Military Ground Vehicles of Your Nation Mk X

[Dostanuot Loj]

General: US no longer has a 'world class' tank

Some interesting Senate testimony.



I guess that is a vote of confidence for the Challenger 2, Merkava and T-90(AM?). RIP Leclerc, Leopard 2 and everyone else though. Hard to say what he means by parity though.

On the matter, how does the Abrams stack up compared to its counterparts? Outside of his statement, is it evident that there is such a 'parity' or is the situation worse/better?

The comment is political maneuvering at best, and should not be taken at face value. The T-90 is still behind pretty much every Western tank for a long list of reasons. It's not a bad tank, and the gap closes every year, but there is no "parity". Armata is really undiscernable right now, it could actually be as advanced as people claim, or it could simply be a shell since it could have been built as a simple example decades ago.

The reality is the Americans have the most recent tank combat experience in the world. The Russians are picking up, and there is a huge "theory war" in Asia right now, but the edge still squarely rests in American hands.

[The Soodean Imperium]

So according to galla people should only design the most advanced, most modern tanks possible, because any other tank is bad in comparison. Who cares if your nation is set in the 30s and 40s.

I think the question that needs to be asked here is whether these are "entered mass production as one of the main combat vehicles of the 1940s" tanks, or "built < 30 examples then abandoned the project" tanks.

Copying dead prototypes is fine as long as they die at the prototype stage; the problem is that you seem to be putting them into mass production on the basis that nobody knew any better.

[Dostanuot Loj]

So according to galla people should only design the most advanced, most modern tanks possible, because any other tank is bad in comparison. Who cares if your nation is set in the 30s and 40s.

I think the question that needs to be asked here is whether these are "entered mass production as one of the main combat vehicles of the 1940s" tanks, or "built < 30 examples then abandoned the project" tanks.

Copying dead prototypes is fine as long as they die at the prototype stage; the problem is that you seem to be putting them into mass production on the basis that nobody knew any better.

The T-35 example is interesting because it spent 90% of its life doing parades and not real military duties. They didn't even participate in exercises, personnel were rotated out of the unit to do that. After a few years they were to be scrapped to sent for use as training tools, but war happened and instead the Soviets decided to throw them out in combat. They were never expected to actually work in combat, just be a speed bump.

[Fordorsia]

So according to galla people should only design the most advanced, most modern tanks possible, because any other tank is bad in comparison. Who cares if your nation is set in the 30s and 40s.

I think the question that needs to be asked here is whether these are "entered mass production as one of the main combat vehicles of the 1940s" tanks, or "built < 30 examples then abandoned the project" tanks.

Copying dead prototypes is fine as long as they die at the prototype stage; the problem is that you seem to be putting them into mass production on the basis that nobody knew any better.

I don't make my tanks to do anything. I just make them and move on because I don't have any lore.

Sev's tank which I just made, I don't know the backstory of it. But that isn't even relevant, because Galla just gets upset at the sight of any interwar tank because it doesn't meet his strict requirements of what it should be. It could be meant as a one off prototype, or it could be a mass produced tank, doesn't matter to him it seems, it's just bad and whoever made it is bad and doesn't know what they're doing.

[The Akasha Colony]

So according to galla people should only design the most advanced, most modern tanks possible, because any other tank is bad in comparison. Who cares if your nation is set in the 30s and 40s.

This is a bit of a straw man.

Galla, Kyiv, etc. were never arguing that bad tanks didn't exist, we were arguing against Sev's notion that somehow these landships were "necessary" for the development of better tanks and that therefore Sev's "bad tank" had to have existed. They were never necessary and better, more logical designs than the landships existed before, during, and after they were built; they were a parallel development that went nowhere and didn't result in anything useful.

This isn't to say that landships were never built; they obviously were. But the notion that they were necessary stepping stones to other things, as if tank design progressed in a linear fashion in which each step was absolutely necessary to the next is false. If Sev wants to design a bad tank just for keks w/e. Lots of people do. But if the justification is that it's necessary to get to good tanks, then that justification comes up a bit short.

[Fordorsia]

So according to galla people should only design the most advanced, most modern tanks possible, because any other tank is bad in comparison. Who cares if your nation is set in the 30s and 40s.

This is a bit of a straw man.

Galla, Kyiv, etc. were never arguing that bad tanks didn't exist, we were arguing against Sev's notion that somehow these landships were "necessary" for the development of better tanks and that therefore Sev's "bad tank" had to have existed. They were never necessary and better, more logical designs than the landships existed before, during, and after they were built; they were a parallel development that went nowhere and didn't result in anything useful.

This isn't to say that landships were never built; they obviously were. But the notion that they were necessary stepping stones to other things, as if tank design progressed in a linear fashion in which each step was absolutely necessary to the next is false. If Sev wants to design a bad tank just for keks w/e. Lots of people do. But if the justification is that it's necessary to get to good tanks, then that justification comes up a bit short.

Was talking about his attitude towards me making tanks, not what sev said

[The Akasha Colony]

Was talking about his attitude towards me making tanks, not what sev said

All he said about your work in that instance was that the 3D modeling was competent.

[Sevvania]

what sev said

Sev said poorly-worded things and now sounds foolish.

The intent wasn't for the landship to be a direct predecessor to my wartime mediums, but for it to exist in the period of interwar silliness that other nations experienced at the time, because I feel like it makes Sevvania slightly more believable. Some NS nations employ the best of the best, learning from all the mistakes of a particular era and optimizing accordingly, and these are impressive in their own right because of the level of research that goes into them. But throwing in a few mistakes, not-so-great-ideas, and technological tangents that other nations were going through at the time promotes a sense of realness/balance/what-have-you. Landships aren't the staple of my interwar armored corps, they're just there to ground me a bit.

[Fordorsia]

Was talking about his attitude towards me making tanks, not what sev said

All he said about your work in that instance was that the 3D modeling was competent.

Not that

The real problem is that you're starting from such a basic level

Your vehicles look bad because they are bad. The tank destroyer is a good example. It's not obvious leafposting nonsense, but it looks like a thing from the 1930s, before anyone understood what they were doing with tanks because they didn't understand how tanks worked. It looks cool as an art piece, but the actual design is really bad. The machine gun turret has always been a dumb feature of tanks that died quite quickly when WW2 started, casemates are kind of stupid, and the overall layout of the front armour is more complicated than it needs to be.

Basically "you make vehicles that are supposed to be from the 30s and 40s, so that means you don't know about tanks, which is why your tanks are bad." As I already explained, he's under the impression that if someone designs a tank that is supposed to be from the interwar period, you know, bad compared to later tanks, that person is somehow ignorant of how tanks should be designed.

It's like I could make a copy of something like the M2 medium, for the 1930s, and he'd be compelled to point out that it's a shit design, and likely question why I did it in a condescending manner.

[Laritaia]

perhaps it's because you are simultaneously a wheeraboo and a card carrying member of the Cult of the Machine Gun.

[Purpelia]

Speaking of that. Is there any possible way to have any plausible reason for some sort of modern military vehicle to have machine gun sponsons, manned or automated or remote or any other?

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Congratulations Ford, you can now be a weeabo too, like the rest of us.

[Gallia-]

As I already explained, he's under the impression that if someone designs a tank that is supposed to be from the interwar period, you know, bad compared to later tanks, that person is somehow ignorant of how tanks should be designed.

Cos it's true tbqh.

I'm not sure what an interwar tank is "supposed" to look like, though.

I don't make my tanks to do anything. I just make them and move on because I don't have any lore.

Thus they are competent 3D models of bad tanks.

Without "lore" there is no grounds to offer constructive criticism, besides the tank itself.

Sev's tank which I just made, I don't know the backstory of it.

Which is why I qualified it with "if Sev wanted to make a bad tank he succeeded".

When I said, "it looks bad", I meant the design of the tank looks unnatural. Typical '30s tanks were of two categories: Big War tanks, which were stuff like Matilda II, Valentine, tentatively the Cruisers, T-26s, FT-17s, etc. And then Colonial tanks, which were stuff like A1E1 Independent and its ilk, the Vickers tankettes, and the multiple turret machine gun tanks.

The latter was for shooting Indians and Africans armed with nought more than Mausers and Maxims than actual combat. It's the fundamental disconnect that people seem to miss when thinking landships are for anything more than pacification of colonies and military parades. People IRL were fully aware of this, but they were still cynical enough to try to sell these to less knowledgeable clients. Landships died immediately after WW1 for a reason, people realized how bad they were pretty quickly. Which is why they were given only mere slivers of industrial output during budget allocations or nothing at all.

Only bad animes like WH40K, Bolo, and Galla Valkyria Chronicles do them unironically these days.

It's not going to make it less bad from a realism perspective, which is the point of these threads, though.

[Questers]

"Murray identified two American allies that have "parity" with U.S. tanks — Israel and the United Kingdom"

But what about dem Leopards that literally dozens of American allies have!

[Gallia-]

Better than Challenger 2, obviously.

They can fire American ammunition without trouble. :^)

Perhaps his implication is that Abrams is inferior to Leopard 2? :^)

[The Akasha Colony]

"Murray identified two American allies that have "parity" with U.S. tanks — Israel and the United Kingdom"

But what about dem Leopards that literally dozens of American allies have!

Murray couldn't even remember what "the British tank" was called in this answer. Such a vote of confidence!

[Allanea]

Speaking of that. Is there any possible way to have any plausible reason for some sort of modern military vehicle to have machine gun sponsons, manned or automated or remote or any other?

What do you mean by a 'sponson'?

That's to say, the problem with sponsons is that they cut a hole through the side of your tank and take up lots of volume and weight for neglibile firepower gains.

It's possible - that's to say, it's not actually physically impossible - to just take a remote-controlled weapons station and mount it horizontally on the side of a vehicle, and this have much less volume problems, however, there are two issues to address somehow:

1. What does this do that an RWS on the roof wouldn't already address better?
2. Even if you've not create a hole through the side of the hull with a convoluted seating arrangement for a dedicated sponson gunner, somebody is probably manning this thing (unless it's some kind of unmanned gun that ide3ntifies and shoots anyone in an enemy uniform holding a foreign rifle - good luck with that one!). Where is that someone seated and who are they?

[Gallia-]

Speaking of that. Is there any possible way to have any plausible reason for some sort of modern military vehicle to have machine gun sponsons, manned or automated or remote or any other?

The "modern" form is either firing ports for personal small arms or some form of remote turret packing a medium machine gun or automatic grenade launcher.

There are plenty of obvious reasons why having machine guns crewed by infantry dismounts can be a good idea.

[Purpelia]

What do you mean by a 'sponson'?
It's possible - that's to say, it's not actually physically impossible - to just take a remote-controlled weapons station and mount it horizontally on the side of a vehicle, and this have much less volume problems,

I mean sponson in the tank/battleship sense. That is to say as a limited traverse mount of some sort mounted on any of the sides of the vehicle either internally and poking out or externally entirely.

So like this includes everything including but not limited to WW1 style sponsons like on the british tanks, a limited traverse front turret-like thing like on the M3 medium, remote weapon stations mounted on the side of a tank, remote weapon stations mounted on the glacis of a tank, a flamethrower mounted to fire through the hubs of the wheels chariot spike style...

however, there are two issues to address somehow:
1. What does this do that an RWS on the roof wouldn't already address better?
2. Even if you've not create a hole through the side of the hull with a convoluted seating arrangement for a dedicated sponson gunner, somebody is probably manning this thing (unless it's some kind of unmanned gun that ide3ntifies and shoots anyone in an enemy uniform holding a foreign rifle - good luck with that one!). Where is that someone seated and who are they?

That's basically my question just qualified for that particular case. Remember, I am asking if you guys can come up with some way, any way, to make modern day sponsons or sponson like mounts reasonable.

The "modern" form is either firing ports for personal small arms or some form of remote turret packing a medium machine gun or automatic grenade launcher.

There are plenty of obvious reasons why having machine guns crewed by infantry dismounts can be a good idea.

You mean like putting lots of machine guns on the side of an IFV and having people just pick them up when needed?

Speaking of that, in an IFV that has a roof hatch (mine do, reasons) would it be unreasonable to have it as a valid tactical maneuver thing to have infantry open the roof hatch, stand on their seats and poke out to fire from their armored moving defense trench? Obviously not as a regular thing but like in urban fighting or some other similar situation.

[Gallia-]

No, I mean doing whatever IFV has done.

Also, that is how it was done before people figured out how firing ports worked:

[Federated Kingdom of Prussia]

On the topic of poorly designed tanks, is it possible that some current trends in tanknology are actually really bad ideas, but we just haven't figured it out yet?

There are plenty of poor design ventures in the history of tanking - to cherry pick an example, having two-man turrets before reliable autoloaders existed. But in the case of that, if I'm not mistaken(and correct me if I am), the fact that that was a bad idea only because really apparent when the tanks actually started shooting at each other.

Outside of tanks, this phenomena happened in naval combat. To copy from Combined Fleet.com:

Bismarck, for instance, was designed for combat in the North Atlantic. Her designers anticipated weather and visibility conditions such as had prevailed at Jutland in WWI. As a result, she was optimized for short-range, flat-trajectory combats. Her armor scheme reflects this, with an armor layout that makes it fantastically difficult to put a shell into her vitals at short range, but which is vulnerable to long-range fire, and which reduces the total amount of protected volume in the vessel by carrying her armor deck lower in the ship than her contemporaries.

German naval designers thought having great belt armor was great even if it came at the price of deck armor, and they paid for it. Is it possible that current trends in tank design are opening up unseen vulnerabilities? Or is engineering at such a high degree these days, that dumb ideas(like putting the driver in the turret to make a lower profile) are seen during testing and corrected?

[Gallia-]

On the topic of poorly designed tanks, is it possible that some current trends in tanknology are actually really bad ideas, but we just haven't figured it out yet?

Yes.

[Federated Kingdom of Prussia]

On the topic of poorly designed tanks, is it possible that some current trends in tanknology are actually really bad ideas, but we just haven't figured it out yet?

Yes.

Sorry; what do you imagine they might be? Or would that be entirely speculating?

[Dostanuot Loj]

Yes.

Sorry; what do you imagine they might be? Or would that be entirely speculating?

Speculating.

These kinds of flaws are revealed when shooting happens, often because the shooting does not happen the way it was expected to.

You can see this already in heavy reliance on maneuver designs which have had to be retrofitted for the prevailing LIC environment. If the UK ever replaces Challenger 2 with an outright new design, it won't have the same lower front hull issue Challenger had. That is not to say Challenger was poorly designed (Neither was Bismark), but that reality was different than expected.

[The Akasha Colony]

On the topic of poorly designed tanks, is it possible that some current trends in tanknology are actually really bad ideas, but we just haven't figured it out yet?

There are plenty of poor design ventures in the history of tanking - to cherry pick an example, having two-man turrets before reliable autoloaders existed. But in the case of that, if I'm not mistaken(and correct me if I am), the fact that that was a bad idea only because really apparent when the tanks actually started shooting at each other.

Outside of tanks, this phenomena happened in naval combat. To copy from Combined Fleet.com:

Bismarck, for instance, was designed for combat in the North Atlantic. Her designers anticipated weather and visibility conditions such as had prevailed at Jutland in WWI. As a result, she was optimized for short-range, flat-trajectory combats. Her armor scheme reflects this, with an armor layout that makes it fantastically difficult to put a shell into her vitals at short range, but which is vulnerable to long-range fire, and which reduces the total amount of protected volume in the vessel by carrying her armor deck lower in the ship than her contemporaries.

German naval designers thought having great belt armor was great even if it came at the price of deck armor, and they paid for it. Is it possible that current trends in tank design are opening up unseen vulnerabilities? Or is engineering at such a high degree these days, that dumb ideas(like putting the driver in the turret to make a lower profile) are seen during testing and corrected?

Yes and no.

To some degree it is difficult to assess the "current" trends in tank design because the most common tanks in service today were designed 40 years ago or more. They were good designs for their time and luckily for them, the end of the Cold War has slowed the technological processes that would have fueled the development of counter-weapons so they've stuck around for a while.

But it's already clear that there are plenty of vulnerabilities in modern tanks, although in large part because these vulnerabilities were simply judged acceptable in the past. In the 1970s, no one was thinking about the possibility of infantry-portable fire-and-forget top-attack missiles like Javelin, so roofs were left relatively unarmored. Or perhaps it is better to say that Javelin exists because tank designers in the 1970s made these choices and Javelin is designed to exploit these known weaknesses.

But this is different from the experience with Bismarck, which existed as it did because the Germans had basically missed two decades of naval developments due to the near-complete disbanding of the old Kaiserliche Marine. The Germans were simply behind the times, as by the 1930s the Washington Treaty powers had all conducted extensive tests, models, and experiments to develop better ideas about ship design. What we have today is more like the designers of Iowa and Vanguard, who designed perfectly good ships for their time, but which simply became obsolete in the face of new technology they had never been intended to fight.

Bismarck too was well-designed, her designers just weren't as aware of all the developments that had taken place since the end of WWI. And ultimately, it didn't end up mattering all that much. For all of the paper flaws that Bismarck possessed to her armor arrangement, none of them were actually very important in terms of her sinking. If anything, her biggest flaw was her holdover three-shaft powerplant and single centerline rudder.