Re: ACE question for John A

--- Robin Paul <Robin.Paul@tesco.net> wrote:
> I've seen a photo of an ACE prototype being used as
> a personnel carrier,
> with troops trotting out of the bucket. Is such a
> thing ever done in
> reality, or is it just someone's bright idea during
> trials?  I would have
> thought the riflemen would be unenthusiastic, and
> the engineers would see it
> as a misuse of their machine.

Gather 'Round, Boys and Girl, Uncle Gingerbeer (and
his alternate personalities) is going to tell the
Story of the ACE.

Once upon a time (during the 1950s) there was this
woman (can we call her a dippy broad?) [No, dammit, we
can't call her a dippy broad.  It's a bedtime story]
(for wargamers!) [NO].	She was approached by
{knuckle-dragging self-propelled sandbags) [Shut Up]
the Marines.  The Marines wanted her to design a
wonder-vehicle.  The wonder-vehicle would be the
perfect weapon for amphibious assault (But no one does
opposed amphibious assaults anymore!) [Yes, but if
anyone says that out loud, Congress might notice that
the Marines are just really expensive riflemen without
the heavy weapons to make respectable light infantry
and with no more special capabilities than the 101st
Air Assault].  The plan devised by the Marines was
that this wondervehicle would transport Marines from
ships to the beach, disembark them, and then dig
fighting positions for them.  (With an earthmover??)
[Apparently the Marines have low standards for
fighting positions.] (Can an ACE make a better
position for infantrymen than is created when a 122mm
shell bursts in sand?) [No.  But shut up or it's back
in the closet for you.]  The result was (or would
become) the M9 ACE, with aluminum body, roadwheels,
roadarms, and everything else.	It had rubber
waterproofing seals for the bowl, and a back door. 
Fast forward to 1985, and the Army is looking for a
fast earthmover.  (Why?) [Damifino, I'd rather have a
dozer on a flatrack any day].  So they look over at
the Marines and see the ACE digging away, and driving
real fast.  The Brass didn't notice (have the brains
to notice) that what the Marines were digging in was
beach sand and what the ACE was racing were just
HMMWVs.  So the Army buys nearly 500 of them (7 per
company, 3 companys per BN, 20-something mech CE BNs).
 So the Army gleefully starts digging holes in Texas
Clay, German rocks-covered-in-dirt, and other
non-sandy places.  To everyone's surprise (except the
operators, but who listens to EMs) everything broke. 
The aluminum belly plates ripped out, exposing the
hydraulic system to rocks.  The road arms bent.  The
overstressed hydraulics blew O-rings.  And because the
vehicle was designed by a (ivory tower academic dippy
broad) [Last Warning] female, the vehicle had over 2
MILES of hydraulic lines, some of which required
serious disassembly to get at to service.  This
perplexed the brass, and they rubbed their lobotomy
scars ferverently.  So they began implements piecemeal
upgrade schemes.  They added steel belly plates.  They
added steel roadwheels.  They let the waterproof seals
drop off the property books and so the troops promptly
"lost them".  They took off the back doors.  They
started introducing steel road arms.  They still
havn't fixed the main problem, which is that the ACE
isn't a bulldozer and can't do a bulldozer's job.  All
it's really good for is pushing spoil when you can get
dozer support.	You can work with all-ACE blade teams,
but that nearly doubles your stick time to get the job
done.  For every hour of digging, they require fluid
checks, lug nut tightening, and other maintinence. 
And the hydraulic system still explodes at random.

But that's not the height of mismatched missions and
equipment.  The same brass realized that since they
retired the CEV without replacement (because the
morons in Congress refused to appropriate funds to
maintain the Balkan mission and Clinton refused to
shut it down even though he couldn't afford it) the
combat engineer company had no non-bridge breach
assets remaining in it's assault and obstacle platoon.
 (What do they call it that?) [Because it's supposed
to lead assaults and create obstacles] (How can it do
that with no breach assets?) [You see the dilemma]. 
So the brass scratched their lobotomy scars some more,
and decided that the M-9 ACE would be a wonderful
method for breaching berms and plowing lanes through
minefields.  (Apparently they felt death rates among
12Bs weren't quite high enough) [That's it, The Closet
for you!] (No, no, no!) {THUMP, THUMP, BANG} [Sorry
for the interruption].	So this moderately fast, but
not nearly as fast as an M-1, vehicle with armor
intended to resist 7.62mm rounds, driven by a PFC with
no TC, armed with a manually operated 9mm weapon
system [Oddly enough, also called the M-9] is supposed
to be charging into the breach.

Sod That.

John

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