Tanks are honestly starting to hit the same issue that Battleship did at their end.
Their main weapons are out penning any reasonable attempt of Armoring against at combat ranges.
In some cases tank guns are penning more armor then can be put on a tank well outside of combat ranges.
Like hell the newest MBT designs are still closer to going over 60 tons then not AS CONCEPTS, let alone how much weight they will gain going Prime Time and plus few decades afterwards. APS only going to go so far, especially when you toss in EWAR fun and like.
We might see a resurgence of safe against autocannon armored only tanks like the OG Leopard 1 was with the addition of low observation/stealth features.
Since He who gets spotted first dies first, so don't get spotted.
That or a complete paragram shift in what a tank is.
Since unlike the Battleship there no Carrier anolog to take over the role of putting a whole lot of boom into the enemy ugly mug. Cannons are still far better at that then any thing else yet.
Anything that improves:
Cost
Protection
Lethality
Situational Awareness
Logistics
In reverse order, without sacrificing aspects of any. You'd have to look at technologies that enhance each aspect without crossing a "line" in others. For example, the MAUS at the time offered significant protection and lethality but massively increased cost / logistics. Situational awareness did not really change in regards to other German offerings at the time. This could lead towards an interesting discussion.
I would add "mechanical reliability" to that list, though I guess you might roll it into logistics.
I don't think there's going to be any real armor breakthroughs, unless someone invents Biphase carbide somehow... BPC is the armor used in OGREs, it's carbon fibers in diamondoid matrix. Super light and impossibly strong.
We might see a resurgence of safe against autocannon armored only tanks like the OG Leopard 1 was with the addition of low observation/stealth features.
Since He who gets spotted first dies first, so don't get spotted.
Maybe. The Leo1 happened because it was impractical at the time to put enough steel armor onto a tank to stop a shaped charge warhead, so why try.
There's also the flip side of that, better situational awareness so that you can see the other guy first and therefore shoot first, and that's easier to implement.
That or a complete paragram shift in what a tank is.
Since unlike the Battleship there no Carrier anolog to take over the role of putting a whole lot of boom into the enemy ugly mug. Cannons are still far better at that then any thing else yet.
Yup and its getting to the point were putting enough Armor to stop a long rod penerator is impactical as well.
Like there honestly isn't a tank out there that has armor able to stop the newest 120/125mm APSlFSD shells, let alone the 130/140 ones in testing, at combat ranges. The M1 cant, the Ts cant, neither the European or Chinese one can...
And the Armor need to do so?
Automatically makes even a 2 man tank go up to over 40 tons.
Throw in that more tanks die to soldiers or helis?
Better off using the same weight to make those two jobs harder by going for more alround protection over trying to make the Glacis or turret bounce a APFSDS rod...
(1)MBT-level frontal armor is not as valuable for IFVs as it is for MBTs. Simply because of their role and tactics. It's also harder to provide, though not impossible.
(2)frontal protection includes all the sides, b/c half of frontal 60 deg arc(+/- 30) is sides. Just frontal armor alone isn't that valuable.
(3)if you want strictly front - it doesn't require MBT chassis. Composite frontal armor of tanks by itself isn't all that heavy, ironically.
Tanks are honestly starting to hit the same issue that Battleship did at their end.
Their main weapons are out penning any reasonable attempt of Armoring against at combat ranges.
In some cases tank guns are penning more armor then can be put on a tank well outside of combat ranges.
Like hell the newest MBT designs are still closer to going over 60 tons then not AS CONCEPTS, let alone how much weight they will gain going Prime Time and plus few decades afterwards. APS only going to go so far, especially when you toss in EWAR fun and like.
We might see a resurgence of safe against autocannon armored only tanks like the OG Leopard 1 was with the addition of low observation/stealth features.
Since He who gets spotted first dies first, so don't get spotted.
That or a complete paragram shift in what a tank is.
Since unlike the Battleship there no Carrier anolog to take over the role of putting a whole lot of boom into the enemy ugly mug. Cannons are still far better at that then any thing else yet.
We've hardly seen tank-on-tank combat in Ukraine either, despite the large numbers of tanks on both sides. Its just easier to take down a tank with precision artillery/drones, and ATGMs than it is to send out another tank and put the crew and vehicle at risk. You can have an infantryman sit in a bush 4km away and launch a top-attack weapon that's almost guaranteed to get a kill or have a cheap little drone give coordinates to artillery many miles away.
You add to that the fact that tanks aren't expected to be terribly relevant in a fight with China, means that there is no reason for the U.S. to accelerate development. They'll keep working on OMT until it's ready, however long that may take. And when it's ready, around the 2035-2040 timeframe it will replace the Abrams for use in mainly frontal assaults and some fire support. You wont see the tank be the king of the battlefield again like it was from the 40s up until the 00's. The golden age is over. There's just too much that can take out a tank and too little that a tank can do about it.
I would add "mechanical reliability" to that list, though I guess you might roll it into logistics.
I don't think there's going to be any real armor breakthroughs, unless someone invents Biphase carbide somehow... BPC is the armor used in OGREs, it's carbon fibers in diamondoid matrix. Super light and impossibly strong.
I think that it's worth considering the potential impact a material such as graphene could have on future tank developments (or for that matter any vehicular developments, airborne, marine, or terrestrial). Even if you didn't use it for the armour and you just used it for the chassis or running gear you could see vast weight savings.
I'm personally quite optimistic as to whether or not we'll get reliably manufactured, high quality sheet graphene at a reasonable cost, although I won't pretend to know when we might have such a capability. And even if it's more expensive than steel gram for gram, it's so much stronger that you'd need much less of it for a given strength.
Of course, it would also help in other areas of tank design, such as within the gun, engine, or armour.
Tanks are honestly starting to hit the same issue that Battleship did at their end.
Their main weapons are out penning any reasonable attempt of Armoring against at combat ranges.
In some cases tank guns are penning more armor then can be put on a tank well outside of combat ranges.
Like hell the newest MBT designs are still closer to going over 60 tons then not AS CONCEPTS, let alone how much weight they will gain going Prime Time and plus few decades afterwards. APS only going to go so far, especially when you toss in EWAR fun and like.
We might see a resurgence of safe against autocannon armored only tanks like the OG Leopard 1 was with the addition of low observation/stealth features.
Since He who gets spotted first dies first, so don't get spotted.
That or a complete paragram shift in what a tank is.
Since unlike the Battleship there no Carrier anolog to take over the role of putting a whole lot of boom into the enemy ugly mug. Cannons are still far better at that then any thing else yet.
I wholeheartedly disagree. The additional weight of the Abrams seems to pose no serious issue for mobility, further additional weight can be added. If this weight cannot be accounted for by the engine or suspension a redesign might be necessary... but examples of more modern designs that found ways to reduce weight show that this truly isn't going to be that difficult to overcome.. perhaps simply just a new turret will be sufficient.
Please note that the turret crew sits lower in the vehicle, thus the height of the turret armor display is drastically reduced. The hull can be ignored for now since it is just a Leopard 2 hull modified for this tech demonstrator. The turret is the primary emphasis.
The breech and gun are separated (but reachable via movable armored panels on the interior from either gunner or tank commander). The autoloader pulls ammo from safe storage and loads without endangering crew members or exposing them. The crew sit lower, but view higher thanks to the multiple systems available for use and tall periscopes with forward view. The radar and active protection system offer superb protection against chemical energy attacks, the low profile of the turret offers significant advantages in protection for the crew. Now, with future upgrades to trophy and lightweight armor this vertically thin turret armor array can be made to protect this tank against increasingly powerful and modern kinetic energy rounds, while relying more and more heavily on protection systems such as jammers, smoke, and of course also the trophy system.
To reiterate, I do NOT think that main battle tanks are getting too heavy, or too powerful for any reasonable attempt at armoring them. I think that most main battle tanks today are quickly losing their footing on the real world "meta" if they hadn't already decades ago. Russia is a great example, their tanks have been obsolete in design for so long that no feasible attempt at upgrading them solves the core issues. No MBT on the planet currently has been more future-proof than the Abrams had been at the time... something new might need further "future proofing" as well. Smarter minds than mine will come together and design the replacement for the Abrams, and it might not be what you expect from a main battle tank but it certainly must change your mind on their obsolescence.
Ouch. 40% weight growth that needs to be planned for in initial design!?!?!?! So your basic clean-sheet tank design cannot weigh more than 50 tonnes, and it's still going to end up near or over 70 tonnes at end of life. (lots of expletives deleted)
Now, that German concept where a single tank is actually a group of 4 vehicles, with a crew of 4 total between all vehicles, is kinda interesting. I can easily see a World of Tanks style control interface for the remote control system, when people are actually directly controlling the vehicles instead of the vehicles operating autonomously.
The hard part is the maintenance of all those vehicles with only 4 bodies, when they also need to be digging in and standing watches to make sure they aren't attacked...
(I am reminded of the short story by James Cobb titled "CAV", about a US intervention in Mali against an Algerian invasion. The characters there are members of a US Cavalry recon section, but there's all of 7 people total between 3 vehicles: 3 crew in the command vehicle plus a 4-man scout team in the back. The other two vehicles are capable of autonomous operation and also directly controlled.)
I would really like to see the German presentation from that conference.
Except the war in Ukraine shows us that the Iraq-Afghanistan all-aspect anti-armor threat isn't limited to low-intensity combats.
The issue of armored volume remains but tank-like protection probably isn't necessary for IFVs. IFVs only want protection against the most common anti-armor threats i.e. hollow charge grenades and light to medium cannons, but before that they want to be bulletproof against light to heavy machine guns. Everything else is ideally killed by the tank. If it isn't, then you simply don't attack mechanized.
All this really means is that tanks lead the attack, and come into view first, with IFVs a few dozen or hundred meters behind them. An IFV can attack in rare instances where the threat is limited to "machine guns and grenade launchers" like the bronegruppa in Afghanistan, but against anti-tank guns like T-12 or whatever the tank, or the dismounts, will lead an attack.
The good news is that infantry can still lead attacks, as Ukraine shows us, so tanks aren't absolutely necessary just highly desirable.
My mistake. I'd guess Paladins will still be rolling around for at least another 10 years though. Maybe the 71 will make it to 100 after all?
Point is just because an engine (AGT-1500), gun (M256), or tank (M1) is old doesn't make it bad. An Abrams with a more capable transmission would get a new lease on life. The AGT-1500 was designed for a growth potential to 2,000 horsepower reliably, and was studied under the Block III tank. It might get that once the ACT hits upper limits again.
Anyway can't wait for the heaviest tank in history (210 tons) to end up being an M1A4Dv2 Abrams with a 92% efficient transmission and AGT-1500 literally screaming at 4,500 RPM, lugging itself up a hill.
Tanks are honestly starting to hit the same issue that Battleship did at their end.
Their main weapons are out penning any reasonable attempt of Armoring against at combat ranges.
In some cases tank guns are penning more armor then can be put on a tank well outside of combat ranges.
Like hell the newest MBT designs are still closer to going over 60 tons then not AS CONCEPTS, let alone how much weight they will gain going Prime Time and plus few decades afterwards. APS only going to go so far, especially when you toss in EWAR fun and like.
We might see a resurgence of safe against autocannon armored only tanks like the OG Leopard 1 was with the addition of low observation/stealth features.
Since He who gets spotted first dies first, so don't get spotted.
That or a complete paragram shift in what a tank is.
Since unlike the Battleship there no Carrier anolog to take over the role of putting a whole lot of boom into the enemy ugly mug. Cannons are still far better at that then any thing else yet.
The Tank will still be the heavily armed and armoured unit, but I'm expecting identical looking command, IFV, AD, etc versions to arrive. WW2 there were plenty of command and spotter tanks, with dummy barrels. No reason you cant make a command version, with a fixed turret. Add a drone carrier with lots of cheap drones. This is only for Tier 1 countries. Everyone else will continue with Leo2/3 or if really poor T72 clones.
For a common chassis the minimum you can get away with is with a common suspension and drive-train. You could have different superstructures for different types (taller ones for IFVs/APCs, shorter ones for MBTs). Of course, this would start to get in the way of commonality, but I can't see it getting in the way that much (I'd imagine that commonality of parts in the drivetrain, suspension, engine, will be more important than the actual structure of the vehicle itself). You could even implement modular armour if you want your IFV to be upgradable to heavy IFV standard (with MBT-like protection) or your MBT to be more of a light tank (with IFV-like protection) in the event that you want some expeditionary fire-power (although the latter is unlikely given the US adoption of the M10).
Ukraine has told us humans tire, robot drones do not. What if the future armor is no crew at all? Robots can search, acquire, build kill chain workflows, and execute dispositions much faster than a human can process. Humans tend to diddle.
No The Tank will still be the heavily armed and armoured unit, but I'm expecting identical looking command, IFV, AD, etc versions to arrive. WW2 there were plenty of command and spotter tanks, with dummy barrels. reason you cant make a command version, with a fixed turret. Add a drone carrier with lots of cheap drones. This is only for Tier 1 countries. Everyone else will continue with Leo2/3 or if really poor T72 clones.
You can definitely make a IFV or a air defense system look like a MBT at first glance? Maybe to a journalist or other layman.
Tanks are tanks, and the main reason they have such high frontal armor protection is to defend against anti-tank guns, and you can't really do that with any other weapon system. Which is why tanks lead an attack. If you have no tanks, the solution is not to armor IFVs to the point of being bad tanks, it's to lead with your dismounts in classic stormtrooper methods: attack on your belly and use cover and concealment to get within hand grenade distance of the enemy trench. Then bomb them and assault the trench by point fire.
Except the M1 Battle Command Vehicle wasn't great.
Not terrible but not great. It was just too expensive after the hull production had shut down. While I wouldn't mind seeing M1 BCVs in the armor battalions they really aren't necessary with modern BCOTM and BACNs. It mostly made sense when the lieutenant colonel needed to actually be up in the bizniz and directing fire by wireless. Even then he'd probably be mad he can't blast stuff with his cannon.
Nowadays he'll just be oogling you from a Grey Eagle's video feed from the back of a Brad with three SATCOM tumors on its roof and occasionally pulling up the second or third line in the assault and shooting with the Bushmaster if he's got chest hair.
If Lima brings back hull production in the coming...whenever, it'll be at least 5 years now, they might be able to crank out enough hulls per year to keep the number of functional M1s at SIAD constant. But you'd need to open a few more factories and find a few thousand more ballistic welders from literally nowhere to actually start doing things like this. There weren't enough hulls to consider mounting the FAADS or construction of the new ARV back when we had Detroit and Lima cranking out 300 tanks a month. The Soviets didn't really even have that capacity and they were triple that, but their assumptions for battle losses were more realistic, tbf.
Which means it ain't happening. You'll get the Bradley CPC and you will like it (really it's fine though).
Cheap drones are worse than expensive ones against modern EW...
The USAF sent some cheap drones to Ukraine that turned out to be worthless because they just died instantly. Even commercial drones aren't good enough. There's a reason drones are increasing in quality through the Ukraine War and it's mostly relating to REC hardening.
I'd rather have 5,000 Leo 2A4s or T-72s instead of 500 "Tier 1" (what's that? A Leo 2A4 with a body kit like KF51? isn't "Tier 1" what they describe cities or commandos as?) tanks any day of the week. A lot of okay or mediocre tanks will win a war. Too fewbut really great tanks will lose it. Isn't that the lesson of the Tiger and Panther?
Industrial warfare never disappeared and the ability to produce a lot of tanks is more important than the quality of those tanks per se.
if you have 1 command tank, and 6 normal tanks, which one will you hit first? If 7 tanks, all look alike, then you are just playing the odds. This was why in WW2 allied command tanks had dummy barrels.
Yeah you can definitely make a IFV or a air defense system look like a MBT...
Except the M1 Battle Command Vehicle wasn't great.
Not terrible but not great. It was just too expensive after the hull production had shut down. While I wouldn't mind seeing M1 BCVs in the armor battalions they really aren't necessary with modern BCOTM and BACNs. It mostly made sense when the lieutenant colonel needed to actually be up in the bizniz and directing fire by wireless. Even then he'd probably be mad he can't blast stuff with his cannon.
Nowadays he'll just be oogling you from a Grey Eagle's video feed from the back of a Brad with three SATCOM tumors on its roof and occasionally pulling up the second or third line in the assault and shooting with the Bushmaster if he's got chest hair.
If Lima brings back hull production in the coming...whenever, it'll be at least 5 years now, they might be able to crank out enough hulls per year to keep the number of functional M1s at SIAD constant. But you'd need to open a few more factories and find a few thousand more ballistic welders from literally nowhere to actually start doing things like this. There weren't enough hulls to consider mounting the FAADS or construction of the new ARV back when we had Detroit and Lima cranking out 300 tanks a month. The Soviets didn't really even have that capacity and they were triple that, but their assumptions for battle losses were more realistic, tbf.
Which means it ain't happening. You'll get the Bradley CPC and you will like it (really it's fine though).
Cheap drones are worse than expensive ones against modern EW...
The USAF sent some cheap drones to Ukraine that turned out to be worthless because they just died instantly. Even commercial drones aren't good enough. There's a reason drones are increasing in quality through the Ukraine War and it's mostly relating to REC hardening.
I'd rather have 5,000 Leo 2A4s or T-72s instead of 500 "Tier 1" (what's that? A Leo 2A4 with a body kit like KF51? isn't "Tier 1" what they describe cities or commandos as?) tanks any day of the week. A lot of okay or mediocre tanks will win a war. Too fewbut really great tanks will lose it. Isn't that the lesson of the Tiger and Panther?
Industrial warfare never disappeared and the ability to produce a lot of tanks is more important than the quality of those tanks per se.
If I see this thing my first thought is going to be "that's a command vehicle" or "that's a MCLC carrier" and I will immediately prioritize killing it with all available heavy weapons. It looks very different from actual Magachs, which look like this:
If you have trouble telling the difference between the two you need to be sent a remedial course for reconnaissance or you need to be booted from a position that requires identification of enemy armor and replaced by someone who can tell me "it looks like a command post or a breaching vehicle" on the radio. Better yet, someone who can identify this obscure AFV and say "it's a long range ATGW carrier". This isn't an unreasonable standard of training, it's the bare minimum needed to provide useful information, as in "this looks different from a gun tank so it's probably important" minimum.
There are always incredibly lazy or incredibly unmotivated people who will say "it's a tank" or "it's an APC" without identifying any obvious features, but they are just bad troops, the ones who will die or get people killed (and subsequently be killed) in a major war.
Large bustles are a dead giveaway that screams "I am very important please kill me" which is why actual command tanks look like this:
It looks nearly identical to a T-80U except that it has about three or four more radio antenna mounts. There's also a low profile TIS. The T-80UK is also a terrible command post vehicle though because it has so many extra antennae that it's an easy target to distinguish in close combat! The M1 Battle Command Vehicle is literally identical to the M1A1(HA) externally, with the exception of radio antennae being slightly more, but not as many as the T-80UK IIRC.
The point is that a command vehicle should be absolutely, utterly, and totally indistinguishable visually from a normal gun tank externally, from all angles except maybe the top, and you should minimize the number of radio antennae and protrusions that give away the command tank's true purpose. This is relatively simple with low profile, flush mount SATCOM like Starlink nowadays I guess. Much harder if you need a lot of whip antennae but you can cover gun tanks in those just as well with stuff like the DUKE/CREW jammers and Shortstop.
This is why the original M2 MBCOTM was awful:
Highly visible SATCOM and datalink antennae make it an easy target during an assault because that just screams "I am very important please kill me" and a gunner who is not being taken under fire, or a decently trained gunner, might aim explicitly for that. Which is why it was only used by brigade and division commanders like GEN Odierno.
Which your example of Pereh does not in the slightest. That's probably why the Israelis kept them hidden behind hills and buildings!
Even then the lowest level of T-80UK was supposed to be company I think. A platoon almost certainly doesn't require the extra radio muscle a command tank provides.
US and European NATO are diverging faster on foreign policies than at any time in prior history.
There is no standardization going on at all. America is going with Abrams forever, because it can't make a new tank at the moment, and the Franco-German EU are making a hybrid of Leclerc and Leopard for their own tank. Britain is trying, as usual, to futilely hold together Atlanticism but without a serious threat there's not much a reason for NATO lol. Russia is stuck in Ukraine and China is more a trade rival than a military threat as far as the EU is concerned. The only countries that care about NATO anymore are Eastern Europeans, while America is more interested in China, and the EU (probably) doesn't care about anything except trade in Africa and building more car factories in Poland.
The distinction is that the Eastern European leaders and American leaders expect war, albeit on different sides of the planet, while the Western European leaders don't and couldn't care less, mainly because it's someone else's problem.
Numbers matter, yes, which means 2,000 tanks and crews is probably the bare minimum for a peacetime fleet for a medium-sized country like Germany or Britain. Triple that for a long-term war run off stockpiles exclusively.
America has about that many in service (it's a hair over 1,600 or 1,700 M1s) and somewhere between 3,000 to 4,000 tanks in storage at SIAD, unless we sold a bunch to random countries. Because setting up a factory in those places so they can make their own tanks is hard I guess. We can't make new hulls anymore either, so the M1 tank is a non-renewable resource, as it stands right now.
Germany had about that many during the Cold War, now it has enough to fight for about 2 months going by medium intensity rates.
America could probably tussle for about 18-20 months before needing to pull hulks from SIAD.
So yeah, numbers matter, and the only people who have enough are the Russians. They aren't making many new ones but NATO should probably have kept all its old tanks in depots. Britain would need Centurions just to keep enough wagons, but if current history tells us anything, even a Centurion Mk. 6/9/10 still has some fight left in it.
Replacing the Abrams is probably necessary...eventually, but the more important concern is building the capacity to produce a few thousand new M1s.
Except the M1 Battle Command Vehicle wasn't great.
Not terrible but not great. It was just too expensive after the hull production had shut down. While I wouldn't mind seeing M1 BCVs in the armor battalions they really aren't necessary with modern BCOTM and BACNs. It mostly made sense when the lieutenant colonel needed to actually be up in the bizniz and directing fire by wireless. Even then he'd probably be mad he can't blast stuff with his cannon.
Nowadays he'll just be oogling you from a Grey Eagle's video feed from the back of a Brad with three SATCOM tumors on its roof and occasionally pulling up the second or third line in the assault and shooting with the Bushmaster if he's got chest hair.
If Lima brings back hull production in the coming...whenever, it'll be at least 5 years now, they might be able to crank out enough hulls per year to keep the number of functional M1s at SIAD constant. But you'd need to open a few more factories and find a few thousand more ballistic welders from literally nowhere to actually start doing things like this. There weren't enough hulls to consider mounting the FAADS or construction of the new ARV back when we had Detroit and Lima cranking out 300 tanks a month. The Soviets didn't really even have that capacity and they were triple that, but their assumptions for battle losses were more realistic, tbf.
Now the US has more than enough Abrams in storage to drag a hundred or so out to use as BCVs. (Assuming they went to Battalion commanders and XOs across every Armored Brigade).
I'd rather have 5,000 Leo 2A4s or T-72s instead of 500 "Tier 1" (what's that? A Leo 2A4 with a body kit like KF51? isn't "Tier 1" what they describe cities or commandos as?) tanks any day of the week. A lot of okay or mediocre tanks will win a war. Too fewbut really great tanks will lose it. Isn't that the lesson of the Tiger and Panther?
Definitely the lesson of the Tiger/Tiger II/Maus series. Panthers just needed a new transmission/final drive designed for their new weight, not trying to make a 30ton transmission survive a 45ton tank.
Our command tanks loooked like, and were, identiacl to the other tanks in the unit. With micro burst transmitters etc there is no need for the ott array.
Tanks with dummy guns are simply more vulnerable tanks as they will be engaged in the same manor.
With the so called improved situational awareness of modern kit, there is no need or logic in having your command structure so far forward that their vehicles look like tanks. Command tanks are not the easiest things to operate anyway.
I think the latest variants of the T-90 are entirely adequate tanks but it seems to me like the Russians have not been doing the best job of employing them, it seems like many crews are under-trained for starters. Even the modernized T-72s and T-80s should have been good enough for many offensive tasks.
The greater problem than getting the necessary welders trained and all of that seems to be the inability of the Army to define what they want out of a new tank. In the short term though I think we should pursue an upgrade similar to GD's Abrams technology demonstrator. If nothing else the significant rebuild that would require would allow for an expansion of the industrial base that would be necessary for the production of a totally new MBT.
Plus in the coming years OMFV should be entering production which will be something else to build.
So now the M1A2D is going to collapse the sewers under the streets it is driving on. Great.
It's not collapsing the bridges in the area that is the issue.
It's destroying the local infrastructure entirely because the tank is stupidly heavy.
Offload some of that armor mass into APS. No, more than that. APS can't intercept sabot rounds yet? Time to figure out how to make an APS that will.
Use multiple APS while we're at it, too, the same way modern ships have 4+ layers of hard kill antimissile defenses. Aside from the max range stuff like SM6 and SM2ER, a ship has basic SM2MR, ESSM, RAM, and finally CIWS. Not counting the soft kill defenses like chaff, flares, decoys, and jammers, which I note a general lack of on tanks.
Using modern APS just to give an example: SM2 corresponds to Quick Kill, conceptually. ESSM engages what gets past the SM2s, and Trophy corresponds to ESSM. RAM engages what got past the ESSMs, that's Arena. And finally the CIWS is the last ditch, that's Iron Curtain APS.
The trick is timing all of this, and figuring out if a given layer was effective or not when the total time from "incoming fired" to "impact" is all of 1 second.
This happened a few months ago IIRC.
I’m curious to see the interior. One of the big changes should be new displays for the TC and gunner. View attachment 691649
Right, Raytheon just signed big Contract for Full Production of 3rd Gen B "Kits" which are just replacable with 2nd Gen B "Kits", and SEPv4 are the first to have 3rd Gen but all SEPv3s can easily be upgraded with "B Kit"...
The greater problem than getting the necessary welders trained and all of that seems to be the inability of the Army to define what they want out of a new tank. In the short term though I think we should pursue an upgrade similar to GD's Abrams technology demonstrator. If nothing else the significant rebuild that would require would allow for an expansion of the industrial base that would be necessary for the production of a totally new MBT.
That is a large problem. Army went from "60ton chassis mounting Tank, IFV, CEV, and Arty" to "super-light C-130 transportable (18 ton) rapid deployment intervention tank" to "IED-proof 100+ton monstrosity" to whatever the Optionally Manned Tank is going to be (hopefully about 55 tons at start with weight growth capacity of up to 77 tons).
Now the US has more than enough Abrams in storage to drag a hundred or so out to use as BCVs. (Assuming they went to Battalion commanders and XOs across every Armored Brigade).
It really doesn't, and especially not if it gets involved in another Korean War, let alone another WW2. Even disregarding any hypothetical loss rates, which America believes it is immune to for some reason, it still needs those hulls to sustain the foreign military sales of the M1.
The Army just now figured it has enough M1s to start converting to M1150s and JVLBs, and it's absorbed a bunch of hulls from the Marines, but if it can't meet the ARV requirement, there's absolutely no way it's going to start converting things for battalion commanders. They'll get the AMPV, and they'll like it, and honestly they probably will.
This is mostly because America hasn't been manufacturing new M1 hulls since 1995 (or 1996, whichever). The hull production line was one of the victims of the Peace Dividend, along with the Sixty fleet. That said, I guess if we include the M60s at SIAD, America might scrape a hair over 6,000 available hulls or so, maybe, but it's debatable how serviceable the Sixties are. L3Harris still manufactures AVDS-1790s for the Israelis though.
If we could make new M1 hulls we'd probably have replaced the Hercules by now, and given the engineers a heavy CEV or something, before considering the BCV.
The greater problem than getting the necessary welders trained and all of that seems to be the inability of the Army to define what they want out of a new tank.
That's obviously because they don't want a new tank...
The Army recognizes the M1 is still a world class fighting vehicle even at nearly 100 tons and has decent enough mobility. 1960's mobility is nothing to giggle at, it's just not as good as 1980's mobility, but it isn't like the Bradley is much better. It's actually significantly worse, because the Brad is now down to M4 Sherman levels of mobility.
Comparatively it had about a 14-15 sprocket hp while the M1 had a 17-18 sprocket horsepower when introduced. These are now down to something closer to 9-10 and 12-13 respectively at maximum weight configurations.
If nothing else the significant rebuild that would require would allow for an expansion of the industrial base that would be necessary for the production of a totally new MBT.
Oh I didn't mean to suggest it would be, I just meant it's something for the industrial base as a whole to do, meaning skills and manufacturing capability is kept around.
If the Army doesn't have the money for that then quite simply the Army (and Congress) aren't spending the money they have correctly. As for the turret looking "weird" I don't see how it's worse than the existing Abrams turret when you try to fit Trophy on it. It integrates the APS a lot cleaner. Battery? Are you referring to the hybrid electric drive? Why do you think that is stupid?
Lima isn't getting rebuilt anytime soon. We'll probably see another world war before that happens.
They're actually doing rather well, all things considered, in juggling the tight resource constraints and competing requirements. The M1 is a perfectly serviceable tank as is, with no serious flaws besides "it's a bit heavy", and that's more a concern for expeditionary warfare and crummy bridges I guess.
AbramsX is just a stupid design in a lot of ways. The ways it isn't are already being explored by Army research, like the Advanced Combat Transmission, datalinked ammunition, drone control, autoloaders, and electric motors for the sprocket for low RPM torque. The diesel engine, battery pack, and optionally manned turret are a bit stupid but are also the main drivers of the design, obviously.
A hybrid-electric drive doesn't require a battery, for one thing, the AbramsX has the battery to enable silent watch in lieu of an APU. Something from FCS days but is probably not really necessary either, and putting it under the turret is just asking for trouble. There's also the issue that the turret as built is already designed for the Trophy, when the Army has pretty clear that it doesn't see Trophy as a particularly good system, just a particularly necessary capability. Get better, GDLS, why aren't using Quick Kill?
The Trophy can come off on the M1. That's an advantage.
AbramsX also looks to have the same strain of "compromised turret syndrome" as Type 10, Leclerc, T-64/-72-/-90, and K2. Small wonder these tanks achieve such low battle weights when their protected zones are 15-20% smaller than the M1, Challenger, or Leopard 2.
If it's a robotic turret then it's probably too well protected and you only really need like 30mm cannon protection.
This is sort of irrelevant. Trophy is just a particularly bad APS. The only reason people use it as a standard is because it's the first one that got bought in large quantities due to the threat of handheld grenade launchers during the Second Intifada and Cast Lead.
America was already making Trophy for the Israelis, just like it already makes Merkava, so adopting it was a result of legal negotiations between the rights holder (Rafael) and a systems integrator.
It may require the turret be removed to service after every major jolt or jostle. A large reason why electric vehicles tend to be so expensive to repair after extremely minor accidents is due to the fragility of a lithium-ion battery requiring a complete teardown of the vehicle to service.
Except the US has been planning ahead, and put into production, a bevy of re-armament programs since 2015...
XM7, the XM1299 ERCA, the GMLRS upgrades, the HEMTT Tomahawk launcher, LRHW, etc. Tanks aren't high on the priority list because...the PLA has just now figured out how to make T-80Us I guess lol? ZTZ-99 isn't a particularly frightening tank to an M1 TC, and the M1 has been receiving semi-constant upgrades on a fairly good clip of 6-7 years since 1995, so an M1 today is a bit more muscular than the M1 of 1989.
Anyway, unless they've been secretly maintaining and running the hull fabrication machines, yes. They will need to be torn down and rebuilt i.e. new gaskets, seals, oil and water filters, etc. Machines don't really like sitting still, unless they're stamping presses or something. Good news is they'd have about 36-48 months to do that because that's about how long it takes to make a trained and experienced welder into a ballistic welder.
Bad news is there will probably be another Pacific War in anywhere from 24 months (succession of William Lai, which the KMT is already bleating about) to 48 and a week months (centenary of the PLA) from today. Those are the two big moments in the near future that anyone can plan for right now. It could happen next week and the US would be none the wiser though.
So, either Lima will need to wait until someone makes a tank better than the M1 to see any serious investment in a brand new tank, which seems impossible a task for any opponent we might face; or Lima will need to wait until M1 losses become so catastrophic, yet somehow LATP still exists, to necessitate new hull production.
Both are less compelling than "we have enough M1s to weather the storm" (we have about 5,000 hulls total between SIAD and Army inventory) and "the M1 is a world class tank given proper turret improvements and drive train upgrades" (which is correct until someone's wagon disproves it, but I don't think a 50-ton medium-bordering-on-light ZTZ-99 is gonna be the wagon to do that).
The need for long range guns to duke it out in a thundering rendition of Quemoy and Matsu is a tad more pressing for Army planners.
A hybrid-electric drive doesn't require a battery, for one thing, the AbramsX has the battery to enable silent watch in lieu of an APU. Something from FCS days but is probably not really necessary either, and putting it under the turret is just asking for trouble.
A hybrid-electric drive without a battery requires an engine sized for whatever the full torque/horsepower demands of the driveline are, while a hybrid-electric drive with a battery allows a smaller engine sized more for the average torque/horsepower demands of the driveline.
Example: the BMW i8 sedan (just saw one in the wild a couple weeks ago, I squee'd). It has a 131hp electric motor and a ~230hp gasoline engine (though I'm not sure I buy that, most of the other gasoline engines in that 3cyl family are 100-140hp). It does 0-60mph in 4.4 seconds, has a governed top speed of 155mph, and gets an average of 65mpg. Most cars that have similar speed performance have twice the installed horsepower.
There's also the issue that the turret as built is already designed for the Trophy, when the Army has pretty clear that it doesn't see Trophy as a particularly good system, just a particularly necessary capability. Get better, GDLS, why aren't using Quick Kill?
A hybrid-electric drive without a battery requires an engine sized for whatever the full torque/horsepower demands of the driveline are, while a hybrid-electric drive with a battery allows a smaller engine sized more for the average torque/horsepower demands of the driveline.
An AGT-1500 is sized for the torque demands of the Abrams, yeah.
The electric motors are there for low speed torque for the smaller diesel on the AbramsX. Because it's a diesel. It's probably the ACE, which is a licensed version of the 2-stroke 5TD diesel used in the T-64B, by Cummins. We're really scraping the barrel there tbh. The AGT-1500 doesn't need the electric motors, because it's a turbine, but if it had them they would be a lot bigger than the AbramsX.
It's not something the M1 needs nor particularly desires unless the Army decides, in its infinite wisdom, to replace the turbine with a smaller and more temperamental diesel of a particular model which is somewhat notorious for being difficult to maintain and operate.
Sounds like a GD issue, not a Army issue. Maybe they should have approached Raytheon for a joint development instead of making something the Army neither really wants nor needs. I guess that would require the ability to do stuff competently though. GD isn't great at that.
An AGT-1500 is sized for the torque demands of the Abrams, yeah.
The electric motors are there for low speed torque for the smaller diesel on the AbramsX. Because it's a diesel. It's probably the ACE, which is a licensed version of the 2-stroke 5TD diesel used in the T-64B, by Cummins. We're really scraping the barrel there tbh. The AGT-1500 doesn't need the electric motors, because it's a turbine, but if it had them they would be a lot bigger than the AbramsX.
It's not something the M1 needs nor particularly desires unless the Army decides, in its infinite wisdom, to replace the turbine with a smaller and more temperamental diesel.
Sounds like a GD issue, not a Army issue. Maybe they should have approached Raytheon for a joint development instead of making something the Army neither really wants nor needs.
If nobody is throwing money at your unit, why should you throw money at it? Not like spending company R&D funds will provide any return on investment, not unless someone actually buys your unit! And that is a great way for a CEO to become an ex-CEO, when the shareholders fire you for spending money with zero ROI.
5TD and L60 were not helped by the fact that they were mated to mechanical transmissions only instead of torque-converted ones which can offset the relatively mediocre torque characteristics of low displacement opposed-piston engines and thus keep them in a more favorable operating range.
The ACE shouldn't have this problem with the ACT even if the latter doesn't have a torque converter, because it has a much higher number of gears than previous mechanical transmissions so good range coverage. The ACE also benefits from more modern technology, especially seals which were a big issue with previous opposed piston engines.
As Ukraine has also shown, forward spotters and highly accurate artillery can target anything very quickly. Your frontline may not be robot tanks but rather stealthy and fast penetrating reconn assets that try to never directly engage an enemy. This is why drones have been so deadly. I'm not so certain you couldn't use golf cart-size vehicles to move a light machinegun into position to provide cover fire for attacking IFVs or even squads. Indirect fire has been deadly effective in the modern era, too, so you would not always need to move in exposed. If you can keep the unit cost below $5k and use the KISS principle. But its more for slicing up mile by mile in static lines like Ukraine, whereas tanks are prepared to scoot hundreds of miles a day. Get in, mark your target, get out. The MBT will always have a role in larger manuevers. I do not see any form of artillery replacing that.
Ah, that's another reason why the MPF went with 105mm. M8 AGS with the 105 held 31. That's a pretty severe loss of stored kills, and it's about 2 less than the usual NTC course of fire.
And personally, I prefer the M1TTB autoloader/unmanned turret. Too bad it's in really rough shape right now, but it is on the list to be cleaned up and restored at the US Army Tank Collection.
I believe it's on the list. I hope they send a class in to clean up the inside and conserve it, when Nick Moran did a video on it the TTB was in rough shape inside.
Tanks are tanks, and the main reason they have such high frontal armor protection is to defend against anti-tank guns, and you can't really do that with any other weapon system. Which is why tanks lead an attack. If you have no tanks, the solution is not to armor IFVs to the point of being bad tanks, it's to lead with your dismounts in classic stormtrooper methods: attack on your belly and use cover and concealment to get within hand grenade distance of the enemy trench. Then bomb them and assault the trench by point fire.
The notion of armor immunity against vehicle mounted weapon is just a luxury for a force significantly more powerful than the opponent. Armor is much, much heavier than weapons needed to defeat it, and add much more to system cost than a up-gun. There is no technical barrier preventing 155, 183 or whatever gun size to deal with any conceivable opponent armor.
In an symmetric arms race, if you upgrade tanks to have better armor, your opponent can just upgun for cheaper and restore the combat parity. The only time where this arms race makes sense is in case of economic, technological superiority, an opportunity to mislead enemy technical intelligence or win a campaign before opponent military-industrial complex OODA.
Even if this armor overmatch happens, it is a tactical advantage and not a strategic level one. Armies with inferior armored vehicles that do not penetrates enemy vehicles frontally do win wars, campaigns and battles. Hell, armies without armored vehicles commonly win wars too, one just need other advantages. Frontal vehicle engagement can not be enforced against an intelligent enemy.
The main value of armor is overmatching infantry weapons, as infantry weapons are hard limited by the payload of humans and available technology. With every improvement against infantry weapons, from defeating infantry warfare weapons, rifleman-portable weapons, two man squad weapons, five man squad weapons to five man towed exponentially reduces the threat density and increases difficulty of opponent weapons employment.
Going from rifleman portable weapons to five ton field gun means a massive reduction in mobility, stealth, survivability and availability of anti-tank weapons.
Remember why tanks exists. Tanks exists to attack static fronts. If one wants optimal vehicle warfare exchange ratio, tank destroyers with big gun an no armor is perfectly valid as everyone penetrate everyone else. The "failure" of tank destroyers is that the vehicle warfare mission is small while adding some armor enables capability to attack infantry forces even if it does not defend against dedicated anti-tank weapons.
The poor performance of tank lead attacks in the current war is not in the survivability of the tank, but the vastly improved density, range and availability of anti-tank. You need a lot of man to defeat a tank attack with 30m panzerfausts or 300m bazookas. With 3000m ATGM, 8000m kamikaze drone, 20000m artillery the amount of defending force that can focus on a tank concentration is increased exponentially while the tank is practically out ranged. The full motorization of everything also means breakthough and encirclement can be maneuvered against by all formations.
The outranging of tanks is not the limitation of protected vehicle with gun-based weapon, but in terminology. If it goes beyond LOS it is categorized artillery.
Airplanes and ships are so expensive that a shift in combat concept just uses old terminology as fleets of specialized vehicles is too expensive and they never solidify their own terminology. Everything is a "fighter", when F6D and F5E is as different as a tank and a SPG.
Since unlike the Battleship there no Carrier anolog to take over the role of putting a whole lot of boom into the enemy ugly mug. Cannons are still far better at that then any thing else yet.
Oh carriers have long existed, from good old air power, helicopters to drones. There are also artillery and so on. Lots of stuff that outrange and kill tanks dead and they've evolved over decades to be highly effective.
The biggest difference is humans are land animals and the smallest unit of force is tiny on land. Air forces that kill thousand ton vehicles or even 50 tons vehicles is insufficient to win the war. You need weapons to kill 100kg man and 5kg landmine.
The whole focus on tank dueling is just so narrow and irrelevant. What direct fire, forward vehicles do is help deal with problems that long range fire can not do. Long range fires can not deal with mines, infantry that pop up, tiny robotic vehicles and so on.
Laser "tanks" would be the next real revolution in forward combat vehicles, the rest is moving crews around. Infinite area suppression and optical observation denial would certainly change tactics.
Regarding laser weapons for a ground battlefield, I think that they wouldn't replace the gun, not even necessarily as the primary weapon of a military's armoured vehicles. They're too vulnerable to smoke and dust and don't have the instant area of effect damage/armour penetration capabilities of equivalent guns. And if you mention advanced power generation, that could (in the future) be used to power a railgun/coilgun just as well.
Speaking of which, couldn't a railgun easily lower the amount of energy it requires for a given shot, allowing it to fire HE or payload shells instead of just kinetic darts?
Come to think of it, both laser and electric-gun vehicles could probably share the same chassis given its innate amount of energy generation.
What Chinese tank or gun ammunition that is vastly superior to the M1A1(HA), let alone the M1A2C and -D, are you thinking of? M1 is heavy mostly because it has a manned turret, that's it. If you moved the crew into the hull you could shave an easy 25-ish tons off the tank alone.
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