TokyoMorose

Hmm, L-3 still technically has the 1500hp version of the AVDS-1790 up for offer. They might pick that up. Could also get an Allison tank transmission to go with it.

And people thought stepped hulls went out of fashion half a century ago! Hah! (Just... why does this exist in this form...)

It worked like any other T-64 pattern autoloader in operation, the 2A21 variant of the 115mm on T-64 had split ammo. As far as I am aware, you cannot manually load 115mm fixed-case ammo in case (pun intended) of emergency. Which is nice, because the 115mm cartridges are gigantic, and in the incredibly compact T-64 that'd be hilariously sad to try to manipulate.

It worked like any other T-64 pattern autoloader in operation, the 2A21 variant of the 115mm on T-64 had split ammo. As far as I am aware, you cannot manually load 115mm fixed-case ammo in case (pun intended) of emergency. Which is nice, because the 115mm cartridges are gigantic, and in the incredibly compact T-64 that'd be hilariously sad to try to manipulate.

I have no idea, and can only tell you it is likely a Kharkovite plot to confuse tankists of the motherland, and thus undermine defense while stuffing their pockets with profits from overly complicated instrument readout.

Gun, at some point, every tank manufacturer was not a tank manufacturer. There's always a first design for a company, and there have been several times when these first designs were good. EE-T1 Osorio comes to mind, for its goal (cheap reasonably modern tank for third world nations on a 40t weight limit) it was a fantastic design from a firm with no previous tank work, in a country with no tank industry.

Gun, at some point, every tank manufacturer was not a tank manufacturer. There's always a first design for a company, and there have been several times when these first designs were good. EE-T1 Osorio comes to mind, for its goal (cheap reasonably modern tank for third world nations on a 40t weight limit) it was a fantastic design from a firm with no previous tank work, in a country with no tank industry.

Final drives gave out after 150km on average, transmission excluding 3rd gear was ~1500km. (Governed) Engines were also around ~1,500km. The French also found that pivot steering greatly accelerated wear on the final drives, to the point of having cases of the drives breaking mid-turn, and they gave strict orders to avoid pivot steering it.

Final drives gave out after 150km on average, transmission excluding 3rd gear was ~1500km. (Governed) Engines were also around ~1,500km. The French also found that pivot steering greatly accelerated wear on the final drives, to the point of having cases of the drives breaking mid-turn, and they gave strict orders to avoid pivot steering it.

Final drives gave out after 150km on average, transmission excluding 3rd gear was ~1500km. (Governed) Engines were also around ~1,500km. The French also found that pivot steering greatly accelerated wear on the final drives, to the point of having cases of the drives breaking mid-turn, and they gave strict orders to avoid pivot steering it.

This is what happens when an IS-3 and an M47 meet and have a very special evening, followed by severe disappointment nine months later.

No, the ROKIT program that became K1 was designed substantially later, and actually subcontracted mostly out to GDLS - the inheritors of the Chrylser Defense group that designed the M1.
 
 
Army liked the GM's armor layout, FCS, and ability to fit the 120mm. But they *really* had a hankering for the Turbine powerplant of Chrysler's offering. So they basically came out and said they wanted a hybrid tank that was mostly like GM's but with the turbine drivetrain. Chrylser's offer to redesign their machine won the bid over GM's redesign, helped by Chrysler having some political favoritism.

No, the ROKIT program that became K1 was designed substantially later, and actually subcontracted mostly out to GDLS - the inheritors of the Chrylser Defense group that designed the M1.
 
 
Army liked the GM's armor layout, FCS, and ability to fit the 120mm. But they *really* had a hankering for the Turbine powerplant of Chrysler's offering. So they basically came out and said they wanted a hybrid tank that was mostly like GM's but with the turbine drivetrain. Chrylser's offer to redesign their machine won the bid over GM's redesign, helped by Chrysler having some political favoritism.

While only tangentially related, I find it interesting that the M1 apparently has issues with the terrain of the Golan Heights, not because that terrain is easy (it is very nasty terrain) - but rather because the US extensively has tested the Abrams on the Yakima Training Center grounds which has lots of similar basalt. I wonder if the YTC gives the Abrams headaches.

Basically, yes - hydraulic pressure is used to vary piston height to change compression as RPM and boost pressures change. The AVCR-1360 was a really nifty engine and if it was not for the Army's then-obsession with turbine power it really should have been the Abrams' engine. In the spoiler pop-out is a picture of the Continental AVCR-series piston head. It was however complicated, and nobody has over the decades of effort put a variable compression engine into mass production until that just-introduced Nissan KR (and they must be feeling confident in it, they are planning to build over 100k of them per year, for a total run in millions).
 
 

Basically, yes - hydraulic pressure is used to vary piston height to change compression as RPM and boost pressures change. The AVCR-1360 was a really nifty engine and if it was not for the Army's then-obsession with turbine power it really should have been the Abrams' engine. In the spoiler pop-out is a picture of the Continental AVCR-series piston head. It was however complicated, and nobody has over the decades of effort put a variable compression engine into mass production until that just-introduced Nissan KR (and they must be feeling confident in it, they are planning to build over 100k of them per year, for a total run in millions).
 
 

Okay, this is a obscure one. Well done. TARDEC AReS - "Advanced Reconfigurable Spaceframe", modular electric hybrid IFV testbed - built 2008. Head to tear through tons of various documents as I don't have the book you got that from. (The TARDEC Story)

Don't hide behind "muh secret data" too quickly since a lot of things aren't actually that secret. You'd think that the external ballistic performance of M829A1 would be secret, but whoopsy daisy it's not.
 
Effectiveness of cage armour? We know.
APFSDS interception methods of APS and its effectiveness? We know and we can figure it out fairly accurately.
Effectiveness of Nozh? We know.
Terminal ballistics of HEAT jets? We know.
Effectiveness of ERA? We know.
 
Seriously, a lot of information is buried in papers or can be gleaned from papers. But the average military enthusiast can't be arsed to read through thousands upon thousands of pages of information to find interesting tidbits of information.

I hate to barge into someone else's arguments, but several (almost all of his last post really) of DarkLabor's points don't really make sense.
 
 
British representatives still made exorbitant claims about Challenger after it's production run was effectively over despite the fact that we now know from leaked British documents their claims were bunk. People still believe what they want even after a project is over. And GIAT keeping FCS and Armor data "THE MOST protected data" is not unique to them either.
 
 
"Weak points" are not the same weaknesses between tanks. Even assuming that hit was through a weakpoint, it doesn't say much for the LeClerc's design that it managed to get hit in one. The Abrams has a comparatively fragile hatch, and yet in all the times they got hit in the mideast, I do not recall a hit managing to be landed clean on that hatch. No Chally 2 was knocked out to a hit to the drivers' optics despite the enormous chasm that was cut in the glacis armor for it. This suggests that the weakpoint on LeClerc is relatively large.
 
 
The best proof for the accuracy of the Swedish armor CAD models is the fact that neither the Germans or US (who also keep their exact data secret) complained about inaccuracies in modeling. There's also the fact that not a single outside test of LeClerc ever, has praised its armor in relation to late model Abrams or Leo 2s.
 
 
As to Greek trials - SH never claimed that the Radios were a crucial thing or a corner stone - just said they interfered. That they used the heavier tropical model does not stop them from reducing the weight of that relative to a normal tropical, which is what I am sure SH meant.
 
 
I already touched on this - KMW and GDLS do not openly discuss Abrams or Leopard 2 protection either. Literally nobody does, and SH is well aware of this. And yes, you have to get permission from the relevant export control authorities to get data on those vehicles as well. So the Swedes could jump through all the hoops with GLDS and KMW, but magically not with GIAT?
 
 
SH_MM is far from a "random retard", which is why I wrote this post. If your contacts are in the French army, of course they are going to say the LeClerc is the best. Everyone in the British army continued to say Challenger (both times!) was the best even after embarrassing performances that saw them lose time and again in trials. It is not in the interest of the French army to say their tank isn't the best, and it's also in their interest to tell everyone joining the armored force in France that their tank is the best. Troops in M1A1s in the late 80s were told that the vehicle could deal with every latest and greatest Soviet battlewagon without issue, and that they had armor capable of resisting whatever the Soviets could throw at them. We now know both of these to be categorically false, and that analysts at the time were aware of it in secret.
 
 
You just contradicted yourself. You said "it is the same as the other [...]" and that these drawings came from GIAT while the other is somehow "just a some stuff put together by the FMV". Which is it? Are the turret designs different, or was the FMV model correct?
 
 
That original statement you made was in fact very 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." When designing the Abrams, design specs were entirely based on hypothetical Soviet threats. Same with Leopard 2, same with Challenger. There was never a spec in Challenger that said: "we should make sure the armor is similar to Leopard 2, or better than Abrams".
 

I hate to barge into someone else's arguments, but several (almost all of his last post really) of DarkLabor's points don't really make sense.
 
 
British representatives still made exorbitant claims about Challenger after it's production run was effectively over despite the fact that we now know from leaked British documents their claims were bunk. People still believe what they want even after a project is over. And GIAT keeping FCS and Armor data "THE MOST protected data" is not unique to them either.
 
 
"Weak points" are not the same weaknesses between tanks. Even assuming that hit was through a weakpoint, it doesn't say much for the LeClerc's design that it managed to get hit in one. The Abrams has a comparatively fragile hatch, and yet in all the times they got hit in the mideast, I do not recall a hit managing to be landed clean on that hatch. No Chally 2 was knocked out to a hit to the drivers' optics despite the enormous chasm that was cut in the glacis armor for it. This suggests that the weakpoint on LeClerc is relatively large.
 
 
The best proof for the accuracy of the Swedish armor CAD models is the fact that neither the Germans or US (who also keep their exact data secret) complained about inaccuracies in modeling. There's also the fact that not a single outside test of LeClerc ever, has praised its armor in relation to late model Abrams or Leo 2s.
 
 
As to Greek trials - SH never claimed that the Radios were a crucial thing or a corner stone - just said they interfered. That they used the heavier tropical model does not stop them from reducing the weight of that relative to a normal tropical, which is what I am sure SH meant.
 
 
I already touched on this - KMW and GDLS do not openly discuss Abrams or Leopard 2 protection either. Literally nobody does, and SH is well aware of this. And yes, you have to get permission from the relevant export control authorities to get data on those vehicles as well. So the Swedes could jump through all the hoops with GLDS and KMW, but magically not with GIAT?
 
 
SH_MM is far from a "random retard", which is why I wrote this post. If your contacts are in the French army, of course they are going to say the LeClerc is the best. Everyone in the British army continued to say Challenger (both times!) was the best even after embarrassing performances that saw them lose time and again in trials. It is not in the interest of the French army to say their tank isn't the best, and it's also in their interest to tell everyone joining the armored force in France that their tank is the best. Troops in M1A1s in the late 80s were told that the vehicle could deal with every latest and greatest Soviet battlewagon without issue, and that they had armor capable of resisting whatever the Soviets could throw at them. We now know both of these to be categorically false, and that analysts at the time were aware of it in secret.
 
 
You just contradicted yourself. You said "it is the same as the other [...]" and that these drawings came from GIAT while the other is somehow "just a some stuff put together by the FMV". Which is it? Are the turret designs different, or was the FMV model correct?
 
 
That original statement you made was in fact very 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." When designing the Abrams, design specs were entirely based on hypothetical Soviet threats. Same with Leopard 2, same with Challenger. There was never a spec in Challenger that said: "we should make sure the armor is similar to Leopard 2, or better than Abrams".
 

Oh, I am in complete agreement. The Germans managed to build the world's first transforming tank - drive a Panther 150km and it turns into a pillbox! It's just you'd think that faced with such disastrous longevity, they'd try to develop a transporter so they don't have to drive around said tanks.

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.
 
 
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?
 
 
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...
 
 
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.

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.
 
 
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.
 

 
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.
 
 
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:

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.


 
 
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...
 
 

I am not sure how it is done for Leopard 2 components, but I have seen entire cast or welded assemblies heated up and quenched at once in appropriately massive facilities. This image of a Panzer 68 hull being Quenched at Thun always comes to mind.
 
Welding plates post heat-treatment is very difficult without making the zone around the weld weak. It is usually preferred in metallurgy to weld before heat treatment and then do it all together.

I am not sure how it is done for Leopard 2 components, but I have seen entire cast or welded assemblies heated up and quenched at once in appropriately massive facilities. This image of a Panzer 68 hull being Quenched at Thun always comes to mind.
 
Welding plates post heat-treatment is very difficult without making the zone around the weld weak. It is usually preferred in metallurgy to weld before heat treatment and then do it all together.