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It is estimated that by the year 2010, seventy-five percent of the world’s population
will live in urban areas. The increased population and accelerated growth of cities
have made the problems of combat in built-up areas an urgent requirement for all
military forces. Urban areas are expected to be the future battlefield and combat in
urban areas cannot be avoided.
With the increasing urbanization of warfare, armored vehicles will need to reform
itself, in their sizes, shape, weights, armor, armaments, propulsion, connectivity and
battlefield awareness.
We need armored vehicles not only to deliver local killing power and allow protected
maneuvers fighting in cities, but also able to survive in the streets. Today’s armor
vehicle is not combat effective in urban warfare. We can see that with Russian
experience in the January 1995 battle for Chechen capital of Grozny and U.S. soldiers
that found themselves in deadly combat in Mogadishu Somalia 1993, under
conditions that begged for armor.
The primary job of armored vehicles in urban areas will be to protect maneuver,
movement, and resupply. Urban environments promise endless ambushes, we need
new forms of armored protection. The predominant threat will come from short-range,
shoulder-fired, shaped charge weapons. The urban threat will come from all
directions, whereas the protection of existing combat vehicles has been designed
primarily against attack within their frontal arc. We need new technologies for
tomorrow’s layers of armor that can complicate target detection on the part of the
enemy systems, before proceeding to environmental or atmospheric modification
capabilities that defeat mines, distort the enemy’s perceptions, and disrupt the
trajectory and integrity of enemy munitions.
An armored, light tracked tactical vehicle is required for effective fighting in urban
environments, it must be nimble. The vehicles must be highly maneuverable and
sprint capability is far more essential rather than long-range sustainability. The
armored vehicles must be able to be deploy in modular approach, either forming to
total armored fighting systems or as troop carriers and must be light enough for
deployment in C-130 aircraft.
Armored vehicles that could operate as compact individual entities or join together to
form moving fortresses offer new flexibility.
We also need fire support system that can provide accurate target location and
designation in three-dimensional terms, with precise ordnance delivery, munitions
with variable penetration and explosive characteristics and the coordination of lethal
and less-than-lethal fires against different targets.
To operate in urban environments, future armor vehicle will have to adapt its
equipment to urban conditions, from firepower and protection to mobility. It is
important for the vehicles to be agile and have to ability to accelerate rapidly, in order
to be combat effective in urban terrain. Besides being faster, it need to be lighter and
in order so, we need miniaturization of components, from engines through
communications gear to ammunitions.