FORMATOSE

Video on the story of the little-known Vickers Mk. 4 (a.k.a Valiant) MBT with some exclusive photos :
 
 

Video on the story of the little-known Vickers Mk. 4 (a.k.a Valiant) MBT with some exclusive photos :
 
 

Video on the story of the little-known Vickers Mk. 4 (a.k.a Valiant) MBT with some exclusive photos :
 
 

Disappeared for a long period, Mai_Waffentrager reappeared four months ago. 
This time, he took out another photoshoped artifact. 

He claimed that the Japanese prototype 105GSR (105 mm Gun Soft Recoil) used an autoloader similar to Swedish UDES 19 project. Then he showed this pic and said it came from a Japanese patent file. 
Well, things turn out that it cames from Bofors AG's own patent, with all markings and numbers wiped out. 

original file→https://patents.google.com/patent/GB1565069A/en?q=top+mounted+gun&assignee=bofors&oq=top+mounted+gun+bofors
He has not changed since his Type 90 armor scam busted. Guys, stay sharp and be cautious. 
 

Those stupid things in production. MoD went with 5 man crew version.

Find the Warrior.
 

So here's a fun (ie: not hyper-optimised) design:
 

It has decent armour, the obligatory baby sandblaster armament for scrubbing radiators and guns off, and a supremely entertaining set of 2km/s micronuke micromissile guns.
 
This thing can take fleets on while giving the viewer epilepsy from all the white flashes.

So a few things experience hath wrought:
For those of us who want to use NUCLEAR FIRE to cleanse the solar system: big nukes are for bragging rights, but are otherwise useless. I'm really hoping to be proved wrong on this front. I've had very little success making mega-lasers, but hear that they are dominate if done right. Sandblasters FTW 100km/s railguns FTW. Seriously, these things are soooo good that they make some fights boring - just plinking away at 100+km while the other guy frantically tries to lase the weapon off. Which makes for slow, boring battles. Big guns aren't worth it: I made a 12' gun to spec (if massively overweight because fuck barrel profiling) and discovered that it will bounce off of ships. Ramming things, surprisingly, does almost nothing. Don't trust anything related to armour - the material science seems to be a bit wonky in this game. My best results so far are: a thin anti-nuke layer (TiC backed with spider silk) on the outside, silica aerogel interlayers between everything, at least 2 layers of thin whipple shields* with silica aerogel between them, and a base layer of boron fibre. A good armour design is exponentially better than those on the stock ships, and allows you to laugh off some of the more challenging missions. Cover your turrets in silica aerogel for anti-laser protection. For a balance of anti-laser/anti-kinetic, basalt fibre is a good but expensive option. For anti-kinetic only I've heard that chrome-vanadium steel is good. For missiles, the stock armour is balls. Put them in ship armour (thick silica aerogel layers are a must) and watch them laugh at multi-megawatt lasers for minutes at a time. All the really optimum stuff fucks your framerate: micro missiles, missile swarms in general, flack payloads on guns, using radiation shields to make APFSDS rounds, 10 000 rpm sandblaster guns and so on. In general: lots of small stuff, moving fast > a few bit, slow things, but this is also a recipe to have every battle play out at <1 frame per second. The two shapes which seem to work well are long and pointy (because angling armour is absurdly effective), and an umbrella up front (which offsets some of the weight from thicker armour by confining it to the first 5% of the hull). Of the two, I'd say that angling is much better overall except when dealing with sandblasters, which is where hiding your radiators behind a front umbrella is aces. Budget a lot more power than you think you need: 13.5MW is good for running 2MW weapons, but will choke hard if you put in a 13MW gun. Generally I try to have at least double the rated power on hand.  
*Aluminium, because I'm too basic to use gold or whatever the cool kids are optimising with.

During the lockdown I found myself getting into space games for some reason, mainly Stellaris and Children of a Dead Earth/CoaDE/ChoaDE. These are both fairly... technically-focussed games, but ChoaDE takes it to the next level*.
 
As such: here is a thread to talk about/post for discussion/brag about your designs for 100km/s railguns, 1GW reactors, 1MT pure fission bombs and the like.
 

Fuck your framerate...
 
*The rarified sperglord level where one of the common complaints is how the ballistics modelling package doesn't model barrel thicknesses properly rather than the fact that, you know, the game looks like something dug up from the early 2000s and yet eats system resources like it was sent from the future.

was there a version of K2 which looks that much like K1 from the rear?

 

 
Given that's how other K2s look like (3 screenshots from the same video, 4th from another):

 

 

 

https://cloud.mail.ru/public/9dEX/djuwzbp4V/_tmp/International Defense Review/
issues from 1983-1988 of IDR were photographed and uploaded (except those from 1983 which were photographed today, and will be uploaded tomorrow), though in not-user-friendly way only - without renaming, without deleting duplicates, without identifying and replacing blurry photos. All that takes a lot of time, and was postponed at least until September, as I'm trying to concentrate instead on one activity which actually requires visiting library - that of making photos, up to 9 hours a day, 6 days a week (on average somewhere around 6x6/7x6 though).
If I'll be able to continue to do that until end of this mouth, and not fall into laziness, I might photograph all IDR issues stored at RSL (1975-1991).

The Merkava Mk. 3 were built in a series of at least three production blocks.

both turret Merkava Mk.3 is there any reason why then changed from rounded cast to... sharp cast ?

To solve a problem of protection. 

Because, BMD chassis are not optimised for surrogate operations. 
One point is the maintenance wich must be made from the outside. 

what was the reason to put 30mm perforated plates on front of Raketenjagdpanzer ?

Development of a 8-tonne reconnaissance amphibious tracked vehicle (ERAC) was launched in 1960.
The use of a fin-stabilized shaped charge projectile as main anti-tank round was deemed obvious given the performance achieved with the 90 mm shell.
The project consists of a D 739 gun firing a 105 mm projectile with a steel body designed to be fired under higher pressure (2100 kg/cm²) with a muzzle velocity of 850 m/s.
The static firing trials in 1962 and the ERAC prototype the following year fall short of expectations ; the accuracy is barely acceptable and the armor penetration is mediocre compared to the caliber.
Meanwhile, the ERAC project is cancelled and its successor, the ECA (Engin de Combat Amphibie : amphibious fighting machine) didn't have any more luck.
The AMX-10 RC also used a fin-stabilized shaped charge projectile but with a superior ballistic performance (1100 m/s).
 
-  MAREST, M, TAUZIN, M, COMHART T9 ; L'armement de gros calibre, Centre des hautes études de l’armement Division Histoire, Paris, 2008.

Development of a 8-tonne reconnaissance amphibious tracked vehicle (ERAC) was launched in 1960.
The use of a fin-stabilized shaped charge projectile as main anti-tank round was deemed obvious given the performance achieved with the 90 mm shell.
The project consists of a D 739 gun firing a 105 mm projectile with a steel body designed to be fired under higher pressure (2100 kg/cm²) with a muzzle velocity of 850 m/s.
The static firing trials in 1962 and the ERAC prototype the following year fall short of expectations ; the accuracy is barely acceptable and the armor penetration is mediocre compared to the caliber.
Meanwhile, the ERAC project is cancelled and its successor, the ECA (Engin de Combat Amphibie : amphibious fighting machine) didn't have any more luck.
The AMX-10 RC also used a fin-stabilized shaped charge projectile but with a superior ballistic performance (1100 m/s).
 
-  MAREST, M, TAUZIN, M, COMHART T9 ; L'armement de gros calibre, Centre des hautes études de l’armement Division Histoire, Paris, 2008.

Development of a 8-tonne reconnaissance amphibious tracked vehicle (ERAC) was launched in 1960.
The use of a fin-stabilized shaped charge projectile as main anti-tank round was deemed obvious given the performance achieved with the 90 mm shell.
The project consists of a D 739 gun firing a 105 mm projectile with a steel body designed to be fired under higher pressure (2100 kg/cm²) with a muzzle velocity of 850 m/s.
The static firing trials in 1962 and the ERAC prototype the following year fall short of expectations ; the accuracy is barely acceptable and the armor penetration is mediocre compared to the caliber.
Meanwhile, the ERAC project is cancelled and its successor, the ECA (Engin de Combat Amphibie : amphibious fighting machine) didn't have any more luck.
The AMX-10 RC also used a fin-stabilized shaped charge projectile but with a superior ballistic performance (1100 m/s).
 
-  MAREST, M, TAUZIN, M, COMHART T9 ; L'armement de gros calibre, Centre des hautes études de l’armement Division Histoire, Paris, 2008.

Vickers MBT Mk. 7 loader's station :
 

 

 
 

Hard to tell. L28 used WC core with WHA cap/nose and steel cup in-between. The cup would not be seen without disassembly, but core and cap material should differ in look. At this picture  WC cores of older APDS looks darker than supposed WHA cores of newer APDS. Probably L52, not L28.

British H6/62 105 mm APFSDS :
 

 
 

Fairey Hydraulics
 
http://www.army-guide.com/eng/product676.html