lightly armored vehicles are just that. lightly armored. by definition an airborne vehicle is lightly armored. once you get adults back in charge of the 82nd you'll see reality accepted. even thin armor on an airborne tank is thicker than the thickest body armor that a paratrooper can wear.
True. I know that, you know that, but once the media gets their hands on it, you'll get "Politicians get rich selling inadequate equipment to Army!!!" "Politicians buy Deathtraps" etc.
Media. Sometimes I think they'll kill their own mothers for a headline.
Not only is the thin armor on an airborne tank thicker than a paratrooper's but the mobility is much better and the firepower is much heavier. It may also be amphibious whereas the paratrooper isn't.
Solomon brought up a great point in the previous BTR-MD article comparing the 30+km mobility per hour of the Russian forces. How many major city centers in the U.S. are 30km or less from the nearest major airport? With a 30km+ range per hour an air landing at an airport could put troops in the center of a city in a relatively short time.
Not a bad vehicle for it's intended rolls, recon and support for ariborne. Still that main gun was a big drawback though. If it had been upgraded later on with a more Bradley style setup, 25mm and a couple of TOW's or something similar, they might really had something. Still it would need to be limited to it's original roles, Vietnam showed it was not something you put in front line situations on a regular basis. We tend to act surprised when we can't get a vehicle that was designed to drop out of a plane or swim several miles to the shore with the same protection as and firepower as an M1. It's the same trap as with the JSF I guess, it must do everything our we don't want it. But back on track, the M8 was a worthy succesor to this and addressed alot of the shortcomings.
First thing I noticed during the video was the engine sounds.........the DD screamed like a banchee. The Sheridans only short comings were the caseless ammo. After two months in service in RVN additional armor plate was added to the bottom of the hulls. As for service in that day and age, it worked very well in the jungle and busting jungle application. The 152mm with flechette rounds ruled the day. Armored Cavaly made them work, they were not mired in the soft earth like the M 48s. Considering how new the platform was yes it had bugs. I remember one conversation I had when we were woring with a company of 2/27 Wolfhounds. If we had a lull in contact about once a week we would test fire weapons when in a NDP (laager). The Wolfhounds went first with their M 60 machineguns and M 16s we sat back and watched the show. It was then our turn and we put on a show for them from main guns to M 2s. Afterwards the 11B types were in shock.....one of the told me......I'm sure as hell glad we are on the same side!
There was a prototype of the Sheridan that was fitted with the Cadillac-Gage Stingray 105mm turret. I always thought that was a good attempt at proven designs being mated together. The Chassis may have been too light to handle the recoil though. http://www.jedsite.info/tanks-sierra/sierra/sheridan_series/agsheridan/agsheridan.html
It was a POS that proved useful solely with VISMOD fiberglass add-ons and deployed as OPFOR. (Baby brother was a TC for two years with the OPFOR in the pre-GWI days, and had little kind to say about them except as a curiosity, and how not to make a tank.) Real-world uses, not so much.
An actual light tank or light armored gun vehicle for the airborne, intelligently designed and executed, would be useful, but the Sheridan was and is to laugh at, both when it was in service, and now.
Modern light tanks need to be tall enough to allow for a 30-35` elevating main ordnance. There is no "Fire! Over, drop 150!" nonsense with modern FCS. Which means if you send a Buford into battle with a T-90, you're gonna suffer accordingly, even if only as a dual kill. Conversely, anyone who has seen Sabot fired with HEAT settings knows that the amount of paperwork required is a function of the kilometers downrange the round flew, squared.
Particularly in the ME with it's large, open, terrain spaces, if you want to _stop_ a fight rather than play speed bump or Normandy, avoiding non-purchase of 'light tanks' in a world where mid-M1A1 level fire control is now the norm can only happen when the new vehicle in question has a routine ability to deliver BLOS fires.
In urban fights in particular, this translates to the ability to fire in support of (say) multiple patrols using GPS guidance similar to Excalibur in combination with MRM_KE flight vehicles to get 2-5m CEPs in support roles from a central location (FOB if occupying) or an outside ring of vehicles if facing multistory shadowed threats with limited look-in angles.
This isn't artillery in the sense of 30-40km RAP shells but 10-15km (i.e. double the best known killshot from a Challie in 1991) is easily possible which means you can keep up with enemy armored units on the move without ever having to /approach/ them, directly (I would personally advise a logistics train attack mode instead).
You augment the all-round armor (14.5mm) with advanced NERA blocks and you protect against both direct fire tank fire and ATGW with a bi-level APS. The AMAP-ADS is a German system which uses a 'crown' of high energy plasma discharge jets to ring the hull upper deck. These burn the fuze out on slow rounds and tip high speed stuff.
It is the SOLE device whose <30 microsecond reaction times have allowed it to pass TACOM trials within the U.S. for use against 'all threats'.. You back this capability up with a secondary Quick Kill system in bucket dispensers on the back of the turret bustle. QK is a kinematic which means it can be set to defend from 3-100 meters out, including against SFWs, straight up.
To target the shells, you pull the 600-800HP diesel out of the back (or front) and push it into the side sponsons as 2X350 power pack generators which integrate with an all-electric drive system and battery stack to provide for lower consumption in a housekeeping mode typical of about 60-80% of a given operational day (you can also quick-charge batteries after a creep or crawl back after damage at half speed).
With the front of the vehicle your fuel tank, a mid-section turret well sealed in it's own housing and the engines mounted in separately cooled side plenums (double hull = good thing) the entire rear of the vehicle opens up for a combined driver and commander/gunner installation PLUS a VLS pallet of tandem stacked drones, RORO'd up the back ramp.
With small rocket motors these target drones can be sent 10-20km downrange, a 9-cell VLS with 18 drones allows a 1.5hr Raven type system (suitably hardened for launch G) to be inserted into coverage without spending half it's endurance flying to the target area.
Now you have the option to kill targets from BLOS while being -protected- against any counterfire from equivalent systems. It is just expensive enough, what with the expendable drones, that it will be uneconomical for most countries to emulate while allowing the chassis itself to be made light enough to fit in a C-17/A-400M equivalent lifter with 'room to spare' on both height and width of a full-up, missionized, drop or forced entry landing in enemy territory.
Weapons like LAHAT and Sniper are no longer a menace in the 3-5km range point where conventional tank rounds lack the accuracy or the energy to penetrate while the 2-3 MILES of travel which a threat must come to get into range on you means that you can still inflict serious attrition if you open up at 10-12km before displacing down the road.
Finally, going through the frontal arc is just silly if you don't have to. With top attack as your driving kill mechanism, it's quite possible that, rather than a 'Thunderbolt' with 20-30 rounds onboard, you can go back to a Patton with closer to 70. Simply by stepping down to 105. Such would allow the (re)adoption of standard HE rounds for low-threat city work along with small quantities of APFSDS and HEAT for 'close encounters', along with the beehive round if needed and 2-3 types (with and without seeker) of guided munitions.
Our legacy forces are largely out of the fight. If they aren't crippled outright by further, massive, defense spending cuts which are coming (Sequestration is a detoothing process on the road to OWG people) they will never be deployed into another major occupational fight which could become prolonged for no endgame yield.
That said, both the Marines and the 82nd/Rangers could truly use to be MOUNTED in all their Forced entry and SPOD/APOD capture missions. If for no other reason than that atomics without radiofuels are coming (isomers as SPH) and the ability to remain safe will mean the ability to remain mobile. If you were to give each force 40 tanks with an equivalent number of COTS IFV as the Puma or CV90, that would be enough for two units (on each coast or oceanic MEU) to take into battle on 5 C-17 loads.
This is the force you would use to go hunting DPRK logistics units behind enemy lines on the Korean peninsula (stopping the threat by stopping their guns and butter). This is the force you would use to seize Syrian or Pakistani special weapons depots in a sudden Failed State condition. If Iran decides to 'intervene' in support of the Shia government against ISIL rebels who are quickly overrunning Iraq, this is the force which could face down their T-72M1s.
Remember: Just expensive enough (15-20 million) that nobody want's to copy them. Capable enough that nobody can force a LOS fight requiring numbers of units to survive an attrition fight.
Mixed feelings about that, putting engines outside the primary hull makes the vehicle significantly wider and the engines vulnerable to small cannon fire, which your ADS systems can not defeat.
Something that is pretty much perfect (insofar as light-tanks goes), is the Thunderbolt Armored Gun System, it has Hybrid Electric Drive, and can carry 4 soldiers or a bunch of equipment and is around 20-25tonnes. You can integrate AMAP-ADS into bolt-on armour as well as whatever smart round you wish to fire from the 120mm cannon.
I am not actually sure if people want a light MBT, or just something with a big DERP gun for throwing HE. In that case they can just mount a NEMO system in custom turret with ATGMs installed, and paradroop those.
Pity about the ammo.
ReplyDeleteA Mk 2 is never going to be in the works, times change and the thin flooring would never be accepted in this anti-IED age.
lightly armored vehicles are just that. lightly armored. by definition an airborne vehicle is lightly armored. once you get adults back in charge of the 82nd you'll see reality accepted. even thin armor on an airborne tank is thicker than the thickest body armor that a paratrooper can wear.
DeleteTrue. I know that, you know that, but once the media gets their hands on it, you'll get "Politicians get rich selling inadequate equipment to Army!!!" "Politicians buy Deathtraps" etc.
DeleteMedia. Sometimes I think they'll kill their own mothers for a headline.
Not only is the thin armor on an airborne tank thicker than a paratrooper's but the mobility is much better and the firepower is much heavier. It may also be amphibious whereas the paratrooper isn't.
DeleteSolomon brought up a great point in the previous BTR-MD article comparing the 30+km mobility per hour of the Russian forces. How many major city centers in the U.S. are 30km or less from the nearest major airport? With a 30km+ range per hour an air landing at an airport could put troops in the center of a city in a relatively short time.
Not a bad vehicle for it's intended rolls, recon and support for ariborne. Still that main gun was a big drawback though. If it had been upgraded later on with a more Bradley style setup, 25mm and a couple of TOW's or something similar, they might really had something. Still it would need to be limited to it's original roles, Vietnam showed it was not something you put in front line situations on a regular basis. We tend to act surprised when we can't get a vehicle that was designed to drop out of a plane or swim several miles to the shore with the same protection as and firepower as an M1. It's the same trap as with the JSF I guess, it must do everything our we don't want it. But back on track, the M8 was a worthy succesor to this and addressed alot of the shortcomings.
ReplyDeleteTo get a "successor" you must first get it into service. The M8 never made it into service.
DeleteThe M8 was at least "Type Classified" which means that at the least, it is ready for the LRIP stage.
DeleteFirst thing I noticed during the video was the engine sounds.........the DD screamed like a banchee. The Sheridans only short comings were the caseless ammo. After two months in service in RVN additional armor plate was added to the bottom of the hulls. As for service in that day and age, it worked very well in the jungle and busting jungle application. The 152mm with flechette rounds ruled the day. Armored Cavaly made them work, they were not mired in the soft earth like the M 48s. Considering how new the platform was yes it had bugs. I remember one conversation I had when we were woring with a company of 2/27 Wolfhounds. If we had a lull in contact about once a week we would test fire weapons when in a NDP (laager). The Wolfhounds went first with their M 60 machineguns and M 16s we sat back and watched the show. It was then our turn and we put on a show for them from main guns to M 2s. Afterwards the 11B types were in shock.....one of the told me......I'm sure as hell glad we are on the same side!
ReplyDeleteThere was a prototype of the Sheridan that was fitted with the Cadillac-Gage Stingray 105mm turret. I always thought that was a good attempt at proven designs being mated together. The Chassis may have been too light to handle the recoil though. http://www.jedsite.info/tanks-sierra/sierra/sheridan_series/agsheridan/agsheridan.html
ReplyDeleteIt was a POS that proved useful solely with VISMOD fiberglass add-ons and deployed as OPFOR. (Baby brother was a TC for two years with the OPFOR in the pre-GWI days, and had little kind to say about them except as a curiosity, and how not to make a tank.) Real-world uses, not so much.
ReplyDeleteAn actual light tank or light armored gun vehicle for the airborne, intelligently designed and executed, would be useful, but the Sheridan was and is to laugh at, both when it was in service, and now.
Modern light tanks need to be tall enough to allow for a 30-35` elevating main ordnance. There is no "Fire! Over, drop 150!" nonsense with modern FCS. Which means if you send a Buford into battle with a T-90, you're gonna suffer accordingly, even if only as a dual kill. Conversely, anyone who has seen Sabot fired with HEAT settings knows that the amount of paperwork required is a function of the kilometers downrange the round flew, squared.
ReplyDeleteParticularly in the ME with it's large, open, terrain spaces, if you want to _stop_ a fight rather than play speed bump or Normandy, avoiding non-purchase of 'light tanks' in a world where mid-M1A1 level fire control is now the norm can only happen when the new vehicle in question has a routine ability to deliver BLOS fires.
In urban fights in particular, this translates to the ability to fire in support of (say) multiple patrols using GPS guidance similar to Excalibur in combination with MRM_KE flight vehicles to get 2-5m CEPs in support roles from a central location (FOB if occupying) or an outside ring of vehicles if facing multistory shadowed threats with limited look-in angles.
This isn't artillery in the sense of 30-40km RAP shells but 10-15km (i.e. double the best known killshot from a Challie in 1991) is easily possible which means you can keep up with enemy armored units on the move without ever having to /approach/ them, directly (I would personally advise a logistics train attack mode instead).
You augment the all-round armor (14.5mm) with advanced NERA blocks and you protect against both direct fire tank fire and ATGW with a bi-level APS. The AMAP-ADS is a German system which uses a 'crown' of high energy plasma discharge jets to ring the hull upper deck. These burn the fuze out on slow rounds and tip high speed stuff.
It is the SOLE device whose <30 microsecond reaction times have allowed it to pass TACOM trials within the U.S. for use against 'all threats'.. You back this capability up with a secondary Quick Kill system in bucket dispensers on the back of the turret bustle. QK is a kinematic which means it can be set to defend from 3-100 meters out, including against SFWs, straight up.
To target the shells, you pull the 600-800HP diesel out of the back (or front) and push it into the side sponsons as 2X350 power pack generators which integrate with an all-electric drive system and battery stack to provide for lower consumption in a housekeeping mode typical of about 60-80% of a given operational day (you can also quick-charge batteries after a creep or crawl back after damage at half speed).
With the front of the vehicle your fuel tank, a mid-section turret well sealed in it's own housing and the engines mounted in separately cooled side plenums (double hull = good thing) the entire rear of the vehicle opens up for a combined driver and commander/gunner installation PLUS a VLS pallet of tandem stacked drones, RORO'd up the back ramp.
DeleteWith small rocket motors these target drones can be sent 10-20km downrange, a 9-cell VLS with 18 drones allows a 1.5hr Raven type system (suitably hardened for launch G) to be inserted into coverage without spending half it's endurance flying to the target area.
Now you have the option to kill targets from BLOS while being -protected- against any counterfire from equivalent systems. It is just expensive enough, what with the expendable drones, that it will be uneconomical for most countries to emulate while allowing the chassis itself to be made light enough to fit in a C-17/A-400M equivalent lifter with 'room to spare' on both height and width of a full-up, missionized, drop or forced entry landing in enemy territory.
Weapons like LAHAT and Sniper are no longer a menace in the 3-5km range point where conventional tank rounds lack the accuracy or the energy to penetrate while the 2-3 MILES of travel which a threat must come to get into range on you means that you can still inflict serious attrition if you open up at 10-12km before displacing down the road.
Finally, going through the frontal arc is just silly if you don't have to. With top attack as your driving kill mechanism, it's quite possible that, rather than a 'Thunderbolt' with 20-30 rounds onboard, you can go back to a Patton with closer to 70. Simply by stepping down to 105. Such would allow the (re)adoption of standard HE rounds for low-threat city work along with small quantities of APFSDS and HEAT for 'close encounters', along with the beehive round if needed and 2-3 types (with and without seeker) of guided munitions.
Our legacy forces are largely out of the fight. If they aren't crippled outright by further, massive, defense spending cuts which are coming (Sequestration is a detoothing process on the road to OWG people) they will never be deployed into another major occupational fight which could become prolonged for no endgame yield.
That said, both the Marines and the 82nd/Rangers could truly use to be MOUNTED in all their Forced entry and SPOD/APOD capture missions. If for no other reason than that atomics without radiofuels are coming (isomers as SPH) and the ability to remain safe will mean the ability to remain mobile. If you were to give each force 40 tanks with an equivalent number of COTS IFV as the Puma or CV90, that would be enough for two units (on each coast or oceanic MEU) to take into battle on 5 C-17 loads.
This is the force you would use to go hunting DPRK logistics units behind enemy lines on the Korean peninsula (stopping the threat by stopping their guns and butter). This is the force you would use to seize Syrian or Pakistani special weapons depots in a sudden Failed State condition. If Iran decides to 'intervene' in support of the Shia government against ISIL rebels who are quickly overrunning Iraq, this is the force which could face down their T-72M1s.
Remember: Just expensive enough (15-20 million) that nobody want's to copy them. Capable enough that nobody can force a LOS fight requiring numbers of units to survive an attrition fight.
PL-01 Obrum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-LupA0YkeU
Black Fox Camouflage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNv04HC6VSc
XM1111 MRM_KE Flight Test
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdH_i5T40GE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THan1NkFakw
AMAP-ADS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw9rYssjE-Q
Quick Kill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgWywHPVzMg
Mixed feelings about that, putting engines outside the primary hull makes the vehicle significantly wider and the engines vulnerable to small cannon fire, which your ADS systems can not defeat.
DeleteSomething that is pretty much perfect (insofar as light-tanks goes), is the Thunderbolt Armored Gun System, it has Hybrid Electric Drive, and can carry 4 soldiers or a bunch of equipment and is around 20-25tonnes. You can integrate AMAP-ADS into bolt-on armour as well as whatever smart round you wish to fire from the 120mm cannon.
In case its a light tank for Airborne operations you are looking for....whats wrong with the Alvis Scorpion series of vehicles ?
ReplyDeleteI am not actually sure if people want a light MBT, or just something with a big DERP gun for throwing HE. In that case they can just mount a NEMO system in custom turret with ATGMs installed, and paradroop those.
Delete