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Old 05-26-2021, 04:55 AM
Ursus Maior Ursus Maior is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2020
Location: Ruhr Area, Germany
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The thing with SHORAD, and even more so with VSHORAD, is that you want similar levels of mobility and protection than the maneuver element you are guarding against airborne threats. That is why the Bundeswehr had Gepard SPAAGs and Roland mobile SAM-launchers on armored chassis for their brigades, divisions and corps, but the Luftwaffe used Roland on MAN 8×8 trucks for the protection of air-bases.

Puttin a gun on a truck is not the same, even if said truck is somewhat armored and has gut mobility cross-country. The levels of protection and mobility will always be different and that is a problem for near-peer engagements, since your SPAAGs and SHORAD SAMs will be within striking distance of direct fire by the enemy. That is even more true today than it was during the later Cold War: back then, tank guns and ATGMs reached out 3-5 km beyond the forward line of enemy troops (FLET); or forward edge of battle area (FEBA), respectively, depending upon you perspective. Back then, battlefield ground-surveillance radars had a range of 20 km, today that's a distance easily overcome by beyond-line-of-sight missiles like Spike NLOS (quad-mountedable on pick-up trucks).

With the ever increasing threat by small to medium-sized drones, non-hardened (V)SHORAD-solutions are simply not going to survive long enough. Drone can now (or in the very near future) use swarm attacks to saturate SPAAGs or make them give away their positions for long-range artillery or NLOS ATAGMs to strike them from afar. A guntruck with a radar mounted is simply not going to cut it against near-peer opponents, especially since these have invested highly into drones.
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