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Contemporary Western Tank Rumble!


SH_MM

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The main problem with the L30 isn't the fact that it's rifled, it's the fact that the propellant charge is pathetic.

Here's a picture of various L30 ammunition from @SH_MM's blog:

JTE14Lc.jpg

Now here's a picture of Rheinmetall 120mm ammunition:
 

 

36ErssN.jpg


Both have (within mm) identical caliber, so you can easily scale the images based on the width of the projectile.

Or, you don't even have to, because it's really obvious that the L30 ammunition is straight-walled while the Rheinmetall 120mm is bottlenecked, and is thus burning oodles more propellant with each shot.  Max chamber pressure is similar too, although the German gun may have a small edge.  Bottom line though is that the German gun turns a lot more nitrocellulose into boom with each shot, and its projectiles therefore kill things deader.

The design of the L30 breech is quite clever, and allows slight economy in the weight and size of the ammunition.  As you can see, it entirely lacks the metallic obturating case at the bottom of each cartridge.  A gun with an L30 style breech mechanism with bottlenecked, one-piece caseless ammunition would really be something.

I doubt this affects performance in the tank biathlon at all, although it is possible that the Leo 2 has received some FCS upgrades that the Chally 2 has no equivalent to.  Chally 2, hell, the entire British military has been cash-strapped and hurting for critical upgrades for years.

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3 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

although it is possible that the Leo 2 has received some FCS upgrades that the Chally 2 has no equivalent to.  Chally 2, hell, the entire British military has been cash-strapped and hurting for critical upgrades for years.

 

I totally forgot the Chally 2 also has the same FCS as it did in 1998 (along with armor, gun, 1200hp engine)... now 20 years old. I feel like Britain is competing with Germany on how quickly they can self destruct their country. 

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2 hours ago, Lord_James said:

 

I totally forgot the Chally 2 also has the same FCS as it did in 1998 (along with armor, gun, 1200hp engine)... now 20 years old. I feel like Britain is competing with Germany on how quickly they can self destruct their country. 

Germany at least keeps a small # of vehicles to close to top standard.  Upgrade programs should get an obsolete Leo 2 fleet up to date as quickly as you can get them through your factories.

 

 

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According to Roman Alymov of tanknet; the Ukrainian’s low offensive scoring might be related to the tanker in this video complaining about the dugouts being made for Abrams and therefore too tall for a T-84, which blocked their view.

 

 

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6 hours ago, SH_MM said:

Germany won.

 

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/280177/germany-takes-prize-strong-europe-tank-challenge-winner

 

Sweden got the second place, Austria came in third. Like last year, the lower places probably won't be officially revealed.

 

last I checked, 810 > 763: 

 

7 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

DfG_l9_W0AEvuds.jpg

 

... or is this chart wrong? 

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23 minutes ago, Serge said:

What ?

Leclerc MBT are not last !

 

Makes my day. 

 

Well if the numbers for the scores are to be trusted, there is only 86 points of difference between the US and the French team.

So between the 4th and the 7th place the contenders could as well be considered equals.

 

The Ukrainian will most likely always struggle because I don't think that they use standard NATO procedures (or something close to it) so those kinds of events will always be slightly different to what they are trained to.

Put a western crew with a western tank (hypothetically) on the tank biathlon and they will perform equally bad.

 

Dat edit war on the wiki page though xD

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Strong_Europe_Tank_Challenge&action=history

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8 minutes ago, Alzoc said:

 

Well if the numbers for the scores are to be trusted, there is only 86 points of difference between the US and the French team.

So between the 4th and the 7th place the contenders could as well be considered equals.

 

The Ukrainian will most likely always struggle because I don't think that they use standard NATO procedures so those kinds of events will always be slightly different to what they are trained to.

Put a western crew with a western tank (hypothetically) on the tank biathlon and they will perform equally bad.

Tank biathlon has WARPACT procedures?! :blink:

:lol:BEST-JOKE-EVER!!! :lol:

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2 hours ago, Alzoc said:

 

Well if the numbers for the scores are to be trusted, there is only 86 points of difference between the US and the French team.

So between the 4th and the 7th place the contenders could as well be considered equals.

 

The Ukrainian will most likely always struggle because I don't think that they use standard NATO procedures (or something close to it) so those kinds of events will always be slightly different to what they are trained to.

Put a western crew with a western tank (hypothetically) on the tank biathlon and they will perform equally bad.

 

Dat edit war on the wiki page though xD

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Strong_Europe_Tank_Challenge&action=history

 

Yeah there are distinct groups in the scores.

 

Germany, Sweden

Austria

France, Poland, UK, US

Ukraine

 

I wish they gave a more detailed breakdown, its kind of a what?!? that the US got 7th and yet won the seperate Shoot-off.

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On the website of the Austrian Truppendienst magazine (the official magazine of the Austrian military), a summary has been published by the Major of the Panzerbataillon 14:

 

https://www.truppendienst.com/themen/beitraege/artikel/die-setc18-im-rueckblick/

 

  • The Swedish team didn't finish first, because one of their soldiers got an injury during the last task, the "tanker olympics". Sweden got the last place in this discipline as a result.
  • The Polish team didn't bring its own training ammunition (is there a shortage in the Polish army?), so they did all live fire tests with high explosive ammunition (!). As this was proper HE ammo and not HE training/practice ammo, they were always the last to shoot (the hosts didn't want to replace the targets in the middle of the competition). This might also explain the poor score compared to other Leopard 2 users...
  • Leclerc required more maintenance than other tanks, but French army send more/better people to take care of that
  • Aparently the rules of the competition were slightly changed, so that having a three men crew wasn't indirectly punished (i.e. three men crews had to do less in certain competitions than four men crews). The Leclerc did a poor job at spotting targets.
  • The UK might reconsider the idea of equipping one tank regiment with AJAX vehicles, because  the Challenger 2 performed quite well. Supposedly the better shooting results of tanks with smoothbore guns might affect the decision wether the Challenger 2 LEP will adopt such a gun or keep the old rifled one.
  • The T-84's fire control system did not perform (significantly) worse than that of NATO tanks. The old Soviet-derived autoloader provided similar reload speeds compared to the manned tanks.The crews had combat experience and knew how to properly deal with drones (something that the US team apparently didn't knew).
  • Originally another German team was meant to participate, but a short time before the competition it was swapped. Still they were giving some preparattion. The Germans had higher physical fitness than others.
  • The stabilizer of (one or multiple) Leopard 2A6 tanks from Germany failed due to the unexpectedly high temperatures (and probably because they weren't replaced in the past years, as spare parts are low...). The gunners of the Leopard 2A6 tank(s) could compensate the lack of a stabilizer to some extend.
  • Germany will co-host next year's SETC aswell, but the Bundeswehr decided that they will only send teams to the challenge, which never participated before.
  • Canada, Croatia, Denmark ,Greece, Switzerland and the Netherlands had observers at the competition. Canada and Denmark will definetly not participate next year (Canada has no tanks in Europe, Denmark is switching from Leopard 2A5 to 2A7), the other countries might.
2 hours ago, DarkLabor said:

Tank biathlon has WARPACT procedures?! :blink:

 

It doesn't? Given that half of the participants are former members of the Warsaw Pact, I would expect that it might include some...

 

6 minutes ago, Ramlaen said:

I wish they gave a more detailed breakdown, its kind of a what?!? that the US got 7th and yet won the seperate Shoot-off.

 

I've read different things regarding this shoot-off. Some sources say that it was the "inofficial" 14th task (the SETC however only included 13 rated tasks, unless something was changed from last year), which not all contenders did serious (like the Swedes according to the Truppendienst article). Based on videos the  "shoot-off" seems to be done from static positions at a shooting range with the targets being clearly visible. The offensive and defensive ops (for which exact scores were leaked) are also including gunnery, but from the move and without always knowing the location of the targets (the crews have to spot them).

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31 minutes ago, Ramlaen said:

 

Yeah there are ďťżdistinct groups in the scores. ďťżďťż

 

Germany, Sweden

Austria

France, Polanďťżdďťżďťżďťżďťż, ďťżUK, US

Ukraineďťżďťżďťżďťżďťżďťżďťż

 

I wish they gave a more detailed breakdown, its kind of a what?!? that the US got 7th and yet won the seperate Shoot-off.

 

A bit more communication on those events wouldn't hurt indeed.

Besides that it would makes some extra cookies for our tank nerd community, it would help to show to the general public that even with the current mess on transatlantic relations operational cooperation is still going on nevertheless.

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37 minutes ago, SH_MM said:

On the website of the Austrian Truppendienst magazine (the official magazine of the Austrian military), a summary has been published by the Major of the Panzerbataillon 14:

 

https://www.truppendienst.com/themen/beitraege/artikel/die-setc18-im-rueckblick/

Is that an official press organism because, some statements are pure BS.
All trials are crew based which allows to have three and four man crews without disparity in the scoring.
Nobody from French Army got sent to GraffenwĂśhr after the fact.
Spotting targets... they mean the SITREP trial???

 

 

37 minutes ago, SH_MM said:

It doesn't? Given that half of the participants are former members of the Warsaw Pact, I would expect that it might include some...

It's just a dumb biathlon... They run in circle, shoot stuff. Get penalties if they miss...
 

 

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This was posted on 4chan with a timestamp of a medal so it might be legit.

 

Quote

I was the commander on one of the Swedish tanks.


We trained for 4 months before SETC. The Germans trained for a full year. They have already selected their crews for next year and are probably gonna start training soon.

Sweden only lost to Germany since we came in last in the "Tanker Olympics".
That is because we had one guy fall and injure his knee during the event.

 

 

 

twEuhGz.jpg

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Yes, some countries like the Ukraine even have competitions to decide which crew will be send to Grafenwoehr. However as mentioned earlier, the German unit didn't know one year ahead of time that they will participate at SETC 2018, because the original plans saw another unit participating.

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On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 7:55 PM, Xlucine said:

The US team really win on style points, hopefully we see the other teams following suit next year

 

You are kidding.....They almost missed the yellow car!  :lol:

 

The Challenger was clearly the winner with its perfect execution of the white people-carrier.  ;)

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