Medium Weight 'air portable' Armour

[IronDuke99]

For the major background behind the current trend for medium weight 'air portable' armour please see this

http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/from-s...he-sava-river/.

Strange to say more or less light wheeled APC's are not something new for the British Army.

There was the 1950's vintage Humber 'pig' well known to anyone who served in Northern Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Pig . The Saracen, also used in Northern Ireland and also dating from the 1950's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvis_Saracen And then there was the Saxon of the 1980's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_(vehicle) famously described by General Sir Richard Dannett as "useless" in 2013.

Now I can certainly see uses for medium weight 8x8 APC's against assorted third world enemy forces (mind you I spent much of the film 'Black Hawk Down', thinking "get out of the bloody vehicles, they are just drawing fire and stopping you seeing much"). They might even do well against heavier armour if they are well handled and the enemy is relatively clueless, as the South African's often proved with light armour in South West Africa and Angola.

But I still have this strong feeling that medium weight 8x8 APC's, etc (including stuff like that Italian 120mm AT gun) will come right unstuck against well handled heavy armour.

I would love to see this -fairly- done on a exercise say a warrior 2000 + Challenger 2 force or a Bradley + Abrams force against a 'medium weight' 8x8 equipped force. I would be very surprised if the lighter armour won.

I remain unconvinced that 8x8 armour is anything much more than a very widespread military fad, perhaps a little like Tankettes before WWII...