Pascal

The gunners sights on Panther(2,5x-5x) and King tigers(3x-6x) had optics with variable magnification, using least magnification had a very wide view angle. This can be also put to the comparison. The Panther gunner also had a two-dial turret position indicator, that may also have helped.
 
Another interesting thing is the "blindspot" from up to down and how other AFV had their way with it, like in the first image with a side view of a Panther.
 
The accuracy myth is one interesting too, soviets captured a random King tiger and tested it, the R100 is a lot tighter.

From Otvaga.

From Otvaga.

Lol nice,  who's the clown who wrote that T-34 book?  

World War 2 B-17 bomber plane crashes
Sad.

China: Paper Tiger
 
"Red China turns 70 this year. It's time."

China: Paper Tiger
 
"Red China turns 70 this year. It's time."

Was this posted before? Anyway. Contains a few interesting facts. According to the driver of Saumur tank musum's Panther, the engine is actually quite accessible and easy to maintain. Then he tells of course about the steering system, which is - no surprise - problematic. Later the curator of the museum also tells about it, and he mentions the constant need to check the steering system, and the frequent adjustings required. Maybe this was the real reason behind the low service life of the final drives? Drivers without enough experience or training, so they didnt perform the checks and adjustments, which led to early final drive failures? The drive train wasnt perfect of course, but there is evidence that with experienced drivers, the final drives lasted far, far more than the mythical "150km" (actually I believe it is a typo in the original french report! 1500km should be the real value).
 

I listened to this last night. The guest was talking about the manifesto, he did not have any inside information.

The growing ranks of unemployed graduates worry China’s government
China Wants to Hit Back at Trump. Its Own Economy Stands in the Way. (I know New York Times)
 
Some older interesting articles:
 

And he tried to accuse me of selective reading, what nerve.

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.
 
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.
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.

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.

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:

1. That was a joke post. 
 
2. These are your exact words: 
 
 
And those vehicles disproved the statement I bolded. Now, if you had stated “refused to accept a tank, with an autoloader, into service”, well, I would have had less to say, though the M1128 still disproves that. 

He should have been more thorough. 
 
The refusal to mount an auto-loader to an actual service vehicle (MBT other tans) was backed by the idea that AL's would increase the complexity of the tank and malfunction at some point. 
This is not "moving the goalposts", it's why the US is still fielding a 4-men crew tank. There will be exceptions that will simply confirm this viewpoint.
 
For anyone pointing the Stryker MGS... that's quite the resounding success. 

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

Ilhan Omar Marriage Flummoxes Media Fact-Checkers
 
OOF.

In that page, it's just examples as to how to hold the rifle prone and how to hold the rifle while shooting air targets.
 
I think it's just so the short handed dudes could see that it's ok to grab it not primarily by the handguard.
 
Hell, i couldn't grab the AK normally by the handguard while prone, so only magazine hold for me in prone.

Donzo.
 
Some "patriotic" dudes saved some of them, probably those two posted above.