N-L-M

19 minutes ago, Karamazov said:

Not only. 

That's ARAT 2, which is also ERA. Covers the hull ARAT 1 and the bare turret side, thus again suggesting that the turret side is equivalent to the ARAT 1 skirts.

5 hours ago, Beer said:

If hit directly from the sides it's not strong enough

So, ARAT -1 only covers the hull sides, which suggests that whatever those skirts are rated for, the turret side can already stop.

The Lone Free State of Texas needs YOU!

The year is 2255, and the Lone Free State is still recovering from how hard it got hit during The Big One. The geography and politics of the local area are such that borders are very hard to draw, movement ranges are long and points of contact may shift at any time. The Lone Free State Rangers require a new family of vehicles capable of keeping the peace and moving forces safely in the presence of both light irregular forces and thin skinned improvised armored vehicles. 

More details to follow soon.

5km is approx 16000 ft. At that altitude, good luck hitting anything without a fire director.

In WW2 manual aiming was used only for short range close in air defence, anything longer ranged than a Bofors 40mm was directed, and even those got mk 51 directors by 1944. The need to accurately calculate lead and drop on a moving target is essential, unless the target is within tracer range- typically less than 5k yd.

5000m is beyond the effective range of non-directed gunfire.

That's an awful lot of Kornets

Thats quite the bold assumption to make regarding ease of retrofit of armor package upgrades, should they even be the case.

Considering how that turret has Trophy electronics boxes on it, as well as the cheeks, but for example still only has the older CROWS- I consider it more reasonable to assume its the counterweight for a few reasons-

1. If that isn't the counterweight, what is? Considering how the Trophy installation is biased aft, youd need a counterweight fore.

2. A frontal turret armor upgrade, alone, of all the M1A2C upgrades, doesn't make much sense.

3. While trophy counterweights are known to exist, retrofit armor improvements to older Abrams aren't.

4. This turret add-on looks substantially different from M1A2C turrets seen. For a start, on those the actual armor cavity was extended forwards, whereas this lump is clearly welded on to the existing turret face, which would mean very poor actual volume for armor inside it.

5. These cheek expansions only appeared after initial Trophy testing which showed turret imbalance issues.

That's not an M1A2C hull

Nor does it appear that an upgrade to the turret would be deployed minus the hull upgrades.

@LoooSeR lel a M-60T did indeed get whacked, but not like we expected

Late 2021 IOC seems a lot more reasonable than earlier claims we've heard, great news.

I can only hope they get them in large numbers, to get rid of the huge quantities of M113s the IDF still operates.

@Sturgeon

Behold: the electric wheeliebob! Now still 100% incapable of climbing a flight of stairs!

Seems like theyre actually looking for industry feedback on the requirements.

IMO biggest deal would be relaxing the protection-transportability requirements as we've discussed previously.

Footage from the IDF 'women in tanks' trial. Low energy and sad.

True true

Where are we going to test all the cool toys when the civil war ends?

Agreed. At least the areas which are uparmored (turret frontal arc and UFP) might be able to shrug off bigger hits. But seeing just how many RPGs and ATGMs fly around Syria, its likely to be very explodey.

Just now, LoooSeR said:

armor for turret ring

Every Magach with Blazer got pretty much the same turret ring modules. I can only hope the fill is newer.

In general the Magach and Sabra armor kits seem to be optimized for a high end threat at the cost of coverage, all under rather serious weight restrictions leading to really poor coverage, especially hull side.

4 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

 

Huh, never noticed this before but it looks like sideskirts 3 and 4 are noticably thinner than sideskirts 1 and 2- looks like only enough thickness for 1 reactive element.

On early Sabra prototypes there were no reactive sideskirts aft of 1 and 2.

Very nice, note the cutouts in both glacis and LFP arnor modules for Soviet-style breaching equipment attachment points.

Gotta love the commanders periscopic sight stolen off a M901 ITV

Amazing, DDR&D has developed the technology to make DARPA style tech concept vids from the 1990s. Absolutely astounding.

4 hours ago, Ramlaen said:

The Trophy APS adds approximately 8,600 pounds to the platform.

I wonder how much of that is the actual system and how much is the 'canoe' needed to hold it all on each side of the turret.

7 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

Because I cannot honestly see how an IFV in the ~52t range meets the very demanding passive armor requirements.

Considering how we don't know what those actually are, that's a very strong statement to make but ok.

7 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

Otherwise there was nothing stopping Rheinmetall from just offering a heavier bolt-on kit for the Lynx (which Rhm states has 6t of growth capacity at its full 44t weight)

Apart from yknow 52 being a larger number than 50, and 55 being even larger, as well as leaving no growth margin.

7 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

(which is implying an armor kit more than your 13t hypothesis as that would happily fly on a C-130, which they *would* have touted as there are a *lot* of C-130s and that was even a firm requirement back in the FCS days)

Fair enough, I suppose.

7 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

40-50% passive armor fraction and virtually all of that being bolt-on. (And yes, vehicles with such high armor fractions *have* been built before, it's not impossible).

Good luck building any vehicle, let alone one with any semblance of mine protection, without a substantial weight invested in the hull body, which cannot be detached for obvious reasons.

7 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

Lynx simply would have been entered with a heavier add-on kit,

Which would do terrible things to its growth margins, which is something the US Army has put emphasis on. Also Rheinmetall didnt really use timing as an excuse to bow out, as others have pointed out.

9 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

It seems to be within a few tons of the infamous 84 ton BAE GCV IFV maximum weight.

Where are you inferring that from?

Theyre basically saying a fully armored one can be shipped in a C-17 and if you remove some armor then its 2. Hoe much armor could you possibly remove? Even if we assume that armor is 25% of the GVW (ToT says 50% for armor and structure, lets say half is removable), to pack 2 per C-17 youd need the bare vehicle to not exceed 39 tons (max payload being 78 (metric) tons)- and therefore, the loaded one cannot under said assumptions exceed 52 tons.

In order for an 80 ton vehicle to get 2-packed into a C-17, you'd need to dtrip over 50% of its weight, which is unreasonable to assume; much more likely that its in the 50-55 ton range.

If so, that would imply that tandem or not, the jet flew in the gap between the tiles, without setting any off.