Russian Ground Forces: News #1

Really, the only difference between the EFV and the Bradley is the ERA on the Bradley, which makes it "Counter-RPG". The main difference however, is obviously the amphibious capability that the EFV has, which is essential for it's potential customer (the U.S. Marines).

Nice Book on Russian BMP

Russian BMP Infantry Combat Vehicles - Steven Zaloga

Thanks for posting that.

Ironically it shows stuff that is just getting into service now like Krisantema and it was published in 1991.

Don't know where they got their figures for Krisantema from however... 170m/s to 5km and 800mm penetration!
More like 450 m/s to a range of 6km and 1,250mm penetration.

More like 2001 published

Finally Russia is closing the last technology gap... Netcentric warfare. 155 Mbps is quite fast. Video calls are the most demanding on bandwidth but if proper encoding is applied to the image being transferred, the amount of transferred data could be largely reduced. I guess most of the time this network will carry data packets containing unit positions, statuses and 8kHz Mono telecomunication voip. This way one can hookup many units within the frontline where 200km operational range of the network is well enough for land based units.

You are quite right that video is probably the most demanding of bandwidth but this is made worse with encryption as this often adds to the volume of data that needs to be transmitted.
Of course the extra processing required at each end to encrypt and decrypt the signal at each end shouldn't be a problem now because of multi core processor chips.

This is a Russia wide military problem because although some branches already have battle management systems in operation... the Strategic rocket forces just put their 4th gen system into service recently, and the Navy also has a system that combines air, sea, and underwater situations in a system that shares data between all vessels equipped with the system (ie new and upgraded vessels) and will eventually include space coverage too... the problem is that these systems were developed independently and integration might create problems.

During tests a few years back of a new army system some of the criticisms were that it could be attacked or listened to, but to be honest without it the army itself becomes a slow ineffective beast that operates at no where near its potential... the old voice communication system could be attacked and listened to as well but took 7 hours to get decisions to the front line. The new system took 20 minutes from frontline up to top and back down with orders and information. An enormous improvement.

BTW one of the reasons that the relatively small American force was able to overpower a larger Iraqi force was because it was so much better managed... it is very much like a team taking on individuals in small piecemeal attacks.

And for those thinking this is a NATO thing or a US thing... this is actually a German thing... lightning war or Blitzkreig involves mobility and firepower... which the Soviets had, and the British and the French, but it included communication and cooperation between the services which the non german forces neglected.

GarryB wrote:You are quite right that video is probably the most demanding of bandwidth but this is made worse with encryption as this often adds to the volume of data that needs to be transmitted.

Garry < Not quite right. The encoding on the images by applying mathematic formulas to describe the image is done entirely to reduce the amount of data to transfer per one frame of video. Video codec were made to specifically reduce the video data size, otherwise there would be no reason for them.

Regarding the tapping of communications. Modern datalink systems use a method called frequency hopping. This method makes it significantly more difficult to tap the communications, however it does not render it completelly impossible. Today digital signal processor chips are quite powerful and not very energy demanding so it is possible to setup a system of chips listening on all the major UHF,VHF channels to intercept the data link as it shifts from one frequency to another. And then rapid audio/video processing capabilities of modern CPUs make it possible to have nearly real-time video/audio streams of enemy communication. Im not taking into account the encryption as even the military grade encryption can be brute-forced 0 but it needs some time to do it. So no matter the netcentrc warfare hardware - it will never be completely safe.

Garry < Not quite right. The encoding on the images by applying mathematic formulas to describe the image is done entirely to reduce the amount of data to transfer per one frame of video. Video codec were made to specifically reduce the video data size, otherwise there would be no reason for them.

With respect Flanky... I think you are confusing encoding with encrypting.
Or more precisely you are confusing data compression with encryption.

You can use mathematical formulas to store data about each pixel in a frame and then reduce data size by only then storing data on the pixels that change between frames for instance but if you send it as encoded it can be intercepted and played by the enemy.
Encryption uses a two piece key to scramble the data in a way that only the person with the corresponding key can unscramble.

If you know what you are doing you can make it more secure by adding noise after you encrypt it so to decrypt it you have to remove the noise first or it wont make sense with the correct key. With modern powerful computers a brute force attack can be used to try all the possible key combinations so the noise added makes that impossible.

So no matter the netcentrc warfare hardware - it will never be completely safe.

It is a strange irony that without a network there is nothing to hack in to.
Of course the risk of having say your air defence networked hacked and exploited is less than not having a coherent air defence network in the first place.

I just wonder with the leap of technology US has the the very wide and powerful capability that NSA holds , How much of Russian Military and Diplomatic communication are secure from the Wide Assets and Deep Pockets of NSA

The point with a battle management system is that it just needs to do its job.

Wars are not won by the best battle management system, they are often won by those prepared to take casualties and not give up...

For the US war needs to be clean because it is a hobby and foreign policy tool.

For Russia it is about survival and they take it rather more seriously.

War will always be about measure and counter measure and secrets play a big part in that.

The US certainly has the budget over everyone else, but they are also on the top of the pile and have to fight off everyone.

Russia doesn't need to be top... it can remain high enough up to be untouchable, and it can concentrate on doing business instead of having an ideology to spread.

Garry < Sorry i missread. You are right encryption is something slightly differrent. Im not a video codec expert nor cryptographic expert, but even using both, i think the encoding is able to sav huge amounts of data so that the encryption overhead added to the encoded data will be still less than without encoded data. And when it comes to encryption - today you can have relatively small cpu node clusters that can try differrent key variations fairly quickly and there are also modern noise filters. So it is still vulnerable. On the other hand i don't think that ultra secret information would be passed through this kind of network. If it would be passed - it might be some kind of message that after decoding might gave enemy a false idea of meaning.

No worries Flanky... ...when I make a mistake or remember something incorrectly hopefully you can put me right.

Your point about the encoding of video and other information is quite right too... you just need to look at the MPEG encodings to see that Mpeg2 which was standard high quality video and digital stereo sound has been superseded by the Mpeg4 codec that offers an 11 to one compression ratio without losing frames.

For non-computer geeks this means that a 1GB movie in Mpeg-2 format (common on DVDs), can be converted into an Mpeg-4 format with the same quality and number of frames and pixels in a 90MB file size. The problem of course is getting a DVD that will read and play that format and of course there is a lot more processing involved to play the video smoothly.

With a decent computer on the end however the MP4 video streams more efficiently than MP2 video because there is less to download so it comes down quicker.

Note MP3 is another encoding format but it does not have a video component and is only digital stereo sound that is a rather popular music format.


http://twower.livejournal.com/399656.html

This page has photos and vids about an exercise last October where a new battle management and command and control system was tested apparently. There is the odd picture of electronic boxes etc.

Well to my knowledge mp4 is not the best container to be used when it comes to ratio size:quality. There is one better which is H.264 codec. Ofcourse please let me know if im wrong
Also when it comes to front-end hardware, most modern multimedia chips do have built in hardware acceleration for decoding h.264 content. So this is not a problem.
But as said there is not much need to video feed other than live footage from surveilance systems.

But as said there is not much need to video feed other than live footage from surveilance systems.

This is a critical point.

If you have seen the movie Aliens, where a space marines unit enters a nuclear reactor powerstation that is terraforming an alien planet to find survivors from a colony, the fighting team go in with an armoured vehicle with the team leader sitting in front of a set of video screens watching the video output from each soldiers camera and directing "his" soldiers "from the rear".

That is bad enough but imagine generals and higher ups being able to watch live feed and being able to communicate to troops on the ground...

The vast majority of communication will be the location of enemy units, your position, and commands. Images of unidentified targets might be sent for further closer examination by recon assets... most of the time still images of an area forming a panorama would be more use than a video clip of a pan.

Well to my knowledge mp4 is not the best container to be used when it comes to ratio size:quality. There is one better which is H.264 codec. Ofcourse please let me know if im wrong

MP4 is a rather old standard, and at the time I remember it being called a lossless compression for MP2 files. Its primary problem was it was hardware intensive so it didn't really catch on. The H.264 codec is also called MP4 AVC.

My digital video camera was a fairly cheap model ($300 NZ which would be about $200 US) and can record MP2 or H.264. Neither is in high definition... it is a cheap camera.
Basically it uses the better codec to compress the video to get more recording per memory card. H.264 is just called long play and can be converted with the software on the camera to something that can be recorded on a DVD and watched.

Flanky & Garry good info. So what I understand is that if video is highly compressed its become more hardware intensive but consumes less bandwidth..& vice versa.
Now assuming we are talking about military netcentric communication don't you think a more compressed video form requires a more expensive gadgets (more processing power) & with a speed of 19mb/sec I would rather suggest the the video should be least compressed as gadgets costs may supersede bandwidth costs...ur views.

Modern multi core processor chips should be able to handle it... if the system has a bandwidth of 19MB/s then it is not the bottleneck.

When developing systems it is all about bottlenecks.

Consider an old computer with an ancient 286 processor running at 10Mhz.

The RAM will be old as well, as will be the motherboard.

It is not just a case of replacing the slow processor, you also need faster RAM and a faster motherboard.

As you improve one you often find you have to replace other components.

Pretty soon USB speeds are too slow for USB 2 so you move to USB 3. Problem is... what if USB 3... which is certainly fast enough, is replaced by Thunderbolt... which is a new type of cable connection from Intel and Apple?

Heres the deal. Current multimedia chip manufacturers have what is called chip famillies. In other words its a group of products that are only slightly differrent between each other. However from the performance point of view the most cheapest one is still able to decode H.264 content without problem.
That might be universal multimedia chip. Then there are special dedicated video encoders/decoders chips. They are used purely for video handling. And... last thing, if in the mean time there is a new technology, or a particular need for better cpu, when creating the solution (gadget) you can use a socket providing the current and future chips will have the same packaging. Meaning the physical outer appearance of both chips will be the same. This way you can design a system with possible hardware upgrades in mind and quite powerful and cheap one. Today electronic components are not expensive. Computer CPUs are relatively expensive, however most of the applications for the netcentric warfare does not need the raw computing power of a RISC/CISC 64bit dual or quadcore cpu. Most of the time you are fine with single core, 32bit, running at 600 Mhz. Modern smartphones are able to handle HD video and THAT was usually resurce demanding. When it comes to end price for the electronic products. From this price only like 25% is the manufacturing price of the gadget. Rest of it is brand, marketing, logistics, reseller. So if in this case some state owned institute will be designing and manufacturing hardware for this netcentric warfare, i can very clearly see the relatively cheap price of such solution.

I wouldnt go so far as to say any CPU and therefore any computer can manage.

PC computers have video cards that process video data, and an ideal setup will have minimal CPU input in the process.

If the CPU is doing all the work then the computer will be slow and jerky and your pointer will look like an hourglass most of the time.

I have a 512MB graphics card in my computer and it wont play HD video full screen smoothly.

At quarter screen size most of the definition and quality is lost but it runs smoothly.

Most nodes in a net centric system will not have desktop PC power and considering what they are used for it doesn't make sense for them to be able to do that.

When I first started in computers the big infrastructure thing was centralised computing.

Personal computers were toys... in business you had a huge multi million dollar mainframe with lots of dumb terminals to allow access. In other words a big mainframe computer with lots of people accessing it through a keyboard and a computer monitor.

A mouse was no use at the time because it was not a click and drag environment.

Later on in the 1990s the desktop computer started to get rather more powerful and the new architecture was distributed processing... instead of spending $10 million dollars on one big computer you spent $200,000 putting a computer on each desktop and adding all the cabling and servers to connect them up in a network and of course bought licences for software for each machine. Instead of on central computer you had lots of computers all over the place doing work.

Right now the big thing is a new architecture called the Cloud model where you almost move back to the old thin client system where the machines on the desks just run programs locally but all the software and data and storage is offsite... perhaps not even in the same country. Everything is online.

You don't have to buy Microsoft Office and install it on every machine to make is usable for all your employees. You rent it on a monthly basis and run it from a webpage. That way the webpage owner is responsible for managing the software upgrades and security patches. When a new office comes out you don't need to worry about upgrading as the website upgrades it for you.

The point is that with a cloud structured system the hand held computers and computers in vehicles and aircraft etc can be much simpler and much cheaper.

Rather than shooting video all the time for instance a recon unit can simply have a map running on a palm computer and when they come across enemy units they can use a laser range finder and the GPS of their own location to precisely position enemy on a digital map display that they can then transmit back to HQ. As they observe different enemy units/vehicles etc they can add that data to the map and transmit that information back to their own forces. A nearby friendly tank unit might notice the two enemy TOW units the recon team have just spotted appear on their maps and the local HQ might order that tank unit to deal with the threat.
In such a case the information being sent is more useful than a video... which might be fun to watch, but of little use to the local units. What they need to know is what forces are spotted with info about numbers and what equipment they have and where they are located.

GarryB wrote:I wouldnt go so far as to say any CPU and therefore any computer can manage.

PC computers have video cards that process video data, and an ideal setup will have minimal CPU input in the process.

If the CPU is doing all the work then the computer will be slow and jerky and your pointer will look like an hourglass most of the time.

I have a 512MB graphics card in my computer and it wont play HD video full screen smoothly.

At quarter screen size most of the definition and quality is lost but it runs smoothly.

Most nodes in a net centric system will not have desktop PC power and considering what they are used for it doesn't make sense for them to be able to do that.

When I first started in computers the big infrastructure thing was centralised computing.

Personal computers were toys... in business you had a huge multi million dollar mainframe with lots of dumb terminals to allow access. In other words a big mainframe computer with lots of people accessing it through a keyboard and a computer monitor.

A mouse was no use at the time because it was not a click and drag environment.

Later on in the 1990s the desktop computer started to get rather more powerful and the new architecture was distributed processing... instead of spending $10 million dollars on one big computer you spent $200,000 putting a computer on each desktop and adding all the cabling and servers to connect them up in a network and of course bought licences for software for each machine. Instead of on central computer you had lots of computers all over the place doing work.

Right now the big thing is a new architecture called the Cloud model where you almost move back to the old thin client system where the machines on the desks just run programs locally but all the software and data and storage is offsite... perhaps not even in the same country. Everything is online.

You don't have to buy Microsoft Office and install it on every machine to make is usable for all your employees. You rent it on a monthly basis and run it from a webpage. That way the webpage owner is responsible for managing the software upgrades and security patches. When a new office comes out you don't need to worry about upgrading as the website upgrades it for you.

The point is that with a cloud structured system the hand held computers and computers in vehicles and aircraft etc can be much simpler and much cheaper.

Rather than shooting video all the time for instance a recon unit can simply have a map running on a palm computer and when they come across enemy units they can use a laser range finder and the GPS of their own location to precisely position enemy on a digital map display that they can then transmit back to HQ. As they observe different enemy units/vehicles etc they can add that data to the map and transmit that information back to their own forces. A nearby friendly tank unit might notice the two enemy TOW units the recon team have just spotted appear on their maps and the local HQ might order that tank unit to deal with the threat.
In such a case the information being sent is more useful than a video... which might be fun to watch, but of little use to the local units. What they need to know is what forces are spotted with info about numbers and what equipment they have and where they are located.

Exactly. So the entire point is that video is not that much needed. And Video calls can be between commanders maybe but not that much important between commander and his soldiers.
What is important are the data describing enemy units being transferred across the entire front.

Regarding the CPU power. Today in a smartphone you have hardware acceleration of HD video. ARM v7 architecture has this, and it is still able to do true multitasking beside playing this video. Everything in 600-800 Mhz frequency range and 1350 mAH battery. CPUs like that (pure chip without support circuitry) is arround 70$ range. Which is very cheap compared to its capabilities. That said those are multipurpose. Then there are ASICs (application specific integrated circuit) - specifically built to decode video which are even cheaper. Regarding the cloud. Cloud might be a good idea for the military use since the data won't be stored locally rather uploaded to a centralised server and thus if the unit with its hardware is somehow captured there is high data safety from unauthorized retrieval. However with sophisticated evasdropping equipment you can catch quite a lot of wireless communication. So there needs to be developed advanced cryptographic methods. Im not an expert on this but the best protection on this would be not to send any data at all. Or send only those that are the most urgent. Cloud in personal use is not of my taste. Because i am giving up on my data to some remote location where i do not have any other form of access than virtual. The possibility of data theft in this case, or unauthorized use of my data might be very high. So despite all the advantages of my data being available from any place on earth with internet connection, i prefer to store the data locally on my computer. Same goes for social networking. If you are interrested about possible new approach to social media you might google project danube.

Regarding the cloud. Cloud might be a good idea for the military use since the data won't be stored locally rather uploaded to a centralised server and thus if the unit with its hardware is somehow captured there is high data safety from unauthorized retrieval.

I am a bit skeptical about the Cloud structure... I suspect Microsoft like the business model of renting software instead of selling it. If you read most EULAs (end user licence agreements for those non geeks) a lot of the time you are not buying the software, you are paying for the use of the software on a specific number of machines anyway.

Im not an expert on this but the best protection on this would be not to send any data at all.

Ironically in addition to encryption another protection is to send lots of garbage along with important info so that any eves dropping enemy will have to work out which is which and will also waste time decrypting rubbish.

Most units will use all sorts of methods for communication but they will also not want to give away their position by transmitting all the time. Burst transmission and using a range of frequencies at once can be used as well as using low power transmitters that will barely reach another unit that is dedicated to comms that can boost the signal and get it back to HQ without revealing the source location of the original signal with its transmission.

Action and counter action... it is all part of the game.

i prefer to store the data locally on my computer. Same goes for social networking. If you are interrested about possible new approach to social media you might google project danube.

Have never even been to facebook or twitter... just because I am paranoid... doesn't mean the whole world isn't out to get me...

COMMAND AND CONTROL

By the end of 2012, the Russian Armed Forces will have been totally equipped with the Acacia-M portable command and control system. Nowadays, it is in service with the auxiliary command post of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff and C2 elements of the Voronezh army and Moscow Military District.

The Acacia-M is a field military computer network ensuring the work of the so-called ‘military Internet’. It enables personnel operating one type of communications gear in stationary command posts to stay within the same information environment when gong on exercising or deploying on operations.

Every Acacia-M mobile C2 centre is equipped with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that provides the operational-level commanders with the on-line imagery of terrain to figure out, for example, where specific command posts are in the field.

Two personnel operate the system. The UAV’s operating time is 1.5 hours at a speed of 120 km/h. Its camera range is up to 15 km. The aircraft is equipped with two video cameras, with a photo camera or an infrared imager as an option.

MRAP Demonstration

Well, now with great joy we can surely say MRAP gap is cosed

http://www.redstar.ru/2010/10/01_10/1_01.html

In the transition to a new look at battle of the Army provides a compound of heavy, medium and light types. Accordingly, at the initiative of the High Command of the Army defense industry began to develop a complex of three families of combat and support vehicles on the basis of heavy, medium and light unified platforms.

First, the level of protection the main tank, designed for combat at close quarters with the enemy. They will come into service heavy-duty compounds.

The second family car with a level of protection will be equipped with the BMP compounds designed to act in difficult terrain and in areas of coastal waters, making raids behind enemy lines, as well as to deal with small-sized (portable), antitank weapons of the enemy.

The third family car is supposed to create on the basis of the automobile in an armored military equipment to the installation of performance on these advanced models of weapons, including precision and on new physical principles, systems and command, control, communications, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, etc.

In planning the improvement of weapons and military equipment in the medium term, we clearly envision what should be the face of the Army in 10-15 years. To do so, participate in drafting the State Armaments Program for 2011-2020, which main idea should be to create a weapon system that meets the requirements of the XXI century.

At the same time upgrading the Army plans to carry out in two stages. In the first (2011-2015) the main focus will be on procurement of modern arms and military equipment designs, especially for rocket and artillery units, intelligence units, electronic warfare and communications, and automated control systems for tactical level.

At the same time continue to develop a new family of platforms such as light ("Typhoon"), medium ("Boomerang" and "Kurganets-25") and heavy ("Armata").
In the second phase (2016-2020 years) is scheduled to begin a complete equipment and units with new modern types of weapons and military equipment on the base of unified platforms.

We know from other sources that the Boomerang will be a 25 ton class wheeled vehicle... which makes it significantly heavier than existing BMP vehicles.
We know it will be amphibious which suggests it might be quite large as well, or have exotic armour including NERA and Plastic elements to improve armour protection levels while keeping weight low.

I would assume the point of having two medium size/weight vehicles is that the other vehicle is tracked with a higher level of cross country mobility and perhaps fire power as well.

The real question is will the Typhoon be a very light MRAP like vehicle like Tigr-M, or will it be a BTR-90 like vehicle with improved layout and more sophisticated lighter armour of better performance?

The burning question of course will be regarding the heavy brigades.
What armament will the heavy APCs be equipped with?
Will heavy armament on the heavy APCs lead to cramped conditions and fire traps if the ammo stores are hit?
Will this lead to a new type of fire support vehicle being developed... a BMPT based on the Armata chassis?
Will they revisit the issue in 2020?

Personally I like the concept of the BMPT, I just think they made mistakes in implimenting it.

In WWIII full scale war with top of the line opponent I think the firepower of a BMPT type vehicle will be useful. In lesser conflicts I think the firepower of the BMPT would actually be more suitable than the firepower of a tank which is often skewed towards dealing with enemy tanks.
The BMPT should have been armed and equipped differently... it needed short range protected firepower but also direct and indirect HE firepower.

In many ways the armament of the BMP-3M is ideal with a few modifications.

First of all the turret ring ammo storage needs to be replaced with external turret rear bustle autoloader so that if the ammo catches fire the crew are safe.
The 100mm gun should be mounted externally and raised up so that it gets much better depression and elevation angles and also makes more room at the front of the vehicle for wide low flat weapon turrets mounting a 30 cal machinegun and a 40mm grenade launcher with wide fields of view and aiming optics.
Another 40mm grenade launcher at the centre rear of the turret like on the BMP-2 upgrade would round out excellent firepower.
The 40mm grenade launcher has a curved trajectory which means it can fire over cover more effectively than 30mm cannon. The 30mm cannon would be useful for use against light armour and light aircraft and the short flight time improves performance against targets like troops in the open.
The 100mm gun has a good range and heavy HE shell for tough targets like bunkers or buildings and for point targets like snipers or ATGM teams harrasing the unit or an adjacent unit a 100mm missile could be used to extended ranges with excellent accuracy.

All this without putting lots of ammo in the crew compartment.

Crew would stay the same as for the BMPT with three seated side by side in the front hull with the driver in the centre and a gunner on either side with a PKT MG and a 40mm auto grenade launcher. In the turret seated below the turret ring is the commander and gunner operating the turret mounted weapons of a PKT, a 100mm rifled gun with rear turret bustle autoloader with one piece HE shells and missile ammo, and one 2A72 30mm cannon with two ammo boxes for the dual feed HE and AP ammo types. The HE rounds can be the time fused models as used in the T-90 with the ANIET system that have been adopted for the BTR-82A. And finally at the rear of the turret elevating with the other weapons and with 400-500 rounds on a flat magazine that the rear of the turret is a 40mm BALKAN automatic grenade launcher. A 2.5km range with a big heavy powerful grenade and no empty case like their underbarrel 40mm grenade launchers.

Variations on armament might be to replace the 100mm rifled gun with a 120mm gun/mortar/missile launcher.