Michael Burgess and Svetoslav Gaidow
Protection, signature management and survivability are considered fundamental for any military capability system. These three concepts must be clearly defined and the dependencies among them well understood due to their importance to equipment acquisition, operational planning, training and doctrine development. The unambiguous interpretation of their intent is essential for the operation and successful integration of capability systems up to joint task force level. Such considerations apply equally to the deployable protected vehicles of the Australian Defence Force, especially the soon to be acquired Protected Mobility Vehicle—Light (PMV-L) fleet. In this article deficiencies in the existing definitions of the three concepts are overcome and their relationships are analysed using system and process modelling in support of the considerations.
Keywords: firepower and protection, protection, signature management, survivability protected vehicle, land vehicle
Michael Burgess and Svetoslav Gaidow
The widely accepted survivability layers onion model is extended for deployable protected land vehicles by considering separately the aspects of the vehicle and the crew. The survivability layers are subsequently re-defined in the new construct to provide greater distinction between the protection concepts contributing to each layer and each aspect. These protection concepts are used to focus the consideration of applicable protection systems, taking into account the vulnerabilities of the capability system of vehicle and crew, as well as other relevant environmental factors. A framework is introduced to provide a consistent approach to the survivability assessment of deployable protected land vehicles; it can be tailored to fit the required level of decision making. The framework features a one-page double-sided tabular tool, which can be used for any military activities from capability acquisition, doctrine development to training and operations on the battlefield.
Keywords: firepower and protection, protection, signature management, survivability protected vehicle, land vehicle
A. Hafeezur Rahman and Mike Gibson
This paper investigates the effectiveness of honeycomb sandwich structure in an MBT hull through a Finite Element Analysis based study. Two hulls, one with steel floor plate and the other with a honeycomb-sandwich floor plate made of aluminium alloy were modelled. Both these hull models were subjected to the same loads and boundary conditions and the resulting stress and deformation results are discussed and compared. It was observed that although the honeycomb sandwich floor plate did undergo higher stress and deformation compared to the steel floor plate, the values were within safe design limits. In addition to this, using these honeycomb structure would result in a substantial mass saving as found from the study. Finally, this paper also covers the practical difficulties associated with incorporating honeycomb structures in MBT hull construction and recommends future courses of investigation.
Keywords: firepower and protection, protection, survivability protected vehicle, land vehicle
Manvi Sahni and Sumanta Kumar Das
Lanchester equations and their extensions are widely used to calculate attrition rates in combat modelling. This paper examines how Lanchester models fit detailed daily data on the Battle of Kursk using the technique of Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE). A detailed database of the Battle of Kursk of World War II has been developed recently. In past several studies have been carried out on the Kursk data. Although different forms of Lanchester Models have been applied for fitting these data, little efforts have been made to apply the MLE technique. The previous studies are mostly based on the least-square methods of parameter estimation and have a number of drawbacks. First, these estimators do not possess optimality properties such as consistency, sufficiency, and efficiency. Second, since these approaches do not consider the statistical properties of the parameters, and therefore statistical inferences from these approaches cannot be drawn. This paper compares the results of the MLE with the results of estimation techniques studied in the past. Various goodness-of-fit measures have been proposed for the accuracy assessment of the MLE to that of the previous approaches. The results show that the MLE is statistically more accurate than existing approaches.
Keywords: Lanchester equations, tank battle, Kursk
Timothy Neville, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia
