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StuG III Thread (and also other German vehicles I guess)


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Only carrying part of the gun crew in the vehicle isn't a huge issue - it's a lot easier to have an APC with the extra hands follow artillery than follow tanks. Brit practice is to have about half the gun crew ride in AS-90, and the rest follow along in another vehicle.

 

A proper self-propelled gun-howitzer in A400M is a pretty useful capability

 

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Some modern howitzers can indeed be operated by 2 but I believe the norm would still be at least 4 men, possibly spread between the ammo mule and SPH. 

 

I think the howitzer that Elbit's developing (and I sure hope they don't take another 10 goddamn years!) would be manned by 4-6 men just because settling for less would be a real shocker for the reserve artillery units that rely on crews of up to 10 per howitzer.

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3 hours ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

Some modern howitzers can indeed be operated by 2 but I believe the norm would still be at least 4 men, possibly spread between the ammo mule and SPH.

 

the entire point of this vehicle as laid out in the article is to reduce manpower requirements as much as possible going so far as to simply remote controlling the majority of a bateries vehicles.

carrying spare personel as a failsafe as the pzh2000 did defeats the point.

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29 minutes ago, holoween said:

 

the entire point of this vehicle as laid out in the article is to reduce manpower requirements as much as possible going so far as to simply remote controlling the majority of a bateries vehicles.

carrying spare personel as a failsafe as the pzh2000 did defeats the point.

Well the only thing they're doing in practice is just relocate the manpower to maintenance units.

 

But I guess on second thought, men who specialize in maintaining the vehicle will do so more efficiently, thus leading to another source of manpower saving.

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DZoJMOCWsAAKwZz.jpgDZoEFFbX4AAAQ-P.jpg

DZoEFFbW0AALCJa.jpg

 

Boxer with CT40 turret and ATGM launcher.

 

The UK wants a total of ~800 Boxers (but supposedly currently plans with only ~500, because money is limited), which could make it the largest single Boxer contract yet. Saudia-Arabia was close to order a total of 928 Boxers including some very exotic variants, but the contract was never signed due to politics. It was apparently very close to be signed - Rheinmetall even requested an export licence for an initial 200 vehicles, but it was denied. The Saudi deal would have included 119 anti-tank Boxers with 105 mm main gun in a turret, 100 Boxers with dozer blades to break through barricades and 60 Boxers to transport up to four VIPs each (probably to evacuate the Saudi-Arabian royal family in case of a revolt/war) incorporating sinks, fridges and safes. The German government didn't want to approve such a deal and an attempt to circumvent this (by selling the licence for the Boxer to some Spanish company and making the vehicles there) failed. This is why Saudi-Arabia ordered the LAV 700.

 

The UK wants 10 variants for the MIV:

  1. armored personnel carrier
  2. command and control vehicle
  3. armored recovery vehicle
  4. mortar carrier
  5. ambulance
  6. armored engineering vehicle
  7. joint fire control vehicle
  8. infantry fighting/reconnaissance vehicle
  9. 155 mm self-propelled gun carrier
  10. short-range air-defence vehicle

Apparently this makes the Boxer the best option, because all variants are either (to be) ordered or fielded already. Germany is interesting in a SHORAD system based on the Boxer (NNbS;  Nah- und Nächstbereichsschutz), an artillery variant with RCH 155 turret, a Boxer for the JFST and a fire-support variant with 30 mm gun. Slovenia wants to buy IFV/recce vehicles and mortar carriers, Lithunia ordered IFVs and scout vehicles with the Samson Mk II RWS, Australia buys turreted CRVs and apparently some ARVs. The 155 mm artillery variant seems to currently be an unique selling point of the Boxer, because other 8x8 wheeled vehicles have not been demonstrated in such a variant.

 

The armament of the APC variant is supposed to be a a Kongsberg Protector with Javeling ATGM. This is why the Dutch variants (already fitted with the Protector RWS) are meant to be the basis for the British variants. According to Nicholas Drummond on Twitter, the ambulance variant of the Boxer was well-received (although he doesn't specify which ambulance variant - Germany and the Netherlands use different ones).

 

 

 

 

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And maybe some distant day in the future, even the German Army will get rid of the last TPz Fuchs and replace them with Boxers.
With several hundrets to be build for AUS and the UK and probably some hundrets more for Germany as a third and maybe fourth batch
(there are still over 700 Fuchs in service, SHORAD is a candidate and  the light infantry would love to see some Boxer variants as a Wiesel replacement) the boxer won`t reach a Gav...M113 level but will at least be one of the more successful platforms.

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