sferrin said:
If we've really fallen that far that's damn depressing. Did we just up and quit the business or what?[/quit]
Pretty much. We put all our industrial eggs into FCS. When that died, so did America's ability to produce land armor. Now it's "BAE Systems, inc." with a lot fewer employees and an ability to perhaps repair a couple tanks a month. At least we still have our submarines and aircraft carriers, which are arguably more important strategically.
Our industrial manufacturing base still exists, as a zombie of sorts, but the industrial design base died 10 years ago. We can build tanks. We just don't know how to design them anymore. A similar fate has befallen the German tank industry, so they will be cribbing a lot from the Leopard 2 in their future super tank. Puma had the fortuitous luck to appear ten years ago, before the Germans were out of the game and the guys who worked on Marder 2 were still around, but Leopard 3 won't have such luck. It's probably more like Leopard 2.5 than a true Leopard 3, since all the experienced German tank engineers are dead or retired by the time they start working on the thing.
Ditto for America now that FCS is kill.
OTOH, the United States still has loads of documentation and data from the XM2001 and Armor Systems Modernization programs, though, that it can pick up from. It's already ahead of the game, since the Block III tank was supposed to enter service less than 5 years ago when it first started (~2013 for first battalion equipped), and we've still been developing our armor, FLIR, turbine, and gun industrial bases with incremental improvements to the Abrams. We lack a lot of the institutional knowledge from experience, but we can avoid some of the pitfalls by cribbing as much as possible from the Armor Systems Modernization program. It'll still be a 1980s tank, but so is T-14.
Making a whole tank is hard if you've been out of the game for a while (Object 148 is literally a relic of the Cold War; being essentially an austerity model Object 195 equipped with
the 2A82 gun, which is c. 1986), but America has all the pieces sitting around, it just needs to put them together. We don't want to build, but by Jingo if we do, we have the gun, XM291, we have the engine, just use an MTU, and we've the armor in SEPv3 and the ammunition too. The Russians shall not have Tallinn.
The best example of this sort of design austerity I can think of, the kind where you reuse as many pre-developed or already commercially existing parts as possible (thus, the "only" thing that needs to happen is regeneration of the industrial base) is probably GD's Griffin light tank, which is literally a Baby Abrams.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iZL3hDhSJuA/WOeUZdOPDGI/AAAAAAAAAn4/72K-QzmizbcBlMZT-ztFd3NZ29wyWcIIACLcB/s640/Griffin%2B%25282%2529.jpg
I guess depending on how quickly BAE can get to work again on their electric drive derived from FCS, we might be able to punt a new tank out the door in less than 20 years. Maybe less than 15. Cross your fingers that Next Generation Combat Vehicle gets a tank counterpart, I guess, but don't hold your breath for a new Army AFV until the '40s or '50s, unless we have a major shakeup like Korea where the US Army is driven from the field or something.
sferrin said:
If Russia, with their small budgets, can turn out an Armata. . .well, what the hell is the US Army doing?
Pining for FCS, desperately trying to cut down an out-of-control military-welfare complex in TRICARE, ham-stringed by a lack of funding due to both misplaced spending priorities and austerity measures, etc. At the end of the incumbent's term, expect a large resurgence in U.S. readiness rates, investment in applied R&D/procurement rather than basic research, and higher overall war funding, much like happened in the early 00's before GWOT.
The question I guess is whether or not we can afford to wait another 4 years for BCA to expire. Not so much that we'll have a war in four years, because if that were the case we're already up it, but whether or not the knock-on effects down the road (i.e. increased Sino-Russian investment in war technology) will mean our opponents will be evenly matched or outright superior to us in technology.
http://breakingdefense.com/2012/12/the-end-of-advantage-enemies-may-catch-up-with-us-technology/
The other question is whether or not the US Army is priming itself for a repeat FCS "transformation" instead of a boring and conservative procurement plan.
Kadija_Man said:
sferrin said:
If we've really fallen that far that's damn depressing. Did we just up and quit the business or what? ??? If Russia, with their small budgets, can turn out an Armata. . .well, what the hell is the US Army doing?
Fighting wars until recently which required an almost complete re-equipment. It's also involved in various conflicts around the world.
Here's a quick way to actually afford what you want - reduce the size of the US Army. Design it to be able to fight one war, not three. Loads of money that way.
Yes, raid the O&M budget for money. That's exactly the reason why the US Army can't even fight one war. Readiness rates are through the floor, so you've effectively already reduced its size. Reducing personnel costs beyond cutting the military's manpower targets would go a long way towards freeing up money for the O&M and R&D budgets. At the moment the US Army is making the same mistake the Bundeswehr is, albeit not to the same magnitude. Too much spending on social niceties. Too little spending on the actual military.
When budgets are tight, you need to focus on the near-term. Long-term healthcare and pensions are nice, but those are luxuries that come after you've secured your immediate future. As it stands, the US Army is spending far too much on personnel and far too little on operations, maintenance, and research & development. It's sacrificing its ability to actually do its job: win America's wars, in order to...spend money on schools? Day-cares? Treating the flu? All of these things could be handled through out-sourcing in local communities instead. Slash TRICARE by iunno, a quarter or a third maybe, and use your new found billions of wealth to acquire stuff that will keep soldiers on the frontline alive.
When you've secured the immediate future, when your soldiers are no longer in danger of being killed
en masse by radio direction-finding, improved conventional munitions, smart bombs, and Soviet-era super tanks, you can start looking inwards on how to improve their home lives. Otherwise, the US Army is going to fight the next war outgunned and outmatched by its opponents, in numbers and technology, and lose. But at least they have good dental plans!
marauder2048 said:
Kat Tsun said:
There's a reason XM360E1 was going to be a cut down piece. Incorporating that into Abrams isn't a long shot. The higher pressures would let you use more powerful ammo,
Kat Tsun said:
at least some form of BLOS shell similar to STAFF or MRM-CE,
Which of course want lower pressures...
The only thing you could be implying is that a higher pressure gun is bad because it can't fire lower pressure rounds. Which is incorrect. The purpose of the higher pressure rating is it lets you shoot something as heavy as M829A4 faster, which is always a good thing. While waiting for a notional 130mm or American-designed 140mm to come online, you'll need a faster, if not bigger, gun.
XM360E1's only downside is that it takes money to put into the Abrams, which isn't something the US Army has because of the Budget Control Act. Other than that, being twenty years newer than M256 helps it be superior in literally every important aspect. It's lighter, stronger, more accurate, and probably cheaper to manufacture. That's why it's currently plodding through the acquisition swamp despite everything.
The only thing the US Army lacks is a STAFF-type BLOS shell in its soon-to-be arsenal of super ammunition. It has the super KEP and the super HE shell, but it needs a super BLOS shell to kill tanks at a distance. This is knowledge the USA itself discovered and is now being used against it (indirectly).
Colonial-Marine said:
From what I've read about the XM360E1 years ago it isn't cut down, just lacking the muzzle brake and some of the other features the XM360 had. Maybe that has changed. I think the XM360 was either L/48 or L/50.
This is possibly true, I've read similar things anyway. Below the Turret Ring implied that XM360's gun was between 46 and 48 calibers long, although it's not terribly clear since it seems that the difference in length could be down to perspective or simply artistic licence or scale. Regardless, the gun is shorter than L/55 because an L/55 is too long for the Abrams fire control system and stabilization system to handle, which is why XM256E1 exploded.
http://below-the-turret-ring.blogspot.com/2016/04/upgraded-abrams-to-feautre-xm360-gun.html
M.M.](...) The fact that the XM360E1 looks longer might be result of the perspective or the claims that the XM360 has the same length as M256's are including the muzzle break in the XM360's length said:
Let the Navy worry about fielding railguns. This talk of having them on our next MBT is hopelessly overambitious. The most radical thing we should be looking at is an ETC gun but this tank should be designed with a conventional 140mm cannon in mind.
ETC is dead, thankfully. What they hoped would be 100% improvements in muzzle energy turned out to be something closer to 7-10%. Barely noticeable in exchange for a lot of turret bulk and volume. At this point, the ideal gun would be something like the 140mm caliber XM291. Adequate powder charge to throw a really big LRP pretty quick, which should be able to kill any hypothetical future tank out to horizon, within an overall reasonable pressure tolerance.
