Singapore's NGAFV
Posted on 10/10/2017 12:39:10 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Singapore's NGAFV
If I were the general setting the standards I’d put the 120mm ordinance as a requirement. The vehicle at least needs to be able to kill a heavy tank if it can get the first shot.
They’ve sacrificed armor protection anyway. At least make the vehicle lethal.
The best armor protection for the crew, might be for them not to be there in the first place. I’d like to see the Army look at remote piloted vehicles.
“I’ve read that Bill has (or had) an office in Harlem. Never heard mention of him having a house there.”
Goes without saying. I completely agree.
There is no spoon
Too bad it’s all NDI; the Army should specify a directed energy weapon as the MPF’s main armament. That would go a long way toward increasing lethality and allowing the mobility and protection tradeoffs to be enhanced.
There are no light tank transportable directed energy weapons with useful anti-armor capability either currently or looking to be available in the near future.
What they’re really looking for, when you boil it all down, is a modern interpretation of the Super Hellcat concept that they were going to put in mass production but WW2 ended before it could - a light, stupid fast lightly-armored vehicle with a monster rapid fire gun that could kill anything on the battlefield with it.
Yes, concur, only a future possibility.
Decades in the future. Not soon enough to be useful for this vehicle today.
Land vehicle energy weapons systems are limited by current state of engineering, which means they are only capable against inherently fragile targets like aircraft and missiles at the best of times, and by generating capability - a big energy weapon requires a big electrical generator to fire. As the author David Drake has often pointed out, to make an energy weapon capable of general military utility for the foreseeable future, it needs to be hooked up to some sort of nuclear reactor. That will limit future energy weapon development somewhat...
Big gun = Big weight penalty + Recoil problems.
IMHO, the problem suffered by all US light tank systems is that the designer either designs for all threats, in which case the beast is no longer ‘light’; or they slim down the design and the Army mis-uses it, like putting M3 Stuarts up against German mediums & heavies in North Africa.
If you’re going to build a truly light-tank, then build a light tank and keep to the terrain where the heavies can’t go. Use your other systems in the anti-armor role, while retaining the tank for mobility.
SAIC does not “bend metal” (in the parlance of acquistion PMP’s). IOW they sub contract... which drives the cost through the roof.
So much for responsible contract issuance.
I worked for GDLS on the Abrams and Stryker. GDLS was told repeatedly by the Army that they wanted a light tank. I was there at a meeting when this was said again and a VP laughed and said, “No you don’t.” The company attitude was, we know what you want. When the military was desperate for a light tank in Afghanistan three companies spent about a billion and a half of their own money and designed one on a truck chassis. (The GDLS attitude on investment was every dollar had to pay itself back in one year.)
The military told all three they’d take all they could produce. But it was the middle of a procurement cycle, where would they get the money? Turns out lots of money was being spent on the Abrams and Stryker, which was not what they wanted in Afghanistan. The military took that money and threw it into the new company’s tanks. GDLS laid off about 8,000 employees, of which, I was one. If a company ever deserved to lose because the top people have a bad attitude, GDLS is it.
When GDLS was upgrading circuit boards on the Abrams to account for the fact that parts would not be available in three to five years, I was reviewing the parts for the new design. I discovered that many of the parts would go obsolete even as orders would be placed. I went to my boss with a list of parts predicted to in production for the next ten years and suggested we use those instead. I swear to God, he grinned at me, placed a finger against his lips and said, “Shhh. If we do that we won’t get this job again in five years.”
Maybe other companies are that bad and I just don’t know about it. But, on general principles, I wouldn’t deal with GD.
Wow, a tank story on Tuesday! Incoming!
I couldn’t agree with you more! I was on the BAE Systems Team for the TRACER/Furture Scout/Cavalry Vehicle. GD was on the team and at the initial team meeting, each of the members of the team told the others what the vehicle would have that they happened to build. GD brought the Abrams electronics suite and said, that was what would be on the vehicle.
As the only member of the team who had ever been in the Armored Cavalry, I got the floor, briefly, and suggested that before deciding what would be on the vehicle, maybe we should analyze/define the vehicle mission. Everyone agreed except GD, who stated it wouldn’t participate because they had already decided what would be on the vehicle and no amount of analysis would change their minds. And then, the leader walked out.
No kiddding. 25 years there, and in a division that did “hardware”. Mostly onesies and twosies of small prototype stuff.
“If I were the general setting the standards I’d put the 120mm ordinance as a requirement. The vehicle at least needs to be able to kill a heavy tank if it can get the first shot.”
That’s why God made ATGWs. Instead, install a 35mm gun that can take on APV’s and helicopters. AT missiles can go on the outside.
GD was still using mostly thru-hole parts because that’s what they used when the Abrams was designed. I was put in charge of miniturizeing hardware. Everybody participated except GD, which insisted on using its thirty-plus year old hardware. They probably had the easiest space reduction potential but flatly refused to even consider modernizing their design.
I’m not in that space but when you say “thru-hole”, are you talking 74xx series stuff, or maybe a generation or two beyond?
Yikes.
I bet a HEAT round would make that thing blow up real good! Thats no 105mm in that turret. Anyone who still thinks its a viable battlefield usage to drop a tank from an airplane with a parachute needs to be on permanent end connector duty.
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