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M3A3 Bradley Cavalry Fighting Vehicle (K61014) 1:35


Mike

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M3A3 Bradley Cavalry Fighting Vehicle (K61014)

1:35 Kinetic Model

 

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The CFV variant of the Bradley is a scout vehicle that carries a crew of five, including two scouts that are able to dismount whilst leaving the vehicle fully crewed and ready to depart if necessary.  It also carries additional communications gear, but is externally very similar to the M2 Bradley, with the same Bushmaster cannon and the ability to carry a TOW missile pack on the side of the two-man turret.  It was designed in the 1990s as an update to the ageing M113, but ended up supplanting it in US service, and it has been a success in every theatre it has served in, although during the Gulf War a number were destroyed in blue-on-blue incidents that resulted in better recognition systems being employed from there on in.

 

It is well-liked amongst crews, and the upgraded armour packages have improved survivability in a changing battlefield that includes substantial amounts of urban patrols.  The A3 is a combination of new-build and converted A2s, and brings a major improvement in the on-board systems that affect the crew's situational awareness, allowing them to work better in concert with other Allied forces, including both the Apache helicopter and Abrams tank, two of the main weapons systems they are likely to be deployed with.  In an age where anti-tank missiles have become a major danger to any AFV due to their ability to pitch-up and plunge accurately downward through the thinner top armour, the roof of the Bradley has been upgraded with titanium, and also includes all the previous upgrades to the A1 and A2 variants.

 

 

The Kit

This is an enhanced reboxing of the 2014 Orichi (no, I'd never heard of them either!) kit from Kinetic, and arrives in their usual top-opener box, with a painting of a NATO Euro camouflaged example on the front, with a small badge acknowledging CrossDelta's assistance with the included decals.  Inside are seven sprues and two hull parts in grey styrene, plus a single dust-jacket for the top of the gun mantlet in a little ziplok bag.  A sheet of Photo-Etch (PE) brass, a tree of poly-caps, decal sheet and the instruction booklet are also in the box, along with a separate painting and markings guide, which is in colour and printed on both sides of a glossy sheet, with profiles provided by AMMO.

 

Detail is good throughout, with lots of surface detail such as anti-slip coatings, vents and fasteners for the appliqué armour, which is followed through with the optional ERA (Explosive Reactive Armour) package parts that are included, and is used on both decal options, but can be left off if you are going off-piste for your markings.  Some slide-moulding has been used to improve the detail and simplify construction, especially on the main hull parts, which have the side-skirts and armour upstands moulded-in along with other detail that would once have been impossible to include.  It still needs an additional number of rivets applying however, which can be found on the sides of sprue A.  Cut these off with a sharp blade, and glue them on where indicated, which is probably best done early in the build process to avoid either forgetting, or knocking off any delicate parts.

 

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Construction begins with the lower hull tub, which is festooned with the suspension swing-arms and dampers, final drive, return rollers and finally the road wheels, which have a poly-cap at their heart and have separate tyres that will please anyone that doesn't like painting these in-situ.  The idlers and drive sprockets also have poly-cap centres, and once fitted the remains of the final drive housing are added to the lower front along with towing shackles and a pair of small plates.  Tracks are fitted early on, and these are of the link-and-length type, supplying all the straight links as a single part, which are joined with a few individual links, a short length on the diagonals, a few more links, and then another length to go over the top.  There are a few ejector pins on the inside face of the tracks, but these are raised, so should be pretty easy to deal with in short order.  The upper hull fits over the top of the lower hull at this stage, and ledges on small upstands inside the upper that will need careful alignment before the glue sets up, as there is a little "slop" at the rear on my example.  The hull is closed up by adding the thick rear door, which has an ovalised smaller entrance in one side, tow shackles and towing cable attached to the outside.  The frame fits into the rear and the door glued into that, as there's no interior, and the rear light clusters fit on the stowage boxes either side of the door.

 

The decal options both have the ERA blocks on the sides, glacis and turret, but there is an option to leave these off, which exposes the appliqué armour that is moulded into the upper hull.  If you elect to do this, you will need to add a little putty to the shallow sink marks that have occurred where the hull roof and sides meet, and to do this you will need to take care not to remove the detail of the panels.  There are some alternative parts for the non-ERA Bradley, which you can use.  The ERA blocks for the sides are moulded as a large single part, with front and rear angled sections finishing off the runs, while a mesh cover for the two engine grilles, another behind the turret, pioneer tools, an exhaust director, mudguards, and the mounting brackets for the glacis ERA blocks are all installed.  The front blocks are fitted in three sections, and a couple of shot-trap eliminators are added around the turret rim and rear deck, and then the rest of the upper surfaces are detailed with the large crew hatch, more pioneer tools, lights, sensors and so on before the turret is constructed.

 

As this is a no-interior kit, the interior breech is present in a limited form just to enable the barrel to elevate, with poly-caps added to permit the gun to stay put, coaxial machine gun, and barrel sleeve being added before it is sandwiched between the turret halves.  The clear commander's vision blocks are inserted from inside the top section, and the turret ring is fitted to the underside, along with the smoke dischargers on the lower cheeks.  The ERA blocks are attached to the appliqué armour panels, the various turret-mounted sensors are added, and the commander's protective glass shroud is fitted to keep him safe when he's got his hatch open.  The barrel for the Bushmaster 25mm cannon is fluted for cooling, and is nicely slide-moulded on the edge of one of the sprues, with a hollow muzzle and flash-hider slots into the bargain.  The bustle stowage has a number of extra ammo boxes for the coax MG arranged around the back, and the big optical sensor box on the top, loader's hatch and the TOW installation (handily attached with a poly-cap) all go on to make the small turret rather busy.  The driver's hatch is last to be made up, with a large hinge part with PE vent, clear vision blocks and armoured covers included.

 

The model is completed by installing the turret and driver's hatch on the model.  Then it's time for the paint and decals.

 

 

Markings

There are two decal options available in the box, with colour profiles provided by AMMO, and decals printed by Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut close to the printed areas.  Apart from the stencils, there are a selection of numbers and letters from A to G to enable the modeller to customise their model.

 

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The two options are the NATO three colour green/black/brown scheme, and the more familiar desert scheme, with no information forthcoming regarding their units, location of era of operation.  There is also no placement guide for the exterior decals, which is going to need a little research on your part, although some of the decals for the front and port side are visible on the boxart.

 

You can find a copy of the instructions and profiles here, although the product hasn't yet been added to the product listing on the Kinetic website.

 

 

Conclusion

Apart from the slightly rushed feeling for the painting and markings section, this is a nicely detailed kit of the Bradley that should do well for Kinetic.

 

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5 minutes ago, denstore said:

It’s a nice kit, and for those that want more detail, Voyager have a couple of very good update sets. The original kit came with nice working link by link tracks. I don’t get why they changed those.

Possibly for ease of construction, or to add the T-161 instead of the Big Foot tracks they standardised to later on.  That track sprue looks distinctly Takom-esque, doesn't it? :hmmm:

Edited by Mike
getting my Big Foots (Feet?) mixed up.
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  • 2 years later...

I am a former Cavalry Scout, this is the armored vehicle I used, but thankfully only during my 18 weeks of training at Ft. Knox. While it was fun to operate and the main gun certainly made for good times, it was a nightmare to clean after running the hills of Kentucky after a hard rain. The red clay that makes up the soil (if you can call it soil) became thick and damn near impossible to clean from the road wheels and gaps that trapped the mud as we churned up the hills in the vast armor training center. This beast is also not well suited for Scout Recon, very tall and with that diesel engine, could be heard from several kilometers away. Not eactly stealthy.

 

Anyway, it's nice to have an accurate Calvary version of the Bradley, most of the other kits, are infantry specific, now I have something to build that relates directly to my skills during my time in the Army. Thanks for the detailed review, cheers,

Anthony

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