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14 minutes ago, Serge said:

Like both Australian and Czech Army competitions ? SPz-Puma on the one hand, SPz-Lynx on the other one.

 

The Puma is a joint venture, because back then the market looked very different and both companies lacked the available systems to create an own solution. The decision was also supported by politics. Back when the Puma's predecessor project was under way, there were four teams bidding, each consisting of multiple companies. KUKA, Henschel, Wegmann, etc. were all still their own companies, rather than being purchased or merged into KMW and Rheinmetall. KMW is also not involved in the Lynx.

 

This situation with the EMBT is  very different for KMW: they already have a product for the market and have zero competition (for example the Czech Republic has the choice between the M60 Sabra upgrade or Leopard 2 tanks... not really a hard choice). You can read the interviews of the German newspapers with the KMW managers - they do not want to keep developing the EMBT into a proper product, but see it as a gesture towards politics: KMW wants to become prime contractor for the MGCS, where Rheinmetall is currently in a better position. The governments of France and Germany have revealed that a German company will be in charge of the MGCS, while a French company will serve as prime contractor for the next-generation aircraft system of both countries. Given that Rheinmetall has more technology and is about 10 times larger than KMW, KMW feels the need to appease politicians by creating the EMBT.

 

18 minutes ago, Serge said:

The very drawbacks of the E-MBT is the balistic hole between turret and chassis. Once solved, we will be able to compared the quality of E-MBT and A7...

 

Yes, that is the only problem of the EMBT compared to a  Leopard 2A7... :rolleyes:

 

O5B3Yhp.png

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32 minutes ago, Serge said:

 

So vintage.

Swedish first and foremost.

You just don't give CAD and armor composition to potential customers... Otherwise, you would lose the intel warfare and give away your Achilles heel.
At best you give them quotes with protection levels but thats about it (rough estimates or minimal protection offered under certain angles).

So these drawings are what the swedish army thought the armor protection was with their best indigenous layouts.
This hasn't been made by Giat Industries for sure, the silhouette of the crew compartment should be a smaller with such angle. There is a dead space that hasn't been taken into account by the swedes.

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It reminds me the feeling of the GIAT Industrie team when it saw the Leclerc returning from mobility trials. 

It was so damaged, they considered Swedish Army tried to simply broke the chassis. From the very beginning, they wanted the Leopard-2.

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1 hour ago, Serge said:

It reminds me the feeling of the GIAT Industrie team when it saw the Leclerc returning from mobility trials. 

It was so damaged, they considered Swedish Army tried to simply broke the chassis. From the very beginning, they wanted the Leopard-2.

Dunno what they've done...
But for sure they left behind the car with G.I. workers and went full throttle. The technicians who were there were forced to REWORK the HULL. The suspension resisted the shock(s?) but the bolt holes were badly damaged. It took them a whole night with the tank on hydaulic lift to fix everything...
At the time, the T1s sent there were equipped with instrumental suspension to gather data. The swedes managed to go up to 1400 bars in the nitrogen spheres (STAT members, who were not gentle people, didn't even go beyond 900 bars)...
The incident got sent back to the higher ups and the president of G.I., with the support of the swedish industrials*, made a formal complaint.
* At the time rumors were circulating that the swedish army was going to adopt the Leopard 2 no matter what; swedish industrials were left behind with no options. (Sauce : "La gabegie" by Pierre Chiquet Ed. Albin Michel)

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Letters of intention signed for both the MGCS and the SCAF.

 

No big surprises, the MGCS will be developed by KNDS under German lead and the SCAF under French lead.

 

The MGCS will be integrated into the French Scorpion program as well as into the German HEER system.

However the schedule was slightly changed:

 

Initially a prototype was due for 2020, a development contract for 2025 for the first deliveries in 2030.

Now a "common demonstration phase" is due for mid-2019, a review of the necessary evolutions in 2022, detailed operational requirement in 2024 for a deployment in 2035.

 

I'm not sure about the coherence of the new schedule but anyway.

 

Apparently KNDS will also be working on a Common Indirect Fire System (CIFS) aimed to replace the Caesar, the LRU (M270) and the Pzh 2000 around 2030 as well.

All those vehicles (bar the M270) are relatively recent, so I don't know if they really need a replacement so soon but at least it will allow to have something ready for the export market.

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The fun thing with it is that it show how huge the Leopard 2 hull is compared to a Leclerc.

The turret looks ridiculously small on top of that hull.

 

They really need to use a more compact powerpack for the MGCS.

Or if they keep the same size make it more powerful (the idea of 1700 hp powerpack with capacitors to power a laser APS was being thrown around in 2017).

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12 hours ago, Alzoc said:

The fun thing with it is that it show how huge the Leopard 2 hull is compared to a Leclerc.

The turret looks ridiculously small on top of that hull.

 

They really need to use a more compact powerpack for the MGCS.

Or if they keep the same size make it more powerful (the idea of 1700 hp powerpack with capacitors to power a laser APS was being thrown around in 2017).

 

Somethink like this, for L2 mbt. 

5EzNuqMgV4E.jpg

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On 6/17/2018 at 7:10 PM, Serge said:

So vintage.

 

The age of these simulations doesn't change a number of facts:

  • when seen from an angle, the surface area behind which the crew compartment is located is greater on the Leclerc 
  • the turret bulge, gun mantlet and gunner's sight are weakspots in the armor layout that remain existent even in the more modern Leclerc variants
  • the Leclerc's armor is physicially thinner

Yes, the current models of the Leclerc (and also the Leopard 2) use much newer armor inserts than tested in Sweden; however that doesn't guarantee that the Leclerc will reach or exceed the protection level of a modern Leopard 2. Given above points, the Leclerc could even be considered inferior protected, if its armor offered a higher protection level per weight and thickness (which I doubt given that the Leopard 2A7 features new armor inserts).

 

On 6/17/2018 at 7:43 PM, DarkLabor said:

Swedish first and foremost.

You just don't give CAD and armor composition to potential customers... Otherwise, you would lose the intel warfare and give away your Achilles heel.
At best you give them quotes with protection levels but thats about it (rough estimates or minimal protection offered under certain angles).

So these drawings are what the swedish army thought the armor protection was with their best indigenous layouts.
This hasn't been made by Giat Industries for sure, the silhouette of the crew compartment should be a smaller with such angle. There is a dead space that hasn't been taken into account by the swedes.

 

That's frankly a lie. Just like the stupid lie from Froggy on the SteelBeasts forum about the Greek military using the AMX-30B2's armor to simulate the Leclerc's protection level. It is stupid to lie just to pretend your favorite tank/toy is perfect, that is not true.

 

Nobody buys a tank without knowing how well its armor will perform. Sweden was supplied with performance data (or protection level estimations) of the tanks and tested armor modules to verify that the data was correct. These tests were not necessarily done in Sweden, for example the M1A2 Abrams' armor was tested in the United States in order to ensure that the exact composition and layout of the armor array remained secret. The Swedes supervised the armor tests in the US and brought their own reference threats (i.e. two types of APFSDS, two large calibre shaped charge warheads to represent ATGMs and one smaller shaped charge to simulate the HEAT rounds fired by the Carl Gustaf recoiless rifle).

 

We know from Swedish sources, that the M1 Abrams with Swedish armor package provides a much higher level of protection than the one seen in the comparison chart:
coIJOcb.jpgqdd9Vwe.jpg

 

Note that the M1A2 turret is shown with the original armor package!

 

We also know that the Swedish armor was designed to meet the requirements (best possible protection against APFSDS with 700 mm penetration and 165 mm shaped charge warhead along the frontal arc of the turret). The Leclerc shown in the comparison chart clearly fails to meet this requirement, therefore it is not the one with enhanced armor protection. Last but not least we know that the Swedish armor was designed as add-on armor and that the base armor of the tank was kept. Therefore your claim that the comparison chart showed the Leclerc with Swedish armor package would mean that the basic Leclerc's armor would be a lot weaker.

 

B0EJ5VJ.jpg

The add-on armor would replace the storage boxes at the side of the turret while adding a wedge-shaped module (like used on the Leopard 2A5) to the turret front.

 

The Leclerc at 54.5 metric tons was designed to reach a similar level of frontal protection than the Leopard 2A4 (pre-1991: 55.15 metric tons) and the M1A1 (57 metric tons). It did so, while being lighter, having a bigger gun and having more side armor. To expect that a 54.5 tonnes tank would reach a protection level even broadly similar to MBTs with a weight of 62.5 tonnes (M1A2 and Leopard 2A5 prototype) is silly.

 

On 6/20/2018 at 6:04 PM, Alzoc said:

Letters of intention signed for both the MGCS and the SCAF.

  

No big surprises, the MGCS will be developed by KNDS under German lead and the SCAF under French lead.

 

The MGCS will be integrated into the French Scorpion program as well as into the German HEER system.

However the schedule was slightly changed:

 

Initially a prototype was due for 2020, a development contract for 2025 for the first deliveries in 2030.

Now a "common demonstration phase" is due for mid-2019, a review of the necessary evolutions in 2022, detailed operational requirement in 2024 for a deployment in 2035. 

 

I'm not sure about the coherence of the new schedule but anyway.

 

Apparently KNDS will also be working on a Common Indirect Fire System (CIFS) aimed to replace the Caesar, the LRU (M270) and the Pzh 2000 around 2030 as well.

All those vehicles (bar the M270) are relatively recent, so I don't know if they really need a replacement so soon but at least it will allow to have something ready for the export market.

 

You are misinterpreting the news. The contract between France and Germany only decided that the MGCS, the CIFS, EuroMALE and the SCAF will be developed. For the first three programs, German companies will be primary contractors, while the development of the SCAF will be headed by a French company.

 

Which company will be chosen has yet to be decided. Germany's anti-corruption laws mean there has to be a bidding process, rather than the government dictating that KDNS will get the contract. The official press statements from the French and the German ministries of defence do not say that KDNS will be responsible for the MGCS, because they cannot make the decision yet. The press releases from KMW and Nexter pretty much say "we are cooperating, please choose us".

 

As a matter of fact, Rheinmetall is also bidding to become the primary contractor for the MGCS. The rumor mill suggest that they are in a better position and might be prefered over KMW. Back when Krauss-Maffei was chosen for the Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 programs, it was the largest defence contractor with the capacity to manufacture MBTs in (West-)Germany. MaK, the second-largest, was chosen as a secondary contractor (making 45% of all tanks, while Krauss-Maffei made 55%). However in the past decades Rheinmetall has become a gigantic company that has swallowed roughly a dozen of smaller German & European defence vehicles and arms manufacturers (among them MaK, Thyssen-Henschel, Oerlikon, KuKa, Chempro, MAN military, etc.),: currently Rheinmetall has more than 23,000 employes, while KMW has just 2,700. The larger company also invests more into research and development (even without an official government requirement), while KMW over the past years has been satisfied with only becoming active once a requirement has been published.  Finally there is a difference in structure: Rheinmetall is easier to work with, as it is not a family-owned company (like KMW). Only the future will show wether KMW's move to join sides with Nexter to form KDNS was a way to win the MGCS contract or not.

 

Rheinmetall has announced that they will show "something" in regards to the MGCS in December of this year. Probably just some 3D models or testbed, because the exact concept of the MGCS has yet to be revealed by the governments. Rheinmetall is already working on its own idea of a next-generation tank (might become independent of the the MGCS) in their own secret facilities. Interesting note is that Ben Hudson from Rheinmetall asked "How do you defeat a tank that has four active defense systems on it?"...

 

General Dynamics will apparently not bid for the MGCS, as they think their ASCOD 2 might be enough for the tank market of the future.

 

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/eurosatory/2018/06/25/tank-makers-steel-themselves-for-europes-next-big-land-weapon-contest/

 

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/eurosatory/2018/06/14/when-does-industry-expect-france-and-germany-to-set-its-future-tank-requirements/

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38 minutes ago, SH_MM said:
Spoiler

 

You are misinterpreting the news. The contract between France and Germany only decided that the MGCS, the CIFS, EuroMALE and the SCAF will be developed. For the first three programs, German companies will be primary contractors, while the development of the SCAF will be headed by a French company.

 

Which company will be chosen has yet to be decided. Germany's anti-corruption laws mean there has to be a bidding process, rather than the government dictating that KDNS will get the contract. The official press statements from the French and the German ministries of defence do not say that KDNS will be responsible for the MGCS, because they cannot make the decision yet. The press releases from KMW and Nexter pretty much say "we are cooperating, please choose us". 

 

As a matter of fact, Rheinmetall is also bidding to become the primary contractor for the MGCS. The rumor mill suggest that they are in a better position and might be prefered over KMW. Back when Krauss-Maffei was chosen for the Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 programs, it was the largest defence contractor with the capacity to manufacture MBTs in (West-)Germany. MaK, the second-largest, was chosen as a secondary contractor (making 45% of all tanks, while Krauss-Maffei made 55%). However in the past decades Rheinmetall has become a gigantic company that has swallowed roughly a dozen of smaller German & European defence vehicles and arms manufacturers (among them MaK, Thyssen-Henschel, Oerlikon, KuKa, Chempro, MAN military, etc.),: currently Rheinmetall has more than 23,000 employes, while KMW has just 2,700. The larger company also invests more into research and development (even without an official government requirement), while KMW over the past years has been satisfied with only becoming active once a requirement has been published.  Finally there is a difference in structure: Rheinmetall is easier to work with, as it is not a family-owned company (like KMW). Only the future will show wether KMW's move to join sides with Nexter to form KDNS was a way to win the MGCS contract or not. 

 

 

 

Formally yes you are right, and the arguments on the comparative sizes of both company and R&D investments are big ones.

 

However I think that politics will come into play and that creating a Germano-French company only to reject it on during the biding process would be weird to say the least.

 

My guess is that either the requirement will be somewhat rigged (which while not surprising would be a stupid idea as it would introduce legal uncertainty for nothing on top of being dishonest) , or KNDS and Rhm will pass an agreement to split the work (I think Rhm is pretty much guaranteed to get the gun and the APS already), but that will probably happen after the presentation of the concepts where Rhm will probably showcase a lot of it's own systems in order to get as many of them implemented into the final project as possible.

Even if they are not the prime contractor, if they get to build most of the critical subsystems, I think Rhm will be perfectly happy with that.

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The problem with Rheinmetall and KMW/KDNS is that Rheinmetall broke an unwritten agreement by creating the Leopard 2 Revolution. The Leopard 2 market was essentially KMW's property, so they got really mad when Rheinmetall started "stealing" the contracts with Indonesia and Poland. This lead to a nearly two year delay in the Leopard 2A7V upgrade, as both companies couldn't agree on how to contract (mostly the money) should be split between them.

 

I think there are multiple options available. The French government is probably pushing for KMW/KDNS to become the primary contractor, but being secondary contractor (like MaK for the Leopard 1/2) also means that KDNS could end up manufacturing a large amount of tanks. Being the primary contractor has a number of advantages such as being responsible for the management of the project, being contracted for the development of upgrades/tech demonstrators and the right to export used tanks (although Rheinmetall also did that with the Leopard 2, it is actually a bit more complicated). The question remains wether Germany will choose the less capable company just to please the French wishes.

 

A third option that the government(s) could decide to choose would be asking/forcing the companies to bid as a joint-venture, i.e. as done with the Puma (the joint-venture PSM is the official prime contractor) and the Boxer (where all contractors are handled by OCCAR, which then talks to the prime contractor ARTEC).

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Things can change a lot indeed.

And a joint-venture would be the easiest way to solve the problem (but if you say that there is bad blood between KWM and Rhm it may prove difficult).

 

But the rights to export will be highly political question no matter what, since the process to authorize foreign sales are vastly different on either sides of the Rhine.

If KNDS/KMW is chosen there is also the legal problem of technology sharing as brought up with the EMBT.

 

All in all a lot of legal and political questions need to be answered, and once again I fear that they will have more weight than the purely industrial questions.

The fact that the CDU-CSU coalition seem to be unstable doesn't help either, a change of government on the German side could lead to a lot of delays, and cost overrun (at best) for petty internal politics reasons.

 

On the other hand if the current Merkel government stays, France could have the edge on the political spectrum.

France always told Germany to get it's act together on military matters while Germany always told France to get it's act together on budgetary matters.

We may get out of the excessive deficit procedure this year and while there is still much to do it's still a card to play.

On top of that Macron know that Merkel is currently in a though spot and that she can't do much but follow as he is taking the lead on common defense matters.

All of this to say that while the MGCS will be German led, the French government know that they currently have cards to play to influence the political side of the program.

 

The first step will be with the concepts presentation which will shape the technological basis of the MGCS, the attribution of the contract will then shape the industrial repartition but it will be heavily influenced by the political climate at this time.

 

I personally think that Macron is ok with most of the industrial part of the program taking place in Germany but that he will push for France to take the lead on the political spectrum or at least to be free to export the tank without being tied down by German politics (at least as little as possible).

 

As I said in another topic, for historical reasons, French in general (and even more so for our politicians, especially Macron) have a profound distrust toward parliamentary systems when it comes to external policy as they are seen as feeble and indecisive on those matters.

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21 hours ago, SH_MM said:

That's frankly a lie.

So what are the proofs?
Some CAD made by the swedes disclosed without any sort of nuclear response between french army or Nexter and the FMW or the guy that disclosed those slides?
That's a joke at best...

 

21 hours ago, SH_MM said:

Just like the stupid lie from Froggy on the SteelBeasts forum about the Greek military using the AMX-30B2's armor to simulate the Leclerc's protection level. It is stupid to lie just to pretend your favorite tank/toy is perfect, that is not true.

Dunno where he got the AMX 30 thingy. But clearly an engineer of Giat Industries disclosed the fact that the design bureau didn't sent the quotes in time to the Greek authorities. As a consequence the protection offered by the Leclerc was considered/judged lower compared to the other western MBTs due to their lower volumes.
We may like our tank, but we keep in mind its achilles heel. We do not claim that its protection is the absolute best in the world. But we are sure it offers an adequate protection (reinforced by what has been learnt in Yemen).
 

21 hours ago, SH_MM said:

Nobody buys a tank without knowing how well its armor will perform. Sweden was supplied with performance data (or protection level estimations) of the tanks and tested armor modules to verify that the data was correct. These tests were not necessarily done in Sweden, for example the M1A2 Abrams' armor was tested in the United States in order to ensure that the exact composition and layout of the armor array remained secret. The Swedes supervised the armor tests in the US and brought their own reference threats (i.e. two types of APFSDS, two large calibre shaped charge warheads to represent ATGMs and one smaller shaped charge to simulate the HEAT rounds fired by the Carl Gustaf recoiless rifle).

You test the armor packages when you've selected a short list of contenders.
What the swedes asked were quotes and some armor cavities to test the protection with their indigenous solutions... (what you have in the photo).
No ballistic tests have been conducted on an actual tank in France for sure. The only two were one for the french army to validate their choices and one for Giat Industries to validate their softwares in the case of repeated impacts on armor packages and structures.
Another one underwent tests in UAE to validate the choices of the UAE land forces.
No trace of a potential swedish delegation to assess the armor packages with rigorous tests on ballistic modules...
That's about it.
 

21 hours ago, SH_MM said:

We know from Swedish sources, that the M1 Abrams with Swedish armor package provides a much higher level of protection than the one seen in the comparison chart:
 

Note that the M1A2 turret is shown with the original armor package!

So you just need some random CAD drawings to say "hey that's the original armor package!".
How did they assessed the armor package in the US?
How did they made their CAD to take into account the protection offered depending on the angle of the modules?
How do they know how the packages are oriented within the turret modules?

You are the kind of guy to swallow hook, line and sinker...

Here the full armor layout of the Le Klurk for you :
8387106146_2be57c06c4_b.jpg

 

21 hours ago, SH_MM said:

We also know that the Swedish armor was designed to meet the requirements (best possible protection against APFSDS with 700 mm penetration and 165 mm shaped charge warhead along the frontal arc of the turret). The Leclerc shown in the comparison chart clearly fails to meet this requirement, therefore it is not the one with enhanced armor protection. Last but not least we know that the Swedish armor was designed as add-on armor and that the base armor of the tank was kept. Therefore your claim that the comparison chart showed the Leclerc with Swedish armor package would mean that the basic Leclerc's armor would be a lot weaker.

 

B0EJ5VJ.jpg

The add-on armor would replace the storage boxes at the side of the turret while adding a wedge-shaped module (like used on the Leopard 2A5) to the turret front.

The swedes asked to be able to put their own armor on the vehicle. Hence the design bureau at Satory proposed a new layout for them to have more room for their solution.
It is anything but an add-on armor  on top of the legacy package modules...
The above drawing is the CAD proposed by Giat Industries to the swedish authorities (all modules are extended not the legacy ones with add-on on top...).

 

21 hours ago, SH_MM said:

The Leclerc at 54.5 metric tons was designed to reach a similar level of frontal protection than the Leopard 2A4 (pre-1991: 55.15 metric tons) and the M1A1 (57 metric tons). It did so, while being lighter, having a bigger gun and having more side armor. To expect that a 54.5 tonnes tank would reach a protection level even broadly similar to MBTs with a weight of 62.5 tonnes (M1A2 and Leopard 2A5 prototype) is silly.

The engineers were not taking into account the other western MBTs when designing the Leclerc. They comply with the established specifications that took into account the latest warnings in the WarPact threats.
Weight is not evidence of efficiency.
The bigger the crew compartment, the bigger the structure (the weight of...), the bigger the modules to line the structure with...
The french approach was to design the smallest crew compartment possible while shaping the modules in such a way that you didn't have to stack armor up to the level that the roof had to be not to collide with the breech at lowest elevation while firing. All those surfaces and volumes savings made some weight reductions; all of wich were reinjected into the density of the armor. Hence the two-man-turret concept illustrated by the Leclerc.


Now think what you want.
Call me a liar if it pleases you.
But your logic is broken.

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2 hours ago, Bronezhilet said:

Euh... being himself?

 

Correction to my previous statement:

Leoboo vs Clercoo vs Hebroo

 

Fight!

Can i jump in? Just so if they actually start to fight they all can blame Russian hackers.

 

60e3012951826eb9dbba6c620d8423f6.jpg

 

Spoiler

And everybody knows that Deutchies and Frenchies are dwarfs in front of might of the Oplot - best European tank that everybody should buy and pay money to Kharkovites.

 

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On 6/26/2018 at 6:52 PM, DarkLabor said:

Some CAD made by the swedes disclosed without any sort of nuclear response between french army or Nexter and the FMW or the guy that disclosed those slides?

 

The FMV employee did not disclose those slides intentionally to the public, and the data is valid for an outdated variant that isn't even in service anymore. Just us not having heard about any sort of response, doesn't mean there wasn't one.

 

On 6/26/2018 at 6:52 PM, DarkLabor said:

But clearly an engineer of Giat Industries disclosed the fact that the design bureau didn't sent the quotes in time to the Greek authorities. As a consequence the protection offered by the Leclerc was considered/judged lower compared to the other western MBTs due to their lower volumes.

 

Oh, an anonymous engineer, what a great source! When some "engineer" tells a story that supports your ideas, you are willing to accept it without any proof that said engineer even exists, that he made such a claim and that he does know what he is talking about? This whole story stinks and could be mere fiction of the originator or - if he exists - of the engineer. This has the same quality as the usually wrong hearsay stories from sources such as "a friend of a friend" and "the brother of the boss of my uncle's second wife". 

 

"An engineer" also supposedly told Paul L. that the Challenger 1 would have turret armor providing protection against APFSDS ammunition with up to 620 mm penetration into steel. As we know nowadays based on declassified document, this was complete bullshit.

 

An engineer most likely shouldn't have access to informations such as wether GIAT send protection data to Greece or not, as this is a decision made by the management, not by an engineer. You complain about me supposedly being "the kind of guy to swallow hook, line and sinker...", yet you are willing to believe illogical and unreferenced claims based on a single footnote from a single book? Let me guess, you didn't even consider the possibility of the "engineer's" word being a bullshit excuse made so that other potential customers would not generally reject the Leclerc tank in favor for an Abrams or Leopard 2?

 

On 6/26/2018 at 6:52 PM, DarkLabor said:

We may like our tank, but we keep in mind its achilles heel. We do not claim that its protection is the absolute best in the world. But we are sure it offers an adequate protection (reinforced by what has been learnt in Yemen).

 

And what has been learned in Yemen? That the Leclerc is good with add-on armor (slat armor, the AZUR kit or DND's low-fragmentation ERA)? How many "naked" Leclerc tanks were hit, by what type of ammunition, at which location and from what angle? You keep asking a lot of questions, but ignore the most important ones.

 

According to a French instructor at the cavalry school of the United Arab Emirates, at least one Leclerc was penetrated at the frontal hull armor (!) by an ATGM - probably a Konkurs or Konkurs-M missile - killing the driver and wounding the commander. That suggests that the older armor package used on the Leclerc Tropicalisé does provide significantly less than 1,000 mm vs HEAT at certain points (or rather less than 800 mm vs tandem shaped charge warheads), the former was in Sweden the required level of protection for the hull against ATGMs...

 

On 6/26/2018 at 6:52 PM, DarkLabor said:

So you just need some random CAD drawings to say "hey that's the original armor package!".
How did they assessed the armor package in the US?
How did they made their CAD to take into account the protection offered depending on the angle of the modules?
How do they know how the packages are oriented within the turret modules?

 

It is not just "some random CAD drawing", but a protection analysis done by the Swedish FMV (the government office reponsible for testing arms and other material for the Swedish military). One can easily see that this is the original armor package for various reasons: First of all, the chart shows the original armor packages of the Leopard 2 Improved and M1A2 aswell, so why would they show the Leclerc with an indigenous armor package instead? R. Lindström, who is proven to have worked for the FMV during the procurement process of the Strv 122 and the testing of the three contenders aswell as an article published on the website of the FMV, claim that when fitted with the Swedish-made MEXAS armor package, the M1A2's and Leclerc's protection increased in certain locations by 50 to 100 percent depending on ammunition, a fact that surprised French and US representatives. So France has given protection data to Sweden, otherwise they couldn't make such a statement and generate a vulnerability analysis; as a matter of fact the up-armored Leclerc with Swedish armor package was designed to meet the higher protection requirements, the "CAD" data clearly shows a tank that is not meeting the requirements. If this showed the Leclerc with Swedish armor package - as claimed by you - the contemporary French variant would have significantly lower level of armor protection.

 

The armor package in the US was assessed by firing different reference projectiles (which were supplied by Sweden) from different angles against it. As we can see in the leaked data, the Swedes also measured the leftover penetration capacity (if there was any) and the leftover armor thickness (if there was any), in order to come up with protection values.

image015.jpg

The "CAD" data is a vulnerability anaylsis. These types of computer analysises have been done since the late 1970s and are still common in the AFV industry. There are numerous companies specialized on vulnerability analysis tools like Condat Scheyern and recently also IBD. The computer program takes data about the performance and physicial dimensions of the armor (the armor performance is based on tests at various angles, at some point the program has to interpolate the data in order to provide accurate readings for the complete surface and all possible angles of impact) and generates a protection coverage.

 

On 6/26/2018 at 6:52 PM, DarkLabor said:

You test the armor packages when you've selected a short list of contenders.
What the swedes asked were quotes and some armor cavities to test the protection with their indigenous solutions... (what you have in the photo).
No ballistic tests have been conducted on an actual tank in France for sure. The only two were one for the french army to validate their choices and one for Giat Industries to validate their softwares in the case of repeated impacts on armor packages and structures.
Another one underwent tests in UAE to validate the choices of the UAE land forces.
No trace of a potential swedish delegation to assess the armor packages with rigorous tests on ballistic modules...
That's about it.

 

When the armor package is being tested is depending on the nation's requirements, there is no general rule. Shortlisting companies without having proven that the claims made by the manufacturer's marketing team have any substance is not a good idea. The Leclerc was one of the three tanks shortlisted for Sweden, yet you seem to deny that Sweden tested the armor - despite employees of the FMV saying so. Greece might not have shortlisted the Leclerc, but they definetly assessed its protection based on testing the armor and/or data for armor protection supplied by France. That's why they came to the conclusion that it has nearly the same protection level as the Challenger 2 (at 62.5 metric tons and a much greater volume!), which happens to show that your claims about the Greek military being to dumb for understanding that a smaller/lighter tank doesn't automatically offer a lower level of protection are wrong. In fact, even if this "GIAT engineer" told the truth, Greece could simply have done a little bit of fifth grade math to calculate how well the Leclerc would perform, if its armor offered the same protection per weight/thickness as the armor fitted to the Leopard 2, Challenger 2, M1 Abrams or T-80/T-84, for which Greece received protection data and/or ballistic modules for ballistic testing. Unless the Leclerc's armor includes some super secret material, it won't outperform armor arrays from the same time in terms of efficiency.

 

Armor tests are mostly made using special ballistic parts rather than firing on a proper tank (you don't want to waste a few millions if the armor fails to protect it). So supposedly only two Leclerc tanks being used for armor tests is pretty much irrelevant; the amount of armor modules tested might be tenfold this number or even more. The US tested the Leopard 2AV's proteciton using armor modules only, no complete MBT was shot at. In fact the updated Leopard 2A4 armor package (from 1991) was offered to various customers that operate ex-German tanks with images showing how well armor modules performed against certain threats, no proper Leopard 2A4 tank was used to demonstrate the protection level. The same happened with the Leopard 2 Revolution, where the armor performance was shown by firing against modules, but not against a full vehicle.

 

Panzerung+AMAP+gegen+RPG.png

 

Greece tested a "full" Leopard 2 turret randomly taken from the product line to verify that their tanks were fitted with the same type of armor as used during the tender. The US used a single M1 Abrams prototype at the end of the development program to test that it matched all protection requirements, before that point, they only used armor modules for all ballistic tests. GIAT was desperate to win in Sweden and Greece, which is why they offered much better deals than required (offering 60% more parts to be made locally in Sweden than required in order to indirectly cut the price of the Leclerc) or cheated (by jamming radios of other competitors and making their tank lighter in Greece).

 

The photo is by the way showing a hull shell made in Sweden. Sweden had to made its own steel shells for testing the three main battle tanks in case of the variants with improved protection, because the manufacturers were not interested in supplying them with enough data on how the tanks would perform when fitted with the Swedish armor: "Då vi inte fick tillräckligt med underlag från leverantören lät vi bygga delskrov efter eget huvud för att kunna utföra skjutprovning mot de olika stridsvagnarna med det svenskutvecklade skyddet - något som särskilt förvånade fransmännen..."

 

Your way of arguing - "I have not heard about it, so it never happened" - is the second bullshit argument after your "anonymous engineer" statement. You knowing only of two Leclercs being used for ballistic test doesn't mean there were only two.

 

On 6/26/2018 at 6:52 PM, DarkLabor said:

The swedes asked to be able to put their own armor on the vehicle. Hence the design bureau at Satory proposed a new layout for them to have more room for their solution.
It is anything but an add-on armor  on top of the legacy package modules...
The above drawing is the CAD proposed by Giat Industries to the swedish authorities (all modules are extended not the legacy ones with add-on on top...). 

 

No, you are wrong. Sweden at first hoped that the MBTs planned to be tested would already meet the desired level of protection. Data provided by the manufacturers and the results of the ballistic tests were used to create a proper analysis of the protection of all contenders. However all of the three tanks failed to meet the required level of protection, which is why Åkers Krutbruk acquired the MEXAS licence from IBD and designed add-on armor kits for all tanks. With add-on armor all three tanks were meant to meet the protection requirements or at least get reasonable close to them.

 

After Sweden designed and tested its add-on armor kits on the existing armor modules, GIAT decided to offer a redesigned turret, that would incorporate the Swedish armor. This turret is not identical to the previously posted CAD image, as GIAT's new design looked like this:

gxJSCfu.png

Note that the gun shield is still the very thin one as found on the actual French models of the Leclerc. The Swedes didn't like this design, just like they wanted more armor in the area of the gunner's sight (creating a "channel" like in the Leopard 2A5's add-on armor), but GIAT prefers keeping the thin gun shield - they also kept it on the up-armored later French Leclerc models, the AZUR up-armor kit doesn't change it and the much improved Leclerc tank offered to Turkey kept the same weakspot.



1454756818-leclerc-turc-02-72349f.jpg

1454756901-char-leclerc2.png

6054-0083%2005.jpg

 

On 6/26/2018 at 6:52 PM, DarkLabor said:

The engineers were not taking into account the other western MBTs when designing the Leclerc. They comply with the established specifications that took into account the latest warnings in the WarPact threats.

 

Ah, I forgot that the M1 Abrams and Leopard 2 upgrades were not designed to deal with the latest threats from the Warsaw Pact, but instead were designed to defeat the alien army from outer space... :rolleyes:

 

 

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