Clan_Ghost_Bear

Ground launched Tomahawk happened.
 
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/703577/dod-conducts-ground-launched-cruise-missile-test
 
edit: bigger picture

 
 

Dat tin can though.
 

from https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6567119520996048896/ - 4 photos of slides from recent presentation on NGCV's RCVs

 
and another one from https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6567111444783996928/

 

https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/landwarfareintl/raytheon-and-rheinmetall-expand-us-army-omfv-team/
 

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:


 

The 34.5" in the one graphic appears to be missile diameter.

article on AUSA 1985 exhibition, published in International Defense Review 1985-12

 
some pics photographed separately
 
article (in german) on AUSA 1985 exhibition, published in Wehrtechnik 1986-01

 
larger pic of Mowag 8x8 w/Ares 75mm cannon

 
larger pic of scalemodel of what would eventually become known as M109A5

btw, on this photo of M109A5 model one can spot at the background an red-and-black artist's drawing of some tank - also published b/w in Hunnicutt's book on Abrams, but it appeared earlier (and with caption which says it artist drawing of M1 replacement from General Electric) in IDR 1982-02

 
article on AUSA 1986 exhibition, published in International Defense Review 1986-12

 
some pics photographed separately
 
article (in german) on AUSA 1986 exhibition, published in Wehrtechnik 1987-01

 
larger pic of scalemodel of M1 Abrams-based tank w/ some new turret

similar vehicle is well-known from artist's drawing
 
 

Your homework is to come up with a reason for Mexico to do joint military exercises.

article on AUSA 1983 exhibition, published in International Defense Review 1983-12

 
additional photos of pics of scalemodel of 155mm liquid propellant SPH proposal from General Electric, which promised substantial increase in number of rounds carried by each vehicle

 
article on AUSA 1984 exhibition, published in International Defense Review 1984-12

 
additional photos of different pics from this article

 

I accidentally found Mike Sparks' Slideshare account:
https://www.slideshare.net/1st_TSG_Airborne

It has some legitimate documents but is mostly made up of over 300 slideshows extolling the virtues of the Gavin.
 
 
 
 
 

Annual report (2017-2018) of the French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis (ISL), it speaks of the MGCS and all the new technological challenges related to MBTs :
 
https://www.isl.eu/documents/annual-reports/isl-2017-2018-annual-report.pdf

Satory I (1967) exhibition catalogue, English version, volume 2 
https://cloud.mail.ru/public/5bTB/3RVqfBy1w
https://imgur.com/a/yq2TwjX

From https://history.army.mil/books/Studies/sunell/sunell.htm, thought it was relevant to the current conversation.
 
General Sunell: Well, General [Robert J.] Baer was the tank program manager for a long time, and he had a very close relationship with Fort Knox. The reason I can discuss the tank program is because I left the Armored Reconnaissance Scout Vehicle (ARSV) task force and became the deputy program manager for the XM1 tank where I worked for General Baer.
General Baer, in effect, said, "This is what all these different items cost on a tank, and I have a $507,000 ceiling for the XM1 tank." And he said, "If you really want to add that to the tank, here's what a fender costs; here's what a machine gun costs. Now which one do you want me to take off, because I cannot exceed this cost ceiling?" Everybody understood that.
General Starry and General Baer traveled together and then General McEnery came in. He did the same thing; he kept the program going. There was some criticism of the tank, and General Lynch came out very strongly as the commandant supporting the tank. His famous message was, "If you can't support the tank, keep your mouth shut and at least don't join the hostiles," if I recall his words.
The tank went through then. General [Donald M.] Babers became the program manager, and we always kept an extremely close relationship with Fort Knox. The program manager and the commandant were not enemies; they worked together. That kept that program going.
Major Pirnie: In other words, there were two aspects. One was the close cooperation with the Program Management Office [PMO] in Fort Knox, which included personal contact with the officers involved, extending over several changes in personnel. The second aspect was tying it to a budget requirement.
General Sunell: Yes.
Major Pirnie: It's perhaps a little unfortunate we have to use the budget in that fashion, but it does compel decisions. Wouldn't it be better if we worked with effectiveness criteria?
General Sunell: Well, this went back to the MBT70 [Main Battle Tank-70] when we had a joint program with the Germans. That tank was coming along, but we had so many additional dollars tacked on to it that Congress accused the Army of "gold plating," and the program was stopped. Everybody knew we needed a new tank program. The Congress specifically stated that the Army could have a tank program, but it must be below a specific cost ceiling. Every time we went to testify in Congress, we were required to go back to that number ... that basic number.
Even today, Brig. Gen. Peter M. McVey, who used to be the program manager for tank systems and is now responsible for all combat vehicles, must go back and trace the cost to the 1972 dollars�$507,000 a copy.
Major Pirnie: How wise was it for Congress to set that standard? Did that help or hurt the program?
General Sunell: It certainly didn't hurt the program at the time. We stayed under budget, and we had the support of the Congress. We didn't have runaway costs. It allowed the program manager to budget within those dollar figures. But in one place it did hurt the program. We knew at that time that we wanted an underarmor auxiliary power unit that cost $35,000 in today's dollars, probably about $15,000 in dollars in that day, but we couldn't do it. We included the power unit as a Pre-Planned Product Improvement program. But if we could have taken the dollars and put it in then, in the 1970s, it would have cost us half as much as to go back and add it to the program.
The second thing we always wanted and needed was a redundant sight for the commander. By that I mean an independent sight for the commander, now called the Commander's Independent Thermal Viewer (CITV). This allows the commander of the tank to search a portion of the battlefield and the gunner to look at a different portion of the battlefield. If the commander sees a target out there, he hits a switch and the gunner automatically slews to that target. We wanted that capability, but we couldn't do it because we couldn't exceed that ceiling.
Now the commander and the gunner are looking through the same sights, and we really would have liked to have had the commander's independent sight, but we couldn't do that. We saved dollars at that time, but it's going to cost us big bucks to go back and do that now.
Major Pirnie: In other words, setting the ceiling had the ironic result of increasing the cost of the vehicle.
General Sunell: Yes. It increases the cost of the vehicle when you have a pre-planned product improvement.

You must be insane, @XhaxhiEnver; truly. When comparing the cost of a series production, you use a single year’s dollar equivalent, which accounts for in/deflation, because the uncorrected values will indeed skew the final costs. It is a common, accepted practice to use the value of the dollar (or whatever currency) of the first year of production of an item, for all years that the item was produced. Ergo, if you want to compare the unit cost of the M1 over its production run, you would most likely use the value of the M1 in the first year it was produced.
 
Inflation will make the cost higher because THAT’S WHAT INFLATION DOES! It makes the unit monetary value decrease, meaning you need MORE MONEY to pay for the same item. This is why it is imperative to adjust for inflation of goods. 
 
One thing you’re not understanding about that $4.2 billion number is that it is for EVERYTHING related to the M1: setting up a new factory and/or re-tooling of old factories to accommodate for the new vehicle (this cost money... like, a LOT of money); acquisition of ammo, fuel, spare parts, and crew pensions and training for each tank planned (make sure they’re not out of parts/fuel within days introduction), and that’s certainly not cheap for 7000 vehicles; worker, electric, and materials costs (it would be ridiculous to think contractor, sub-contractor, and other utility and manufacturing costs would not be estimated and included in the report). 
 
I don’t know where you learned to estimate finances, but you should probably ask for your money back. 

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.
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
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".

1-800-come-on-now
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.
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.
It was absolutely the successor program to the failed MBT-70, what are you on to?
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.
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.
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.

A collection of docs overviewing some plans for the US army moonbase, including what weapons they were going to use for defense.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a047426.pdf

article on CATTB from IDR 1990-12

 
and also clippings
from IDR 1989-12 on MTAS
 
and from IDR 1990-05 on 140mm gun 

and render of CATTB from US Army's Weapon Systems Handbook of 1992:

 
and pic from Soldat und Technik 1992-01:

 
and pic of testbed w/XM291 gun - also from SuT 1992-01:

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.

Lotta memes and myths going on here, if there was a primary reason the US hasn't adopted an autoloader on a tank it would be penny pinching and budget cuts.

You're kind of moving the goalposts, though. You originally said that the US never mounted an autoloader to a tank because of fears over mechanical failure.

I don't see the love for the M1128 MGS!