The only reason that the Porsche Tiger failed was that Porsche was... far too ahead of his time. He was trying to force 1930s/1940s tech to work at the same level as modern tech.
M1 Abrams MBT Replacement
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Could run on wheels, if we had motors on each wheel, then we could do the same with ev tank.
Kat Tsun
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The BT's chain drive is more efficient than a electric motor tbh, but yes it would be pretty funny and maybe someone will do it if 60+ ton banded tracks don't pan out.
"Modern" in this case means 1890s? The first automobiles were electric after all.
The only super big difference between now and 1895 in EVs is that we have li-ion batteries instead of lead-acid wet batteries. It's not like a car is running around with superconducting motors lol.
The hard part of making EV motors for tanks' roadwheels is the suspension at the end of the day anyway.
"Modern" in this case means 1890s? The first automobiles were electric after all.
The only super big difference between now and 1895 in EVs is that we have li-ion batteries instead of lead-acid wet batteries. It's not like a car is running around with superconducting motors lol.
The hard part of making EV motors for tanks' roadwheels is the suspension at the end of the day anyway.
You don't use a motor at every wheel to power it necessarily. You can load balance the power like a locomotive keeps tension in a train. Your torque going through the transmission is like a whip that also oscillates. Electric motors can dampen this and get that torque to the wheels more quickly, by keeping everything taught.
shin_getter
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Looking at current era of tank proposals, it appears to me that the whole "decoupling" idea of the tanks makes sense, and one really shouldn't follow a tank salesman's proposals.
1. Good Sensors on the tank is a waste due to poor vantage point. Study of West European terrain points line of sight at 500m for the most part. Expensive "Identify AFV at 15km" Modern sensors are wasted on ground level mount if one thinks about cost at all.
Very good sensors on the roof often provides less situation awareness than a cheap drone camera flying in practice. Ultimately in the modern era, tanks spend most of its time hiding and tactics that involve driving on top of a hill to spot things is asking to be part of the highlight reel of explosions on social media next week. The tank offers no protection to sensors and restricts the use of such sensors due to compromised position of being a expensive, non-stealthy, slow land vehicle for the purpose for direct fires, while a sensor drone can be independently and optimally positioned for the purpose of the sensor obtaining battlefield situation awareness.
There were multiple videos where a drone operator have perfect situation awareness of a confused ground melee highlighting how much more high mounted sensors sees. There were the case of FSA ACV-15 ramming a SAA T-72. There were a video of a pin hole positioned Ukraine tank in a village shooting up multiple vehicles in a Russian convoy not even 150m away. There were drone videos (multiple view points even) of again 150m T-80 on T-64 kill through a forested area.
The tank commander should get drone feed with good long range sensors, and control organic light weight drones for close security. The entire crew should be watching drone/mast feeds until a target have been identified. Even the drive need to learn to "drive in third person view" as it offer far greater awareness than even 360 transparent view in a lot of cases.
The most important development for future combat vehicles in off platform sensor fusion into Fire Control quality tracks. There is so many more targets that can be detected than what the tank can see, and the ability to engage it, or at least pre-aim the right spot is huge. This is also pretty old problem worked on since the early days of indirect fire artillery.
Sensors actually on the tank is backup, and one should not go overboard on it.
2. Crew can be removed from the tank and replaced with communication link that normally operates at very short (meters) range. Why?
If we take that land vehicles are maximum mass limited (bridges, aircraft, liquefaction, etc) than splitting up into multiple vehicles enables higher performance. An all integrated MBT has to carry heavy and volume consuming weapon and other systems, as well as good armor protection for the crew.
If you remove the crew, the crew can be inside a much better protected vehicle with only defensive features. Entire weight budget in armor, APS, self defense AA.
If the crew is removed from the gun, there'd be no funny thing like a very expensive cannon + support system with less ammo than an ATGM carrier because the weight budget ran out.
As unmanned turret tanks are no longer designed for direct crew access to systems, there is no needed to seat the crew in the tank. As long as there is support personnel nearby to fix/recover vehicles, it'd be sufficient.
Overall, I think all vehicles with heavy "offensive" weapons intended to operate in a formation can all get the same treatment.
3. Communication should not be a problem when it involves formations in close proximity. It is not really practical for a opponent kilometers away to jam a meters level communication link (can also be tethered as backup). Opponent wouldn't want to put EWAR assets close enough to jam that kind of comms if they could.
There are some ideas about crews being far behind the front for survivability sake, but in the era of long range fires, I don't think it helps that much, not like a control station can be particularly stealthy either. Critical mass of defenses (CRAM, smoke, EWAR, DEW) may work better. So one may just mass everything near the front.
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So what would it look like? A heavy HAPC converted to command vehicle, with crew looking out from sensors 50 meters up, controlling a "tank" 15 meters ahead.
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**Some people complain at convey length due to more vehicles and likes, but what is really happening is dispersion is about vulnerability times cost per kilometer not arbitrary distance between vehicles.
1. Good Sensors on the tank is a waste due to poor vantage point. Study of West European terrain points line of sight at 500m for the most part. Expensive "Identify AFV at 15km" Modern sensors are wasted on ground level mount if one thinks about cost at all.
Very good sensors on the roof often provides less situation awareness than a cheap drone camera flying in practice. Ultimately in the modern era, tanks spend most of its time hiding and tactics that involve driving on top of a hill to spot things is asking to be part of the highlight reel of explosions on social media next week. The tank offers no protection to sensors and restricts the use of such sensors due to compromised position of being a expensive, non-stealthy, slow land vehicle for the purpose for direct fires, while a sensor drone can be independently and optimally positioned for the purpose of the sensor obtaining battlefield situation awareness.
There were multiple videos where a drone operator have perfect situation awareness of a confused ground melee highlighting how much more high mounted sensors sees. There were the case of FSA ACV-15 ramming a SAA T-72. There were a video of a pin hole positioned Ukraine tank in a village shooting up multiple vehicles in a Russian convoy not even 150m away. There were drone videos (multiple view points even) of again 150m T-80 on T-64 kill through a forested area.
The tank commander should get drone feed with good long range sensors, and control organic light weight drones for close security. The entire crew should be watching drone/mast feeds until a target have been identified. Even the drive need to learn to "drive in third person view" as it offer far greater awareness than even 360 transparent view in a lot of cases.
The most important development for future combat vehicles in off platform sensor fusion into Fire Control quality tracks. There is so many more targets that can be detected than what the tank can see, and the ability to engage it, or at least pre-aim the right spot is huge. This is also pretty old problem worked on since the early days of indirect fire artillery.
Sensors actually on the tank is backup, and one should not go overboard on it.
2. Crew can be removed from the tank and replaced with communication link that normally operates at very short (meters) range. Why?
If we take that land vehicles are maximum mass limited (bridges, aircraft, liquefaction, etc) than splitting up into multiple vehicles enables higher performance. An all integrated MBT has to carry heavy and volume consuming weapon and other systems, as well as good armor protection for the crew.
If you remove the crew, the crew can be inside a much better protected vehicle with only defensive features. Entire weight budget in armor, APS, self defense AA.
If the crew is removed from the gun, there'd be no funny thing like a very expensive cannon + support system with less ammo than an ATGM carrier because the weight budget ran out.
As unmanned turret tanks are no longer designed for direct crew access to systems, there is no needed to seat the crew in the tank. As long as there is support personnel nearby to fix/recover vehicles, it'd be sufficient.
Overall, I think all vehicles with heavy "offensive" weapons intended to operate in a formation can all get the same treatment.
3. Communication should not be a problem when it involves formations in close proximity. It is not really practical for a opponent kilometers away to jam a meters level communication link (can also be tethered as backup). Opponent wouldn't want to put EWAR assets close enough to jam that kind of comms if they could.
There are some ideas about crews being far behind the front for survivability sake, but in the era of long range fires, I don't think it helps that much, not like a control station can be particularly stealthy either. Critical mass of defenses (CRAM, smoke, EWAR, DEW) may work better. So one may just mass everything near the front.
--------
So what would it look like? A heavy HAPC converted to command vehicle, with crew looking out from sensors 50 meters up, controlling a "tank" 15 meters ahead.
---------
**Some people complain at convey length due to more vehicles and likes, but what is really happening is dispersion is about vulnerability times cost per kilometer not arbitrary distance between vehicles.
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jsport
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Partially true but the humans are always going to want the best sensors for their own vehicle in case the drones crash...
UAS doing the work as you have repeatedly expressed is going to be the name of the game and likely armed UAS.
a coveted backup though
The tank is primarily an armored remote control station. ideally, yes, the crew should be away from the gun and hopefully that happens soon, but humans want/need to fix the gun that is their primary protection ASAP and that means riding w/ the gun. a tank that lobes or provides indirect fire only when the swarm has not been able to do the job and/or the tgt is far enough faway.
an armored remote control station crew are still going to want the protection of a full MBT both armor and armament.
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MY post was in reply to Kat Tsun's post in which he mentioned that there was no electric motor available that was both powerful enough to drive a tank, and small enough to fit within it's drive sprocket.
My point was that with electric motors, you don't just need one, or two. The more motors you fit, the less powerful , and smaller, each one can be. Also redundancy. If every wheel is powered, damage to one, or even a few, motors is not critical to the tank's mobility.
cheers,
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On an interesting side note:
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/y8hn8w/dont_see_a_setup_like_this_very_often_overpass/
Taken in May of last year according to this Flickr link via the comments. Somewhat unusual to see that many being transported in one go in recent times, at least before this year.
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/y8hn8w/dont_see_a_setup_like_this_very_often_overpass/
Taken in May of last year according to this Flickr link via the comments. Somewhat unusual to see that many being transported in one go in recent times, at least before this year.
Kat Tsun
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Yes this is true.
The main benefit of electric motors will be pseudo-self-tensioning elements of the track to allow for higher movement speeds and preclude ballooning. It will be heavy and require powerful suspensions or perhaps in-arm suspensions rather than torsion bars. M1 will need a new hull in the long hull to fully take advantage of it to allow for electric motors in the roadwheels as well as the sprockets/idle wheels.
Perhaps AbramsX will finally usher in Simpkin's "1990's mobility" that he talks about in Antitank.
The alternative technology is banded tracks which have only been demonstrated in vehicles of approximately 40 tons by Diehl, presumably for SPz Puma at some point in the future.
jsport
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How the Army wants to build its 'wolf pack' drone waves - Breaking Defense
New autonomy and network technology could enable a new form of high-intensity, low-altitude tactics.
any wolfpack needs to launched from the most forward area.. ie the remote controllers need to be inside a tank for protection.
Likewise a bunch of one shot wonder drones is bad idea as opposed to recoverable and reloadable armed UAS swarms. UGV motherships launching and recovering and reloading armed UAS is means to stop the adversary swarms by attacking their launch vehicles, as well as accomplish all other desires effects. .
Kat Tsun
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"Wolfpack drones" aren't going to have remote controllers. They're swarming autonomous weapons like AGM-124 or Brimstone.
The problem at the end of the day is fitting anti-tank missile quality warheads, sensors, and range into a platform that can nominally only carry 1/10th to 1/6th the payload fraction of a solid fuel rocket (i.e. an electric motor propeller plane). Generally people only choose one or two of those things, and those are usually range and warhead, although range sort of comes with the territory in most cases using battery motors, and diesel/heavy fuel setups are similarly long legged. So it's really just the warhead.
Remote control is used in something like HERO-120 simply because the ability to autonomously attack armor formations with a dual- or tri-mode seeker, al a Stormbreaker or Brimstone, isn't in the mass budget. A radio datalink and visual/NIR EO camera is, though.
Just to fit Javelin's 8.5 kg warhead would require a UAS of about 40-60 kilograms with massive cruciform or biplane wings. Javelin itself, in the launch tube, is about a quarter that weight. At the end of the day, solving the mass fraction issue will be the primary concern to fit warheads into tactically relevant platforms.
Swarming UAS/loitering anti-tank munitions are going to be operational-tactical systems used by division or brigade artillery units for mass anti-armor fire in lieu (or probably in support of) systems of conventional anti-tank means such as smart artillery shells and TGSM rocket artillery. The alternative is fiber optic guided missiles al a Spike-NLOS, but UAS offer greater range and military utility due to the time and targeting ambiguities needing to be lower. They're more like mobile minefields than point anti-tank systems in that they can deny areas to the enemy for a specified time period of an hour or maybe more. Perhaps they will grow in range/loiter time to exploit this advantage and flocks of these drones will be able to produce localized mobility obstacles for mechanized forces under the control of a centralized C3 system.
The counter system is provisioning mobile platoons and companies with local air defense systems able to defeat one or two drones at a time with airburst grenade launchers or lightweight cannons that can fit into an RWS and be guided by vehicle self defense radars. The counter system of the UAS penetrating platoon air defense is but it probably involves stand-in attack jammers and cheap mobile decoys mixed in with the more muscular attack systems.
No has really considered much past that but I imagine it will just be a push-pull of REC and jammer systems akin to every air defense battle since basically forever ever. Maybe tanks will have Suter-type attack jammer systems or some means of disrupting the localized radio datalinks between the autonomous flock members to cause them to break formation or TOT and be destroyed by air defense cannons of the tanks. Who knows. That's for the future to reveal in like idk maybe 40 years given the glacial pace of military technological developments these days.
The only interesting thing that autonomous swarms offer is the ability to loiter in the battlespace with on-call massed anti-tank/anti-position fires without needing a tactical fighter-bomber like an F-16 or Tornado IDS orbiting a few minutes away with racks full of ATGW with HEDP warheads. Which means it's cheaper, which means poor people can afford it. Flocks will be useful for replicating the effects of the platoon neutralization mission that something like XM2001 could do with 100 rounds.
The problem at the end of the day is fitting anti-tank missile quality warheads, sensors, and range into a platform that can nominally only carry 1/10th to 1/6th the payload fraction of a solid fuel rocket (i.e. an electric motor propeller plane). Generally people only choose one or two of those things, and those are usually range and warhead, although range sort of comes with the territory in most cases using battery motors, and diesel/heavy fuel setups are similarly long legged. So it's really just the warhead.
Remote control is used in something like HERO-120 simply because the ability to autonomously attack armor formations with a dual- or tri-mode seeker, al a Stormbreaker or Brimstone, isn't in the mass budget. A radio datalink and visual/NIR EO camera is, though.
Just to fit Javelin's 8.5 kg warhead would require a UAS of about 40-60 kilograms with massive cruciform or biplane wings. Javelin itself, in the launch tube, is about a quarter that weight. At the end of the day, solving the mass fraction issue will be the primary concern to fit warheads into tactically relevant platforms.
Swarming UAS/loitering anti-tank munitions are going to be operational-tactical systems used by division or brigade artillery units for mass anti-armor fire in lieu (or probably in support of) systems of conventional anti-tank means such as smart artillery shells and TGSM rocket artillery. The alternative is fiber optic guided missiles al a Spike-NLOS, but UAS offer greater range and military utility due to the time and targeting ambiguities needing to be lower. They're more like mobile minefields than point anti-tank systems in that they can deny areas to the enemy for a specified time period of an hour or maybe more. Perhaps they will grow in range/loiter time to exploit this advantage and flocks of these drones will be able to produce localized mobility obstacles for mechanized forces under the control of a centralized C3 system.
The counter system is provisioning mobile platoons and companies with local air defense systems able to defeat one or two drones at a time with airburst grenade launchers or lightweight cannons that can fit into an RWS and be guided by vehicle self defense radars. The counter system of the UAS penetrating platoon air defense is but it probably involves stand-in attack jammers and cheap mobile decoys mixed in with the more muscular attack systems.
No has really considered much past that but I imagine it will just be a push-pull of REC and jammer systems akin to every air defense battle since basically forever ever. Maybe tanks will have Suter-type attack jammer systems or some means of disrupting the localized radio datalinks between the autonomous flock members to cause them to break formation or TOT and be destroyed by air defense cannons of the tanks. Who knows. That's for the future to reveal in like idk maybe 40 years given the glacial pace of military technological developments these days.
The only interesting thing that autonomous swarms offer is the ability to loiter in the battlespace with on-call massed anti-tank/anti-position fires without needing a tactical fighter-bomber like an F-16 or Tornado IDS orbiting a few minutes away with racks full of ATGW with HEDP warheads. Which means it's cheaper, which means poor people can afford it. Flocks will be useful for replicating the effects of the platoon neutralization mission that something like XM2001 could do with 100 rounds.
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shin_getter
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There are offensive weapons, and there are defensive weapons.
Defensive weapon merely need to neutralize, suppress, deter and do not need to reliably destroy, and does not need to sustained combat power against equal mobility threats as contact should be followed by retreat. A defensive system however have to cover a wide set of threats in conditions where the platform is threatened. Something like Lasers, Air bursting autocannons and likes are good defensive weapon. Missiles are also good at defense due to low launcher requirements.
Offensive weapons can maximize projective destructive power against narrow target sets and conditions. As such AP round shooting tank (for causing penetrating catastrophic kill on large number of targets, as opposed to repairable mission kills on small number of targets) is a offensive weapon with matching weight and cost premium. A weapon system like artillery is also offensive, as its handling makes it less effective in self defense situations, and capability to defeat attacking threats is low for its cost.
A armored remote control station would benefit from being covered by defensive weapons. It does not need to pay the premium for offensive weapons and would not be positioned in the right spot to utilize them.
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FVL is looking for ineffective approaches again.
Anti-helicopter mines should be illustrative of the problem. It is not technically difficult to do an passive acoustic sensor net with tube launch (buried in the ground!) LOAL loitering AA Munition (see Iranian 538 missile). I don't think ALE have much of chance at doing mine warfare even if it has the magical conditions for sweeping the defending infantry out.
The idea that ALE can sweep the space of AA threats also complete forget opponent air power. A higher performance aircraft (perhaps just a faster drone like Iranian Karrar with Azarakhsh missiles) doing CAP can make helicopters flaming wrecks in no time. Even random walmart quadcopters from anywhere can close penetration corridors with look down sensors.
And opponents will be fighting ALE like drones directly. If drones can freely operate and suppress everything down to a guy with a big tube, the opponent is pretty much finished and no need to conduct "assaults." You can do all kind of fancy stuff when the opponent is already dead, but warfighting is about everything before that.
I mean, LOL at helicopter infantry assault "destroying" targets. By the time that is doable, a million other ways of killing the target would have been available. Also the idea of seizing terrain implies it can be held, and against drone threats the the opponent is certainly to have. If a terrain can be defended from drones, it can not be attacked by FLV drones. If a terrain can not be defended from drones, the helicopter landed infantry would be wiped when opponent allocated drones to attack them, unless the opponent doesn't have them and is pretty much finished since it is the lowest end of military capabilities.
I'm almost sure the next evolution of the concept would be the return of quadtilit VTOL to carry half a megawatt lasers to go with the helicopter assault~
*Hint: this line of thinking is like trying to design an armored APC to enable infantry with swords to conduct shock attack, because only shock and not fires can decide battles~ remember Suvorov ~
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jsport
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AV is claiming Switchblade 600 carries a javelin warhead 90km including loiter...maybe.. regardless, there woudl appear to be better small warheads /techniques for swarm w/ refit motherships could sustain operational Penetration as the US Army Multi-Domain strategy states.
UAS are an expensive means to provide obstacles when there are plenty of other options.
Armed, and reloadable RF hardened swarms are means to wear down and eventally over take drone defenses and get to the adversary mobile swarm launch complexes .
Swarms, cued from sats, would first and formost call in fire before they fire themselves. Only when high value fleeting and under cover vehicles present themselvs do the armed UAS fire.
jsport
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The best defense is a good offense and the swarms would protect the crewed tank the best by allowing no LOS no effectively the tank can remain a indirect fire/BLOS platform
Armed swarms operate in airspace too difficult for adversary CAP and they could down helicopters themselves.
exactly and armed swarms operate deep to accomplish this in operational Penetration w/ no threat to your launchers as they are defended by tanks.
jsport
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A recent Defense News AUSA video w/ an AV presenter claimed it carried a javelin warhead and flys 90Km, just quoting.
AV has the resource (congressional capture) to upgrade for Ukr.
shin_getter
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In a world where you can shoot indirect, so can the enemy. You should not expect to outrange a technological peer without dedicating it in design.
A vehicle a fixed maximum weight budget, for example 50 tons, with a crew compartment of 10 tons and chassis of 20 tons, leave you with 20 tons for weapon of X range on top of other chassis weights.
A vehicle with sample maximum weight budget of 50 tons without a crew compartment, with chassis of 20 tons leaves with 30tons for weapon of X+Y range.
So sitting the crew in another vehicle result in more weapons range.
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But that kind of thinking is highly attrition and tactics focused. If you look at the current war, huge losses are taken in offensives that everyone knows is "inefficient". But moving into no-man's land and taking huge losses is necessary: long range fires can not neutralize all threats. No long range fire can deal with mines, and long range fires are extremely inefficient against small platforms in complex terrain.
Perhaps much of shellfire can be replaced with indirect, but there is no solution to mines or tunnels or obstacles and one has to close to minimum range at some point. Armored vehicles have to do.
Defensive counter-air can be attritible drones themselves. The opponent will have acceptable some attrition as price of maintaining battlefield control.
Loitering munitions are anti-concealment weapons, by being able catch short windows where the opponent moves. The small aerial vehicle space has a lot of designs available:
1. Loitering munitions
+sensors/comms
+endurance
-speed
Some alternative roles for small aerial vehicles can be seen:
2. Low cost cruise missile (Iranian shahed "drone")
+ endurance/range
+ warhead payload fraction
- no sensors/comms
- speed
3. Low cost bomber
+ sensor
+ reuse/VTOL
- endurance (20 minutes, <10km range)
- speed
4. Missiles (rocket powered)
+ speed
- endurance
I don't think loitering munitions would be optimal in swarms or in massed fires on protected frontline forces. There is too much sensors expanded with excessive overlapping coverage, and long endurance is not needed for tactical distance attacks. The need for mass also suggests the target force has hard kill defenses and while lacking of stealth, where faster projectile works better.
Basically, if the opponent is trying to rerun of Prokhorovka while massing AA, it is the place to use to time on target attack with MRLS/Artillery. Perhaps drones can be allocated for this task if other assets are unavailable/insufficient, but it is not optimal.
The real utility of loitering munition is killing opponent forces trying to infiltrate the front lines, or attacking rear line assets doing shoot and scoot out of hiding spots. Basically where sensor-shooter separated kill chain is too slow and the target to hide before fires can be applied. Of course of the opponent lacks basic AA coverage, everything else can be engaged too, but the opponent simply will not survive against drone mass if they lack AA in general.
If the opponent position is known, for example front line facing each other, bombers with very short range is sufficient as long as it can penetrate defenses. That electrical quadcopters can do this role is illustrative, I think the evolution of the concept is high speed electrical aircraft (low operating costs) doing dive bombing while normal ISR is offloaded to other platforms, as cycle time, weapons accuracy, and defense penetration is important here while time over opponent is low.
I can totally see future loitering munitions having a terminal rocket dash stage with wings ejected. This is not unlike Russian AShM with supersonic terminal dash. (or mount a rocket, for the larger platforms, already seen on some large multicopters)
Basically attack munitions will evolve to defeat defenses, but do it in a matter that minimize costs. If air defenses only works for self defense against slow projectiles, air attack would evolve fast projectile in the terminal stage. (complex network attack is a expensive counter and not needed against lightweight AA guns)
Now some formations already have far more significant defenses, but if independent maneuver elements are only provided with light AA guns, attack munitions that can defeat light AA guns works to defeat them.
Autonomous and swarms are both overrated. The ability to maintain sensor coverage over huge part of the battlespace is strategic. The ability to combine with other long range fires performing DEAD means no-mans land can expand dramatically as anti-drone AA fail to survive good old artillery.
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Kat Tsun
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"Protected frontline forces" in the XXI century is like a tank platoon my guy.
Small UAS with HEDP warheads are extremely effective at obliterating individual fighting positions and light armored vehicles alike.
The only practical defense is giving individual armored vehicles air defense radars and telling infantry to dig in and not move much tbh.
Small UAS with HEDP warheads are extremely effective at obliterating individual fighting positions and light armored vehicles alike.
The only practical defense is giving individual armored vehicles air defense radars and telling infantry to dig in and not move much tbh.
jsport
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..havent seen any thought that would deter the idea of a tank w/ a gun range longer than the current 120mm and a mobile UAS refit mothership best able to accomplish the US Army's Pentetration goals as part of the Multi-Domian Ops (MDO). The US Army wants a whole Penetration Div. These tms would specialize in infiltration where the front line isnt and be able to outrange any defenses until these units accomplish their goals (SEAD counter c2, counter logistics& support) in the rear area. .
There's the fact that tanks don't really need any more speed, desert storm was gust about the ideal scenario for fast tank movement and besides a few short sprints the abrams never whint full speed, infact I don't think it ever got in a tank dule at max speed anyway. Simply put there are a lot of other things on the battle field that create friction that keep tanks from going 60 miles per hour, that probably showed tanks designers that hp per sprocket was good and to focus on other stuff, like fule efficiency. And one can't really ignore those friction as well or you end up with Russia during the first month of the Ukrainian war (not that they ever whint with much speed anyway).
Kat Tsun
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Desert Storm was a snail offensive because battalions kept overrunning their corps and COCOM mandated phase lines though. VII US Corps barely managed 5 miles an hour for the most part. It was a true Zhukovite central planned strategic offensive operation though. Rare implementation of Soviet battle methods by a Western force.
If "hp per sprocket" (do you mean "sprocket horsepower"?) was "good", then why does AbramsX have nearly 50% more over M1? Clearly it wasn't good enough to keep them from making the leap from 16-18 shp/t to 26 shp/t, comparable to M113 HOTROD. We've just now reached HIMAG levels of mobility and the 1970's battlecruiser tank is now fully realized thanks to all the gears in the world.
If "hp per sprocket" (do you mean "sprocket horsepower"?) was "good", then why does AbramsX have nearly 50% more over M1? Clearly it wasn't good enough to keep them from making the leap from 16-18 shp/t to 26 shp/t, comparable to M113 HOTROD. We've just now reached HIMAG levels of mobility and the 1970's battlecruiser tank is now fully realized thanks to all the gears in the world.
There is a catch-22 to gun upgrades. If you need a gun to bust up fortifications then 120mm is adequate and you can call in large caliber tube artillery on top of targets where it is not. The 30mm chain guns would chew up most urban targets. The 30mm has a wider field of fire, too. You can crack tanks with ATGW that can come from many sources, so it can be off board. Heavy ATGW can outrange 130mm in most cases. Going with guided munitions is more important tbh. Survival, general utility, and counterfire should all trump anti-tank reasons for a gun. Not so sure the MBT shouldn't be going the route that guided destroyers went 50 years ago. High relative shaft power, VLS, rapidfire mid-caliber, sensors and range focus on control of locus, and maximum focus on a compromise between ease of maintenance and damage control in the structure. AbramsX doesn't check off all those boxes, but its closer. Maybe a BradleyX should be the M1 replacement.
Like it or not, a drone will get to its target. So we need drones to counter drones. And those drones should be over both land and in the air. Maybe even need some drones to be able to traverse over water, something AbramsX won't do without a bridge.
Like it or not, a drone will get to its target. So we need drones to counter drones. And those drones should be over both land and in the air. Maybe even need some drones to be able to traverse over water, something AbramsX won't do without a bridge.
Archaic would be a poor use in this paragraph. VLS has not found its way into tanks.
Kat Tsun
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Except it has?
It was pretty common in the 1980's, actually. Object 299 had a VLS carrier, FAADS NLOS was going to be a M113A3 with a VLS battery, there were probably quite a few in Europe as well that are somewhat obscure, perhaps France had something of the nature. Pereh technically counts as a precursor to VLS tanks, too. People simply realized, like giraffes, that it was worse than putting them on a truck very quickly and actually deployed VLS artillery was palletized and placed on flatbeds. It's not a hard conclusion to come to. Even the giraffes themselves were replaced by Tiger attack helicopters or the Westland Apache because helicopters are more flexible and do the same job.
Archaic is perfect because it's a deprecated concept from an older era that is uncommon after new, more common things arrived.
IMI Jumper and Lockheed NLOS-LS, the Serbian ALAS and Russian Germes, and the Japanese Type 96 MPMS and US EFOG-M, are all carried on utility trucks rather than tracked, armored vehicles. There's no particular reason for a low signature BLOS system to be heavily armored. Missiles, especially cold launched cruise missiles of the low velocity and teeny engines used in FOGs, are incredibly difficult to track with orbital gunfire spotting, if possible at all. Not so with artillery howitzers or multiple rocket launchers, which can be detected from orbit by SBIRS and targeted by counterbattery fire, so the actual risk of counterbattery is pretty much nil.
I guess people in the '80's thought someone might be able to track the fiber cables or radio datalinks of VLS missiles with SARs or HF/DF idk.
Meanwhile, giraffes were just supposed to be cheaper attack helicopters because European armies couldn't afford enough Bo-105s or Westland Lynx to fill out the needs to have anti-tank battalions for divisions, and so they were going to use battalions of Leopard 1s and Challenger 1s converted to elevating mast tanks with TRIGAT instead. Then the Cold War ended, tons of money was freed up by downsizing, and people made Tiger HAP and Westland Apache was procured, solving the problem utterly.
It's not only archaic, it's so archaic it never even got produced in any real numbers. People simply realized it was a bad idea long before the bending of steel occurred, and so actual VLS systems went from being self propelled armored vehicles with tank-like protection in theory to just trucks with cargo beds or PLS sleds in practice.
Even before that, the use of VLS systems by ground troops shifted from self moving platforms to simple air-dropped pods of 463Ls with a dozen missiles, as was the case in Small Unit Operations and Lightning Over Water/RAND's adaptation of the former, because it was realized that full track armored vehicles are unnecessary and arguably worse than static mounts or light utility vehicles..
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jsport
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To replace the Abrams tank, the Army should stick to what it knows - Breaking Defense
The Army is considering an unmanned future system, but AEI’s John Ferrari and Charles Rahr argue the Abrams X is a better bet.
nope
jsport
what do you know about surfing Major? you're from-
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In this illustrative example, the Army begins procuring DLPs in the mid-2030s at a total cost of $1.1 billion a year—half as much as the $2.2 billion that it would cost annually to remanufacture Abrams tanks. Such cost savings might be possible because DLPs would not need to protect a crew and could thus be lighter and smaller than current manned Abrams tanks. But it is also possible that such savings would not be attained: The procurement costs of unmanned DLPs could be comparable to or greater than those of refurbished Abrams tanks.To replace the Abrams tank, the Army should stick to what it knows - Breaking Defense
The Army is considering an unmanned future system, but AEI’s John Ferrari and Charles Rahr argue the Abrams X is a better bet.breakingdefense.com
nope
from DLP PDF
IMHO alot of research funding into hard concepts needs to occur before a DLP is even defined.
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DLP is so ill-defined at the moment that attempts to project it's budget are essentially futile, I'm actually shocked the CBO went with the completely pointless "this is what it would cost if it cost half as much" diagram. Usually they're better than that.
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shin_getter
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People like to think of armored fighting vehicle in terms of naval analogy. It is not a particularly bad idea, but some fundamental differences needs to be taken into account.
A ship is more efficient and effective when it is larger: transport ships regularly reach enormous sizes limited only by lack of demand for a route. Non-rail land vehicles are on the hand, more effective when small as terrain limits size and mass heavily. A tank is not like a battleship. A tank is more like a turret, and a combined arms formation is the equivalent to a ship. Despite the end of battleships, there is no end to gun turrets on ships. For land forces Unlike naval forces, there is no need to rebuild everything due to tight system integration of ships, when new weapon concepts become available: one instead just add vehicles to the formation.
The other thing about ships is that volume is not a problem, while it is a huge problem for land vehicles having to fit in tunnels and airplanes. This have big implications on the value of armor. Armor on ships are heavy things that makes the ship sink, protects only a small volume and is ineffective if penetrated. The alternative passive defense concept is to simply make the ship bigger: systems are spread out with lower chance of multisystem destruction on hit, ships gain more reserve buoyancy, air absorb energy and in the end there is still a lot of steel to get through even it is not in a solid plate but spread out across the hull and bulkheads, and there is other benefits like storage space and habitability. Making the ship bigger is simply a more robust defense that works against most threats as opposed to all or nothing for armor. For land vehicles however, volume is constrained and passive protection demands armor, and some passive protection is useful to protect against small and area of effect weapons, a real issue now that miniature robots with small weapons payloads are common.
The final thing involves operating environment. In desert warfare one can perhaps conceive tanks as landship fleets fighting at points in history, the typical areas of fighting is complex terrain. The naval case of attacking into complex terrain is called amphibious assault, and gun fire support is a useful capability.
Once a combat system is deeply embedded as a small part within a complex combat system as tanks in a combined arms framework, the capability of a individual platform is not so important relative to the system. The tactical level tank debate is in some sense, never all that relevant and increasingly less so. People know to point at the failing of German Cats in WWII but nonetheless go back to OCD over glacis slope or something.
-------------------------
Also, if one is to design a minimalist vehicle for blasting machine gunner and concrete structures, I think 106mm recoilless/lowish velocity raven gun on a UGV could do the job. (M114 BAT?) Restart the CKEM line if APS is considered a serious threat since it fits on far more platforms and give the whole force overmatch, instead of getting capability on a tiny fleet of vehicles that is likely to be at the wrong place and time against a intelligent opponent.
A cheap direct fire HE thrower is nice to have, looking at the past decade of urban warfare that involve wholesale flattening of entire areas. Dumb artillery is too imprecise (and thus expensive to obtained required effects), smart artillery or missiles is also too expensive and there are dead zones and reaction times. Now there are also other alternatives like thermobaric/superheavy rockets or man-handling a mountain howitzer into place (siege of marawai) but they have their own problems. Demolishing a urban area with autocannons is likely order of magnitude more expensive than with simple big HE.
The requirement would probably stay until indoors flying drones can clear urban areas (likely requiring autonomy, but look at skydio and it may not be that far off). It is also conceivable that low cost airpower (see optimistic EVTOL cost breakdowns) can enable cheap loitering air support can greatly cut down on land based support needs.
A ship is more efficient and effective when it is larger: transport ships regularly reach enormous sizes limited only by lack of demand for a route. Non-rail land vehicles are on the hand, more effective when small as terrain limits size and mass heavily. A tank is not like a battleship. A tank is more like a turret, and a combined arms formation is the equivalent to a ship. Despite the end of battleships, there is no end to gun turrets on ships. For land forces Unlike naval forces, there is no need to rebuild everything due to tight system integration of ships, when new weapon concepts become available: one instead just add vehicles to the formation.
The other thing about ships is that volume is not a problem, while it is a huge problem for land vehicles having to fit in tunnels and airplanes. This have big implications on the value of armor. Armor on ships are heavy things that makes the ship sink, protects only a small volume and is ineffective if penetrated. The alternative passive defense concept is to simply make the ship bigger: systems are spread out with lower chance of multisystem destruction on hit, ships gain more reserve buoyancy, air absorb energy and in the end there is still a lot of steel to get through even it is not in a solid plate but spread out across the hull and bulkheads, and there is other benefits like storage space and habitability. Making the ship bigger is simply a more robust defense that works against most threats as opposed to all or nothing for armor. For land vehicles however, volume is constrained and passive protection demands armor, and some passive protection is useful to protect against small and area of effect weapons, a real issue now that miniature robots with small weapons payloads are common.
The final thing involves operating environment. In desert warfare one can perhaps conceive tanks as landship fleets fighting at points in history, the typical areas of fighting is complex terrain. The naval case of attacking into complex terrain is called amphibious assault, and gun fire support is a useful capability.
Once a combat system is deeply embedded as a small part within a complex combat system as tanks in a combined arms framework, the capability of a individual platform is not so important relative to the system. The tactical level tank debate is in some sense, never all that relevant and increasingly less so. People know to point at the failing of German Cats in WWII but nonetheless go back to OCD over glacis slope or something.
-------------------------
Also, if one is to design a minimalist vehicle for blasting machine gunner and concrete structures, I think 106mm recoilless/lowish velocity raven gun on a UGV could do the job. (M114 BAT?) Restart the CKEM line if APS is considered a serious threat since it fits on far more platforms and give the whole force overmatch, instead of getting capability on a tiny fleet of vehicles that is likely to be at the wrong place and time against a intelligent opponent.
A cheap direct fire HE thrower is nice to have, looking at the past decade of urban warfare that involve wholesale flattening of entire areas. Dumb artillery is too imprecise (and thus expensive to obtained required effects), smart artillery or missiles is also too expensive and there are dead zones and reaction times. Now there are also other alternatives like thermobaric/superheavy rockets or man-handling a mountain howitzer into place (siege of marawai) but they have their own problems. Demolishing a urban area with autocannons is likely order of magnitude more expensive than with simple big HE.
The requirement would probably stay until indoors flying drones can clear urban areas (likely requiring autonomy, but look at skydio and it may not be that far off). It is also conceivable that low cost airpower (see optimistic EVTOL cost breakdowns) can enable cheap loitering air support can greatly cut down on land based support needs.
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Apparently the Abrams X is competing with an unmanned robotic tank proposal known as the 'Decisive Lethality Platform', despite the fact that the latter seems to be still in the early concept stage at best:
breakingdefense.com
From the CBO report linked in the article:
To replace the Abrams tank, the Army should stick to what it knows - Breaking Defense
The Army is considering an unmanned future system, but AEI’s John Ferrari and Charles Rahr argue the Abrams X is a better bet.
From the CBO report linked in the article:
(I didn't bother adding the accompanying 'Illustrative Example' cost graph.)
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Yeah, but since it doesn't have an AGI stuffed into it, it's effectively useless, given that Sat-Linked UAVs were tricked by a bunch of insurgents with off-the-shelf equipment and some nation-state tips. This would likely be a rolling friendly-fire incident if certain nations would have their way.
shin_getter
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Seems like a very bloated vehicle now that every light vehicle can have a 30mm RWS stuffed on top.
Armor that protected not the weapon, the sensors, the communications, the running gear, or any men is almost completely pointless. What is armor protecting really, the engine and transmission? But this isn't 1930 where the engine can be precious and a bottleneck.
----
The lynx family probably have a lower risk concept that works better:
Note the seats on the vehicles, and the low total weight. It is one where where crew can dismount to fight but still generally be collocated for all the support tasks and deal with communication issues.
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Pre apology for my lack of engineering knowledge but why don’t we see gatling guns like a modernized GAU-8 30mm
cannon on a [unmanned] ground vehicle. Is it rate of fire and storage/resupply issue?
Firefinder
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Yes.
Gatling guns are basically too fast firing to be actually useful in most areas.
Like sure.
3000 rounds a minute is nice and all..
Until you realize.
You need 3000 rounds to fire it for 1 minute.
IRC 1 30mm is about 2 pounds? So to fire it for one minute you need basically 3 tons of ammo.
You can see the logistics issues.
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