Just as he did about a year ago, Nicholas Moran rates the realism of tank scenes in various movies and TV shows.
Good: Band of Brothers.
Bad: Rambo III (“Is he driving or is he gunning?” You can’t do both in any Soviet tank.)
Tags: Afghanistan, Military, movies, Nicholas Moran, Sherman tank, tanks, video, World War II
He finally got around to show The Beast that was mentioned in passing from Part 1.
Has anyone seen his recent inside the hatches with the new army ‘MGS’ prototypes (the BAE one and the other one…can’t remember what it’s called)? Once again, I was never a 19K but holy moly, those don’t look good.
The thing that shocked me was apparently they’re still only protected up to 30mm AP across the frontal arc without add-on armor packages (essentially Bradley a3 or CV90 frontal arc protection). With the package we’re talking protection against the 76mm of the Pt76 and their variants or 100mm HEAT rounds from the BMP1 and 3. If the whole advantage is getting a 105mm ‘infantry support gun’ into the field couldn’t they have done that cheaper with another existing chassis? Hell just engineer a new turret and stick it on a Bradley. Even the CV90 has a MGS variant with a 90mm or 105mm.
I’ve mentioned it here several times, but I was always under the impression an AFV’s #1 job is crew survivability. It’s primary adversary is going to be Chinese ATGWs with tandem-warheads in the Pacific, so how does its 105mm chonker cannon protect the crew with an armor package that only does its job in an upgraded mode that makes it weigh as much as a 1980s first block M1 Abrams?
The problem with things like the MGS system is that they look enough like tanks to fool the idiots running them up into combat into thinking that they are tanks. Which they manifestly are not.
The raw unpleasant fact is that even the Bradley is an insane concept, as are all IFV designs. You’re trying to do too much with one vehicle at the same time, and because you’re operating within the constraints of reality, that means you can’t armor the damn things or make them small enough to really be survivable.
If it were me, I’d take the Merkava as a model, and build a small, low-profile chassis that could take modular armor bolted on to the sides, as well as have the engine upgraded easily. Have a version that could take a turret module with a main gun; another that had something like the Russian Terminator complex, and another version that was armed only for local self-defense and was meant to carry the infantry. Don’t try to do everything in one vehicle, and be damn sure that you can plaster enough armor on the things to make sure your crews survive; you can afford to lose vehicles galore, but the trained and experienced crews? Not so much. Ask Russia how that’s working out for them…
Modular is the way to go, in my humble opinion. Same engines, same suspensions, different mission modules. Hell, I’d make the damn things like PLS… Be able to drop the turret modules as portable defense emplacements while the transport component goes off to pick up more ammo or whatever… Imagine trying to get inside a perimeter where the defenses include actual tank turrets that are dug in and wired into everything…
Something like that is coming. Likely, in an autonomous form, controlled from something dug in really, really well.
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