Enough new tank news has popped up recently to justify a roundup.
The U.S. Army on Tuesday selected General Dynamics Land Systems to build a light tank meant to improve mobility, protection and direct-fire capabilities for Infantry Brigade Combat Teams.
The production deal is a key step forward for Army Futures Command, which has promised faster and more successful modernization programs through a competitive prototyping approach.
GDLS will deliver 26 vehicles initially, but the contract allows the Army to buy 70 more over the course of low-rate initial production for a total of $1.14 billion, according to the Army.
At least eight of the 12 prototypes used during competitive evaluation will be retrofitted to be fielded to the force, service officials in charge of the competition said.
The first production vehicles are expected to be delivered in just under 19 months. The first unit will receive a battalion’s worth of MPF systems — 42 vehicles — by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. The Army plans to enter full-rate production in calendar year 2025, according to GDLS.
It uses 105mm main gun (the same caliber used in the first iteration of the M1 Abrams) and weighs 35 tons.
The German company said the Panther KF51 (KF is short for Kettenfahrzeug, or tracked vehicle; the number indicates it falls into the 50-ton plus class) “is destined to be a game changer on the battlefields of the future.” It sets “new standards” in “lethality, protection, reconnaissance, networking and mobility,” the company boasted in a statement.
Jan-Phillipp Weisswange, Rheinmetall’s assistant head of public relations, told Breaking Defense that the vehicle was designed on the company’s own funds and not in response to a client’s request. Weisswange said the tank was not designed as a candidate for the Franco-German Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) project, launched in 2012 to replace the Leopard 2 and Leclerc main battle tanks, but rather for an export market.
Still, those two systems could provide a sense of where Rheinmetall could target potential sales. Users of the Leopard 2 are Austria, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, while the Leclerc is used by Jordan and the UAE.
The Panther’s chassis uses components of the Leopard 2 hull, but the turret is entirely new. According to the company, the 59-ton vehicle has a maximum operating range of about 500 kms (310 miles).
The main armament is the Rheinmetall 130mm cannon, designed for the MGCS project’s Future Gun System (FGS). The FGS is automatically loaded from two revolver-type magazines which each hold 10 rounds of insensitive munition-compliant ammunition. According to the company, the FGS “enables a 50% longer kill range to be achieved [than 120mm] with an unrivalled rate of fire due to the autoloader performance.” It can fire kinetic energy rounds as well as programable airburst ammunition and practice rounds.
There’s also a integrated drone launcher option. Here’s a short video on the tank, showing the location of the autoloader in the rear turret bustle:
So, uh…. Dutch farmers have purchased a tank to use to block distribution centres. pic.twitter.com/rVvwb2pSA9
— Keean Bexte 🇳🇱 (@TheRealKeean) July 5, 2022
Is actually a hoax.
Tags: Foreign Policy, General Dynamics, Germany, Military, Rheinmetall, Russo-Ukrainian War, tanks, Ukraine, video
According to Kamil Galeev’s thread, Rhinemetall has huge contracts with Russia, and practically all of Russia’s machine tools are supplied by Siemen’s and another German corp and rely on the German software to operate. Don’t know if it’s true or not, but it makes sense. That plus it will be getting cold soon make Germany less than enthusiastic. Notice how nobody is mentioning that Merkel was warned about the pipeline and energy blackmail?
The new light tank has a crew of four. It does not have an auto loader. Unless I missed the joke..
Oops, that sentence was for the Rheinmetall tank. Now fixed.
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I remain dubious of the utility, here.
The idea is that they’re getting this to add the firepower of a main battle tank to the light formations, but the vehicle isn’t as protected as an MBT. Which argues that it’s going to go the way of all things light and fleshy, in an actual war.
I spent time in the 9th ID, when it was the High-Technology Light Testbed. I thought, going in, that it had potential. I learned the hard way that if you send unarmored vehicles into combat against even second-rate armored formations, you’re going to die in vast numbers, presuming that the second-rate armored formations are not led by complete idiots. 9th ID needed the Stryker and some serious attached firepower, like an M1 battalion or two.
The light tank concept presupposes that you’re not going to have to go up against full-bore armored formations. Or, the things meant to deal with those armored formations, like widely-issued effective AT weapons.
Also, the US has never, ever been able to pull off anything in the “light” armor category. We’ve got a history with heavy armor that’s backed up with US heavy logistics, but when it comes to doing anything on a lesser scale, we usually tend to screw things up.
I really doubt that the “light and agile” BS that they tried selling us back in the 1980s, wherein our superior ELINT and recon was supposed to enable us to get out of the way of the heavy armor is any more likely to work today. It requires too much in the way of “good luck”, and perfect intelligence perfectly understood and reacted to in a perfect way. Screw up something, anything, anywhere along the line, and you’re the fly on the anvil, waiting for the hammer to fall.
Here’s another point… At the same time the Army bought the M1 and the M2/3 Bradley, they also (finally…) bought the M9 Armored Combat Earthmover, an asset first proposed in the immediate aftermath of WWII. The M9 was supposed to be an earthmoving asset that could accompany tanks without needing additional haul assets like semi-trucks and flatbed trailers. Great idea, but…
We used to refer to these things as “mobile HAZMAT sites”, because if you got through a rotation at the NTC without dripping a 55-gallon drum of hydraulic fluid across the training area, it was a f-ing miracle. The design used hydropneumatic suspension to achieve its road speed, but you can probably imagine what trying to do actual earthmoving with that worked out to–Blown seals everywhere inside the hydraulic nightmare that was that vehicle’s internals. I seriously doubt that there’s a hydraulic seal or system on the planet that could stand up to that sort of abuse on a routine basis, yet they based the entire vehicle on that idea. From an end-user point of view, that was insane… You could literally sit in the driver’s compartment (another stupidity… Thing was meant to operate with armored vehicles in convoy, but only had one person as a crew, which when coupled with the maintenance needs…?) and watch the seals blow when you were working with it. Hitting a rock when moving earth leads to a bunch of force being pushed back through the system. Which blows seals and hoses like mad…
In any event, I tell you that to tell you this: Our rule of thumb as Engineers in regards to digging in armor forces became “The only thing that substitutes for a D7 bulldozer is another D7, a D8, or preferably, a D9…” The ACE isn’t even a half-ass substitute, especially when you look at all the maintenance issues.
This principle applies nearly everywhere; the only thing that can substitute for an M1 Abrams is another M1 Abrams. Period.
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