N-L-M

You see, they have this prince with $10 mil, they just need a little up front deliveries to free him from prison and then they'll pay double, honest.

Coverage does indeed look very good for single layers, but I'm not sure I get how the snd pulse is supposed to help. If all it does is propel the heavy strike face of the array with a delayed pulse that could work, but if the individual flyer plates of the explosive sandwich are also supposed to have an effect, we run back into a coverage problem- very little of the array is covered by both layer at once. The system seems to me to be optimized vs KE, (heavy flyer plate with enough delay to break a rod at the center, not the tip, to maximize effects, but depending on how long the delay is (and how thick the face plate is), this system may also have marginal effects vs tandems, with a fast moving flyer plate already in motion when the main jet arrives, but which hasnt moved too far out of the way yet thanks to the built in delay.

It appears that, approximately one year later, that link no longer works. If anyone happened to have saved the file while it was available, a rehost would be greatly appreciated.

Another option: M900 remanufactured. Considering how the same contract has HEI ammo of similar vintage, its possible that it's the propellant (or in the HE rounds, perhaps also the explosive fill) which is past its use-by date, and that the projos and cases will then be available for re-loading with fresh (perhaps IM or temp-independent?) propellant.

Working prototype to production is a non negligible step. Other than the refit market for vehicles using the AVDS already, yes. The MTU engine is sufficiently different in shape to make integration into AVDS tailored spaces... annoying. Boat-hulled Pattons come to mind. I'm not absolutely sure the thing isnt fully production ready, just smells to me like it. If it is indeed fully ready, then yes L3 has managed to develop one AVDS upgrade since they bought the IP and plant.

https://www.janes.com/article/91385/royal-netherlands-army-selects-iron-fist-aps-for-cv90 Another win for Iron Fist.

https://www.janes.com/article/91385/royal-netherlands-army-selects-iron-fist-aps-for-cv90 CV90 is getting Iron Fist.

So, regarding this- You seem to have hit on a problem which I was mildly aware of while setting up the requirements, and which I didn't want to change by making the KE threat worse. The design space did in fact offer at least 2 core methods for dealing with annoyingly high armor mass requirements: 1. BIIIIIIG tanks. The weight limit of 120 tons allows a lot of fairly silly yet still well armored tanks. Bigger is better thanks to the volume of the engine bay scaling with the cube of a linear scaling whereas the armor weight needed only scales with the square, as thickness remains constant. Making a vehicle at less than half the maximal weight of course you ran into some issues. 2. ERA Against HEAT, the main defeat mechanism is the multiplicative effect of the reactive armors. ERA gives you the same multiplicative effect as NERA at approximately half the weight and 3/4 of the volume. This effectively means that at the same weight of armor you can get double the coverage at the cost of being made of explodium, with no other additional cost. You could of course layer explosive and non explosive armor to get, for example, a front array that will only stop the 60/160 and 125mm KE with the ERA in place, but which will still stop the 2"/4" and 105mm KE bare. The main defeat mechanism of light N/ERA against KE is LOS feeding and not multiplicative, and therefore when using it the KE threat does pop up as a thing to annoy you. From my math, you can get a good frontal NERA array at an equivalent areal density to around 350mm steel including a 30mm backing plate. Using ERA, you can get that down to approx 250mm, While the NERA one does indeed require a careful volume conscious design, the ERA one practically lets you go wild. In effect, the armor requirements could be met by a design similar to the M1 Abrams with TUSK II, at approx 85 tons, or a design similar to the T-72B3 mod 2016 or Oplot-M (depending on how explodey you want to be) at approx 45-55 tons. By deciding to make a truly reasonable weight of tank, with no explosive armor integrated into the main arrays, with a human loader, and with moderately under-rated engines (32L engines should be pushing out north of 900HP each per the spec), you sort of ended up designing yourself into an unintended corner. All in all, the Objects 426 and 138 both used ERA as an afterthought at best, which is a bit strange considering just how good it's given to be. Survivability is much better with double coverage of single-hit armor (per given area), at least for a fairly small number of hits, and I expected this to be exploited quite a bit more than it ended up being.

I think that's post-buyout, but it also appears to be not entirely developed*, and certainly never built in any numbers. *For reference, it smells to me like a semi-finished development program which requires a partner for full development testing and fielding. If it were fully developed I'd expect it to be shilled as a "simple cheap ready" part of upgrade packages.

Upgrading the AVDS in the current year is a bit problematic. The owners of the old Continental Motors IP are currently L3 technologies, who do not seem to have a good handle on R&D for this property. As a point of fact, they offer no growth options that werent available before they bought out Continental.

Looks more like a Konkurs to me, with that bulged tube end.

Does this mean Stryker Dragoons will have *both* CROWS-J and 30mm guns, or just non-30mm variants in the same SBCT will get the -J?

NERA or ERA. a single 3/3/3mm thick ERA plate at that standoff would likely protect against PG-7V, and 30mm is probably enough to cram in 2 NERA layers back to back. The gap to the 70mm RHA plate is standoff. That's one option, anyway.

Guess I'll just have to catch up with the thread in a few months then, lel.

That article mentions the COV. I've encountered one of those in the wild before, but never knew what it was called. Magical, absolutely magical. Knowing the name allowed me to find this: Also here are some pics of the one I spotted in the wild:

Again, conflating hardware costs with program costs. We've been over this, into the trash it goes. That's not what sunk cost means. Words and phrases have meanings, and if you can't be bothered to use the accepted ones you can go peddle your own flavor of semantics somewhere else. Sunk cost is money put in and not recoverable. And the 1.5T is definitely not that, as most of it is yet to be spent. And yes, it's an estimate. Like any good forwards-thinking organization, the US armed forces try to estimate how much stuff is going to cost in the future, so as to be prepared for it. More advanced accounting will include a confidence interval for the actual number, based on varying assumptions as to what the future will actually be. This is perfectly reasonable and makes good sense. Truly, inflation is a hell of a drug. Which is why comparisons are usually carried out in constant value equivalent, as the plain dollar number is not constant value and is therefore meaningless by itself. Says the guy who is still trying to make the point that the Abrams is somehow insanely expensive despite his own sources disproving his claim, who has now moved on to insinuate that all Army numbers are fudged to hide the real cost. Riiiiight. LOL. This one line proves that you have no idea how production lines get started, go from prototypes to FSD to production, gain competence or anything else. It is a well established fact of the industry that as production lines mature, product costs fall due to less productivity losses and higher throughput from skilled workers. The fact that you even for a moment were willing to put that piece of stupidity into writing for all to see disqualifies you from discussing manufacturing. Ok now we're back to simply throwing away the numbers the army supplies for the cost of the things it's buying because you don't like it. You again fail to compare apples to apples and are surprised by it. Hardware costs. Also: M1: 2374 produced. M1IP: 894 produced. M1A1: 5572 produced. That's 8840. Now granted quite a few of the M1A1s are rebuilt M1IPs, but still. regarding costs we've already been over this. Again, see hardware costs vs program costs and so on. Yeah an apple isn't as acidic as an orange. You are now aware that the MBT-70 would also have been more expensive than the plain projected hardware cost, likely by a similar amount. But again, if you're unwilling to accept the US Army numbers for hardware costs but are willing to accept their numbers for program costs, that's peak cherry picking right there. If reality is what you want it to be, sure the MBT-70 is cheaper because no spares, training, or ammunition were stocked for it. Massive savings across the board! The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are one and the same. The XM-1 program was the successor to the MBT-70 program, coming immediately on its heels and learning important lessons from it- notably cost control and cutting back on the gizmos. "follow on program" does not in any way mean "shares technical solutions and/or parts". It means a program that succeeds where the previous one left off. I'm insulting to people who badpost. Cope. Being insulting is not against the rules, being a shitter however is. And no, you still not being able to tell the difference between program cost and hardware cost does not make me wrong. which is not however a sunk cost. Words have meanings. Also lets do some more math, since you're in the mood. $500M per plane for flight is approx 17,000 flight hours per plane at the 30K CPFH price point. That number is significantly in excess of the plane's current rated lifespan of 8000h, so claiming that the costs are marginal on the basis of flight hours is flat out wrong. Also this is again why you do all the math in constant value dollars.

I did read the document, and your conclusions from it are so off-base that I'm not sure you read it. Consider, for example, the closing remarks, on page III of the document (page 6 of the PDF): "small real cost growth" is not at all the situation you describe. A growth of 19%, mostly because extra features were added in? say it ain't so! And again, 19% growth for features, mainly the strengthened powertrain, is literal taxpayer rape. wew. Also, the 507k is hardware costs for a single vehicle. Doubling the order for what is pretty much the same hardware cost per unit does not mean that the hardware cost per unit has doubled, and indeed the paper only talks about an estimated price increase if 19%. I really don't know how you could even reach that interpretation. You know, that's a fascinating source, but once again your source does not say what you claim it does. To wit, the Army's response to that claim: Page 89 of the very PDF you posted. If you're gonna cherry pick quotes from sources, at least bother to read your entire source. Cause it firmly disagrees with the conclusion you are trying to draw from it. Fun for the whole family! And a bit more, just to get the point across: Oh no muh poor taxpayer getting ripped off for squillions of dollars oh no It's almost as if getting sent to an active war zone in the sandbox leads to greater wear and therefore need for spare parts, as well as high fuel consumption, while the M60A3s are left at home or in Europe, who'd a-thunk it? The cost of the M1 exceeding the M1A1 is interesting, wonder what led to that. You do have a legit point that in practice it appears that the M1 has turned out to be expensive to operate, but that's a far cry from it being a case of the US MIC "raping the taxpayer". 1-800-come-on-now Ah, a clear sign that you indeed don't know what you're talking about, thanks for playing. for reference, the 1.5 trillion is a lifecycle cost for the entire fucking fleet. Not a sunk cost. And that's a really shitty way to dodge the point, which was that early LRIP costs are not indicative of full scale production. All the congressional testimony you've posted says otherwise, the design to cost was largely successful and the tank was delivered on time and mostly on budget, a great achievement for any development program, let alone one run by the US Army. It was absolutely the successor program to the failed MBT-70, what are you on to? So the US Army disagrees with you on the cost issue, and by all accounts the Abrams program has been a resounding success. You don't scale up a 3300 tank buy to 7000 if the cost balloons out of control, and sufficient evidence has been posted in this thread (ironically, by you) to disprove that notion. Inflation is a hell of a drug, and the extras in the TTS don't help. But anyway, TL;DR there's plenty of evidence that the Design-To-Cost of the M1 Abrams was by and large successful, and that it was successfully limited to a unit hardware cost significantly below that of the MBT-70, thus backing up the claim that started this whole discussion, ie that the Abrams was a budget tank born from the failure of the MBT-70 project. Not really no. What is however ironic is that you're calling out Ram despite you being the one who's incredibly wrong about this. The F-35 cost issue is prime bait and you took it like a champ. Thanks for playing.

For those keeping track at home, the D9 for example has a lot of rollers (good MMP), deep grousers for excellent traction in soft soil, and oil coolers for the torque converter. Unlike armored vehicles in which the torque converter is intended to lock up quickly and therefore not get very hot, the torque converter in the D9 is designed to work in slippage at all times. This results in a lot of power being turned into heat in the oil, which then needs to be cooled to prevent the seals from dying. You could run a tank in 1st gear and 100% slip on the torque converter and get pretty good tractive effort, but not for any length of time. The D9 is a very well designed tool.

And yet the RFP it was designed to meet was a cut down MBT-70 spec, and the design incorporated a lot of lessons learned from the MBT-70. The main difference was a flexible spec with Design-To-Cost as part of the RFP, allowing the active trading of performance requirements for cost reduction. Because the Army was really not happy with the cost of the MBT-70 and was out of both time and budget. Yes. For LRIP. In 1983 dollars. The very paper you quote mentions that inflation in that interval is nearly 300%, (239% according to this), which is the most significant chunk of that, and LRIP lots are always more expensive than mass production lots- for reference, the LRIP lot 1 F-35A was approx $200M a pop, and LRIP lot 11 is down to $89M per. So yeah, LRIP costs are not entirely indicative of mass production costs, which is what 3000 units most definitely is. Also you should be comparing apples to apples, that is hardware costs. Comparing hardware costs of the M60 to total costs of the M1 is disingenuous, as the M60 also needs those extras you are not factoring in. Same source, page 3217: Your own sources disagree with your opinion, the Abrams is not "the MIC raping the taxpayer". Another interesting snippet from page 1882: Seems like the Abrams is actually really close to the M60A3 in costs despite being a much better platform. If that's a sign of "raping the taxpayer", what would you consider a reasonable price to be, for that performance? And again, page 1910. This source you posted does not in any way support your claim that the M1 project ended up, and I quote, " producing a tank that costs 6 times the price of the M60 in its mission capable form ". Much the opposite, in fact. The M1 was extremely cheap compared to the M60 for what it was, and was the result of an extremely cost-conscious development, having learned the lesson of the failed MBT-70.

It has to do with the Abrams development mostly evolving from a cut down MBT-70. Ending up more expensive than the M-60 is mostly irrelevant because by that time the M60 was entirely obsolete, and therefore could not fill the role required, nor could any vehicle of equivalent cost. For the defined role, the Abrams as designed was a very austere design with few exceptions, and if you think for some reason that the Abrams wasn't designed under some pretty strict cost limits you are sorely mistaken and are more than invited to re-read Hunnicutt. Also penny pinching in general is a figure of speech for cost cutting, not only the cost cutting associated with small low value details. But choosing a 1-axis gunner's sight stab over 2-axis because it's $3000 cheaper is indeed penny pinching when it comes to a tank. Not than the MBT-70, to which the comparison must be made. Yes, also killed were the FCS, GCV, and some other programs which were supposed to replace the Abrams with an autoloaded vehicle. The fact that these projects all got cut and ate up most of the budget, leaving fuckall for Abrams upgrades, is a separate issue. Also talking facts here, bucko. Compare the estimated price of the MBT-70, M60A1 and M60A3 to that of the Abrams in then year dollars. Had you bothered to open a copy of Hunnicutt, you'd see that he provides the following numbers in equivalent 1972 dollars: $422k final Chrysler proposal $507k RFP design goal $526k XM-1 1978 estimate (including GFE) (from here) $339k M60A1 $432k M60A3 $611k XM803 (MBT-70) So yeah, Definitely a budget conscious development. (now if you're going "wait those numbers can't be right how come it's so much cheaper than the design goal", the answer is "competition". Chrysler's bid was $196M to GM's $232M).

So, seeing as some people need a refresher: You really should read Hunnicutt's Abrams book, but the 10 minute version of the story is as follows: MBT-70 was going to be the best tank that anyone had ever made. Ever. It was going to have all the bells, a double serving of whistles, and bully the hell out of any Soviet tank in every respect. At least, that was the idea. The MBT-70 proved to be a very problematic beast and got stuck in development hell for the better part of a decade, and by the time it was cancelled there was very little time and even less budget to get a working tank into service, and Congress was not happy with funding another ambitious development project. The Abrams was therefore most definitely a budget option compared to the state of the art at the time, though it was designed with some inherent growth features built in for later upgrades (notably, the CITV on the M1A2 was planned for pretty much from the get-go). The US was fully willing to have an autoloader in their fancy tank, and by all accounts the autoloader on the MBT-70 worked just fine; but it was not easily adaptable to the Abrams, and there was no time or budget to mature a new one- the Abrams was almost criminally late to the field as it was! All Abrams variants prior to the M1A2 are in one way or another budget versions, and only in the A2 did the US Army really get all the features they initially wanted (plus a bunch more that had cropped up and matured in the mean time). The US has designed several vehicles with autoloaders and even type-classified quite a few, with the Stryker MGS actually seeing service. Other than memes which as far as I can tell derive from wikipedia- tier sour grapes, there's no actual evidence that the US Army does not like the idea of autoloaders, much the opposite.

I'll take "things that never happened" for $500, Alex. See also: MBT-70.

No, judging has however been somewhat delayed.

Ok I see it's a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. Have fun on the Carl Sagan forums. Another protip for the masses: If your only defenses are "I haven't been banned for it yet" and "it's not illegal", perhaps you should keep that to yourself.

Friendly reminder that it is a really, really bad idea to deliberately antagonize moderators. We shouldn't have to point this out.