The Armored Vehicle Thread

Armor. The more armor they layer on the heavier. The ERA plate packages that can eat just about anything are heavy. The TUSK and British equivalent add equipment, armor, and other mounts like the dozer blade on the Challenger 2.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jan 22nd 2020 at 6:03:03 AM

So when you run over a crunchy, you make good and sure you got 'em.

Bradley Replacement: Did Army Ask For 'Unobtainium'?

An America is back in the race to build a rival to Hitler's Maus!

Edited by TairaMai on Jan 26th 2020 at 1:32:09 AM

Sounds like the Brassholes don't understand how armor works and keep asking for more than can actually be delivered.

I still don't get they they won't accept a relatively light vehicle with reactive armor and an IED deflecting hull

They have two: The Stryker and the JLTV.

• The Stryker was just a warmed over LAV-25/MOWAG Piranha with too many computers. Then the IED's hit during OIF I. So now most Strykers have the V-hull and (most of) the computer problems have been fixed.

• The JLTV has been dooing pretty good. The fact that it didn't gain weight and is on track to replace all USMC HMMWV's (even the FUNVEE!).

Trouble is the Bradley's age and the Brass was scared by the IED attacks. Russia's troublesome beast the T-15 has teething troubles. But expect to see it in the hands of America's enemies in the coming years. Chinese armor was a joke during The '90s but man have they been playing catchup.

But as LeGarcon would point out - all the Brass have gone to college (West Point is famous as an engineering college!) - so they should know the Square-Cube Law

Sounds like we need to get to work on Deflector Shields. No more sci-fi nonsense, make it real gorramit!

CIWS is way more badass then any kind of deflector shield, I mean fuck energy shielding.... Were making forcefeilds of explosions.

Now I'm imagining a C-RAM battery on top of an Abrams and boy is it a funny mental image.

Does it need to be air-mobile? I mean, IIRC they hit that snag when they tried to fit up-armoured Strykers into C-130s, but they got around it by transporting the slats separately and fitting them in the field. And heavier IFV programs like the Ajax and Kurganets seem to be doing fine without anyone demanding them to be air-transportable.

A big thing about Big Army is the need for rapid deployment. It can take weeks to ship and send everything by way of the Navy or Merchant Marine to somewhere. You can reduce that deployment time to days with air transport.

And it avoids easy targets like railway lines and seaports. It's a tad more expensive that way but you can put a full Army BCT anywhere in the world in less than 3 days by air. A similar thing happens with Marines, with air transport and constant deployments aboard Navy ships, they can send a full MEU anywhere in the world in 3 days.

True, but they've had two decades to smooth things out with the SBCTs, no? This doesn't sound like the right niche for a Bradley replacement.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jan 25th 2020 at 7:43:37 AM

Pedantic nitpick: The Funvee and it's cousin, the Humdrumvee, were both Air Force vehicles.

Today I learned about the T31 Demolition Tank, which was basically the Sherman Tulip given some, ah, performance enhancers.

More like Sherman Chonk amirite?

Funvee? Humdrumvee? What???

References to Iron Man. The Action Prologue has Tony's Humvee getting shot up in an ambush attack, before going into a How We Got Here plot. When the film catches up with that scene again, Tony refers to his truck as the "Funvee" and sends Rhodes off to ride in another truck, the "Humdrumvee."

Man, that film is over ten years old now.

In things I probably didn't need to know, I just learned that... Pierre Sprey thinks that the M48 is better than the M1?

Uhhh

That was an inglorious and amazingly stupid steaming pile of bullshit. He can't even get the Caliber of the Stryker MGS right. This is why you should lump Pierre Sprey in the same category of military thought as Mike Sparks. You can stack Theodore Postol right along side.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Apr 13th 2020 at 9:05:04 AM

Maybe at World War One/World War Two style infantry support but that's more to do with ammunition type and availability, not anything else.

Otherwise, I draw a complete blank on any conceivable advantage the M48 has.

The only one is that is comparably cheap. Pity that At weapons a generation or two old can one-shot them. I wouldn't want to see the inside after a TOW type missile slapped into it.

If Pierre Sprey has his way, the F-16 wouldn't even have gotten a radar.

He's one of the number crunchers who can't see past his figures.

The M-48 (and the later M-60) were the pinnacle of RHA and welded tanks. He never even bothered to lookup Chobham armor.

POGO is to the DOD what biting insects are to summer - a bloody nuisance that can do real harm.

Yeah, that is one of the reasons I say POGO is utter shit when it comes to military matters.

There are pictures of Israeli M48's and M60's after being hit by Malyutka missiles in 1973. The exterior view is not pretty, I'd imagine the interior view would be described as "ruinous".