The Armored Vehicle Thread

The turret looks out of place◊.

The Ratte was prettier though.

Hey, hey, hey.

if were going with the maus agian, lets make it hover this time.

Why settle for a land battleship, when you can have a floating amphibious one.

Because that sounds like something out of Red Alert and sadly we don't live in such a glorious universe.

As cool and intimidating something like a modern, railgun armed Son of Maus (or a Mammoth Tank) would be, without air superiority such a vehicle might as well be lugging about a giant "please bomb me" sign.

Never mind trying to cross a bridge...

That's why Mammoth and Apocalypse tanks had missile launchers.

Well if its this big, couldn't we strap some grumbles to its back?

^^ Anti-Air missile launchers at that! How hard would it be to bolt on some old M6 Linebacker Stinger pods onto the sides of our Mammoth?

edited 4th May '15 7:49:39 PM by MajorTom

Or give a crew a Stinger/Igla/Mistral/what-have-you; it's what they're for.

In 2003, Abrams crews were issued AT-4s because it was feared that Iraqi tankers might force an urban battle where the Abrams might not be able to turn its gun barrel around in time.

There was a version of the Bradley mounting Stinger Pods so I see no major issue with it.

The only true railgun

As for rail and coil guns, they are at their infancy and plagued with issues. The Navy has the MJ rail gun, General Atomics has developed the Blitzer rail gun as counter battery fire, AAA and ballistic defense.

They are all huge, the Blitzer which is the only land based systems ATM require 3 flatbed trucks and two of those are just for the fuel and capacitors.

Then there was a Coilgun developed for the US Army to lob mortar shells at longer ranges but it hasn't gone anywhere.

For more details visit Magnetic Weapons page.

But currently even a for a battleship sized vessel putting railguns as main armaments is dubious at best.

Of course, chemical energy has its limitations, there is a maximum theoretical limit for expanding gases pushing out a projectile is around 1828.8 m/s. To increase a projectile energy you either increase velocity, mass or both.

Increasing mass usually reduces the efficiency of the propellant, hence why it is easy to reach high velocities with small caliber bullets than it is with cannon rounds, when compared with increasing the velocity, increasing weight only gives minor gains.

Increasing velocity usually involves tampering with the propellant to make a more efficient burn, like the Americans are trying to do with the ETC Cannons, or add more propellant, which is risky since it increases the chances of explosions.

Increasing both is hard, adds up to weight in everything, from the larger and heavier ammunition to the frames and cannons that need to be built heavier and sturdier to withstand the higher pressures involved.

As for electromagnetic weapons like coil guns and rail guns, they have issues after a certain threshold but their lower limit still higher than the chemical gas expansion by a long shot.

Until someone finds out how to make room temperature and wear and tear resistant super conductors, which would result in batteries and capacitors capable to make EM weapons interesting, EM weapons won't make their debut in ground warfare anytime soon. Maybe for naval warfare since there is less red tape with using nuclear powered ships and they have both the room to store the capacitors and are essentially floating in coolant.

edited 4th May '15 8:19:34 PM by AngelusNox

Or can mount the large turbine generators like in the DDG-1000. It has a bank of generators to power the whole ship plus extra systems.

There is that neat little rotary engine design they are looking at that Taira shared earlier that has some promise.

Correction the M-6 Bradley Linebacker has a single four shot Stinger Pod in place of the Two shot TOW Pod. Still fairly simple system thanks to the Stingers simple targeting requirements.

edited 4th May '15 8:26:00 PM by TuefelHundenIV

@Taira: First, that freight train comparison only works if you only consider the weight of the locomotive with no cars.

Second, okay, so in all seriousness, where's the tank-portable 11.1+ MJ coilgun? We KNOW railguns are too big and power-hungry for tanks, but that doesn't prove that coilguns don't have the same problems. I know that DARPA tested a 1.6 MJ coilgun, but compared to modern tank guns, that's basically just a peashooter, only marginally better than the 75mm gun used on the Sherman tank, which I highly doubt that you'd use to try to penetrate the frontal armor of a T-72 or somesuch.

For all practical purposes, any sort of electromagnetic propulsion for weapons on land vehicles is quite far off, simply because of how much greater the energy density of gunpowder is than the energy density of current batteries and capacitors. Their potential might exceed chemical propellants, but actually achieving that, at least for anything highly constrained by size (eg. ships can handle it because they're huge and can carry huge generators and capacitor banks), is probably not going to happen any time soon.

edited 4th May '15 8:37:20 PM by Balmung

Sandia the guys working on the coil gun around 2011-2012 slated the first test coil gun as a weapon no earlier then 2021 and possibly as late as 2026.

edited 4th May '15 10:22:24 PM by TuefelHundenIV

The funny thing is that the last time I looked that up, they said in 2006 that the prototype would be ready by 2011 to 2016.

I'm kind of reminded of this: https://xkcd.com/678/

edited 4th May '15 10:36:10 PM by Balmung

Lol. They are running on Valve time. :P

So, the take away message is that no, we can't stick a railgun on a tank and won't be able to do so any time soon?

Not one that is as efficient/powerful as modern tank cannons, that is.

Yet...

Turns out Armata does have active protection pods.

Kurganets is big.

360° view of Armata and Hammerhead.

360° view of Kurganets.

Bumerang with a different turret.

edited 5th May '15 8:01:17 PM by KnitTie

Knit Tie: Cool pics. Thanks for digging them up and sharing.

Tom; When giant robots rule the Earth. Bonus points if you know the joke.

What are those vertically-oriented launchers highlighted in the APS pictures? Designed to counter top-attack missiles?

I can't help but notice some of those APS pods are pointing upwards. And backwards. Guess Ivan has 360 degree protection now.

Goodbye Javelin, you were useful while you lasted.

Also that doesn't look like Arena, an entirely new system?

And I still don't see any Shtora eyes.

edited 5th May '15 8:12:10 PM by LeGarcon

I think they are smoke launchers, but they might be a part of the active protection system as well.

Edit - Oh wait you don't mean those baton things on Kurganets, you mean the vertical missile pods on Armata. Yeah, those are apparently anti-Javelin hard kill launchers.

edited 5th May '15 8:26:39 PM by KnitTie

Garcon:Don't count on it. If it is still using extant hard kill systems Javelin and other top attack weapons are very much a threat still. Arena used the pods. However Shrtoa replacement might be the other pieces now. Shrota was limited by direction the turret was facing.

They could be smoke discharges or possibly a baffler system?

edited 5th May '15 8:19:13 PM by TuefelHundenIV