The Armored Vehicle Thread

"Hey Ahmed, just pile those shells over here where you can reach them more easily. I don't know why the Americans use this big complicated storage locker for them..."

Sadly I can see that.

So I just heard about this:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=2015+%E5%AF%8C%E5%A3%AB%E7%B7%8F%E5%90%88%E7%81%AB%E5%8A%9B%E6%BC%94%E7%BF%92+10%E5%BC%8F+%E6%88%A6%E8%BB%8A+%E5%B1%A5%E5%B8%AF

TL;DR: A JSDF Type 10 MBT on public exercise rather violently threw a track. A Type 90 ARV came by to help.

That whole assembly's gonna need put back together.

Have the Japanese ever made a tank that wasn't like...terrible?

Stuff in the JSDF era isn't bad per se, just low production numbers. The Type 10 is on the level with an A2 Abrams and perhaps beyond in a few ways.

Uhhhh tanks?

We should probably just buy them from the Americans. ._.;

The armour I dont really trust on it though. :/

edited 26th Aug '15 7:25:13 PM by Imca

The Type 10 is bigger than an Abrams?

How the hell do you build a tank bigger than the Abrams? Why would you do that?

Why would anyone let you do that? That's terrible.

Of course the armor is terrible, Japan can't make heavy armor for crap. Their island kinda sucks when it comes to that sort of thing.

edited 26th Aug '15 7:26:07 PM by LeGarcon

^^ The Type 10 is 48 tons fully loaded and has similar protection levels to Abrams. At least in conventional warfare.

It's also smaller dimensionally.

^ K2 is bigger than Abrams, and ridonkulously expensive.

edited 26th Aug '15 7:26:18 PM by MajorTom

Oh good. I knew the Japanese made questionable armor design decisions but damn that would have been too much.

I dont trust any thing with "nano" in the name.

We have not reached the nanotechnology level yet, so it just reeks of buzzwords to inflate the ego of the designers.

"Nanosteel" Sounds like glorified RHA to me.

edited 26th Aug '15 8:21:00 PM by Imca

It looks like it is just a fancy way of saying composite armor. It is using carbon nano-tube materials likely as part of some sort layering. Carbon Nano tubes are not new and yes you can safely say Nano without it being a buzzword. There is nothing to inherently distrust. It also has ceramic composites as a modular system. Nothing worth any of you getting your skivvies in a knot about.

The secret behind Japanese armor

Lol. Nah this is just the inevitable application of carbon nanotube technology to armor.

Have some academic literature on the CNT composites

edited 26th Aug '15 9:55:46 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Latvia to receive first shipment of armored vehicles from Great Britain in autumn

The Challenger 2 is half a ton heavier than the M1.

Yep. The Chally 2 is a really big heifer of a tank. I saw some up close in Suffield some years ago, and they're fricking gigantic compared to just about anything.

On that Japanese tank, the Type-10. It can go in reverse the same speed it does in forward drive, thanks to its CVT drive system. I like the idea but it's probably making the whole thing lots more complex.

Not even a ton. According to FAS the Challenger 2 weighs 68.8 Short tons and the Abrams A2 Non-SEP or TUSK is 68.7. Abrams SEP is nearly 70 Tons with TUSK it is over 70 tons.

This is why the A3 program is aiming to do a lot of weight reduction options including new armor, new gun, fiber optics over metal wire etc.

edited 26th Aug '15 10:02:47 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Also, Challenger-2 has a TUSK-equivalent program, the TES. With the reactive and passive armor upgrades, expect the tank to add a few tons.

edited 26th Aug '15 10:51:46 PM by SabresEdge

With full TES specification, the Challenger 2 weighs about 75 tons.

edited 26th Aug '15 11:31:24 PM by Greenmantle

ITT: "Hurr durr Japanese armor was bad in WWII so their tanks must be terrible now, on the basis of throwing a track once, something which otherwise never happens."

Their electronics were behind in WWII too. Not so much now, eh?

It's a way to make steels and other alloys harder and more durable while making it less weight. In many metals and other materials the crystal structure and arrangement has more to do with why something is durable or hard or not than not.

You must not have liked Empire Earth then.

re: The Saudi Abrams

The Saudi National Guard and Saudi Army aren't very well trained by Western standards, as much for internal security reasons as anything else. Competent armies are objects of fear for their governments in the Middle East, with plenty of historical precedent for it. The Saudis worry if their armed forces get all hurf-blurf about competence they'll start demanding the justice system get that way too, or something else.

I recall an story that the SOCOM trained special forces groups in Iraq and Egypt and with said groups actually getting good on Western standards.

After a while some of their higher ups decided they were too operator (thus a threat to their nice seats and ranks) and decided to split the group and send each one to untrained units.

it turns out that coup proofing your military results in a very shitty fighting force that can't get its shit together.

They'd be as well just copying the old Turkish system of using armies almost exclusively made out of foreign troops. Mamelukes, that kind of thing. Only with less of the slavery and forced conversion to Islam stuff.