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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

https://www.rbc.ru/business/09/06/2018/5b1baf419a79476d6dd11200?from=main

Quote

Volgograd plant "Red October", which produces steel for the tanks "Armata", reduced wages to employees in May because of the production being stopped for the time of the footbal World Cup. Some employees were sent on leave for two months.

/.../

   The union of the plant wrote an appeal addressed to President Vladimir Putin and his plenipotentiary in the Southern Federal District, Vladimir Ustinov. "Now the company is in a catastrophic situation, which can lead to its complete halt: there are massive dismissals of employees (currently more than 3 thousand people are fired), the activity of steel smelters is suspended, wages are not paid in full and are constantly delayed. Under the threat of disruption there is also a state defense order, "reads the appeal

/.../

In January 2018, the general director of the Red October, Igor Sizov, said that the plant would be stopped in the summer for the time of the World Cup. At the same time it became known that the FSB required several enterprises located in 11 regions to stop production for the duration of the football championship. It was a question of dangerous industries, where chemical, biological, radioactive, toxic and explosive substances are produced.

/.../

   According to SPARK, the net loss of the "Red October" in 2016 amounted to 1.7 billion rubles. In May 2018, the Arbitration Court of the Volgograd Region introduced a monitoring procedure at the plant on the application of the Swiss Red October International, owned by Dmitry Gerasimenko. It is this structure that in 2013 redeemed "Red October" for 221 million rubles. In 2016, Gerasimenko was placed on an international wanted list by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs on charges of embezzling a $ 65 million of VTB loan. Later he was arrested in Cyprus, but then released on bail.

   According to Maxim Khudalov, the director of the corporate ratings group of ACRA, the state defense order takes up 70% in the proceeds of the Red October (in 2012, 7.3 billion rubles). He noted that the enterprise produces blanks from special steels, which can only be replaced with imports from China. "But, considering that the plant is in distress since 2007, it is unlikely that the defense industry is strongly tied up on it, most likely, an alternative to its products has long been found," the expert believes.

Footbal and idiotic functionaries put together are terrible force.

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  • 4 weeks later...
8 hours ago, Konev said:

There is no topic for tank FCS ,so I ask a question here.

Is it possible to replace the human gunner by a computed one  in current technology?

If not,what problems with it?

Thanks!

 

 

Yes. Absolutely.

There is an emerging trend right now for "transparent armor".

The way it works is there's a ton of cameras outside, preferably well protected and concealed, and you can get a very quick all around view either via large screens (less preferable but cheaper solution) or helmets (more preferable but more expensive  solution).

 

Such technology is now being trialed in the US on the Bradley and later on in the NGCV, and in Israel on the Merkava 4, Namer, and Eitan. 

 

It reduces a traditional crew of 3 (commander, gunner, driver) to just 2 (commander and driver), and a crew of 4 (incl. loader) can be reduced to 3 if they choose not to use an automated loader.

It provides the commander with so much view over the battlefield that he does not really need a gunner to locate other targets jointly, and there are also technologies nowadays that do 90% of the targeting, especially in returning fire mode.

 

For example, we take a vehicle equipped with such vision system, and an APS as well. 

It gets an alert that an ATGM or APFSDS is fired against it, doesn't matter what, really. The radar identifies the location of the shooter and the gun lays automatically on the direction of the target. Modern object recognition systems already exist in FCS with automatic trackers so it can adjust its aim from approximate direction to pinpoint targeting. That process of receiving data and having the gun directly on target can take a second, and all that's left for the commander is to push the firing button. So the previous burden that required both a gunner and commander, is not there anymore. 

There is also debate whether the commander should even be required to push the button, so the system could do all the process even faster with no human input, but I don't think that debate will favor the machine.

 

In future vehicles like the Israeli Carmel and US NGCV, both the driver and commander will be sitting in the same capsule and both will have access to both the driving systems and firing systems, so the burden on each member is further reduced.

 

If what I wrote is not all too intuitive to you yet, try watching this video:

Spoiler

 

 

TLDR

Yes, you can remove the gunner completely.

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9 hours ago, Konev said:

There is no topic for tank FCS ,so I ask a question here.

Is it possible to replace the human gunner by a computed one  in current technology?

If not,what problems with it?

Thanks!

 

 

 

Hard, but possible.

Completely automatic fire control systems exist in aircraft and anti-aircraft systems.  The difference is that aircraft are usually silhouetted against the sky.  If you point a radar at an airplane in the sky, you'll get a very clean, crisp return from the aircraft (well, unless it's stealthy or jamming you or something), and no return whatsoever from the sky.  It's then relatively easy to rig some sort of system that points a weapon towards that return.

With a tank it's a little different.  If you point a radar at a tank, the radar wave will bounce off the tank and back towards the radar, but the radar wave will also bounce off the ground and all the random metal crap on the ground and bounce back towards the radar.  The signal is much more complex, and a powerful computer is required to figure out what is tank and what is ground.  The same applies to any sort of sensor system trying to track a ground vehicle.  Sorting out the actual target from the noise is a lot trickier, because the ground produces a lot more sensor noise than the air.

 

But it's 2018, and there are all sorts of crazy powerful computers and signal processing algorithms.  

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17 minutes ago, Collimatrix said:

 

 

Hard, but possible.

Completely automatic fire control systems exist in aircraft and anti-aircraft systems.  The difference is that aircraft are usually silhouetted against the sky.  If you point a radar at an airplane in the sky, you'll get a very clean, crisp return from the aircraft (well, unless it's stealthy or jamming you or something), and no return whatsoever from the sky.  It's then relatively easy to rig some sort of system that points a weapon towards that return.

With a tank it's a little different.  If you point a radar at a tank, the radar wave will bounce off the tank and back towards the radar, but the radar wave will also bounce off the ground and all the random metal crap on the ground and bounce back towards the radar.  The signal is much more complex, and a powerful computer is required to figure out what is tank and what is ground.  The same applies to any sort of sensor system trying to track a ground vehicle.  Sorting out the actual target from the noise is a lot trickier, because the ground produces a lot more sensor noise than the air.

 

But it's 2018, and there are all sorts of crazy powerful computers and signal processing algorithms.  

With the solution I provided above, which is already pursued by numerous armed forces, you don't even need a system for independent identification of targets. You can do with greater view and semi-automatic return fire capability.

 

But if you want something to independently acquire targets, which I think is important as well, the way to go is probably optical devices coupled with the BMS. Movement detection and object recognition will do their thing, and geo-location of that object will blink it on the BMS. The BMS will then decide whether this is a registered friendly asset, or an unregistered and potentially harmful asset.

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18 hours ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

TLDR

Yes, you can remove the gunner completely.

Maybe my thinking is from yesterday, but I wouldn't think a moment about removing the Gunner. With the flood of incoming information in an NCW environment, I'm totally happy with a commander who can focus on processing these informations and taking decissions plus eventually assigning targets. Furthermore I'd love to have a gunner who is able to do his job the traditional way if the sensors got a beating...

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49 minutes ago, Jägerlein said:

Maybe my thinking is from yesterday, but I wouldn't think a moment about removing the Gunner. With the flood of incoming information in an NCW environment, I'm totally happy with a commander who can focus on processing these informations and taking decissions plus eventually assigning targets. Furthermore I'd love to have a gunner who is able to do his job the traditional way if the sensors got a beating...

There are technologies available today that can greatly simplify most of the information coming in to the TC in a way that even when assigned with also gunnery, the overall load is reduced.

Location of friends & foes (works on formation coordination and combat orientation), mission assignment, firing tenders, optimal route finding, autonomous (limited or not) driving, semi-autonomous engagement. 

With all these, a commander in a 2-man crew will actually be able to perform his core tasks with LESS burden from other tasks. The only one who gains more burden from this, is the driver who now serves as a secondary gunner as well, as all controls within the vehicle become dual - every station has the same UI.

 

Of course, it will take about a decade before we will see the fruits of that concept, which currently gets massive funding in both Israel and the USA, as well as private companies like BAE and Elbit that are pushing for certain pieces of this concept at least.

And we should see parts of it becoming operational in the next 2-3 years.

 

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On ‎7‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 5:47 AM, Mighty_Zuk said:

 

It reduces a traditional crew of 3 (commander, gunner, driver) to just 2 (commander and driver), and a crew of 4 (incl. loader) can be reduced to 3 if they choose not to use an automated loader.

 

Who in their right minds would be dumb enough to do that? 

 

Spoiler

Image result for CHallenger 2

 

Oh... 

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Nobody

2 men crew is a deep failure for tanks whatever the level of technology. 

In france, 3 men crew was considered the best choice but, after 25 years of Leclerc MBT, I know plenty of cavalry men who would be very pleased to have a 4 men crew tank. 

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1 hour ago, Serge said:

Nobody

2 men crew is a deep failure for tanks whatever the level of technology. 

In france, 3 men crew was considered the best choice but, after 25 years of Leclerc MBT, I know plenty of cavalry men who would be very pleased to have a 4 men crew tank. 

If you build a tank the traditional way today, then yeah 4 men is better.

 

But with the setup given to a 2-man crew provides them with a substantially higher level of situational awareness than a 4-man crew.

 

Keep in mind that all running projects for such technology also include a 3rd person for the vehicle who operates unmanned systems around the vehicle, so he's an extra hand during repairs, and an extra pair of eyes through his own platforms, that provides far more added visibility than an extra crewman does on existing tanks.

 

So when talking about 2-man crews, it doesn't mean there are 2 men inside the vehicle. Just that only 2 of them are required to operate the vehicle.

 

Besides, autoloaders are the only way to provide true protection against catastrophic kills, by removing the danger of being struck in the process of loading. Thus the only threats that remain that could cause catastrophic kills are mines/IEDs, and shots that penetrate into the ammo compartment and proceed to pierce into the crew compartment.

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