Military Ground Vehicles of Your Nation Mk X

[Dostanuot Loj]

Nexter also has long term contracts for capability sustainment. Less work is done because less work needs to be done.

FYI, Nexter's contracts are low-level upgrades to key systems, and maintenance. Maintenance being standard (Chally 2s are getting this treatment too, as are everybody's tanks).

At this point Leclerc is inferior to the latest few generations of Leopard 2. It's FCS is inferior (and always has been), it's comms are about equal, but it's engine has reliability issues, and it's armour is at best equal, more likely inferior.

The Leclerc only has three things going for it right now: It's smaller, it's lighter, and it has an autoloader.

The French are not upgrading Leclerc not because they don't have to, but because they don't want to put the money there. France has made Africa their focus, and that means investing in their airmobile forces. They have made the decision that, if Russia decides to push things and they need the Leclerc, they will have plenty of time to bring them up to standard. Especially if Germany maintains their tank fleet, or builds new tanks. Germany is their buffer.

Edit:

For the nth time: pretty much no one in the world is producing any new tanks.

You mean nobody in Western Europe, right? There are plenty of new tanks being built right now.

[Austrasien]

Pretty much no one except Russia, Israel, China, India, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Ukraine (lol sort of), Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. Yeah.

Krauss-Maffei delivered 16 Leopard 2A5s in 1995 with production running at six vehicles a month from January 1996, production for the German Army has now been completed.

And there were new-build export orders, like the Leopard 2A6 HEL which was produced from 2006 to 2009, after German Army production finished. Completely new Leopard 2s were still being built years after the Leclerc went out of production. Is that somehow unclear?

You just have no idea what you are talking about. Germany succeeded because their exports succeeded. And not just of whole vehicles. Their engines, their tracks, their guns are all enormously successful. What they did to their own forces is irrelevant because export business has more than made up for it. France, Britain and Italy all failed to find substantial export success for their heavy vehicles in the 90s. When they cut back on domestic procurement no one could pick up the slack.

[HMS Vanguard]

No, some of those things are still being done, and others are not, just like a mechanic shop can mod or rebuild a car but cannot design a new car. Anyway, my position isn't that any of this is hard; all along my position has been that it is pretty easy and hence lots of countries can do it.

You have also elided by initial caveat, that Germany has no special advantage putting together a radically new design. If they did nothing but manufacture new Leopard 2 hulls, there would be some substantial overlap between what they're doing now and what they would need to do. I'm not sure it would save much time, because setting up the manufacturing plant will be a bottleneck even if it is conceptually simple, but there would be some synergy there. If they had a blank slate design but didn't aim at a big advance, less so, as they would arrange the subsystems differently, and probably redesign the armour entirely. If they made a radically new design, cannot assume any components can be reused.

No, it's almost all being done.
Any good mechanic can design and build a car from scratch, and many do. Many become mechanics because they want to do just this. Some turn around and sell these as kit plans.
There is absolutely nothing involved in the design and manufacture of a new tank that German is not already doing except actual manufacture of the hulls and turrets. And again, that is the easiest part.

Again, seems to elide the caveat (and indeed every sentence following the first).

Because they don't need to - their tanks are twenty years newer. The Germans weren't rebuilding their tanks from the ground up in the mid 90s either.

1: France had to run upgrade programs because the batch 1 Leclercs had serious issues actually. Batch 2 tanks were cut short, and batch 3 production as well as upgrades to batch 1 and 2 to solve serious issues in the tank have been dropped entirely due to cost. France has decided their tanks are good enough for now, and put that money elsewhere.
2: You do realize that the A5 is a completely rebuild Leopard 2A4, right? Germany started major rebuilds of A0 to A3 tanks into A4 tanks in 1985, alongside new vehicle production. In 1993 new vehicle production ended, and in 1995 rebuilds transitioned from the A4 end standard to the A5. There has been no lull, no time period when they stopped doing this because they have had to do it with exports. The Germans have been continuously rebuilding their tanks for the past three decades.

1. Leclerc had problems in the sense that some new components were unreliable; it did not have simple lack of components, or components decades out of date.
2. Not my point. It was claimed that the French have lost their

Well, that explains it; what you consider my position to be and what it actually is are very different.

Then what is your position?

If I answer this question without rereading every previous post in detail, I can tell I am going to get lawyered on any tiny inconsistency while the substantive points are left to fall by the wayside. So my substantive answer is, "re-read my posts more carefully". I give the additional non-binding answer, that tanks are now sufficiently unimportant and easy to produce, that they will be produced only by countries with a large enough demand to make this a viable economic proposition, and that many countries will see insufficient use for tanks to justify producing or perhaps even importing them. I certainly haven't claimed Germany (or any major country) can't produce tanks - that's close to the opposite of my position.

[HMS Vanguard]

Pretty much no one except Russia, Israel, China, India, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Ukraine (lol sort of), Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. Yeah.

In the Western world, certainly.

And there were new-build export orders, like the Leopard 2A6 HEL which was produced from 2006 to 2009, after German Army production finished. Completely new Leopard 2s were still being built years after the Leclerc went out of production. Is that somehow unclear?

Perhaps you know better than me, but information I can find on the Greek Leopards suggests they were built in Greece, not Germany. Furthermore I suspect, though cannot find anywhere stated, that this also means they are upgrade jobs too (although they may not be, the Greeks used to be very profligate).

You just have no idea what you are talking about. Germany succeeded because their exports succeeded. And not just of whole vehicles. Their engines, their tracks, their guns are all enormously successful. What they did to their own forces is irrelevant because export business has more than made up for it. France, Britain and Italy all failed to find substantial export success for their heavy vehicles in the 90s. When they cut back on domestic procurement no one could pick up the slack.

Because they dumped a lot of stock on the market that they themselves had built for their own army, and no longer needed. It's effectively an export subsidy, albeit an unintended one. If France, Britain, or Italy had paid for 3,000 vehicles to be produced and then tried to get rid of them at whatever price the market would bear, they would be "successful". But, of course, really would have made a large loss on the whole venture.

Which is the point I made in my first post: the success of the Leopard 2 is an historical accident. Yes, it's an historical accident that has given Germany a very real boost in the form of a components industry (albeit, again, at an effective cost higher than that industry is worth), but I have serious doubts that a 300 tank market is going to sustain any substantial new development. Production of new chassis for Leopard 2 components is perfectly plausible. Expansion back to a 1-2,000 tank army is also possible but in my view very unlikely; if that happened they could certainly produce a new tank. This discussion started on the premise that Germany was going to very quickly introduce a world-beatng design that would re-equip everyone in the West up to and including the USA.

[Dostanuot Loj]

No, it's almost all being done.
Any good mechanic can design and build a car from scratch, and many do. Many become mechanics because they want to do just this. Some turn around and sell these as kit plans.
There is absolutely nothing involved in the design and manufacture of a new tank that German is not already doing except actual manufacture of the hulls and turrets. And again, that is the easiest part.

Again, seems to elide the caveat (and indeed every sentence following the first).

I'm sorry, I forgot to add another paragraph asking why you think any new tank will be radically different from the past? The most "radically different" tank design in decades has been Armata, and it's not really radical or very different.

1: France had to run upgrade programs because the batch 1 Leclercs had serious issues actually. Batch 2 tanks were cut short, and batch 3 production as well as upgrades to batch 1 and 2 to solve serious issues in the tank have been dropped entirely due to cost. France has decided their tanks are good enough for now, and put that money elsewhere.
2: You do realize that the A5 is a completely rebuild Leopard 2A4, right? Germany started major rebuilds of A0 to A3 tanks into A4 tanks in 1985, alongside new vehicle production. In 1993 new vehicle production ended, and in 1995 rebuilds transitioned from the A4 end standard to the A5. There has been no lull, no time period when they stopped doing this because they have had to do it with exports. The Germans have been continuously rebuilding their tanks for the past three decades.

1. Leclerc had problems in the sense that some new components were unreliable; it did not have simple lack of components, or components decades out of date.
2. Not my point. It was claimed that the French have lost their

1: No, Leclerc has had major problems with quality of production for sure and the reliability that comes from it, but Batch 1 production vehicles had an FCS that was inferior to anything else in Western Europe when it was introduced. The armour modules inserts were not much more advanced then the AMX-40, and there is a long list of things that needed to be brought up. Newer hulls with sub par internals. Batch 2 tanks, and the upgrades to Batch 1 in the late 1990s helped, and Batch 3 was to bring the Leclerc up to par with the M1A2 and Leopard 2A6. Leclerc is the second best tank from Western Europe, but only because Challenger is slightly worse, and Ariete is terrible.

Then what is your position?

If I answer this question without rereading every previous post in detail, I can tell I am going to get lawyered on any tiny inconsistency while the substantive points are left to fall by the wayside. So my substantive answer is, "re-read my posts more carefully". I give the additional non-binding answer, that tanks are now sufficiently unimportant and easy to produce, that they will be produced only by countries with a large enough demand to make this a viable economic proposition, and that many countries will see insufficient use for tanks to justify producing or perhaps even importing them. I certainly haven't claimed Germany (or any major country) can't produce tanks - that's close to the opposite of my position.

I don't lawyer over minor details when your main arguments tell well enough what you are saying.
You have literally just called a cop-out to get out of a discussion you jumped into unprepared.

Edit:

Perhaps you know better than me, but information I can find on the Greek Leopards suggests they were built in Greece, not Germany. Furthermore I suspect, though cannot find anywhere stated, that this also means they are upgrade jobs too (although they may not be, the Greeks used to be very profligate).

2A6HEL, Leopard 2E, and Strv.122, like Dutch and Swiss Leopard 2s, were essentially local assemblies of German produced "kits". Germany provided all the components, software, and instructions, and those host countries assembled them with locally built hulls and turrets like Ikea furniture.

[Laritaia]

but Batch 1 production vehicles had an FCS that was inferior to anything else in Western Europe when it was introduced.

I dunno about that, the Challenger 2s FCS is pretty terrible.

[Theodosiya]

Would it be possible for Theodosiya MBT plants, previously used to build and service T series to completely build licensed Leopard 2A6 and 2A7? Wanna go detail on Army tanks. Up till 2004 use purely Soviet/Russian/Ukrainian scrap. 2005-now convert to west. Leos will serve in the Army ti'll 2020, by which the new MBT i talk about would be deployed in all division.

[Laritaia]

Would it be possible for Theodosiya MBT plants, previously used to build and service T series to completely build licensed Leopard 2A6 and 2A7? Wanna go detail on Army tanks. Up till 2004 use purely Soviet/Russian/Ukrainian scrap. 2005-now convert to west. Leos will serve in the Army ti'll 2020, by which the new MBT i talk about would be deployed in all division.

You would have to buy all new tooling and equipment, but yeah.

[Dostanuot Loj]

but Batch 1 production vehicles had an FCS that was inferior to anything else in Western Europe when it was introduced.

I dunno about that, the Challenger 2s FCS is pretty terrible.

I know.
Batch 1 FCS was terrible.
Leopard 1A4 had better FCS. Batch 1 Leclerc was essentially AMX-40.

Would it be possible for Theodosiya MBT plants, previously used to build and service T series to completely build licensed Leopard 2A6 and 2A7? Wanna go detail on Army tanks. Up till 2004 use purely Soviet/Russian/Ukrainian scrap. 2005-now convert to west. Leos will serve in the Army ti'll 2020, by which the new MBT i talk about would be deployed in all division.

Should not be a problem. You have the heavy industry already, and generally that's the hardest part to set up if you're being given all the real hard parts. License production would be you being given the hard parts.

[Austrasien]

Why the Leopard 2 succeeded is completely aside from the fact it did. I don't really have anything against the Leclerc; when I said France will not contribute to a future tank much it is because they no longer have much to contribute as a result of their conscious decision not to continue investing in heavy vehicles, not because they are inherently bad at it.

Germany "wins" at tank production in Europe because they are the only ones who bothered to keep doing it. And the Leopard successor might well end up being a very problematic vehicle, but once Germany goes all-in on it there will simply be no alternative for most NATO armies. Countries like Poland and Sweden aren't going to carry the burden of keeping Leopard 2s in service indefinitely after German industry has committed to the new tank.

[Autonomous Eastern Ukraine]

I know you guys mean the prototype MBT, but whenever I see AMX-40 I think of this thing.

[Laritaia]

Duck Tank!

[Fordorsia]

I know you guys mean the prototype MBT, but whenever I see AMX-40 I think of this thing. (Image)

That thing sits a the back of the short tank transporter

[Gallia-]

Duck Tank!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/653 ... tsyamx.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/653 ... syamx2.png

[Fordorsia]

Duck Tank!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/653 ... tsyamx.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/653 ... syamx2.png

Hey Katherine ; )))

[Theodosiya]

Any info for best autoloader, suspension, infrared, thermal, night vision and optronic for my MBT? Also, i kinda want it to share some parts with Leopard 2A7.

[The Wyoming Peoples Front]

The Germans used a lot of mules and horses in ww2.
What was their combat use (if any) other than transporting goods and equipment?

[Allanea]

The Germans used a lot of mules and horses in ww2.
What was their combat use (if any) other than transporting goods and equipment?

There was some use of cavalry in a reconnaissance and raiding role by all parties. At the time cavalry possessed a strategic and operational maneuverability that compared favorably to infantry of the day.

Indeed there were a few successful uses of cavalry directly in various cavalry assaults, most famously the destruction of several German transports and at least one mechanized infantry regiment by raiding Cossacks.

[Allanea]

Also, the Nazis used horse cavalry in the COIN role, via the various SS cavalry units that were dedicated to COIN.

[Laritaia]

they only really did that because Germany couldn't into mechanization.

[Allanea]

Well, yes. Horses suck.

[Austrenia]

Well, yes. Horses suck.

Depends, but generally yes, compared to vehicles they have several disadvantages.

[Laritaia]

compared to vehicles they are all disadvantages.

[Allanea]

Well, yes. Horses suck.

Depends, but generally yes, compared to vehicles they have several disadvantages.

Basically once automobiles are generally available and used in industry, horses fail and suck compared to them in every single possible way.

[Allanea]

Unless you're deployed in the tiny areas of the world which are for some weird reason inaccessible to vehicles (i.e. certain mountain terrains) you should be riding a truck or a jeep or an IFV.