Jump to content
Please support this forum by joining the SH Patreon ×
Sturgeon's House

Mighty_Zuk

Excommunicated
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,631

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    8

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Mighty_Zuk

  3. United States Military Vehicle General: Guns, G*vins, and Gas Turbines

    in Mechanized Warfare

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Ramlaen said:

    I hate paywalls.

    The Army has postponed a decision to purchase the Trophy active protection system for the Abrams tank, Inside the Army has learned.

    During an Aug. 25 meeting of the Army Requirements Oversight Council, senior leaders concluded the effects of the system on the tank, particularly on the performance of the Abrams turret, require further testing. The purchase decision was expected to be made at the AROC meeting.

    "The results of the live-fire testing have been very positive," Lt. Gen. Mike Murray, the service's deputy chief of staff (G-8), told ITA Sept. 6. "Everybody is convinced this is the capability that we want; we just have to overcome the impacts."

    The Army has to "make sure we fully understand the problems" that come with installing a nondevelopmental APS on an existing vehicle platform, he said. While the Israeli Defense Forces' Merkava tank "was built with Trophy in mind to be integrated onto the platform," Murray said, the U.S. Army "just installed it" on the Abrams. "So we have some weight-balance issues we've got to work through, and may have to play with placement."

    He emphasized that "nobody is walking away from Trophy." However, "we want to make sure we fully understand that the problems we have identified are fixable before we commit to a procurement decision."

    Maj. Gen. David Bassett, PEO GCS, last month alluded to some of the challenges encountered in the "installation and characterization" effort. "Turret balance and the performance of the turret is really important to us," he said. "We've done some initial testing so that we understand what impact that had on the turret itself, and I think we're just in the early phase of figuring out what we might be able to do to mitigate it. It's as much about balance as it is weight."

    Prior testing of Trophy, which involved a stationary tank, revealed "some impacts on the performance of the turret," Murray said. He declined to elaborate further.

    Forthcoming tests "would involve some actual crews running some actual engagement scenarios -- moving tank, stationary tank, et cetera," he said. The testing will include participation from the Maneuver Center of Excellence, Army Test and Evaluation Command, the Program Executive Office for Ground Combat Systems and Army Forces Command.

    The goal is to have the testing complete and results synthesized "within 30 days" of the AROC, Murray said.

    Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has prioritized the need to boost the survivability and lethality of maneuver forces in Europe in the wake of Russian adventurism on the continent. The service aims to devote more than $1 billionin European Deterrence Initiative funding, via the Defense Department’s Overseas Contingency Operations account, to upgrading combat vehicles in Europe.

    At present, the plan is to procure a brigade set of Trophy APS using EDI funding, Murray said, "and then we'll have to go back to the chief and make a decision about how many more we go with."

    Representatives from General Dynamics Land Systems, the maker of the Abrams, and DRS Technologies, which has partnered with Israel's Rafael to bring Trophy to the United States, have discussed their efforts in separate interviews with ITA.

    Don Kotchman, vice president of tracked combat vehicles at GDLS, said Aug. 28 the company "worked in close partnership with [the Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center], and the program office to support the design for installation of the Trophy kit onto the tank. And then the development of the installation kitting . . . so the system could be attached."

    Additionally, he said GDLS conducted a "parallel" effort using independent research and development funds to incorporate an "ability to use the data from the sensors associated with Trophy to give the vehicle commander improved situational awareness."

    Michael O’Leary, director of survivability and lethality for DRS Land Systems, said Aug. 25 the NDI effort has "migrated in a lot of people's minds from a focus on the capabilities of the system to a refocus on the true challenges of how you integrate a capability like this on a platform that already exists.

    "It's a totally different story if you're incorporating and integrating this on a clean-sheet design -- much easier process. But on a platform like an Abrams, where it's already had multiple technologies and add-on capabilities -- armor, sensors, equipment -- just trying to find the right places for the system's components, such that it can see all around the vehicle, such that the countermeasures can fire all around the vehicle and protect the entire platform, 360 degrees. Those are challenges."

    Citing a "consensus of opinion" that APS improves the survivability of a platform, O'Leary said, "if you take away or you degrade the tactical capability of the platform in the process, then you don't get a whole lot of supporters."

    Those challenges are "not insurmountable," and many have already been addressed, he maintained. The corollary, however, is to assess how "any changes you've made affect cost, schedule and performance."

     

     

    EDIT: I master the art of "hax".

  6. GLORIOUS T-14 ARMATA PICTURES.

    in Mechanized Warfare

    Posted

     

    Taken from waronline.org Russian speaking Israeli defense forum. 

     

    All this propaganda talk (1:50 - 3:00) is really unnecessary. And it's just a blatant insult to the engineers. 

    Also at 4:20 (Blaze it) they use Armored Warfare footage and show a Merkava 2D as a Mark 4. Tsk tsk tsk. "Nye pravilnaya markovka druzya!"

    Can't provide more commentary at the moment as I'm only half through the video.

    20:07 - Apparently Leclerc is the most modern NATO tank. 

    26:10 - Ability to control unmanned systems. However the current construction of the tank probably doesn't allow it to utilize this capability while on the move, or during engagement. They missed an opportunity to free up the 3rd crew member to do exclusively UAV/UGV operation duties.

    32:55 - T-14's armored capsule does indeed have a spall liner. However it is painted white so it's not visible.

    35:00 - T-14 will get soft-cover ERA bags. 

  8. Aerospace and Ordnance discussion/news.

    in Aviation

    Posted

    A few days ago Israel bombed a row of Syrian facilities belonging to CERS, believed to be producing chemical weapons and/or ground-ground missiles, or perhaps both (payload and delivery production at same site).

    Now come the photos and it seems as if the damage done to the site was rather limited. My first guess was that these facilities go underground, and the munitions themselves were bunker-busters. What do you guys think?

     

     

    DJWgvcFW0AAQh6n.jpg

    DJWamgYWAAAfTBf.jpg

     

     

    As a bonus, the site appears to be close to an S-400 site:

    DJWfgdmWAAAMCp8.jpg

  14. Reactive Liner Shaped Charges - For when you really don't like something

    in Ballistics Science Discussion

    Posted

    23 hours ago, SH_MM said:

    I think the Merkava uses proper SLERA (self-limiting explosive reactive armor), which for example can contain only small amounts ("pockets") of explosive materials inside a larger layer of an elastic material. It is also possible to combine reactive/energetic materials with explosives for use as SLERA/ERA.

     

    http://www.ciar.org/ttk/mbt/papers/symp_19/TB611523.pdf

    Albeit IMI is the main producer of the Merkava's armor, it and RAFAEL are both government owned and certain divisions inside them act as separate units, enabling a rather uncomplicated process for producing products of one company in another.

    And so far the only patent I'm aware of, on an armor solution by an Israeli company so closely related to the Merkava project (as a whole), is of a NxRA type armor by RAFAEL (The link was given in this forum actually, don't remember by whom).

    Now, the responsible division for this patent works in close cooperation with MANTAK, it has to be. Same with parallel divisions in IMI. So if one holds a strong opinion on the conception of a given armor type, there should logically be a consensus among these bodies I've mentioned above.

    The patent was filed in 2005, which was shortly after the Merkava 4 entered service. Obviously, armor development hasn't stopped there and the armor array has been changed at least once.

    https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=US&NR=7360479B2&KC=B2&FT=D&ND=1&date=20080422&DB=&locale=

     

    So if RAFAEL choose to head on with NxRA over SLERA and NERA for heavy applications, and we assume that so do MANTAK and IMI, then the Merkava 4 is unlikely to use SLERA over the described NxRA.

     

  18. DRDO; India's Porsche

    in Mechanized Warfare

    Posted

    48 minutes ago, Khand-e said:

     

    DFI is literally one of the the worst (top 5 for sure) military "discussion" sites on the internet.

     

    "Malarious" was a very inaccurate description, because unlike reading DFI, Malaria can be cured, It's more like Super Ebola.

    My people have been through worse. I can handle.

     

    @Collimatrix I believe for the AT role they've also developed thermobaric rounds. I am quite positive it was said to be anti-tank and NOT anti-material.

     

    We should just rename this thread into:

    "DRDO me-me's"

  20. General AFV Thread

    in Mechanized Warfare

    Posted

    1 hour ago, LoooSeR said:

     

     

    I am against creating 100s of threads that are barrely active. Reason why i put all those vehicles in one thread is:

    1) If you want to find info on new big series of Russian universal platforms/AFVs - you go to "that one thread" instead of searching 8 different threads to find anything on T-14, T-15, T-16, Koalitsiya, Kurgnanets-25 IFV, Kurganets-25 APC, Boomerang K-17 IFV, Boomerang APC and so on.

    2) There is not much info on any of those vehicles. You will have 8 almost completely empty threads, if we do separate threads.

    So no, it stays as it is.

     

    For the record, I was not advocating the creation of numerous threads. I'm plenty satisfied with what we have now. Just explained the situation.

  21. Active Protection System (APS) for tanks

    in Ballistics Science Discussion

    Posted

    "Benefits of APS yet to be fully realised".

    What is this bullshitry? APS has been demonstrated in combat to a great potential and its benefits are very well realized by those who don't deliberately insist on living in the 80's.  Oh wait there was already an APS back then. 

    It's not so much about benefits not being realized as much as it is the fault of poor procurement procedures across most of the western hemisphere.

  22. General AFV Thread

    in Mechanized Warfare

    Posted

    6 hours ago, Serge said:

    I don't have it but we do have it. 

     

    I will open one about it. It will help keeping clear material and talks. 

     

    Look at the T14 thread. I worth to be split because it deels about both K17 and Kurganets-25 too. 

    And technically, the Kurganets and K-17 are not Armata. They're two separate types of universal vehicles. The thread is technically named for the T-14, T-15, and T-16, as well as the Koalitsiya which I believe tends to go under the SPH thread.

  25. GLORIOUS T-14 ARMATA PICTURES.

    in Mechanized Warfare

×
×
  • Create New...