N-L-M

10 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

Nigeria

You see, they have this prince with $10 mil, they just need a little up front deliveries to free him from prison and then they'll pay double, honest. 

Coverage does indeed look very good for single layers, but I'm not sure I get how the snd pulse is supposed to help. If all it does is propel the heavy strike face of the array with a delayed pulse that could work, but if the individual flyer plates of the explosive sandwich are also supposed to have an effect, we run back into a coverage problem- very little of the array is covered by both layer at once. 

The system seems to me to be optimized vs KE, (heavy flyer plate with enough delay to break a rod at the center, not the tip, to maximize effects, but depending on how long the delay is (and how thick the face plate is), this system may also have marginal effects vs tandems, with a fast moving flyer plate already in motion when the main jet arrives, but which hasnt moved too far out of the way yet thanks to the built in delay.

On 11/2/2018 at 10:19 PM, skylancer-3441 said:

it turned out that there is a report about SAIFV, which is readily available on the internet there http://cdm16635.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p16635coll14/id/56079/rec/1

It appears that, approximately one year later, that link no longer works. If anyone happened to have saved the file while it was available, a rehost would be greatly appreciated.

Another option: M900 remanufactured.

Considering how the same contract has HEI ammo of similar vintage, its possible that it's the propellant (or in the HE rounds, perhaps also the explosive fill) which is past its use-by date, and that the projos and cases will then be available for re-loading with fresh (perhaps IM or temp-independent?) propellant.

9 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

pre-production engine fully completed testing and verification

Working prototype to production is a non negligible step.

9 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

The 883 is better in every way.

Other than the refit market for vehicles using the AVDS already, yes. The MTU engine is sufficiently different in shape to make integration into AVDS tailored spaces... annoying. Boat-hulled Pattons come to mind.

I'm not absolutely sure the thing isnt fully production ready, just smells to me like it.

If it is indeed fully ready, then yes L3 has managed to develop one AVDS upgrade since they bought the IP and plant.

https://www.janes.com/article/91385/royal-netherlands-army-selects-iron-fist-aps-for-cv90

Another win for Iron Fist.

https://www.janes.com/article/91385/royal-netherlands-army-selects-iron-fist-aps-for-cv90

CV90 is getting Iron Fist.

On 9/19/2019 at 12:10 PM, Toxn said:

dealing with HEAT threats turned out to be the biggest challenge of this competition - the only place where I even needed to consider KE protection as separate from protection against HEAT weapons was against the 120mm Norman KE, which resulted in the hull front and turret front having more HHS than I would otherwise have liked. I think the entire competition would have been different if the reference threats had ditched the 360/960mm HEAT reference threat, used the 250/750mm threat in it's place, and otherwise kept everything else the same. This would have lead to a lot more viable 'heavy tank' designs given the relatively greater freedom from the tyranny of protected volumes and plausible armour mass fractions.

So, regarding this-
You seem to have hit on a problem which I was mildly aware of while setting up the requirements, and which I didn't want to change by making the KE threat worse.

The design space did in fact offer at least 2 core methods for dealing with annoyingly high armor mass requirements:

1. BIIIIIIG tanks.

The weight limit of 120 tons allows a lot of fairly silly yet still well armored tanks. Bigger is better thanks to the volume of the engine bay scaling with the cube of a linear scaling whereas the armor weight needed only scales with the square, as thickness remains constant. Making a vehicle at less than half the maximal weight of course you ran into some issues.

2. ERA

Against HEAT, the main defeat mechanism is the multiplicative effect of the reactive armors. ERA gives you the same multiplicative effect as NERA at approximately half the weight and 3/4 of the volume. This effectively means that at the same weight of armor you can get double the coverage at the cost of being made of explodium, with no other additional cost. You could of course layer explosive and non explosive armor to get, for example, a front array that will only stop the 60/160 and 125mm KE with the ERA in place, but which will still stop the 2"/4" and 105mm KE bare.
The main defeat mechanism of light N/ERA against KE is LOS feeding and not multiplicative, and therefore when using it the KE threat does pop up as a thing to annoy you.

From my math, you can get a good frontal NERA array at an equivalent areal density to around 350mm steel including a 30mm backing plate. Using ERA, you can get that down to approx 250mm, While the NERA one does indeed require a careful volume conscious design, the ERA one practically lets you go wild.
 

In effect, the armor requirements could be met by a design similar to the M1 Abrams with TUSK II, at approx 85 tons, or a design similar to the T-72B3 mod 2016 or Oplot-M (depending on how explodey you want to be) at approx 45-55 tons.

By deciding to make a truly reasonable weight of tank, with no explosive armor integrated into the main arrays, with a human loader, and with moderately under-rated engines (32L engines should be pushing out north of 900HP each per the spec), you sort of ended up designing yourself into an unintended corner.

All in all, the Objects 426 and 138 both used ERA as an afterthought at best, which is a bit strange considering just how good it's given to be. Survivability is much better with double coverage of single-hit armor (per given area), at least for a fairly small number of hits, and I expected this to be exploited quite a bit more than it ended up being.

56 minutes ago, Sovngard said:

Does it also concern the AVDS-1790 1500 HP ?

I think that's post-buyout, but it also appears to be not entirely developed*, and certainly never built in any numbers.

*For reference, it smells to me like a semi-finished development program which requires a partner for full development testing and fielding. If it were fully developed I'd expect it to be shilled as a "simple cheap ready" part of upgrade packages.

9 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

Seems like uprating the 1790 would be far less work.

Upgrading the AVDS in the current year is a bit problematic. The owners of the old Continental Motors IP are currently L3 technologies, who do not seem to have a good handle on R&D for this property. As a point of fact, they offer no growth options that werent available before they bought out Continental.

Looks more like a Konkurs to me, with that bulged tube end.

43 minutes ago, Ramlaen said:

-equip all 9 SBCT with CROWS-J

-equip 3 more SBCT with 30mm guns (making 4) and then decide whether to upgrade the remaining 5

Does this mean Stryker Dragoons will have *both* CROWS-J and 30mm guns, or just non-30mm variants in the same SBCT will get the -J?

25 minutes ago, heretic88 said:

Unless the 30mm box has some magic contents, I do not see how it can be effective

NERA or ERA. a single 3/3/3mm thick ERA plate at that standoff would likely protect against PG-7V, and 30mm is probably enough to cram in 2 NERA layers back to back. The gap to the 70mm RHA plate is standoff.

That's one option, anyway.

14 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

it is better to avoid my playthrough

Guess I'll just have to catch up with the thread in a few months then, lel.

27 minutes ago, skylancer-3441 said:

AUSA 1985

That article mentions the COV.

I've encountered one of those in the wild before, but never knew what it was called. Magical, absolutely magical.

Knowing the name allowed me to find this: 

Also here are some pics of the one I spotted in the wild:

18 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

The 595K (FY72) was factored for 7000+ tanks produced within the program time-span. But This was again hypothetical and a highly creative and controversial tactic to HIDE the real cost. 

It cannot have been for the unit. Why? Because we have procurement numbers. 

 

From 1979 to 1987 11.25 Billion USD have been spent on the M1 procurement program. For a total of under 4800 tanks. 7000+ tanks at 600K that's 4.2 billion on 1982's cash. 

The unit rate went down thanks to some tricks that the US DOD did (like procurement deferrals, paying tanks with funds appropriated for other items), but the first series established a unit price of 2.4 million USD. 

 

So 4.2 billion were predicted to be budgeted in FY82 USD's (according to you, although I say it was for FY72 and I'm going to prove you why) for over 7K tanks. But in reality the cost was 11.2 billion for little under 4800 tanks. Now where the US Army was clever was to always confuse FY72 USD with current USD. Why? Because the 11.2 billion USD over 1987 are exactly the 4.2 billion on FY72 once the inflation is taken to account. Again, this doesn't take into account the little cheating done on the numbers by the DOD or the fact that 33% of the tanks weren't procured yet.

 

Once factored the price per unit is 2.4 million in average and with inflation that's just under 910K in FY72 when converted from FY87.

 

 

From 1988 the procurement price would start to rise ABOVE 3.3million/unit. That is the SECOND Procurement timeline. That's for the next rant. 

Again, conflating hardware costs with program costs. We've been over this, into the trash it goes.

19 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

It is sunk cost in the sense that's what they pretend it is going to cost over 55 years.

That's not what sunk cost means. Words and phrases have meanings, and if you can't be bothered to use the accepted ones you can go peddle your own flavor of semantics somewhere else.

Sunk cost is money put in and not recoverable. And the 1.5T is definitely not that, as most of it is yet to be spent.

And yes, it's an estimate. Like any good forwards-thinking organization, the US armed forces try to estimate how much stuff is going to cost in the future, so as to be prepared for it. More advanced accounting will include a confidence interval for the actual number, based on varying assumptions as to what the future will actually be. This is perfectly reasonable and makes good sense.

26 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

As in the case of the Abrams, the hourly cost will go up (inflation alone will insure that).

Truly, inflation is a hell of a drug. Which is why comparisons are usually carried out in constant value equivalent, as the plain dollar number is not constant value and is therefore meaningless by itself.

27 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

Also, again, you strike me as someone who doesn't do his homework and expect to get out of trouble by pure sophistry

Says the guy who is still trying to make the point that the Abrams is somehow insanely expensive despite his own sources disproving his claim, who has now moved on to insinuate that all Army numbers are fudged to hide the real cost. Riiiiight.

25 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

as the hardware never becomes cheaper

LOL. This one line proves that you have no idea how production lines get started, go from prototypes to FSD to production, gain competence or anything else.

It is a well established fact of the industry that as production lines mature, product costs fall due to less productivity losses and higher throughput from skilled workers.
The fact that you even for a moment were willing to put that piece of stupidity into writing for all to see disqualifies you from discussing manufacturing.

32 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

They don't...the Army says so. But even then they are forced to reckon the issue. 

Ok now we're back to simply throwing away the numbers the army supplies for the cost of the things it's buying because you don't like it.

35 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

The US army doesn't disagree with me, because the numbers I have are ... from their Procurement. Yes. They failed to meet the 7K goal and they failed to make it at 4.2billion of FY82 USD. 

You again fail to compare apples to apples and are surprised by it. Hardware costs.

Also:
M1: 2374 produced.

M1IP: 894 produced.

M1A1: 5572 produced.

That's 8840. Now granted quite a few of the M1A1s are rebuilt M1IPs, but still.

regarding costs we've already been over this.

38 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

So far you have provided ZERO evidence that the M1 did cost less than the projected MBT-70. As a matter of fact a serial production M1 from the first run cost in average 900+K in FY72 dollars. About 50K more than the MBT.

Again, see hardware costs vs program costs and so on. Yeah an apple isn't as acidic as an orange. You are now aware that the MBT-70 would also have been more expensive than the plain projected hardware cost, likely by a similar amount.

But again, if you're unwilling to accept the US Army numbers for hardware costs but are willing to accept their numbers for program costs, that's peak cherry picking right there. If reality is what you want it to be, sure the MBT-70 is cheaper because no spares, training, or ammunition were stocked for it. Massive savings across the board!

43 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

No it really wasn't. It was a far more conservative tank on its design.

The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are one and the same. The XM-1 program was the successor to the MBT-70 program, coming immediately on its heels and learning important lessons from it- notably cost control and cutting back on the gizmos.

"follow on program" does not in any way mean "shares technical solutions and/or parts". It means a program that succeeds where the previous one left off.

46 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

You sure have been insulting for a moderator. Must be cool to bend the rules.  However, YOU. ARE. STILL. WRONG.

I'm insulting to people who badpost. Cope. Being insulting is not against the rules, being a shitter however is.

And no, you still not being able to tell the difference between program cost and hardware cost does not make me wrong.

4 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

To me this is conducive of an already accepted reality

which is not however a sunk cost. Words have meanings.

Also lets do some more math, since you're in the mood.

$500M per plane for flight is approx 17,000 flight hours per plane at the 30K CPFH price point. That number is significantly in excess of the plane's current rated lifespan of 8000h, so claiming that the costs are marginal on the basis of flight hours is flat out wrong.

Also this is again why you do all the math in constant value dollars.

17 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

If you had read the actual "Lessons Learned" source you would have seen that the Cost factoring in constant FY72 Dollars had jumped from 507K for 3000+ tanks to 595K (always in FY72 Dollars) for...7000+ units (which meant that the initial unit price in Constant dollars factored for the budget was TWICE the 507K FY72;

I did read the document, and your conclusions from it are so off-base that I'm not sure you read it.
Consider, for example, the closing remarks, on page III of the document (page 6 of the PDF):

"small real cost growth" is not at all the situation you describe.

A growth of 19%, mostly because extra features were added in? say it ain't so!

And again, 19% growth for features, mainly the strengthened powertrain, is literal taxpayer rape. wew.

Also, the 507k is hardware costs for a single vehicle. Doubling the order for what is pretty much the same hardware cost per unit does not mean that the hardware cost per unit has doubled, and indeed the paper only talks about an estimated price increase if 19%. I really don't know how you could even reach that interpretation.

18 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th Congress/The M-1 Tank and NATO Readiness (1179).pdf

You know, that's a fascinating source, but once again your source does not say what you claim it does.

To wit, the Army's response to that claim:

Page 89 of the very PDF you posted. If you're gonna cherry pick quotes from sources, at least bother to read your entire source. Cause it firmly disagrees with the conclusion you are trying to draw from it.

Fun for the whole family!

And a bit more, just to get the point across:

Oh no muh poor taxpayer getting ripped off for squillions of dollars oh no

19 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

Date 1991.

It's almost as if getting sent to an active war zone in the sandbox leads to greater wear and therefore need for spare parts, as well as high fuel consumption, while the M60A3s are left at home or in Europe, who'd a-thunk it?

The cost of the M1 exceeding the M1A1 is interesting, wonder what led to that.
You do have a legit point that in practice it appears that the M1 has turned out to be expensive to operate, but that's a far cry from it being a case of the US MIC "raping the taxpayer".

19 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

However the program itself chewed through a supplemental 1billion USD on 1 year alone just to keep with LRIP

1-800-come-on-now

19 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

F-35 really? With the 1.5 trillion sunk costs? What is this?

Ah, a clear sign that you indeed don't know what you're talking about, thanks for playing.

for reference, the 1.5 trillion is a lifecycle cost for the entire fucking fleet. Not a sunk cost. And that's a really shitty way to dodge the point, which was that early LRIP costs are not indicative of full scale production.

7 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

My whole point was to deny that the "Abrams" was a cost conservative program

All the congressional testimony you've posted says otherwise, the design to cost was largely successful and the tank was delivered on time and mostly on budget, a great achievement for any development program, let alone one run by the US Army.

7 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

replace or one-up the MBT-70/XM-803

It was absolutely the successor program to the failed MBT-70, what are you on to?

7 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

delirious illusion until it was both too late and self-defeating.

So the US Army disagrees with you on the cost issue, and by all accounts the Abrams program has been a resounding success. You don't scale up a 3300 tank buy to 7000 if the cost balloons out of control, and sufficient evidence has been posted in this thread (ironically, by you) to disprove that notion.

7 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

(which went from as low a 178K USD for the first series to 1 million USD for newly built TTS delivered last in 1982)

Inflation is a hell of a drug, and the extras in the TTS don't help.

But anyway, TL;DR there's plenty of evidence that the Design-To-Cost of the M1 Abrams was by and large successful, and that it was successfully limited to a unit hardware cost significantly below that of the MBT-70, thus backing up the claim that started this whole discussion, ie that the Abrams was a budget tank born from the failure of the MBT-70 project.

7 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

This is Irony 101

Not really no. What is however ironic is that you're calling out Ram despite you being the one who's incredibly wrong about this. The F-35 cost issue is prime bait and you took it like a champ. Thanks for playing.

8 hours ago, heretic88 said:

First their track provides much less traction. Second, the presence of the suspension system makes it significantly harder to maintain grade. And third, their transmission system is optimized for speed, rather than power. 

For those keeping track at home, the D9 for example has a lot of rollers (good MMP), deep grousers for excellent traction in soft soil, and oil coolers for the torque converter. Unlike armored vehicles in which the torque converter is intended to lock up quickly and therefore not get very hot, the torque converter in the D9 is designed to work in slippage at all times. This results in a lot of power being turned into heat in the oil, which then needs to be cooled to prevent the seals from dying. You could run a tank in 1st gear and 100% slip on the torque converter and get pretty good tractive effort, but not for any length of time. The D9 is a very well designed tool.

20 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

The Chrysler Abrams was a "clean sheet" tank when it came to the core. 

And yet the RFP it was designed to meet was a cut down MBT-70 spec, and the design incorporated a lot of lessons learned from the MBT-70. The main difference was a flexible spec with Design-To-Cost as part of the RFP, allowing the active trading of performance requirements for cost reduction. Because the Army was really not happy with the cost of the MBT-70 and was out of both time and budget.

20 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

The Hardware cost for the LRIP was 2.16 million. 

Yes. For  LRIP. In 1983 dollars. The very paper you quote mentions that inflation in that interval is nearly 300%, (239% according to this), which is the most significant chunk of that, and LRIP lots are always more expensive than mass production lots- for reference, the LRIP lot 1 F-35A was approx $200M a pop, and LRIP lot 11 is down to $89M per.

So yeah, LRIP costs are not entirely indicative of mass production costs, which is what 3000 units most definitely is.

Also you should be comparing apples to apples, that is hardware costs. Comparing hardware costs of the M60 to total costs of the M1 is disingenuous, as the M60 also needs those extras you are not factoring in.

20 hours ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

Unit Cost had been already risen to 700K+ FY 75

Same source, page 3217:

Your own sources disagree with your opinion, the Abrams is not "the MIC raping the taxpayer".

Another interesting snippet from page 1882:

Seems like the Abrams is actually really close to the M60A3 in costs despite being a much better platform. If that's a sign of "raping the taxpayer", what would you consider a reasonable price to be, for that performance?

And again, page 1910.

This source you posted does not in any way support your claim that the M1 project ended up, and I quote, " producing a tank that costs 6 times the price of the M60 in its mission capable form ". Much the opposite, in fact.

The M1 was extremely cheap compared to the M60 for what it was, and was the result of an extremely cost-conscious development, having learned the lesson of the failed MBT-70.

38 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

I don't know what all this has to do with "penny pinching"

It has to do with the Abrams development mostly evolving from a cut down MBT-70. Ending up more expensive than the M-60 is mostly irrelevant because by that time the M60 was entirely obsolete, and therefore could not fill the role required, nor could any vehicle of equivalent cost. For the defined role, the Abrams as designed was a very austere design with few exceptions, and if you think for some reason that the Abrams wasn't designed under some pretty strict cost limits you are sorely mistaken and are more than invited to re-read Hunnicutt.

Also penny pinching in general is a figure of speech for cost cutting, not only the cost cutting associated with small low value details. But choosing a 1-axis gunner's sight stab over 2-axis because it's $3000 cheaper is indeed penny pinching when it comes to a tank.

43 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

they ended up funding a MORE expensive program.

Not than the MBT-70, to which the comparison must be made.

44 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

US STILL doesn't have an auto-loader. The US has killed a plethora of systems that "lost usefulness" post CW

Yes, also killed were the FCS, GCV, and some other programs which were supposed to replace the Abrams with an autoloaded vehicle. The fact that these projects all got cut and ate up most of the budget, leaving fuckall for Abrams upgrades, is a separate issue.

46 minutes ago, XhaxhiEnver said:

You are arguing about intention, I'm talking about facts.

Also talking facts here, bucko. Compare the estimated price of the MBT-70, M60A1 and M60A3 to that of the Abrams in then year dollars.

Had you bothered to open a copy of Hunnicutt, you'd see that he provides the following numbers in equivalent 1972 dollars:
$422k final Chrysler proposal
$507k RFP design goal
 

$526k XM-1 1978 estimate (including GFE) (from here)

$339k M60A1

$432k M60A3

$611k XM803 (MBT-70)

So yeah, Definitely a budget conscious development.
(now if you're going "wait those numbers can't be right how come it's so much cheaper than the design goal", the answer is "competition". Chrysler's bid was $196M to GM's $232M).

So, seeing as some people need a refresher:
You really should read Hunnicutt's Abrams book, but the 10 minute version of the story is as follows:
MBT-70 was going to be the best tank that anyone had ever made. Ever. It was going to have all the bells, a double serving of whistles, and bully the hell out of any Soviet tank in every respect. At least, that was the idea. The MBT-70 proved to be a very problematic beast and got stuck in development hell for the better part of a decade, and by the time it was cancelled there was very little time and even less budget to get a working tank into service, and Congress was not happy with funding another ambitious development project. The Abrams was therefore most definitely a budget option compared to the state of the art at the time, though it was designed with some inherent growth features built in for later upgrades (notably, the CITV on the M1A2 was planned for pretty much from the get-go).

The US was fully willing to have an autoloader in their fancy tank, and by all accounts the autoloader on the MBT-70 worked just fine; but it was not easily adaptable to the Abrams, and there was no time or budget to mature a new one- the Abrams was almost criminally late to the field as it was! All Abrams variants prior to the M1A2 are in one way or another budget versions, and only in the A2 did the US Army really get all the features they initially wanted (plus a bunch more that had cropped up and matured in the mean time).

The US has designed several vehicles with autoloaders and even type-classified quite a few, with the Stryker MGS actually seeing service. Other than memes which as far as I can tell derive from wikipedia- tier sour grapes, there's no actual evidence that the US Army does not like the idea of autoloaders, much the opposite.

1 hour ago, alanch90 said:

people who refused for over half a century to even mount an autoloader in a tank because "too many moving parts can fail"

I'll take "things that never happened" for $500, Alex.

See also: MBT-70.

No, judging has however been somewhat delayed.

Ok I see it's a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. Have fun on the Carl Sagan forums.

Another protip for the masses: If your only defenses are "I haven't been banned for it yet" and "it's not illegal", perhaps you should keep that to yourself.

Friendly reminder that it is a really, really bad idea to deliberately antagonize moderators. We shouldn't have to point this out.