Warrior Maven Video Above: Army 4-Star Details Robotic Attacks to “Breach Complex Enemy Object& Tank Ditch”
By Charlie Gao,The National Interest
One of the U.S. military’s biggest advantages is the navigation system used by its mechanized forces. Generically, this capability is known as “blue force tracking.” It is characterized by the ability for vehicles to know the position of all friendly vehicles around them via a battlefield network.
The advantages of this capability are numerous: Commanders can quickly react to changing battlefield situations because they will know where their troops are, the speed of maneuvers can be increased as it takes less time for units to orient themselves relative to each other, and probable enemy locations can be shared across the entire net.
Given the advantages of such systems, one would think that Russia has a similar capability in their latest tanks. However, the truth is more complicated. Each vehicle is theoretically able to field similar capability, but budgeting limitations have restricted the deployment of a force wide blue force tracking capability. But what is “standard” for Russian tanks? Is it close to what the U.S. military fields?
The heart of any battlefield network is the radio. Without radios, an individual vehicle has no way to receive or transmit commands or any kind of data. The standard radio on most frontline Russian tanks is the R-168 radio complex. The R-168 provides a voice as well as data link between all tanks in a formation at distances of up to thirty kilometers on the move. For data, it can transmit at up to sixteen kilobits per second.
