The Armored Vehicle Thread

^ The Turkish military hasn't exactly been a shining beacon of a military done right since long before 1945. It's at best a second-rate military, more likely it's a third rate one that happens to have Western kit instead of Soviet shit.

edited 28th Aug '15 7:39:58 PM by MajorTom

He is referring to a fairly old practice not a modern one. The Turks would capture peoples and enslave them then train them to be soldiers for the Sultan. The Mamluk and the Janissaries were both examples.

edited 28th Aug '15 7:48:45 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Not that that worked out too well either, though. There was a period in the 1600s when the Janissaries would depose Sultans they didn't like and install replacements from the pool of brothers, so that goes right back to the problem of a professional military in inept hands.

Pretty much. It worked for a while more or less. I wonder if the Saudi's will change anything with their military after such a poor showing.

The Mameluke and Janissary systems worked for quite a long while before they went the same way that the Catholic military orders like the Templars and Hospitallers did, i.e. fucked up and corrupt. And to be honest, almost anything would be an improvement over the current militaries in the entire middle east.

Look, you can have corrupt, inefficient militaries made up of draftees too poor to pay the bribe or too dumb to dodge the draft, who are basically there to provide poorly-paid labor for their officers and will never putsch you out of office because you've made sure they need to go through your guys if they ever do anything; and in case anything happens, they can just pound away in the general direction of the threat with tank fire and artillery while you run to Uncle Sam for the actual work...

...or you could get putsched out of office by professionals who are disgusted with the bribery/want a larger share.

Your call.

edited 28th Aug '15 11:24:52 PM by SabresEdge

Doesn't Jordan have a half-decent military when compared to the unwieldy larger Arab states? Iran has also no pushover of a fighting force.

On paper...

In practice as we've seen in their efforts against ISIS, they either have no resolve to fight or they really aren't any better than anyone else save Israel in the region.

Iran's one of the nations funding the region's terror networks. And their populace is too cowed to do anything about their system of government because they've seen too many of their mates hung by their necks from cranes in those odious public executions the ayatollah pricks are so fucking fond of.

Honestly I have only heard good things about jordan's in practice too.

They did boot the PLO out on their arses way back in the day, during the Black September War, but that was under King Hussein. That guy had brass balls.

If Jordan's current military is decent, I'll happily attribute it to their leader being a former Starfleet officer.

edited 29th Aug '15 1:07:15 PM by AFP

But Starfleet can't do ground combat for shit.

Their standard equipment is a onesie and some dress shoes.

Do they even have any proper ground armor?

edited 29th Aug '15 1:11:44 PM by LeGarcon

^ Well there was that one jeep with a phaser cannon on it in one of the TNG films. I think it was Star Trek: Insurrection?

No no I think it was Nemesis?

They got into this Mad Max chase sequence literally seconds after they did a whole big thing on not bothering the native population.

And then the entire scene was never mentioned again.

Who knows. Probably for the same reason they don't ever believe in body armor or personal shields for their ground ops. The borg seem to have no trouble with personal shields though.

@ AFP: Ah well, let's see:

Abdullah began his schooling at the Islamic Educational College in Amman. He then attended St Edmund's School, Hindhead, in England, before continuing his education in the United States at Eaglebrook School and Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts. In 1980 he attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, was commissioned into the British Army as a Second Lieutenant, and served for a year as a troop commander in the 13th/18th Royal Hussars. In 1982, Abdullah was admitted to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he completed a one-year Special Studies course in Middle Eastern Affairs. Upon returning home, he joined the Royal Jordanian Army, serving as an officer in the 40th Armored Brigade, and undergoing a parachuting and freefall course. In 1985, he attended the Armored Officer's Advanced Course at Fort Knox, and in 1986, he became commander of a tank company in the 91st Armored Brigade, holding the rank of Captain. He also served with the Royal Jordanian Air Force in its Anti-Tank Wing, where he was trained to fly Cobra attack helicopters.

edited 29th Aug '15 1:54:04 PM by Greenmantle

Somehow a theoretical question popped into my mind, that of making a modern-day assault gun, and now the idea's been caroming around the inside of my brain like a hyperkinetic intellectual hamster.

As I understand it, the Sturmgeschutz had the original doctrinal role of providing infantry with mobile fire support, freeing up the tanks for deep exploitation; they had a secondary role as marginally-capable tank destroyers (at least in theory—in practice the Stug was perfectly happy spitting AP death). The Germans had their Stugs, the Sovs had the SU-76 as well as the heavier ISU-122 and 152 series, the Brits had their infantry tanks, and the Americans...managed to miss the role entirely, and had to press cavalry-tank Shermans and tank destroyers into the role, for which they were less than ideal. The much-beloved Sherman-E2 assault tank turned out to be excellent for the role, but they were under-prioritized in production and hence were never available in the quantities the infantry wanted.

My theory is that we generally don't see them after WWII because main battle tanks evolved to take up their role, and probably also because tanks became so numerous that there was no need to build cheaper but logistics-complicating dedicated armored infantry support vehicles—that and the passing of the tank-destroyer role to lightly-armored RCLR and missile carriers. (If there is another doctrinal reason for it, please tell me!) Also, I suspect that the IFV fulfilled the infantry fire-support role.

Today, though, there are a lot of older tanks around that are regarded as too lightly armored to seriously take to the battlefield in the face of AT fire, especially given the ubiquity of the RPG-7. A T-55 or M-47/48 would be hard-pressed to survive serious AT fire, and while proper tactics would be mandatory, it would be nice having an armored vehicle that a) can survive the stray RPG shot or Malyutka missile, and b) isn't a tank, therefore freeing up the actual tanks from the close-support role—and god knows the role of infantry support hasn't gone away; instead, it's probably 90% of a tank's duties.

To that end I'm wondering if there's still a future for the assault gun, or if the heavy IFV has taken over the role entirely. The conversion would be relatively straightforward: raze the turret of an older tank, replace with a superstructure and a larger gun, and invest the saved weight in frontal armor. If you go with a rear-mounted gun (like the SU-76 or Marder series), you can fit a much larger gun without worrying about the barrel digging into the dirt; the size of the gun is an open question. Back in WWII, there was a clear difference between a 76mm tank shell and a 122mm artillery shell, but today's 120mm+ tank rounds are as powerful as medium artillery in their own right. So the main gun could be an ordinary tank gun. If not, going 130mm or 155mm for the main gun would give you a lot more hitting power, but it'd slow down the rate of fire and would probably require either two loaders or a complex autoloader like that found on modern self-propelled howitzers.

(A problem with taking an autoloader: you'd need to find one that separates the propellant-charge storage, preferably using wet stowage, from the fighting compartment. For that reason a T-72-style carousel autoloader is right out. Unlike an SPH, this theoretical assault gun would face enemy direct fire on a regular basis.)

There are several vehicles like that these days. Centauro B1, Maneuver Combat Vehicle, etc.

Those still feel like vehicles you'd only use because you can't get a tank though.

Like why use the fancy Stryker over an Abrams?

Two words: Air drop.

You'd have a hell of an easier time dropping an M1128 out the back of a heavy lift plane in flight than an Abrams.

edited 30th Aug '15 5:54:21 PM by MajorTom

Actually, a wheeled tank destroyer would be rather different than a classical assault gun. For one, it's much less survivable, if a lot more mobile. Mobility's a fine thing for a cavalry tank or a hit-and-run tank killer, but I suspect that in the close support role, frontal armor is what's needed.

Well that's certainly true but at the end of the day you're still gonna wish you had a tank.

Like if that thing eats an RPG it's still going down, doesn't matter how much firepower it has.

So again, they feel like something you'd only use because you can't get a proper tank.

edited 30th Aug '15 5:56:10 PM by LeGarcon

^^ No, More Dakka is. A Bradley is a fuckton better at close in support than any StuG.

The StuG life came and went, its time is done and gone.

Sup guys I heard you all talking 'bout assault guns and no one mentioned this thing right here.◊