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Panzer Vor!!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Challenger 2 will be "life extended".  Out of service date is in the 2030's.  A complete new turret is a possibility, presumably with the 120 smoothbore gun.  Last time that was looked at it was realised that there was nowhere to store the long monobloc rounds: Chally has separate projectiles in the bustle and propellant charges in the hull.  Installing the Leopard engine would have freed-up hull space but then that amounts to a new tank.

 

Likewise Warrior, fitted with the same 40mm CTAS gun as Ajax Scout.  Very lethal if it works as advertised.  There will be an APC variant of Ajax for recce support.  An 8x8 APC is on the cards again: Boxer is a contender.  There's a thread under the modern armour section on this.

 

So, in short, there's no intent to have a new MBT or a new MICV for the next 20 years or so.  And yes, those might end up being collaborative projects if they will be new designs.  Or off-the-shelf if not. We have become a very small player in the global market.  The Ajax family will only be about one-third the size originally conceived.  Warrior will be reduced by almost half from the original fleet, likewise Challenger.  The Scout family originally included a Medium Armour variant with a 120 gun on a beefed-up chassis, not dissimilar in concept to the BAES demonstrator with the 120 low-recoil gun on a CV90 chassis. More tank destroyer than battle tank, not armoured enough to mix it in open battle.

 

Unlike us, Germany has managed to maintain an extensive land combat systems industrial base and rarely buys anything of non-German origin - despite allegedly adhering to the same EU public procurement directive requiring open competition as us.  Blame it on the Defence Industrial Strategy from a decade or so ago.  That said we didn't need to be able to make AFV's in the UK and had its focus on high-tech and "integration" rather than metal-bashing.  A decade before that we were turning out up to 300 a year, including exports.

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On ‎16‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 21:16, Panzer Vor!!! said:

https://www.rt.com/uk/362910-mod-german-infantry-vehicles/

 

 

How long before we get the Leopard as  we have no tank building capability 

Personally as long as our guys have the kit they need I,m not bothered where it comes from 

I like the way that article says rushing into a deal for the boxer may costs us more as we are not considering other platforms. This is right after saying the MOD has basically wasted £300million and 3 years doing exactly that?

 

They claim a competition could be timley and save money. When ever has a competition for the MOD ever been quick?

 

The Boxer is proven so just buy it. Simples.

 

Julien

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The law requires a competition. Simples.  All defence procurement in the EU over about £340k is subject to competition, with few exemptions.  No, that won't change when/if we leave the EU: it's been UK sovereign law since the '90's and would need to be repealed/replaced,  And our current PM has said that sort of process won't start until after we've left.  Points to note.  A lawful competition can be run in about 70 days.  Multi-climate trials of candidates and/or of the prototypes is at least a 2-year process simply because of the logistics.  Our Forces seem congenitally incapable of establishing and setting requirements against which to buy, which certainly doesn't help.  One reason we didn't buy Piranha Evo - or indeed anything - was that it would take up to 5 years to modify it to meet the requirement spec, including the afore-mentioned trials, which needed 16 variants in 150+ unique tactical role variations to meet all the various Corps' needs.  A force-wide product needs to meet all those needs and has to be guaranteed to operate 100% of the time off the ramp from -30 in Norway to +50 in deserts, in humidity up to 100%, in salt and dust laden environments and potentially in NBC conditions.  It also needs to be proved not to be a death-trap.  Boxer was optimised for a conventional war in NW Europe by partner nations without expeditionary warfare aspirations.  Why did no-one else see lack of C-130 portability as a problem, especially when 2 of the partners operated the Transall C-160 which is even less capable?  That's 'cos none of them envisaged taking it anywhere it couldn't drive to get there!  It wasn't even designed with a cannon-armed turret in mind.  There's also a reason that the Piranha series is the most successful Western 8x8 APC in history with over 30 times the sales volume of Boxer, and currently continues to outsell Boxer, Pandur, AMV etc hand over fist.  

 

As a plea, if you don't understand the complexities of specifying and buying modern war-fighting equipment please don't make wild-assed comments that imply it's like popping down to your local car dealer and picking up a few hundred off the forecourt.  Even those are subject to a development, testing and type approval programme at least 2 years long before you ever get to buy them.  But I don't hear anyone criticising that this takes too long.  Just look up Ford Pinto and how many hundreds of US drivers died, many burned to death, in that wonderful fuel-tank-bursting product.  Look up how many people have died in the Ford Explorer, at least a dozen in this country, because Ford skimped on the EMC testing which allows the cruise control to be spoofed on and unable to be switched off.  No US Federal agency would use them.  No-one knows if Boxer does or will meet the UK's current needs, refined by nearly 15 years of asymmetric warfare since we last evaluated it.  The design is well over 20 years old now.  Buying Boxer off the shelf at that age is potentially just perpetuating the paradigm of buying kit for the last war, not the next one.  Why not just stick a pin in the wall chart of all the other 8x8's out there?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 30/10/2016 at 10:29 PM, Das Abteilung said:

Challenger 2 will be "life extended".  Out of service date is in the 2030's.  A complete new turret is a possibility, presumably with the 120 smoothbore gun.  Last time that was looked at it was realised that there was nowhere to store the long monobloc rounds: Chally has separate projectiles in the bustle and propellant charges in the hull.  Installing the Leopard engine would have freed-up hull space but then that amounts to a new tank.

 

Likewise Warrior, fitted with the same 40mm CTAS gun as Ajax Scout.  Very lethal if it works as advertised.  There will be an APC variant of Ajax for recce support.  An 8x8 APC is on the cards again: Boxer is a contender.  There's a thread under the modern armour section on this.

 

So, in short, there's no intent to have a new MBT or a new MICV for the next 20 years or so.  And yes, those might end up being collaborative projects if they will be new designs.  Or off-the-shelf if not. We have become a very small player in the global market.  The Ajax family will only be about one-third the size originally conceived.  Warrior will be reduced by almost half from the original fleet, likewise Challenger.  The Scout family originally included a Medium Armour variant with a 120 gun on a beefed-up chassis, not dissimilar in concept to the BAES demonstrator with the 120 low-recoil gun on a CV90 chassis. More tank destroyer than battle tank, not armoured enough to mix it in open battle.

 

Unlike us, Germany has managed to maintain an extensive land combat systems industrial base and rarely buys anything of non-German origin - despite allegedly adhering to the same EU public procurement directive requiring open competition as us.  Blame it on the Defence Industrial Strategy from a decade or so ago.  That said we didn't need to be able to make AFV's in the UK and had its focus on high-tech and "integration" rather than metal-bashing.  A decade before that we were turning out up to 300 a year, including exports.

 

Smoothbore gun is a no go for British tanks, it was trailed (extensively, a friend of mine was on the trials) and found to be not as accurate as rifled barrels.

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Indeed so, Madmusky.  Precisely why we went in the opposite direction to NATO with the rifled gun in the first place and accepted the lack of inter-operability.  I guess it's all about how you want to defeat the threat.  HESH needed smooth-bore in Chieftain days.  HEAT also works best from smooth-bore unless you follow the French line of warheads on ball-races fired from rifled guns.  Guided projectiles likewise: the Russians are the only people to field those, from their 125 smoothies.  Kinetic energy penetrators really need rifled guns.  Whether it's a "no-no" will be down to people with stars on their epaulettes to decide, whatever ATDU think.  Our ammo is expensive and we only have 1 source of supply: it's expensive largely because there is only 1 source of supply.  A problem now exacerbated by us only running about half the Chally fleet, doing more simulated training and using the sub-calibre device - thus needing less ammo.  And we're still stubbornly out of step with the rest of NATO, which is hard to justify. Even France has come on board with Leclerc, having been out of step with AMX30!  And they wrote the book on being out of step ........

 

The FRES Medium Armour concept relied partly on firing guided projectiles, effectively replacing a dedicated ATGW variant.  But there weren't any such rounds at the time.  Had that concept gone ahead - and it still might - then the low-recoil 120 smoothie is the only option for such a light vehicle.  That's why we had the one-and-only CV90120 over at ATDU for firings some years back.  With the low-recoil version, kinetic energy APDS performance is too reduced so HEAT becomes the prime round, guided or otherwise.  The talk for CR2 life extension is of a complete new turret, which was effectively the real difference between CR1 and 2.  CR3?  That might imply a gun change to NATO smoothbore, but as I said above the biggest problem with CR2 was ammo stowage - stand fast your point about accuracy. Changing the turret only partly solves that.  There was talk a while back of NATO going to 140mm smooth, based on the 120 for ease of upgrade.  I believe Rheinmetall built some and a Leo2 was converted.  Hasn't gone anywhere yet.

 

Don't underestimate the potential effectiveness of the 40mm CTAS cannon and ammo on Ajax and Warrior.  It could be a real game-changer for light armour, but it isn't an MBT-killer even with APFSDS. One of the projected roles for Medium Armour was recce overwatch for that reason.  But I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near an incoming 900g airburst fragmenting HE round time-fused from the laser rangefinder.  Hiding behind things suddenly becomes pointless, even in an attack helo.  What's the vulnerable bit? Oh yeah: shredded rotors ......  Having such a capability in Afghan would have saved lobbing many Javelins and other indirect fire missions against Taleban fire teams.  RARDEN was at best a 30mm sniper there.  Warrior suddenly provides real infantry support capability rather than just punching 30mm holes in things.  France was supposed to commit to CTAS when we did for their next-gen recce and IFV, but haven't.  They've been playing with an unmanned turret installation on a Warrior we loaned them.  Toutatis.  That out of step thing again .......

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  • 2 months later...
On 16.10.2016 at 10:16 PM, Panzer Vor!!! said:

https://www.rt.com/uk/362910-mod-german-infantry-vehicles/

 

 

How long before we get the Leopard as  we have no tank building capability 

Personally as long as our guys have the kit they need I,m not bothered where it comes from 

Although when buying something like that from Germany one has to take into account the risk of not getting it when you will need it. Since weapons exports are such a touchy subject in Germany not even allies can be sure to have contracts fulfilled (latest example is the travesty between H&K and the US contractor for an advanced grenade rifle - someone found some 1860's treaty that US didn't sign about not shooting grenades "at" people).

 

So with the general situation of the UK planning to leave the EU and Germany being sad about it - well, I wouldn't sign a contract like that.

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2 hours ago, Arachnid said:

Why is it down to the government,the armed forces should be the one's who get to decide,after all they're the ones who have to use the stuff

The government like all government's pay the bill,and they like to penny pinch,that said any off the peg AFV or Aircraft with a proven

track record will save millions in R&D much as I'm saddened that we seem to have little ability to build new tank's and AFV's we do have a track

record of wasting huge sums of money "going it alone" Look at the Phantom,re -engined and packed with home avionics costing a fortune for little

or  no increase in performance or capability,and France is a close second in this kind of thing Rafale a beautiful and capable aircraft need's

huge export sales to re-coup cost's which never really materialised in the number's of the Mirage,I wonder what the costs per airframe are if you

add development fund's?Look on the bright side if only Germany is the source of Tank;s trucks and AFV's maybe Nato countries will finally

have the inter-operability of equipment it always wanted!

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Gemany's own army is in a bit of a state TBHhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11420627/German-army-used-broomsticks-instead-of-guns-during-training.html  What this article discreetly neglects to point out is that Pz.Gr.Abt.371 deployed with the new VJTF** in this condition after borrowing around 14,000 items from other units!  :doh:

 

Probably best not to even mention the whole G36 thing.....Oooops!  :blush:

 

**  'Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF)'  :rofl:

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Arachnid, the Armed Forces do write their own requirements - if they can ever make their minds up and stop changing them, that is.  Yes, there is an investment decision process to make sure it all stacks up - as you would expect any competent democratic government to have before billions of your tax pounds are squandered (all too often the case in the past).  All the armed forces have Capability Directorates of some sort, with military Requirements Mangers embedded in their respective project teams in DE&S. And equipment is chosen against those requirements, within the available funds.  "The Government" doesn't get a say - except insofar that the Armed Forces and MOD are of course branches of "The Government".  Interference in the procurement process beyond the set selection criteria is illegal, as our own government and others in the EU have found to their considerable financial cost through European Court fines.  Look across the road from the Palace of Westminster at Portcullis House. That cost HMG £30M in compensation to the bidder who should have won part of the deal, before someone fiddled the result.  The reason we don't, for example, have significant AFV or small arms industries in this country against which we could play the National Security Of Supply card under Article 346 of the EU Treaty is because a past government's Defence industrial Strategy failed to see these and other defence industries as significant enough to be worthy of preservation and they were allowed to wither.  High-tech was seen to be the way forward.  So the nation that gave the tank to the world can no longer build tanks.  In fact we can't build any medium or heavy AFVs any more: the Ajax hulls are built in Spain, of all places, and shipped in.  MRVP is a US product.  MIV will be a foreign product. Challenger LEP might end up with a Leopard or similar turret.

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