The Crusader looked pretty good on paper but it had a lot of problems when you looked at the details. Chief among which was the fact that the gun was fully automated and in the event of a misfeed or other problem, the crew could NOT get access to the gun to correct the problem. In the event of automation failure, the gun could NOT be loaded by humans, even if they had been able to get access.
The next problem was that the Crusader had to be escorted around by a separate ammunition supply vehicle, the XM2002. The Crusader only carried 48 rounds, which it could fire at ten rounds per minute. Then it would take *twelve* minutes to reload 48 rounds from the ammo carrier. Once the piece ran through the 110 rounds in the XM2002, the 2002 would have to scuttle back to the rear to reload, which would take slightly less than an hour once it got to the ammo dump. So you get four minutes of fire, then nothing for twelve minutes (because apparently it couldn’t reload while firing) and then two more cycles, then nothing for at least an hour.
Did I mention that the gun could *not* be reloaded by hand? You had to load the ammo carrier vehicle *then* load the gun from the carrier via the automated feed system - and you better hope it doesn’t screw up.
Yeah, we really didn’t need the Crusader. We should have bought the PzH2000 instead.
I remember hearing at the time that a major argument against Crusader was it was too heavy at a time when the US needed to prepare more for rapid deployment. But it looks like the PzH2000 weighs a lot more than Crusader.