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Challenger 2 LEP contract signed - Challenger 3


GMK

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1 hour ago, magman2 said:

148 challenger 3 tanks,

who are we going to fight with that small number???

Not even the 150 originally proposed 

a Cut of 2 Tanks 

 

 

In an ideal world nobody! But I get your drift👍

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I can’t believe they have spent 100s of millions on warrior csp for the last ten years only to cancel it. Which is fair enough but what a waste of public money. It’s shocking. Will they learn any lessons from this? Will digitalising challenger and sticking a smoothbore on it with all the other changes they implement  going to be any less challenging than what they tried with Warrior? Are we gonna be sat here in ten years with another failed project that’s  over budget and delayed? 

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12 minutes ago, Rangerboy83 said:

I can’t believe they have spent 100s of millions on warrior csp for the last ten years only to cancel it. Which is fair enough but what a waste of public money. It’s shocking. Will they learn any lessons from this? Will digitalising challenger and sticking a smoothbore on it with all the other changes they implement  going to be any less challenging than what they tried with Warrior? Are we gonna be sat here in ten years with another failed project that’s  over budget and delayed? 

No is the answer to that Rhienmetall have a turret that has already been put on a Challenger chassis.All R&D has been done by them and this project has been going since 2016 so I would say as long as we don’t change spec’s etc it is pretty much ready to go.

 

https://www.monch.com/mpg/news/land/4822-rheinmetall-challenger-2.html

 

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiczsvj2sTvAhWEoVwKHZK4DOYQwqsBMAJ6BAgFEAg&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DwO0mRGwW87U&usg=AOvVaw1tRC0FSgyXroQKUquAbizN

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Good answer.  We won't change the spec, Rheinmetall have driven the development of what the British Army needs for a fire control system and have most likely priced it as affordable for the MOD, the cost would rocket if the "big brains at Bovington" were to ask for something that is outside the scope of a pre production turret and you must remember the AFV coffers are not as  healthy as they were 30 years ago. You can guarantee that Rheinmetall have also factored in the latest must have for the battlefield: the Active Protection System. 

Its an interesting era we live in and as an former Armoured corps soldier who was taught gunnery on chieftain, went to war in Challenger and commanded a CR2 I find it fascinating.

CR2 is a fantastic machine but suffered from the lack of spares and has become unreliable.  It has aged prematurely, chieftain suffered this same fate but over quite a few decades, CR2 has managed to be in the same state over a shorter period of time.

If I were to have a Armoured vehicle wishlist then here it is:

Leopard 2 A7

CV-90

Boxer (the Australian version)with a 40mm turret.

Oh and a handful of 432s, just for posterity!

 

Each to their own!

 

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5 minutes ago, Widow 65 said:

You can guarantee that Rheinmetall have also factored in the latest must have for the battlefield: the Active Protection System. 


Yeah, about that....

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35 minutes ago, GMK said:


Yeah, about that....

Bet any money the mod don’t buy into a active protection sys for CR 2 LEP. It will be bought as a operational requirement if and when they go somewhere. It will have a more standard ISS like Ajax.

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As Widow 65 says Rhienmetall may have that built in.

Anyway let’s look on the bright side at least we still have heavy armour! Although as I am sure we will agree not enough.

Hopefuly they might see the light and upgrade a few more if they see value for money.

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I can think of a couple of reasons for 150 vs 148.  148 will be for Field Army.  1 is almost certainly a factory reference vehicle to be retained by Rheinmetall.  The other could be for ATDU, Defence Academy or for destructive survivability testing.  Although in a sane world the latter would be done and proven before the buy decision.

 

The £750M most probably includes initial spares provision for 2 years to allow Babcock to catch up with ranging, scaling and buying stock to put on Leidos' shelves, new special tools and test equipment, new or upgraded crew simulators and other training aids e.g. for maintenance.  It might include an initial supply of ammunition.

 

So Boxer will replace Warrior, which hardly seems a fair trade.  But with 6 (by my count) fewer line infantry battalions because of the creation of the Ranger Regiment, the 1/2 Mercians merger and another battalion for 16 Air Assault Bde I imagine there will be Boxers to spare from the originally planned and funded laydown so it's a cheap win.  Aries might have been a better bet for high intensity warfighting, but more £££££.  Or anything with a medium calibre cannon..........  Boxer is certainly more suitable for the constant low intensity operations, peacekeeping/support etc that the Defence Secretary said should be regarded as the new operational norm.

 

In terms of getting this gear to places far and near, noting that armoured manoeuvre training at BATUS will cease, I did not hear Albion and Bulwark mentioned explicitly but the upgrading of one of the Bay class RFA LPDs for "maritime strike" implies that this will be their replacement as an RN ship with the other 2 remaining as RFAs.  I didn't hear the chartered civilian Ro-Ro ships mentioned but we must assume they will remain at least until the end of the PFI deal.

 

But I can't help thinking that in 1939 it was trumpeted that the BEF was the best equipped force ever to leave our shores and it was, in truth, the only fully mechanised and motorised army in the battle for Belgium and France.  And we know how that turned out.........  Because we were small and puny.  And the support we expected from allies was not there.  And of course we were outclassed by a more ruthless, aggressive and far less gentlemanly foe with more and better kit.

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  • 1 month later...

Apparently the power pack is tweaked to align with Trojan, plus new hydro pneumatic suspension (“third generation”).

 

No word on the number of main armament rounds carried, whether it’s compartmented (like Leo2 turret ammunition) or unprotected (Leo2 hull ammunition), and an unspecified APS (Iron Fist or Trophy are the most likely candidate).

 

Hopefully this turret is less developmental than WCSP or AJAX; at least the main armament is proven, mature, and decent this time round. 

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On 3/23/2021 at 12:15 PM, Das Abteilung said:

And of course we were outclassed by a more ruthless, aggressive and far less gentlemanly foe with more and better kit.

Only partially true. The BEF were outclassed by a better unified military that used all elements of said military force as a whole cohesive unit in support of each other. German early war period tanks were vastly inferior to their counterparts. The bulk of the armour used to invade Poland and France and later Russia, were a mix of captured Czech tanks (Pz.Kpfw 35t and 38t) or Pz.Kpfw I and II with small numbers of the larger Pz.Kpfw III and IV. The IV having a short barrelled, low velocity gun designed primarily for infantry support, not tank on tank engagements. The Pz.Kpfw III at the time was fitted with the same gun as the PaK 35/36 otherwise known as the army's door knocker due to its lack of performance against the likes of the Somua S35 or Char 1b Bis or the BEF Matilda tanks.

 

The BEF and French were defeated tactically too. Both countries hanging on to some draconian belief that tanks were to support infantry. And as such, heavily armoured and slow moving as in WWI, minus the heavy armour. The French deployed tanks in penny parcels rather than enmasse and were as history records, over run and over whelmed and the BEF suffered almost the same fate minus the numbers of vehicles the French could deploy.

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42 minutes ago, Crayons said:

Only partially true. The BEF were outclassed by a better unified military that used all elements of said military force as a whole cohesive unit in support of each other. German early war period tanks were vastly inferior to their counterparts. The bulk of the armour used to invade Poland and France and later Russia, were a mix of captured Czech tanks (Pz.Kpfw 35t and 38t) or Pz.Kpfw I and II with small numbers of the larger Pz.Kpfw III and IV. The IV having a short barrelled, low velocity gun designed primarily for infantry support, not tank on tank engagements. The Pz.Kpfw III at the time was fitted with the same gun as the PaK 35/36 otherwise known as the army's door knocker due to its lack of performance against the likes of the Somua 35 or Char 1bis or the BEF Matilda tanks.

The western politics behind the pre-1940 may days were a pile of crap.
The Netherlands were hoping on their neutrality, The Belgians did the same after some cat and mouse games with UK and France. France felt undefeatable. The UK went full appeasement. That combination alone was a blueprint for disaster.
No one thought of the Ardennes. Hope is often a delay of desillusion. And it proved that way in 1940.
Gambling with the odds on your side, including a well trained and spirited army and an air force at the peak. That is the secret behind 1940. Not the tanks, not the guns, not the inferiority of the men.

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3 minutes ago, Steben said:

Gambling with the odds on your side, including a well trained and spirited army and an air force at the peak. That is the secret behind 1940. Not the tanks, not the guns, not the inferiority of the men.

Are you saying that the opposing armies were neither well trained or spirited and a lack of political will was the downfall of the "Allies" in the early war period?

 

Any military action is a gamble and the best devised plan is only good up until engagement.

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1 hour ago, Crayons said:

Are you saying that the opposing armies were neither well trained or spirited and a lack of political will was the downfall of the "Allies" in the early war period?

 

Any military action is a gamble and the best devised plan is only good up until engagement.

Nope, I did not 🙂. What I ment is that the German Army was at its combined peak of confidence, training, tactics and above all a very gambling mind. The complete German operation could have been just as much as a complete disaster. One of the reasons was bad coordination, the lack of coherent strategy amongst the "allies which weren't really allies". From day 1 everyone blamed the other. The decision making structures lagged. They all learned from that. The rest of the war is a summary:
1 structure and leadership
2 production and logistics
3 the other "little" things, such as guns, armour and other stuff of less importance

The Arab-Israeli wars are another proof of the same pudding. Every amx13 or old Sherman own backyard defending army will prevail over a divided modern T62 or IS3 conquest army with less food.
And every Israel would been squashed even if they had M1 Abrams in 1973 if the western forces did not supply ammo and fuel.

Edited by Steben
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1 hour ago, Steben said:

Nope, I did not 🙂. What I ment is that the German Army was at its combined peak of confidence, training, tactics and above all a very gambling mind. The complete German operation could have been just as much as a complete disaster. One of the reasons was bad coordination, the lack of coherent strategy amongst the "allies which weren't really allies". From day 1 everyone blamed the other. The decision making structures lagged. They all learned from that. The rest of the war is a summary:
1 structure and leadership
2 production and logistics
3 the other "little" things, such as guns, armour and other stuff of less importance

The Arab-Israeli wars are another proof of the same pudding. Every amx13 or old Sherman own backyard defending army will prevail over a divided modern T62 or IS3 conquest army with less food.
And every Israel would been squashed even if they had M1 Abrams in 1973 if the western forces did not supply ammo and fuel.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and armchairs are a very comfy vantage point to look back from.

 

The German military was never not at its peak. It was, at most times, at a strategic disadvantage in terms of materials to wage war.

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2 hours ago, Crayons said:

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and armchairs are a very comfy vantage point to look back from.

 

The German military was never not at its peak. It was, at most times, at a strategic disadvantage in terms of materials to wage war.

I am affraid you are not reading what I mean. Confidence and tactics are not a material. 

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9 hours ago, Crayons said:

Both countries hanging on to some draconian belief that tanks were to support infantry.

I'm possibly misunderstanding this somewhat, but I often see this tossed around - and isn't it exactly what tanks did end up being used for in the successful Western Front Campaigns of late WWII?

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11 hours ago, ChocolateCrisps said:

I'm possibly misunderstanding this somewhat, but I often see this tossed around - and isn't it exactly what tanks did end up being used for in the successful Western Front Campaigns of late WWII?

Quite the contrary, infantry for the most part accompanied tanks in a protection role. With the proliferation of infantry anti tank weapons such as the Panzerfaust, Panzershreck, PIAT and Bazooka to which either tank armour could not counter or posed significant threat as to render tanks inoperable, doctrine was changed to suit an evolving situation.

 

During the Polish campaign the Germans learned the hard way that tanks are not suited to urban warfare and as such high loses were incurred when moving into Warsaw. The European theatre also posed challenges in that the wide open terrain in which a tank is ideally suited was not there and urban density was very high making tanks face a very unsuitable battlefield in which infantry AT weapons posed serious threat.

 

This is all merely my interpretation of contributing factors to doctrinal changes.

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The early German victory days would have been an impossible dream without the Luftwaffe, the backbone behind the "panzerwaffe" image of the blitzkrieg.
Tanks hardly were an all in one war winning machine. But where they really made the difference was in driving miles and miles (Another factor which made the M4 such a great tank in France in 1944), exactly what the Germans had foreseen in 1940 with their scissor movement. Tank vs tank battles in those days never lead to an image of German superiority. The British "cruiser" doctrine was exactly the same, but never was useable in the situation it was.
The tin cans the German tanks were in the beginning were an excellent tool because the gun or armour did not matter that much. Tactics took the Allies by surprise. Something that changed very very quickly... From that moment on logistics and attrition made the day and the German defeat was fixed. Even in France in 1940 the Germans knew they were weak on that level. They just pulled it off in time.

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