Quote:
Originally Posted by Webstral
Grendal, this is a tremendous addition to our knowledge base of the LAV-75. It's exciting to know that the initial combat experience of the LAV-75 might have been very positive, whether that would have been in China in 1995 or Europe/Korea in 1996.
|
Very cool info.
I can't see front line US/NATO AFVs being sent to China in 95-96 to bolster their war effort, due to the threat of technical intelligence being giftwrapped for Soviet forces capturing vehicles.
I could possibly see older AFVs, but suspect that the real fight changer for the Chinese would be if we could just dump Javelin CLUs and missiles (Tankbreaker, whatever) by the boat load. Training Chinese troops to use an M1/LAV-75/M60 or whatever else can take some time, especially because it's not just the crews fighting the vehicles it's the maintainers and mechanics, the logistics guys who have to learn what widgets need to be front loaded due to frequent breakage and on and on.
Worst case you send them some seriously game changing piece of kit that they end up just abandoning because they can't maintain it or resupply it (apparently a lot of German troops ended up doing this with StG-44s -- get handed this super assault rifle without any programmed ammo resupply scheduled so after a few days in the line you're back to a Mauser bolt gun or something . . . ).
Javelins, though, would be kind of like the Afghan Stingers if you were facing a conventional Soviet armored attack. Getting the Chinese Stingers probably wouldn't hurt either -- both can be taught to somebody with zero formal education at all (for which: see previous reference to Stingers in Afghanistan) and both can be learned fast. Soviet units pushing up against Chinese infantry formations where the squad level anti-tank weapon just changed from an RPG-7 to a Javelin launcher would be deep into the realm of rude surprises.