"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message ...
"Scott Ferrin" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 2 May 2004 12:09:06 -0400, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:


"The Enlightenment" wrote in message
...

"robert arndt" wrote in message
om...
http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/leo2.htm

Forecast International's and Jane's Best Tank in the World... three
years running.

Rob

A fine weapon, though there is not much gap between the M1A2 and the
latter Leopards. I believe the hyperbaric diesel of the Leopard
consumes 3/4 less fuel though the smoother power of the AGT 1500 might
help hill climbing.

What the Americans need, now that they are likely to invade countries
all over the world, is not American or German style tanks but Russian
ones.

The US German and other NATO MBTs are essentially defensive tanks;
heavily armored they trade mobility for the following.

You have never seen an M1 move across the countryside, eh?


He's talking out of his ass. "Trading mobility. . ."? Maybe they
can't be towed by a heard of donkeys in a bind but under it's own
power it'll out drive the typical Russian POS any day of the week.

Maybe what he means by 'mobility' is it's airlift/sealift potential.

Quite, An Abrams is useless if it isn't there or is there is to small
a number or is consuming so much fuel and logistical resources you
can;t keep your forces supplied.

Weight will also effect cross country abiltiy and bridge crossing
abillity.


SNIP
One of the major arguments for 'transformation' to the lighter FCS forces is
that they will be able to deploy much faster than our current heavy armor. I
have to say that I am *highly* suspicious of trading our battle-proven heavy
armor for a set of 25-ton vehicles that admittedly will not be anywhere near
as survivable in direct combat as the M1, but will depend entirely on
high-technology and advanced tactics for survivability.

A Russian style tanks gets its ligher weight by being smaller. I
believe armour thickness should be about the same.

The light weight armour the US is trying to develop is I believe much
lighter again. I think a Russian style tank makes more sense since
these are more mobile than the defensive style NATO tanks.

It seems to me that the ultra light weiigh armour the US is working on
will be effective against HEAT style rounds but not so effectice
against kinetic rounds. I would expect US forces would have such air
superiority that en****ering an enemy MBT would be a rare event.




I don't care how
high-tech they are; computers crash, networks go down, and tactics can be
easily flawed or otherwise screwed up in any number of ways. We should
always maintain a dominant, overmatching force to fall back on.

The eagerness to rid our ground forces of this heavy armor is very
disconcerting to me. We should be developing a heavy follow-on to the M1 to
operate within the FCS. Perhaps it won't need to be produced in the same
numbers as the M1, but we should *always* maintain a heavy armor capability,
period. If deployment speed is such a concern (which it is), we should
absolutely develop more advanced heavy airlift and high-speed sealift as
well, so these heavy units can be deployed as quickly as the rest of the FCS
forces; there are several on the drawing boards.






1 NATO tanks are around 55-60 tons while Russian tanks are 42-45 tons.

And the NATO tanks actually tend to win every time they engage Russian
equipment, which while lighter (or maybe because of that) *does* exhibit
the
ability to apparently acheive near low-earth-orbit with their turrets
when
struck by western munitions...but I am not sure that is much to brag
about.


2 NATO tanks have typically 5 crew while Russian tanks use an Auto
Loader to reduce crew to 3 (this reduces the rate of fire and reduces
the number of 'eyes')

What US tank has a crew of five? The M1 series has four crewmemebers--as
did
the earlier M60 series vehicles. You have to go a LONG way back in
history
to find a five-man crew in a US tank. The Russian autoloader has a rather
dismal record (unless you count its tendancy to periodically try to
"load"
the gunner into the breach... :-)


3 NATO tanks are taller and can depress their guns further; they were
designed for defensive operations behind parapets with only their
turret showing thus the greater depression.

Behind "parapets"?! You have any idea what a sabot round does when it
encounters an earthen "parapet"? It goes right through it, and then
through
the tank behind it. What you are searching for here is the
hull-down/turret-down defilade position--not a "parapet" (which we used
to
refer to as "MILES piles", becuase the only thing they would defeat was
the
laser enagement training system, not real warrounds).


4 Russian tanks are smaller targets. Because the are smaller they
need less Armor.

They seem to make plenty-big targets, as evidenced by their performance
against western tanks in various Middle Eastern engagements.


Given the US's need to operate offensive wars they need offensive
style tanks that are lighter, more mobile and require less fuel.

Or we could just proceed with FCS...


They need Russian style tanks.


Yeah the side that wins tank engagements 99.999% of the time needs to
trade it's tanks for the losings side's model. I think you need to
change your handle because "enlightened" you ain't.