Tanks and other Armoured Vehicles Image thread.

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Something like the older generations of tanks having coaxial machine guns loaded with ammunition with identical ballistic profile to the main gun so tracers hitting a tank would be followed by the main gun shooting an armor piercing round.

It's practical and cheaper than an integrated targeting system, the main drawback is that the other guys get to know your'e aiming at them before you kill them and if they realize the shooting is not coming from a random sniper then they probably answer with an anti-tank missile or worse.

The original Ontos had spotting rifles, and so does this Venezuelan neo-Ontos. It just also has digital cameras strapped to the scopes *on* those spotting rifles.
 

GROGNARD

Well-known member
Don't know if I've brought this up before: The General Dynamics Land Systems EFV.
Marine APC par excellence. 31-38 built before cancelled by the USMC & obama.
"overall project too expensive" aka "every USMC Colonel that USMC transfers thru has to reinvent entire project from zero, thus tripling the original price."
_0villa_31_-1.jpg


As shown on R. Lee Ermey's "MAIL CALL"
Great vehicle, so good, that the Chinese made a decent copy from the blueprints they 'bought' from the Obama admin.
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
Founder
I would trust the duct taped Humvee with iffy brakes over anything amphibious made by China
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
The hull of the Type 05 is different enough that it's *extremely* inaccurate to call it a copy, the only way in which it is a "copy" is that it's an amphibious track with a planing hull.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
Don't know if I've brought this up before: The General Dynamics Land Systems EFV.
Marine APC par excellence. 31-38 built before cancelled by the USMC & obama.
"overall project too expensive" aka "every USMC Colonel that USMC transfers thru has to reinvent entire project from zero, thus tripling the original price."
_0villa_31_-1.jpg


As shown on R. Lee Ermey's "MAIL CALL"
Great vehicle, so good, that the Chinese made a decent copy from the blueprints they 'bought' from the Obama admin.

Largely because everyone with more than two brain cells figured that contested landings like D-Day and the Pacific Campaign are impossible in the current technological context. Everyone knows that at this point you'll need to stop any landing at the beach and have developed weapons and doctrine in accordance with that.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
Pretty much. Landing sites are rather self-evident I'm afraid and thus easily covered. So you'll need to prep the area before you even think about landing troops.

Then there is the fact that amphib vehicles are, by their very nature, going to be weaker than their non-amphib counterparts. To get that capability, you have to sacrifice quite a bit to get it to work right, things like firepower (less powerful weapon, less ammo, or in rare cases even both) and armor. Even military officers of the past concluded that the best possible place to stop an amphibious assault is at the beach and nowhere else. With ASMs making it harder for Amphib ships to properly set up units for the assault and give them the proper support, better and better heavy weapons (especially artillery and ATGMs) capable of harming said amphibs, and other factors when fighting a semi-competent opponent... you'll get tremendous casualties if not outright destruction of your units due to the inevitable counterattack with everything short of the NBC kitchen sink at the minimum.

That isn't including the fact that Sensor Fusion is likely to proliferate, meaning that you'll have a situation where the sensor density is so dense that it would be very obvious when it comes to jamming and electronic countermeasures, meaning that you'll have to have everything amphib and amphib related equipped with stealth which has its own set of problems (the reason that the USN hasn't gotten anything stealth-related? Seawater corrodes every RAM coating before the F-35s into uselessness, seriously, seawater is some scary-ass shit in the corrosion department). ... and before you say that being low to the sea level would protect you, the same radar tech that is designed to find submarine periscopes can be easily used to find high-draft amphibs (which has its own set of problems).
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
That isn't including the fact that Sensor Fusion is likely to proliferate, meaning that you'll have a situation where the sensor density is so dense that it would be very obvious when it comes to jamming and electronic countermeasures,
You can't be strong everywhere. There are always multiple avenues for an amphibious assault, and you only need one to make a beachhead. Sensor fusion doesn't mean shit if your forces are out of position to respond, so feints are an obvious solution. Sensor fusion also looses its magic when the sensor net is degraded, so the use of ARMs and targeted strikes also work as a counter. These tactics also work really well together because a feint can make radar stations light up.

So sensor fusion is not a hard counter for amphibious units because combined arms warfare exists.

Amphibious units are also useful as scouting forces taking advantage of unprotected terrain such as crossing rivers away from known fords or passing through marshes.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
You can't be strong everywhere. There are always multiple avenues for an amphibious assault, and you only need one to make a beachhead. Sensor fusion doesn't mean shit if your forces are out of position to respond, so feints are an obvious solution. Sensor fusion also looses its magic when the sensor net is degraded, so the use of ARMs and targeted strikes also work as a counter. These tactics also work really well together because a feint can make radar stations light up.

So sensor fusion is not a hard counter for amphibious units because combined arms warfare exists.
However, the good spots are self-evident and, as I said, easily covered. The only reason that D-Day went the way it did was due to ocean conditions basically forcing them to land well outside their intended landing zones in at least one instance and there was a butcher's bill to be paid for it. Sensor fusion is a hard counter, largely because it means you can effectively track any invasion force, and E-War that is more complex than 'denying both sides to radar/anything-not-laser-comm' is a lot harder when you've got multiple nodes.

Also, anti-rad missiles are less of a counter than you think, especially since they're far less effective than you think with (at least) a semi-competent opponent with semi-competent IADS doctrine, as we've seen prominently in Vietnam (and the hundreds of aircraft lost just to suppress those IADS assets) and Serbia (which had NATO have the Yakity Sax as their motif and depleted much of the ARM stocks as the Serbs achieved their IADS objectives with minimal losses). Add to the fact that everyone is working on getting their SHORAD systems to be essentially giant anti-munition bubbles (Skyshield is just an early culmination of this) and you'll find that your ARMs will be wanting, be in numbers or effectiveness.
Amphibious units are also useful as scouting forces taking advantage of unprotected terrain such as crossing rivers away from known fords or passing through marshes.
Amphib capability is very unforgiving, as every amphib vehicle we've done showed. You forget that the BMP-1 and 2 are designed the way they are because they were specifically designed for a river crossing in mind, and that is far more forgiving than the traditional amphibious assault.
 

Tiamat

I've seen the future...
An interesting development, would be useful for armed recon and urban warfare like the type seen currently in Ukraine, assuming it pans out.


Mount twin Javelin launchers on the side of the turret as they stated they're doing, and you've got a potential shoot-and-scoot ATGM vehicle as well. Just have to avoid getting seen first...

Hilariously enough, I recall them playing around with an idea like this back in the 1980s with the Humvee sporting an M242 25mm chaingun. Back to the future, kinda sorta?
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
An interesting development, would be useful for armed recon and urban warfare like the type seen currently in Ukraine, assuming it pans out.


Mount twin Javelin launchers on the side of the turret as they stated they're doing, and you've got a potential shoot-and-scoot ATGM vehicle as well. Just have to avoid getting seen first...

Hilariously enough, I recall them playing around with an idea like this back in the 1980s with the Humvee sporting an M242 25mm chaingun. Back to the future, kinda sorta?
It's more like 'the first time the US Army played with the idea, it was far outside fesibility' than anything. Though, I would question the use of 25mm chainguns, as that has been proven to be less effective when facing against concrete or even semi-hardened structures. Why do you think the new minimum light autocannon caliber is 30mm now?
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
Founder
It's more like 'the first time the US Army played with the idea, it was far outside fesibility' than anything. Though, I would question the use of 25mm chainguns, as that has been proven to be less effective when facing against concrete or even semi-hardened structures. Why do you think the new minimum light autocannon caliber is 30mm now?
25mm works when you have man portable bunker busters
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
25mm works when you have man portable bunker busters
What I've gathered is that's... a yes and no answer. Yes, that with Javelins it's pretty good, but if you are forced to fling Javelins at everything that your 25mm can't hurt -which is surprisingly larger than you first assume- then you'll lose any crew carrying capacity just to get enough reloads (either by design or by the crew stuffing them into the vehicle). Hence why 30mm is now the new 'minimum' land vehicle autocannon caliber.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
It's more like 'the first time the US Army played with the idea, it was far outside fesibility' than anything. Though, I would question the use of 25mm chainguns, as that has been proven to be less effective when facing against concrete or even semi-hardened structures. Why do you think the new minimum light autocannon caliber is 30mm now?

Pretty much *all* light and medium caliber cannons have limited effectiveness against reinforced concrete. It's not that the concrete itself is particularly durable, but that high velocity high explosive shells punch through the concrete and *leave* the rebar. You want low velocity, high caliber explosive kaboom to punch "clean" holes in reinforced concrete structures, which is why snub barreled demolition guns remain a thing on engineering vehicles.
 

Aldarion

Neoreactionary Monarchist
Pretty much *all* light and medium caliber cannons have limited effectiveness against reinforced concrete. It's not that the concrete itself is particularly durable, but that high velocity high explosive shells punch through the concrete and *leave* the rebar. You want low velocity, high caliber explosive kaboom to punch "clean" holes in reinforced concrete structures, which is why snub barreled demolition guns remain a thing on engineering vehicles.

Speaking of...
Sturmtiger_abandoned_and_blown.jpg


Any modern equivalents?
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Speaking of...
Sturmtiger_abandoned_and_blown.jpg


Any modern equivalents?
Speaking of...
Sturmtiger_abandoned_and_blown.jpg


Any modern equivalents?

Closest thing would be the U.S. Army's M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle with its M135 165mm demolition gun. It's pretty old and based on an M60 chassis rather than the modern Abrams, but it is still in service for at least a couple more years. There's also a British counterpart, also with a 165mm snub barrel demolition gun, on a Centurion chassis.

Despite wide consensus from combat engineers that they need a frontline CEV on the more mobile Abrams chassis, the Army cancelled the planned replacement, claiming that it can't afford to field such specialized vehicles any more.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
Closest thing would be the U.S. Army's M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle with its M135 165mm demolition gun. It's pretty old and based on an M60 chassis rather than the modern Abrams, but it is still in service for at least a couple more years. There's also a British counterpart, also with a 165mm snub barrel demolition gun, on a Centurion chassis.

Despite wide consensus from combat engineers that they need a frontline CEV on the more mobile Abrams chassis, the Army cancelled the planned replacement, claiming that it can't afford to field such specialized vehicles any more.
Largely because Congress gotten back to it's penny pinching ways when it comes to military matters.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
To be fair, limited production specialist vehicles with highly unique parts *are* indeed disproportionately expensive.
Yes, but Congress, historically, had this tendency to pull a 'yoink the budget' more often than not... to the point that I'm surprised that the US military hadn't pulled a coup yet.
 

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