The Armored Vehicle Thread

I heard they were wanting to do that because RARDEN sucks or some such thing.

RARDEN is manually-loaded with three-round clips.

CTA International (a 50/50 Joint Venture between BAE Systems and NEXTER Systems) was founded in 1994, which is when development of the gun started.

edited 5th Mar '15 5:58:28 AM by Greenmantle

The 40mm Warrior has been in the works for years now.

There has also been talk of a Bradley variant with the 57mm/70 the USN adopted on some ships for a few years, either as an upgrade or to a dedicated AD vehicle.

edited 5th Mar '15 5:42:50 AM by Night

A Mk 110 on an armored vehicle for fire support and/or air defense purposes?

\*Want intensifies*

edited 5th Mar '15 5:44:05 AM by MajorTom

I will believe the Warrior is really going to get that 40mm cannon upgrade when they start rolling them across Salisbury Plain in front of news cameras. They've been making noises like those in that article for years.

@Night: SHORAD has been dying on the vine for years now. The Bradley Linebacker was taken out of service, the Avenger is down to a few batteries and battalions in the National Guard in the US.

I doubt that Big Army will approve a new Air Defense Bradley. The 30mm cannon is adapted from a US Navy design (in fact the new DDG-1000's have them). The Avenger program office proposed adding rockets and another M3 .50 cal and the Air Defense branch passed. Que the Avengers and Linebackers being retired.

On that list of last combat dates for WW 2 tanks, remember that an IS-2 was used in combat in 2014 by Russian separatists in Ukraine.

Driven off from a pedestal where it'd been parked as a memorial, if I remember. As a commentator observed dryly, it seemed that the decommissioning procedures had not been very strictly followed.

On that 57mm Gun. We talked about similar vehicles a few pages back. There was that tank that was basically a 57mm on a tank body for ADA. The 75mm Ares gun on RDF/Lt the Vehicle was suggested as an SHORAD weapon backed up with close range missiles in two four packs. Sparky Warning.

edited 5th Mar '15 3:46:54 PM by TuefelHundenIV

And we both know that mentality will last only as long as it takes for Big Army to finally come under air attack. Same with the Marines. The moment an Su-25 or Q-5 or what have you buzzes some ground troops is the moment ADA will come back into the front line. Because it would mean the Air Force and the Navy can't do their jobs at having absolute air supremacy in an AO.

>Implying they will come under any air attack that is not a drone.

Army on army conflicts are a thing of the past, and insurgencies can not really field that many jets.

Although wouldn't SHORAD also be more effecient to deal with drones then deploying actual air cover?

It's a different beast from the Bofors 57mm, but the Russians do have a successful upgun program for the PT-76, with an automatically-loaded S-60 57mm AA gun replacing the low-velocity 76. The lack of modern sabot ammo hurts it, though; the old 57mm APHE is enough to shred anything short of an MBT, but you can get similar performance out of less bulk with saboted 35mm and 40mm.

The Marines haven't ditched what SHORAD they have yet. The proposals to get new ones or even pick up the army old vehicles haven't gone over well. When it comes to SHORAD vehicles and programs the Marines acquisition pretty much is tied to the Army buying in as well. Which does not bode well for the Marines getting anything beyond the aging Avenger.

Imca: The problem is we can not rely on that remaining true in any aspect as time marches on. While drones are an increasing to the point even Hamas had one we can't completely count out having to fight small wars or skirmishes with more modern enemies.

edited 5th Mar '15 4:51:51 PM by TuefelHundenIV

^ Especially given the shit going on in Ukraine and the South China Sea.

Given the PT-76 isn't meant to be an MBT killer anymore, the S-60 up-gun is an upgrade. The S-60 will put the hurt on even a Bradley within a couple hits and anything less just withers away.

Oh and this is relevant to what we've been talking about recently: The BMP Is Part Tank Part Taxi.

edited 5th Mar '15 5:51:58 PM by MajorTom

On the exaggeration of the death of the tank. This is an older article but many here should be familiar with the argument. The advent of the MANPAT systems improving effectiveness sounding the death knell of the tank. The gist of the article is that in most cases the big modern losses are from sloppy tactics and poor use of combined arms. The MANPAT systems also pretty much guarantee that only the tank can last in such an environment themselves as everything else is comparatively more vulnerable.

The article however doesn't seem to touch on the increasing presence of active protective systems and their increasing effectiveness from soft and hard kill systems. Or the possible implications that tech could cause the line to remain in flux rather then completely rule out one general type of vehicle or another. The more recent flare up between Israel and Palestine saw a full on test of the Trophy APS/AKS and by all reports it performed very well. The Russians have been leading the way for a while in those systems but the rest of the world is rapidly catching up.

Other factors like new armor technologies might mean lighter vehicles with high protection levels and there is also a chance for more performance out of reactive armor kits and applique armors which have extended the life of more lightly armored vehicles at the cost of added weight.

edited 5th Mar '15 7:31:30 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Nuclear weapons would like to argue with you there, two nuclear armed countries are NEVER going to poke each other, just because no one wants to being about the end of the earth.

This has remained true for 70 years, and will continue remaining true indefinatly, MAD is a very real threat, and one can never guarantee reasonable escalation.

Case and point, the Ukraine signed there weapons away, and no one is fucking stupid enough to aide them in any meaningful way since Russia did not decide that a piece of paper was more trust worthy then a WMD.

edited 5th Mar '15 7:29:41 PM by Imca

We might never fight the Russians but we might fight some country where a few Su-25s fell off the back of a truck.

Or maybe we'll have a run in with those strange all green wearing nobodies who turned up in Crimea a while back.

Yeah like NERA/NxRA, electric armor and directed energy reactive armor.

Some of that shit be straight out of sci-fi.

Imca: I beg to differ. First not all modern nations have effective nuclear deterrence. Second having modern or near modern equipment and training also does not require nukes. Third the Vietnam War would like to say hello with modern weapons and equipment in the hands of a non-nuclear power with the Russians providing relatively modern weapons, equipment, and other platforms to the North Vietnamese. Fourth nukes don't stop small wars or skirmishes which have happened in abundance. Fifth and final No nuclear power is going to deploy a nuke over a small war or skirmish and the preference even in the chance of clashes is for conventional weapon and nearly all nuclear armed nations have been very shy about even making credible overt nuclear threats outside of posturing.

Nukes are the new battleships. Expensive, increasingly ineffective and impractical. With every passing year the means to deliver a nuclear warhead become fewer and fewer with the advent and improvements in anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems from point defense to high altitude and low orbit interception.

If they were all that and a bag of chips you'd be seeing disarmament movements going on signalling the end of war. You're seeing the reverse. Nations around the world outside the West are arming and expanding their militaries and in some cases growing more belligerent.

Then you have the fact science and technology are marching on. The weapon the Soviets feared most in the 1980s was the laser guided bomb like Paveway. They could be dropped en masse and precisely against their formations and slaughter thousands of troops and tanks and APC's without the use of nuclear weapons. Precision guided munitions like Paveway, Hellfire, Maverick and ATACMS scared the fuck out of Soviet Generals more than Minuteman and other ICBM's ever did.

Nowadays you can have a relatively inconspicuous drone drop a Hellfire or laser-guided Hydra 70 rocket on your head and never know it was there. Worse, even if you shot it down it meant little since there's no dead pilot. What good are nuclear silos and missile trains if their command crews and codes get drone'd before they ever get there? Limited at best.

And that's not all. The railgun tech being built by the US Navy has applications beyond measure. Even a hardened a nuclear silo will be no match for hypersonic artillery of high caliber fired from a railgun. (And that assumes we never make anything like Rods From God.) Or modern bunker busters like the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) which can kill the massive underground complex at Natanz, Iran like it was on the surface.

In all, nukes are basically becoming technologically obsolete. What good is the power of the atom when you have a thousand alternatives all much more effective?

I wouldn't say that. Nukes just need new ways of delivery.

And Rods from God are overrated. How effective can they be if the Russians can just send a Mi G-31 up there and smash the launch platform with minimal effort?

Not to mention none of your alternatives wipe out entire countries, a MIRV can, how can a gun which fires a single bullet replace a weapon that erases entire cities, it cant the only replacement to the nuke, will be either rods from god or the anti-mater bomb, the nations getting more aggressive and belligerent, are all without nuclear capacity of there own.

Korea was a proxy war and political maneuvering point, it was a way for the Amercians and the Soviets to fight each-other without... well fighting each-other, its conditions were unique and are not replicated any where else at this time.

edited 5th Mar '15 7:52:43 PM by Imca

How effective can they be? Well you can demolish an entire airfield or tank complex in a single hit. Even better, such an attack left no radiation or signs of nuclear detonation.

That scene with London in that GI Joe movie? Very real the effects of a Rod From God. It just needs to be big enough and fast enough.

And the means of delivery for nukes are....what new means? Missiles were the last practical way of delivering a nuclear warhead. Bombers will never reach their targets and you can't exactly send one to your enemies through the mail.

You have never seen a MIRV have you Tom.

There is no way in hell your going to intercept one of those unless you do so at take off...

Considering there normally launched from subs, good luck even doing that.

I'm not doubting their firepower, I'm doubting their ability to not be swatted out of orbit on a whim. Destroying a satellite is as easy as pushing a button on a cruiser or scrambling a Foxhound.

Satellites are poor weapons platforms, they're exposed as hell and modern missile technology effectively means they're target practice.