design? And isn't accepting a poor design a reflection of indifference to the troops, preferring the manufacturers' POV to that of the operators? Trekphiler 12:12, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean.

In the case of Vietnam, it's a case of the wide availability of a new class of man-portable antitank weapons (RPGs), and lack of technology to protect APCs against them. Note that Americans didn't ride on their APCs all the time. Where the enemy could only fight with small arms, they sat in their armoured ACAV vehicles and saturated the bush with machine gun fire rather than get out and fight. This is contrary to normal infantry tactics, since infantry is always considered safer on the ground than in a vehicle—the vehicle is simply a necessary way to conduct mobile warfare. —Michael Z. 2006-06-28 19:29 Z

AFAIK, the M113 design didn't change for the duration. When faced with RPG, I would have thought countermeasures were in order. I'm unaware of any. I'd suggest this is indifference. Technical limiations may have played a role, I don't deny it, but this smells like Harris' telling Bomber Command crews Monica (tail warning radar) confused German searchlight radars, when Air Ministry Intel knew damn well "German searchlight radars" were a myth & Monica made bombers easier targets for nightfighters. Trekphiler 05:05, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Desant vs. Riding

Quite a reasonable rewriting, Michael. May be we should even split the article on two. AlexPU 07:09, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Do you think part 2 would stand on its own? I think it could either be rolled into armoured personnel carrier or mechanized force, or remain here to provide perspective. —Michael Z. 2005-11-11 15:36 Z

OK, let's keep it here. AlexPU 16:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Unsubstantiated silliness

The phrase "and a low regard for their own soldiers' lives", was removed with the edit summary "rv unsubstantiated silliness". Eleland, please respond to the arguments in the "POV?" section above, or I will restore the line. —Michael Z. 2006-06-28 19:22 Z

Never mind—I've restated better with a reference to the Zaloga article. Thanks for prompting me to improve the article, Eleland. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2006-06-28 19:45 Z

My apologies for editing the article without checking for argument on it -- I'm new here and forgot about that. I called it "silliness" because i was sloppy and conflated political systems with practical military issues. Regardless of the Soviet system's disregard for human life, a soldier represents a considerable investment in training, equipment, and logistics (yes, even in the Red Army -- they were not a screaming rabble of peasants). Nobody was sitting around saying "well, we could build APCs, but we'd rather just lose half our guys to shrapnel before they make contact with the enemy". Anyway the current version is more precise and better, I thank you for the restatement. Eleland 18:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

No need to apologize—it's all part of shaking out the copy. I'm happy that the article is now better than before.

But I wouldn't make any extrapolations about what some members of the Soviet leadership may have been saying about the value of human life, or not: this is a regime which in the 1930s executed hundreds of thousands of its own innocent citizens, and knowingly killed millions by famine during collectivization. During the Great Patriotic War, penal battalions were occasionally marched up in multiple ranks for the sole purpose of depleting German machine gun ammunition prior to an attack. —Michael Z. 2006-06-29 21:44 Z

Also, don't forget simple incompetence. After the 1937-9 purges, most R.A. senior professional soldiers were dead or in the gulag. And troops are uniformly cheaper to train & easier & quicker to replace than vehicle systems. Trekphiler 04:55, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citation for helicopter riding

There is now evidence of very small numbers of troops riding externally on attack helecopters.

What evidence? Can someone please provide a citation? Thanks. —Michael Z. 2007-03-19 18:06 Z

I'm not sure we should really include this in this article. Last time I checked, even *attack* helicopters were not tanks. Anyway, it has been occasional US practice to carry a few guys externally on the AH-6 Little Bird / Hughes 500 series light attack helicopters since the early 1990s. But: it's rare; I am not sure why we care whether guys are riding inside or outside the bird; it's not tank desant. DMorpheus 20:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)