The Armored Vehicle Thread

Wait, shit. The Iraqi Army has Buratinos now?

I don't doubt they'll be tremendously useful, but the Iraqi National Army is not known for the high levels of training and logistics needed to really use and secure those weapons. (Nobody wants to imagine a 220mm FAE rocket making its way into the wrong hands, for one.) And then there's the usual caveat about using them in urban warfare—sure they're useful if you intend to turn the whole city into rubble...which, hopefully, the Iraqi Army doesn't intend on doing to its own cities, many of which are filled with citizens that already distrust the regular Army.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Narco Armor: Improvised Armored Fighting Vehicles in Mexico

Who watches the watchmen?

Dude we need get those to fight the IFV trucks with the swivels chairs over in Syria.

Oh really when?

Nah man. We just need to start issuing Airtronic RPG-7s. IAFV's like that are tin cans, resistant to many types of small arms fire like shotguns and assault rifles but easily torn apart by anti-armor rockets.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

As some of you probably noticed me mention, a narcotank got taken down hard by an M3A1 Stuart back in 2004 in Paraguay.

Yes. 37mm WW 2-era AP.

It's that bad.

edited 4th Mar '15 5:00:03 AM by Night

Nous restons ici.

Those 37mm AP rounds would take out many APC's and some IFV's these days, they're Not So Harmless as their reputation against tanks in WW 2 said. A BTR-90 wouldn't survive, neither would a BMP-1 or maybe even BMP-2 applique/reactive armor enhancements depending. A Stryker wouldn't unless the slat armor forced a deflection. Same with the LAV-25.

A Bradley would No-Sell that type of ammo.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

I think you're overselling it considerably in comparison to similar modern weapons like the 2A24 and Bushmaster. The velocity of a 37mm M3 round maxed at 884 m/s where the most closely comparable rounds (APBC-T for the 2A24 and APDS for the Bushmaster since it has no "shot" round) have a muzzle velocity of 970 m/s and a muzzle velocity of 1100 m/s; both of the modern systems also have a significantly greater effective range and accuracy.

The 37mm round is significantly heavier but this does not seem to do it any favors in publicly available armor penetration statistics. (That and the statistics on the M51 round for the M3 seem optimistic anyways at first glance.)

Nous restons ici.

I'm basing based on actual armor ratings today. Very little of what I mentioned can truly stand up to .50 cal or 14.5mm in the same way a tank could. A BMP series vehicle only truly stops small arms fire. HMG's can cut through em especially if they use AP/API(-T)/HEIAP (Raufoss 211) ammo. Same with BTR's. Strykers are rated at only resistant to .50 cal from the front, a close range ambush with AP ammo on a .50 or 14.5mm can punch through the side and rear armor of one. An M113 barely stops even certain types of small arms. Put tungsten core AP 7.62 ammo on a GPMG like an M60 and it can cut through an M113 at close range.

The 37mm gun on the Stuart has better penetration rating than .50 BMG. So all those things listed are vulnerable to that old round.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

>Bradley

>No Sell

There is no way in hell that piece of shit quasi-tank with as much armor as a snowblower is going to no sell any thing the other things in your list did not, I mean hell the Stryker replaced the damn thing.

Not completely, and the Bradley did sprout all sorts of new armor during the Second Iraq War.

Entirely plausible. Bradley is in an entirely different weight class, literally. BTR and Stryker are both fairly light carriers, while BMP bought its amphibious ability at the cost of armor.

Note that Bradleys routinely sport ERA tiles, which BMP-2s can't carry because their passive armor is too thin to support them.

edited 4th Mar '15 10:10:44 AM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

BMP-3s can though if I remember right. Plus they can mount Arena and Shtora.

Though the infantry they escort probably don't appreciate that.

edited 4th Mar '15 10:11:55 AM by LeGarcon

Oh really when?

The enterprising Syrian rebels at Jaish al-Islam have found a configuration of ERA around the turret of the BMP-1 that works. It's in Oryx's blog about the Syrian war.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Yup, by layering it on top of spaced passive armor. Only protected the turret though; considering how few hits were historically scored against the BMP's small turret, I wonder about its value.

Might make the crew feel better, though.

Some of those ghetto BMP mods were really things of wonder.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Never underestimate the value of crew moral.

Interestingly, a lot of the WWII kludge-armor modifications put on Allied tanks like wood or sandbags actually made them more vulnerable to HEAT rounds - because WWII HEAT was poorly designed, detonating the warhead early actually made the standoff distance better and thus made the round more efficient.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

So did Warriors and FV432s, if I remember correctly. The reactive armour was Israeli, too.

Keep Rolling On

The Bradely is a far cry from being replaced as an IFV or vehicle in inventory it also is a lot better protected against a wider range of weapons fire then any of those other vehicles. It uses spaced laminated armor rated for 30mm AP and even some heat rounds as well as steel skirts. That is before using additional armor kits or reactive armor. This is one of the few vehicles I can reasonably forgive someone for mistaking it for a tank. The trade off is the Bradley is a bit heavy weighing in at over 30 short tons. The Bradley line is going to be around for a while longer. The vehicle replacing the more vulnerable M113 is a turretless Bradley with the same armor scheme.

Who watches the watchmen?

As mentioned, Bradley is in a whole weight class of its own. It's heavier than some WW 2 medium tanks. It uses spaced composite laminate armor as its base and is frequently outfitted with ERA or slat add-ons (or both). It'll take a frontal hull hit from an RPG-7 and you'll suffer no crew or passenger casualties. It's 30mm resistant and shrugs off anything less pretty easily. A 37mm APHE round dating back to the 1940s is gonna have a Hell of a time doing jack shit to it.

Bradley is one of the best armored APC's/IFV's out there.

I believe BMP-2s can have ERA if it's attached to bolt on slat armor for the sides and front.

edited 4th Mar '15 5:10:52 PM by MajorTom

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

During WWII, there were reports of bomber crews adding armor plating to their seats, because "they knew what they wanted to protect".

The upgraded Bradley variants were somewhat of an extreme in IFV design, although lately they've been becoming the new standard, since the newest infantry fighting vehicles all around the world all sport comparable levels of protection. I posted the following a long time ago in the Military thread; it's still relevant.

---

On the basis of armored vehicles alone: you could argue that the American philosophy has evolved to focus on survivability. This was reached after decades of "small wars", where every life lost was a political loss. Hence, the Bradley is heavy for an IFV—twenty-seven-odd tons. Much of that is very thick armor: not quite up to tank level, but well beyond that of a BMP. They're reportedly able to survive all-around hits from 30mm APDS, which is frankly pretty difficult to believe.

The Russian BMP is explicitly designed for the Soviet view of WWIII, huge sweeping operations like the Great Patriotic War fought at lightning tempo, instead of small wars. A BMP-1 weighs half that of a Bradley, a BMP-2 barely more than a BMP-1, and even the newest BMP-3 less than 19 tons. Light, low, and amphibious. The catch is that when they're drawn into a war not of the fast-moving WWIII model, like urban combat or mountain ambushes, they tended to be RPG bait. There were reports from Afghanistan that heavy machine guns could pierce their side armor with little difficulty. In a high-tempo war this wouldn't be such a problem, since machine guns and RPGs have to fired from up close, but in small wars where irregular ambushes are the order of the day, it's a disadvantage.

That's the biggest quickly-noticeable difference when you look at the raw numbers. There are lots of smaller tactical details, too. BMPs are designed for minimally-trained Soviet conscripts to lay down fire from the move, hence their firing ports and the like. True, the fire would be very inaccurate—it's a drive-by shooting, Russian style—but what matters is to overrun the enemy front line, to bypass his strong points and strike deep. Bradleys are designed for relatively well-trained riflemen to dismount, destroying the enemy with precise firepower. The emphasis is firepower over positional strength. That's not to say that the Soviets couldn't carry out dismounted attacks—they were drilled to do so—or that Americans couldn't execute an attack on the move. But in the designs of the vehicles you could see the philosophical differences in the two styles of war.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Hence the design of the M-1 Abrams. It's made to keep the crew alive: bustle rack ammo storage, DU armor and NBC negative overpressure system. That system pushes air out of the tank, pushing NBC contaminants away.

The Bradley and the Stryker may be getting a 30mm gun.

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be a case on The First 48

Stryker as well, huh? It seems that Stryker is gradually evolving into something like the latest in the BTR series, except perhaps a little heavier and better-protected. Bolt a 30mm chain gun on it and it'd be very comparable to a late-model BTR-80.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Can it mount some TOW missiles too for anti-fort and anti-tank duty in a pinch?

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Meanwhile, the Warrior is due to get a 40mm cannon as part of the Warrior Capability Sustainment Programme.

edited 5th Mar '15 5:24:38 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On