The Military Thread

The gas turbine in the Abrams was originaly made for desile fuel it wasnt a conversion on the Australians part, it's the fuel that they were designed and rated for even for Amercia.

Some where in the 40 years that the US has had the Abrams around for though they switched it over to running on kerosene without any mechanical changes so to speak of, hence why the smoke generator no longer works.

It was something like a fuel range reduction of 10%, but the call to do so was made so that the Abrams could use the exact same fuel as the aircraft and cooking stoves, and they could take desile out of the supply chain.

Basicly its notedly not ideal for the tank but not to the extent that it wasnt worth having to deal with one less type of fuel truck.

...

Basicly at the end of the day machinery may be flashy but logistics is king and the US knows that.

You could take an Amercian abrams fill it full of desile and it would actualy run slightly better, the army just doesnt want to bother with it.

Edit: Additionally last I heard the US army wants there next generation of light vehicles to be JP-8 fueled hybrids too.

Hybrid for extra range, and the fuel choice so that they can also take petrol out of the supply chain and just run every thing from helicopters to trucks to tanks to stoves on the same fuel.

Ancient armies marched on there stomachs modern ones march on there fuel tanks.

Edited by Imca on Jun 3rd 2023 at 3:52:45 AM

There is a market for so-called 'low-background' steel made before widespread testing of nuclear weapons. It's typically used for particle detectors and Geiger counters.

In a funny inverse, all of America's vehicles run on jet fuel or want to be in the near future to match the tank (among other things) but Russia's doing the opposite.

All of their high power turbine engine T-80s run on the same boring diesel that fuels the Russian army from the lowliest staff car to the TBM launcher/erectors.

Edited by LeGarcon on Jun 3rd 2023 at 6:49:35 AM

I'm a bit confused. If you make everything gas turbine, you can remove diesel from the supply chain.

But if you make everything diesel and not a gas turbine.... Tanks burn 50-60% as much fuel when idling, which is more than half of the time from what I've seen.

Maybe the Humvees and MRA Ps running on gasoline are similar, have similar problems. I'm not sure if the American process actually saves logistics, or just results in like needing 33% more fuel.

Edited by WorkingOnBeingGood on Jun 4th 2023 at 3:31:09 AM

There not all using a gas turbine, there are diffrent ways to burn the fuel.

Tanks use a turbine because of its high power and simplistic construction, that meets there needs to move and be easy to repair.

Trucks and Humvees use a normal riciprocating engine because they dont need to do that.

The fuel you use doesn't actualy relate to what type of engine you use, it just relates to how you set that engine up.

The Leopard 2's V12 engine technically can pull up to 1,500hp. It also weighs half again as much as the Abrams', and other industrial diesel engines of that rating can weigh several times more. But more importantly, gas turbines reach better thermal efficiency as they near their maximum power output — which the Abrams basically requires because it weighs 10-15 tonnes more than the Leopard 2 (which in turn weighs 10-15 tonnes more than most Soviet-pattern tanks).

There are something like 2,000-2,500 M1s in US service. All of their hulls were built before 1997. I'm skeptical that anyone could presently build a substitute diesel powerplant that could put out the same power and is compact enough not to require extensive redesigns to the tank's powertrain and entire rear section and doesn't come with a lot of messy teething problems; as a point of comparison, the T-64's high cost (by Soviet standards) and teething issues came in parts from the designers' attempt to fit a high-powered engine and suitable proprietary transmission into a small frame.

The AbramsX concept promises a new, lighter hull that runs off a diesel-electric hybrid powerplant, but let's be real — given the choice between starting a production line for what's effectively a whole new tank or tacking its electronics upgrades onto existing Abrams hulls, we already know what the US DoD is going to settle on. Logistical inertia beats battlefield specs, nine times out of ten.

The abrams x is not going to happen simply because at that point you might as well just buy a whole new tank.

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/irish-airspace-and-waters-remain-europes-open-flank

RUSI has an article that talks about the weakness of Irish military defense in protecting its airspace and territorial waters. Also mentioned the Russian Navy ship incursion from last year.

Like Japan, Irish military's having retention problems.

The RAF is "obliged" to help the Irish based on an "arrangement" Dublin and London made. Irish doesn't have fighter jets or assets to handle ASW ops. Coupled with the lack of long-range radars.

I think they have a guy leaning out of a Cessna with a highway speed meter.

Are there any real and effective light tanks being made in the West? I do not mean converted IFV's, I mean purpose built for the role.

What would the whole new tank you could buy even be? There is just the Panther and the Abrams X

Gotta make one, maybe if we start now we can retire the Abrams in the 2050s

Thats the point of "a whole new tank" it doesn't exist yet, you gotta make it.

Both of those are just modernization.

Edited by Imca on Jun 4th 2023 at 8:39:52 AM

Though to be fair the amount of Abrams DNA left in the Abrams X is much less than something like the Abrams TTB or the CATTB.

The Panther still uses a Leopard 2 hull but given the Leo 2 is taking life extending upgrades a lot better than the Abrams that's not the worst thing in the world.

But a new clean sheet design would be nice.

"1200 hp 6TD-2 diesel engine. This engine is special in that it is actually multi-fuel, and hence can run on kerosene or jet fuel in addition to diesel."

Is this secretly a gas-turbine engine? I thought true non gas-turbines couldn't do this?

You can make then do so, they just wont do so well.

The reality is that making an engine that can not kill itself when it burns the wrong fuels required over engineering the engine and it adds cost and complexity.

And it still wont burn those fuels as well.

It's the kinda decision that only really makes sense for militaries.

Is that the engine from the Ukrainian diesel T-80 variants?

Some military diesel engines have adaptor devices to regulate the pressure in their fuel injector, which increases the range of fuels they can use. So you can use some kerosene-based fuels, but there are limits. You still can't use fuels with very high octane ratings, which take more pressure to set off than a diesel cylinder can reliably provide (sans a spark plug). And you can't use fuel types that lack the viscosity to lubricate the pistons, which rules out gasoline and higher grades of jet fuel.

Some random news:

• Spiegel: A handful of former German pilots are apparently now in China to provide military training – and are earning huge salaries for their services. Their activities have raised sensitive questions for German security officials.

• CNN: China accuses US of ‘provocation’ after near collision of warships. A PLAN Type 052D destroyer cut across the bow of Burke-class destroyer USS Chung-Hoon while she was transiting the Taiwan Strait alongside Canadian Halifax-class frigate HMCS Montréal, coming within 150 yards of the ship.

• Nikkei Asia: Russia 'buying back' arms parts exported to Myanmar and India. The buybacks tracked down by Nikkei's journalists included just under 7,000 tank optics parts from Myanmar and six night vision devices for a SAM system from India.

• Military.com: Poisoned Water: How a Navy Ship Dumped Fuel and Sickened Its Own Crew. In 2016, the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Boxer intentionally (and potentially illegally) dumped diesel fuel into the ocean, and then immediately sucked the contaminated water back into her own water supply — poisoning many sailors and marines in an incident that the ship's command actively tried to cover up.

Between this, the Pearl Harbor fuel leak, the Fat Leonard Saga, the twin destroyer collisions in 2017, the Constellation project bloat and the twin fiascos of the LCS and DDG-1000 programs, it sure seems like the service branch that's supposed to lead the US "pivot" to the Indo-Pacific is enjoying some truly exemplary leadership, eh.

Plus the finished report into the absolute atrocity that is SEAL 'training' nowadays (or rather, recruit torture school.)

I seem to recall that isn't the first time some Westerners have gone mercenary in the past few years to train someone in Asia.

The US Navy needs some major work. So much mess. The Marines are not far behind.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jun 5th 2023 at 2:02:59 PM

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/irelands-security-policy-being-damaged-abuses-its-defence-forces

RUSI commentary on abuses being uncovered in the ranks of the Irish Defense Forces. Eoin Micheál Mc Namara said that reports of these abuses and other forms of discrimination towards women undermine Irish security policies.

How does a military test if their newly made ICBM model can actually reach its intended target? Obviously they can't just launch it anywhere; I suspect most countries don't appreciate having a ballistic missile fly over them, at least because there's always the chance it suffers a failure and it causes extensive casualties and property damage when it (or its debris) subsequently falls down.

Now that I think about it, do all ballistic missiles use more or less the same guidance system (notwithstanding replacement with technologically improved iterations), and thus they only need to test whether the other components work as intended?

ICB Ms work by exiting the atmosphere and the going up bit is the hard part, that’s generally testable either in one’s own territory or over the ocean.

Once the missile exits the atmosphere, its trajectory while outside the atmosphere can be calculated fairly easily. So, the researchers can shoot a missile at a high angle, measure its velocity, and use that to calculate the range. There have been cases where some countries tested missiles so they fly over the high seas; for example, the US has tested missiles by launching them from Vandenberg AFB in California and landing them near the Johnson Atoll.

For your second question, most ICBMs use inertial guidance combined with celestial navigation or GNSS (e.g. GPS/GLONASS). Some missiles, such as Russia's Iskander, glide in the atmosphere before hitting its target, so they use terrain matching, similar to cruise missiles.

I don't know about testing methods for missile GNC (guidance navigation and control) systems, and I would not be surprised if it was not public information, so I'll extrapolate from what I know about aerospace vehicles in general.

Because it is expensive to flight test spacecraft, most testing will be done on the ground, or through simulations. For GNC systems, first, Monte-Carlo simulations will be done to test the software. Then, they test the onboard computer, feeding it simulated inputs. If that works, then they move on to testing the hardware, feeding it simulated inputs and measuring the outputs. At that point you can get a measure of the accuracy of your missile.

Edited by minseok42 on Jun 7th 2023 at 9:10:57 AM

Makes sense, but has it ever happened that a ballistic missile performed significantly worse than its tests predicted? (Any Russian and North Korean examples don't count because both are plagued by a long list of problems that undermine the efficacy of any theoretical tests they make.)

Edited by MarqFJA on Jun 7th 2023 at 3:49:16 PM

Except for a few anecdotes, it's hard to get actual data. Most missile testing is done in military black sites like Area 51, so we can't just go to a nearby test range and see for ourselves. Most conflicts that saw ballistic missiles in action involved Russian designs. The only publicized case I can think of is the incident this April when a ROK Hyunmoo-II missile crashed shortly after launch, and we know about that only because the explosion was seen by civilians.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1532565777823502354

Didn't see this from last year. Russians used improvised armor on a KAMAZ truck.