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Krieger22

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Posts posted by Krieger22

  1. "Enough to retain structural integrity for the rest of the tank that isn't (N)ERA, with frontal arc also functioning as a backstop for HEAT's remaining penetration"

     

    The "excess steel armor" problem came around due to increasingly powerful HEAT shells and ATGMs, their relative inaccuracy asides. If one of those connected, they would probably go through a lot more steel than you could reasonably fit on a tank.

     

    The Germans and French responded with the Leopard 1 and AMX-30, which were intended to trade armor for speed to get out of the line of fire with. The British had Chieftain, which relied on sloping to hopefully deflect was fired at them (this didn't work, hence Stilbrew). The Americans had the M60, which was designed for fused silica that would probably be pretty effective against period HEAT, but was never built with it.

     

    Leo 1 and the AMX-30 don't have much of an excess steel problem, but they don't have the growth space for significant upgrades due to how light they are. Chieftain... well, eventually a version of the design shorn of most steel armor and replaced with Chobham, and with hydropneumatic suspension became Challenger. M60s soldiered on for far longer than they should have in US service no thanks to MBT-70. Marine Corps M60A1s eventually got an ERA kit (apparently not Blazer) in time for Desert Storm, but remaining stocks were rapidly sold off afterwards. Israeli M60s (Magachs) got very extensive (N)ERA upgrades following the agonizing experiences of Yom Kippur. Sabra is a further evolution of late Magach design principles, but it's really close to the absolute maximum you can do with an M60, assuming it's not already there.

     

    magach-7-latrun-2.jpg

     

    You may have noticed that I didn't mention Soviet tanks. Starting from the T-64 on, all of them had NERA protection on the frontal arc. BDD kits with similar (if not identical) working principles to Chobham were made available for T-54/55s and T-62s as well, although never for export.

     

    EDIT: General Dynamics actually did propose your suggestion of putting a new turret on an old tank with the M60-2000, an M60 hull with an M1A1 turret. Nobody bought it.

     

  2. More details on the USS Fitzgerald investigation have come out

     

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    Their report documents the routine, almost casual, violations of standing orders on a Fitz bridge that often lacked skippers and executive officers, even during potentially dangerous voyages at night through busy waterways.

    The probe exposes how personal distrust led the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock, to avoid communicating with the destroyer’s electronic nerve center — the combat information center, or CIC — while the Fitzgerald tried to cross a shipping superhighway.

    When Fort walked into the trash-strewn CIC in the wake of the disaster, he was hit with the acrid smell of urine. He saw kettlebells on the floor and bottles filled with pee. Some radar controls didn’t work and he soon discovered crew members who didn’t know how to use them anyway.

    Fort found a Voyage Management System that generated more “trouble calls” than any other key piece of electronic navigational equipment. Designed to help watchstanders navigate without paper charts, the VMS station in the skipper’s quarters was broken so sailors cannibalized it for parts to help keep the rickety system working.

    Since 2015, the Fitz had lacked a quartermaster chief petty officer, a crucial leader who helps safely navigate a warship and trains its sailors — a shortcoming known to both the destroyer’s squadron and Navy officials in the United States, Fort wrote.

    Fort determined that Fitz’s crew was plagued by low morale; overseen by a dysfunctional chiefs mess; and dogged by a bruising tempo of operations in the Japan-based 7th Fleet that left exhausted sailors with little time to train or complete critical certifications.

    To Fort, they also appeared to be led by officers who appeared indifferent to potentially life-saving lessons that should’ve been learned from other near-misses at sea, including a similar incident near Sasebo, Japan, that occurred only five weeks before the ACX Crystal collision, Fort wrote.

     

  3. Speaking of KC-46, the first USAF KC-46 has been delivered. Is there a catch? Well, yes...

     

    Quote

    The agreement, finalized after months of sometimes public and contentious discussions, allows McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas to receive the KC-46 as early as this month, with more set to follow, said Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Hope Cronin. However, the new tankers will arrive with several outstanding category-1 deficiencies, the term used by the military to describe the most serious level of technical problems.

    That may sound like a blow to the Air Force, whose leaders had previously implied that all category-1 deficiencies must be fixed before the service begins accepting the tankers.

    However, service leaders believe the Air Force retains significant financial leverage, even as Boeing delivers the KC-46 aircraft, and the service sees it as vital that Air Mobility Command be able to begin training pilots and boom operators to use the tankers even as technical problems are being corrected.

    Quote

    Perhaps more importantly, the Air Force holds a significant trump card in its hand. According to the terms of its fixed-price contract with Boeing, the service can withhold up to $28 million per aircraft upon delivery — and the Air Force official said the service intends to keep that amount until it sees a good faith effort by Boeing to fix deficiencies.

    That means Boeing could miss out on $1.5 billion if the maximum withholding is applied to all 52 aircraft on contract.

    “That is not something that legitimately can be contested by Boeing. That is purely a government decision until the airplane is brought up to specification,” the official said.

     

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