N-L-M

And I think you're focusing on the solution and looking for a problwm it can solve. Except that with retrofit-level tech MBTs can be made entirely immune to such autocannon bursts. Fact: diverse isn't always superior. And when you're giving up internal volume to a system that is inferior in every important respect to the alternatives it displaces, that's a no-go. Weight and volume better spent on electrical systems and 130mm ammo, not superfluous coax autocannon. No, a coax MG exists to provide suppressive firepower against enemy troops whose location is not known precisely and to offer a close in self defence option with a large ammo reserve. Anything larger than "jihadyota" is "worthy" of 120/130mm MPHE. At the cost of displacing 130mm MPHE, which is a price not worth paying. The rationale is that you're basing your entire concept of effective gunfire vs an opponents MBT on your ability to first land effective hits with your autocannon. This means your effective range is limited to the effective range of said autocannon. Unless you don't think the autocannon is needed to ensure effectiveness, in which case why install it in the first place? Also, you seem to be greatly underestimating the bulk of an autocannon and associated ammo and feeding. You are displacing quite a few main gun rounds, which are significantly more effective, and consequently only harming the vehicles effectiveness. And the argument of saving rounds is a result of you completely ignoring alternative counter-APS approaches that do not involve multiple main gun shots. So you'd trade the long range firepower of stowed 130mm rounds for the ability to pepper enemy MBTs at close range with small frag which they can easily resist. After admitting that the ability to counter APS exists regardless, as you use it at longer ranges. Yeah no. What I'm saying is that the line infantryman shouldn't be packing a pistol and 9mm ammo in the first place, but an equivalent weight in 5.56mm ammo, because 9mm is low energy, sad, short ranged and innaccurate and won't go through the enemy's body armor. Particularly not when the metaphor breaks down, as tech has been pushing the effective engagement ranges ever further out, so why the hell would I take a 9mm when I intend to fight the enemy at 800m? No it isn't. There are options that do not require sticking around after announcing your presence like that. What is leading the target Who let the target get within 3km Confirmed for not understanding how ballistics or time work. Protip-30/35mm fullbore rounds take a lot longer to reach 3km because the MV is low and the shells lose velocity quickly. And all this extra time is time for the target to disappear and time you leave yourself exposed after announcing your presence, which is just asking to get nailed by someone who doesnt waste their time with autocannon bursts. Better but still not as good as just not bothering with the small caliber shit in the first place. For a start as Bronez pointed out that solution is very sensitive to so many environmental conditions that its a non starter. Again, the alternative does not have to be firing multiple rounds from the main gun. But even if we assume for a moment that it is, well then you'd design your gun and autoloader for that purpose. And pre-selected ammo flick rammed 120mm guns can reach 120rpm. It's been done. Much faster than waiting for slow autocannon shells to cross the distance. The point of such shutters is that you close them for a very short amount of time to protect the soft portions from frag and then open them again. They dont have to be closed for any longer than 0.1 sec per fragmentation round sent the way of the protected vehicle. Servomechanisms powerful enough to move STANAG 3 level shutters at high velocity are established tech. Really fucking fast. Its a matter of how fast you want them to move, and building an appropriate servo mechanism. Servos are insanely fast. And yes these shutters could also protect the system from small arms fire. Protective covers are not shutters. If you need to manually remove them before action they aren't the kind of system I'm talking about. Shutters as their name implies *shut*. Watch the vid LooSeR linked. Yes, because you can carry 10k linked rounds for a machine gun as 7.62 rounds are tiny and because you want an emergency backup weapon that can prevent you from getting overrun by squishies and practically speaking eint run out of ammo. The MG is not however considered a primary weapon system substitute for any target. No. 120 or 130mm MPHE shits all over 35mm HEAB against all squishy targets. And to top it off the multiple smart fuzes on the multiple HEAB rounds you need to send downrange to provide a similar effect means the autocannon option is more expensive. And thats without getting into how at long ranges the 35mm just cant reack and suffers such poor dispersion that significantly more rounds are required. 35mm cannot compete in the big league with the big boys. M. P. H. E. If you dont want to bring down the building you set it to SQ or PROX. Will bring down part of the wall and anyone behind it but not the building. If you want the building to come down you use PDD. You don't need autocannon rounds for this. There are many upsides too. Most of them involve the multipurpose selectable destructive effect of MPHE rounds. And you're going to have autocannon equipped IFVs around anyway, in case you happen to run into a contrived situation which somehow only an autocannon can solve but a 120mm MPHE can't (or that a RCWS with a 40mm AGL with high elevation also won't solve). Still not a reason to install a coax autocannon on a tank. 100% of released future concept "tanks" with autocannon have no main gun to cut down weight and save cost, not because it provides complemetary firepower on the same platform. I like the way you ignored all the other targets I listed. But just to make the point clear- the autocannon does not provide any additional AP capability against them either, as they will be immune. So again it is redundant. This is just grasping at straws. 130mm ammo vs 120mm ammo requiring lengthened racks 'may cause problems' despite such work having already been done for the old 140mm systems? Last time I checked most countries are satisfied with current ammo capacites. And the shrinking of crews as you point out frees up volume, so what prevents you utilizing that volume for effective useful 130mm ammo? There were a few already mentioned in this thread, had you bothered to read it. The additional length and greatly increased muzzle energy of the 130mm give a lot of room to play around with while keeping a reference long rod going at the desired velocity. Decoy darts, segmented programmable rods that break apart before entering the APS intercept zone, RCS reduction of the dart (and matching of any decoys), EW methods, AHEAD-tipped darts to try and hit the APS munition itself first, and many others. All of these are more future proof than trying to spray the opponent with light frag, and none of them require the entire vehicle to be designed around them. So again, in conclusion, you're obsessed with this solution and are desperately looking for a problem to justify it despite it objectively being a poor one.

https://issuu.com/vishmeh/docs/armada_artillery_compendium_-_april A few years old at this point, but Armada International compendiums are a nice overview of any field.

Thats a rather suspect claim. The performance claimed for most loadings of these guns, for example: http://s16.photobucket.com/user/hybenamon/media/LAND/ARMOR/Cockerill 90mm Cannon/CockerillSpecs.jpg.html Indicate performance that would require a pretty full case of powder, just slow-burning.

1. Making more resistant shutters is stupidly easy. STANAG 4569 level 3 KE equivalent can even be done with transparent materials. 2. It depends what sized flechettes and what shutters. but if you're trying to spam 25mm APFSDS -equivalents, well that gets real heavy real fast. 3. Accepting such a low success rate is not a good way to go about developing weapons. 4. Tanks are already mud-resistant, this also sounds like a non-starter. 5. Multispectral smoke is a thing, but all you do is blind the opponent's optics (and not their radars) for a short amount of time. The long ToF for heavy shells means the opponent has a long time to shoot down this shell in flight and to counterfire before it arrives. Going to all this trouble just to blind them for a short time also sounds like a non-starter. 6. Missile spam is a legitimate strategy, particularly if the missiles themselves are designed for the express purpose of defeating APS. This solution is not cheap, however.

What is this MG intended to achieve? increase effective range vs 7.62 MGs? Currently 7.62mm coax weapons are considered effective for suppression effects out to roughly 1-1.2km. I'm not entirely sure what the actual objective ideal suppression range would be, but it would be reasonable to assume that you want to be able to suppress infantry out to the effective range of small man portable ATGMs, or around 1.5-2km, in which case a slightly longer effective range may be desirable. The availability of MPHE for destructive fire vs suppressive fire may however render this a moot point, and such a specialized MG sounds like a waste of effort. If the enemy's tank has shutters, you're going to need some pretty massive darts to damage stuff, and that means you're going to need a pretty massive rocket. and what you get for your trouble is limited destruction of external equipment, with no guarantee of a mission kill. For example, an Abrams-style secondary sight location and reserve panoramic cameras renders any "optics kill" approach unworkable. And if you're already resigned to flinging LOSAT sized rockets, you may as well make a proper LOSAT as that's more liable to actually kill the target. Carting around large numbers of dumb rockets to maybe annoy an MBT isn't a good way to go around countering them.

@LoooSeR and @Bronezhilet mentioned a lot of downsides, but there are even more. This idea is not a good one. For a start, you're willingly throwing away the ability to destroy the enemy at extreme ranges; There's a reason every MBT designed since the 1980s has a LRF with a range of at least 4 km, and that's because effective ranges increase with time, and the Gulf wars already had armor engagements at around 4-5km. limiting yourself by concept to 2km range is just flat out stupid. Secondly, properly crewed MBTs are fleeting targets. Sending a burst of autocannon ammo downrange and waiting until its almost arrived before firing your main gun greatly increases the exposure time needed to nail a target, and leaves you exposed for longer than is ideal, particularly as much of this exposure is after you've announced your presence in a less-than-subtle manner. Thirdly, 35mm KETF just isn't that impressive against armor. ~5mm dia tungsten fragments just don't go through all that much armor at all. so small motorized shutters tied in to the APS radar can effectively 100% counter both that and PROX artillery threats at very little additional cost. Such a shutter system could probably be retrofit on to existing tanks with APS within half a year of such a threat materializing. and protip- if your basic design concept can be subverted by an afterthought retrofit you should get better ideas and better taste. Another major point against such a layout is that the single greatest advance in tank ammunition in the past 30 years has been MP HE rounds, capable of reaching out to 5+km and destroying any target other than current-gen MBTs in one shot. small bore autocannon simply do not have the range with HE rounds, nor can they fully fill the MP role- 35mm HEAB will not bring down buildings or penetrate and wreck IFVs. Likewise, 35mm HEAB has a hard time reaching out to extended ranges to counterfire on ATGM teams- more rounds are required, dispersion is worse, and time to target is significantly worse. Displacing fullbore MP HE rounds for less capable autocannon rounds is a non-starter. And on a further note, future threat IFVs are likely to be immune to 35mm APFSDS, at least at extended ranges, as that is the current standard armament for many NATO IFVs. This means that the coax 35mm will be almost completely useless and redundant and therefore does not belong on future MBTs. (and for the ones that wont be immune to 35mm APFSDS, 120/130mm MPHE on PDD will destroy them more thoroughly and faster than a burst of autocannon APFSDS). And on a final note, why would a switch to the new 130mm mean lower ammo capacity? the base diameter is the same as the NATO 120, and most stowage is horizontal. Extend the bustle of an Abrams and it'll hold just as many 130mm rounds as it holds 120mm rounds today (seldom used hull rack excluded). So in conclusion, this seems like a bad idea all around.

@SH_MM you've been ripped off by TNI, you're officially in the big league now.

With a single disk, the problem is balancing lift on both sides where one is advancing and the other retreating. The retreating has to have a higher AoA to compensate, and therefore stalls first. With contra disks, you can have a different swashplate for each rotor set. The retreating blades on each side can get a 0 AoA and therefore wont stall.

Link works, thanks!

I thought they got their first A7Vs in 1917

More escort carriers for the USN? Yes please!

Now that's how you design an oppression tower. Just needs some more spikes and barbed wire, an ominous smoke generator, and hidden speakers for playing theme appropriate music and it's good to go.

No, but it does mean the radar hardware needed for advanced signal trickery is all there, as everything required for advanced DSP and pseudorandom transmissions are there, as they are needed to run a bog-standard AESA. And what I said is that the hardware is all there. It means you need the hardware to control the phased array, which is the same hardware needed for the more advanced methods. No. Barrage jamming is almost completely ineffective against any kind of white noise filtering. Even a simple frequency sweep pulse compression will easily filter out white noise barrage jamming. Learn DSP. Completely useless for standoff asset protection jamming outside the same range gate the protected target is in against modern software defined pulse encoding. The radar has the ability to reject signals from outside the range gate, and the different encoding of sequential pulses means that you have no gating ambiguity and drfm from a platform outside the fate gets rejected really easily. The jammer being further away, it gets filtered out trivially. Again, learn DSP and study current radar tech. Modern software-controlled AESA radars are magic by 1980s standards and a lot of 1980s tricks just dont work on them any more.

You are definitely wrong. Current APS radars are AESAs, which are as advanced as radar hardware needs to be to handle the most advanced signal processing wizardry. Considering the EM intensive battlefield, any APS radar has to be able to distinguish its signal from background noise, ground return, and the radars of other vehicles within LOS, and is therefore quite ready to deal with basic bitch white noise jamming already. (point of fact most modern pulse-Doppler radars are fairly immune to plain noise jamming). Negligible cost increase, if you already have the APS radars and computers installed. old VT fuzes are hilariously easy to jam, and I don't think anyone has large stocks of a newer more resistant variety.

But why did you say trash twice?

No. Modern radars are magic and white noise jamming is easily filtered out. You need waaaay more advanced trickery than simple noise jamming to fool a good, modern, AESA radar.

Brits paying for new turrets? More likely they end up buying surplus M1A1 turrets (from those vehicles converted to CEVs and bridgelayers or whatever) and upgrade them. Also, weekly reminder that Drummond is a hack.

Today I learned just how low energy and sad steam locomotives were. High end locos with large superheaters ran up only around 220-300 psi pressure at best. For comparison, the USN in WW2 was running almost 600 PSI in destroyers, and postwar reached 1200 PSI before deciding that steam power isn't worth it and that gas turbines are where it's at.

That's very optimistic. Skeet submunitions have very unpredictable flight patterns and detonate quite a distance away. You'd need to intercept them before they go off (I'd assume, as the slugs are pretty zippy), and that's not easy. Single EFPs are however not as penetrative as similarly sized conical shaped charges, so I'd expect any bomblet armor (other than the German spikes which work differently) to also be effective against these skeets. You still want the roof armor, no APS I'm aware of can shoot down multiple DPICM bomblets in flight.

Or, alternatively, having roof armor designed to counter single EFPs. (Or indeed tandem EFPs if you want to stop OTA missiles like the TOW-2B).

Norman Friedman is the Hunnicutt of naval technology books. Every single book he's published is A. The gold standard of books on that topic and B. Worth every penny. As he is still alive at this time, I unironically reccommend buying his books even if there is a PDF available, as he deserves every penny he gets from it.

Based on what we've seen of the Altay, it has ammo to the sides of the driver, M60 style. Perhaps the new improved model is intended to incorporate the lessons of the fighting in Syria and avoid such catastrophic Kabooms as seen in M60s and Leopard 2s.

Kharkovites strike again!

At that point I'd be more worried about someone just starting up the vehicle and running away with it, ERA or no.

Are you actually worried someone will walk up to the vehicle with a ratchet and the right-sized socket and just disassemble the (presumably over 30 kg each) block and steal it?