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Lord_James

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Posts posted by Lord_James

  4. Gun Science Library

    in Ballistics Science Discussion

    Posted

    I don’t know where to ask this, but I have a question: 

     

    https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/609554.pdf 

     

    “Development of a structural uranium alloy” 

     

     

    What advantages would uranium alloys have over steel or aluminum? It’s rarer, much heavier without a significant increase in strength, difficult to work with, and I can’t think of anything (off the top of my head) that a high density material would perform better than common structural materials, except maybe the mass dampener in Taipei 101. 

     

    PS. The article refers to Niobium as ‘Columbium’, Cb. 

  8. US/Iran flirting with quagmire thred.

    in Open Discussion

    Posted

    29 minutes ago, Priory_of_Sion said:

    Seems that Trump does not want to start a conflict with Iran, which is great news. I don't know if he'll be able to tightrope his anti-war stance with his strong anti-Iranian positions & advisors forever. 

     

    Not to mention, if Iran does it again, it will be a million times harder to play it off as “a mistake”. I hope it doesn’t come to war, because Iran will get absolutely rofl stomped, and also I don’t think many people would want another ISIS popping up in a country with possible nuclear weapons capability. 

  20. Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) and Euro Main Battle Tank (EMBT)

    in Mechanized Warfare

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

    I knew you would bring up the Euroturtle program, but I still insist that it is not an equivalent.

     

    As I've said, it's about the timeline.

    The MGCS deployment date is 2035 for Germany. 2040 for France.

    If we are generous and pessimistic, it means development of the tank commences around 2025-2027. A more realistic option would be 2030.

    I believe an accurate timeline was posted somewhere but can't find it.

     

    That means that if the program is killed even at the earliest stage of development, both France and Germany, plus any country that depends on the program, will have to either buy competing designs off the shelf, or retire tanks without proper replacement, or keep tanks in service despite becoming nearly obsolete and beyond their projected end-of-life point.

     

    The MBT-70 wasn’t in need when it was being designed? And after it died, both countries involved didn’t have to upgrade older tanks to stay competitive? 

     

    It is the same scenario, just 50 years later. 

  21. Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) and Euro Main Battle Tank (EMBT)

    in Mechanized Warfare

    Posted

    On 5/24/2019 at 11:00 AM, Mighty_Zuk said:

    Because of the timeline set for it, this program is inherently too big to kill. Therefore any political meddling will be of minoe effect.

     

    I never did respond to this, despite my vehement disagreement, but how the program is “too big to kill” is not valid: 

     

    MBT-70_american_version_front.jpg

     

    research and development programs, no matter how much of a need, or how much money and political backing they have, can fail very spectacularly. This new ‘Europanzer’ is no exception, and I have reservations that it will actually bare fruit, considering how well past international tank development programs have gone. 

  22. Tanks guns and ammunition.

    in Ballistics Science Discussion

    Posted

    https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a139649.pdf 

     

    “Fracture behavior of a uranium and a tungsten alloy in a notched component with inertial loading” 

     

    Tl;dr, the rear section of a long rod can be damaged during launch, which can be solved by these simple tricks ballistic physicists don’t want you to know about: 

     

    1. Increase ‘lug root’ (the zigzag structures holding the sabot to the rod) radius. 

     

    2. Move the rod farther forward, relative to the sabot, so less of the rod is behind the sabot. 

     

    3. Reduce the stiffness of the rod, especially the parts behind the sabot. 

  23. Gun Science Library

    in Ballistics Science Discussion

    Posted

    Because (as far as I know) we don’t have a material science section of this forum, I’ll link this here: 

     

    https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a405973.pdf

     

    “Depleted Uranium: a case study of good and evil” 

     

    tl;dr, DU is no more harmful than other heavy metals used by armies across the world, like tungsten and lead. The fears and concerns proposed by people regarding DU’s toxicity are caused by misunderstandings and a lack of critical thinking / fact checking. 

     

    In other words: water is wet. 

  24. The Soviet Tank Thread: Transversely Mounted 1000hp Engines

    in Mechanized Warfare

    Posted

    6 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

     

    Off the top of my head:

    105mm Smoothbore was a German weapon.  I think it's this one on the Keiler prototype:
    DsXfbDy.jpg

     

    There was a later Rheinmetall 105mm that was rifled, essentially a roided-up L7 that fired stub-cased APFSDS and maintained backwards-compatibility with existing stocks of L7 ammo.  That strikes me as a decent idea.

     

    The Brit 110mm was a rifled weapon and it was, by circuitous path, a halfway point between the L7 and L30.  Yes, you read that correctly.  There is a round of the ammunition on display in Bovington.

     

    The 110mm was a post-L11 design.  The idea was, initially, to simply take an L7 and neck it out, just as the L7 was a necked-out 20 pounder.  The pressures were cranked up a bit, but this caused case sticking.  The gun was changed to a stub-cased design, and ultimately to a bagged case design similar to the L11, but with a new (and much better) breech sealing design.  Some iteration of the 110mm was tested as armament for the Abrams, but rejected.  The breech design was eventually recycled and used in the L30 120mm gun on the Chally 2.

     

    There's a little bit about it in this book, but otherwise what I've been able to learn about it is from scattered discussions around the interwebs.

     

    Thank you - I always value when you explain something, as it’s usually descriptive, yet understandable to my feeble mind :D 

     

     

    For the German 105 smooth: I knew it was mounted on the Leo 2K and other prototypes before the actual Leo 2, but any specifics were always missing, or conjecture. I didn’t know about the “roided up L7” though; does sound like a good idea, though it is still rifled. 

     

     

    I may have misread about the Brit 110, I remembered it as a rebore’d L7 to remove the rifling so it could fire better ammo, while still fitting in current L7 armed vehicles. I guess I should have known that was too good an idea for the post WWII British MoD; not the worst idea those wistful crones have forced upon their army, but still disappointing. 

     

     

    Anyway, thank you again, Colli, and let’s get back to Soviet tanks and their transversely mounted engines! 

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