Military Ground Vehicles of Your Nation Mk X

[Anemos Major]

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Tagging in with a new SPAAG. Expect a Tor-alike soon.

Very nice, as usual. I see you've kept the large-caliber gun you were talking about last time.

I did indeed! Tunguska meets Otomatic, something like that.

[Fordorsia]

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Tagging in with a new SPAAG. Expect a Tor-alike soon.

Is the 70mm for AA as well as the missiles? Doesn't seem that useful for AA with only 90 rounds.

[Korva]

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Tagging in with a new SPAAG. Expect a Tor-alike soon.

Is the 70mm for AA as well as the missiles? Doesn't seem that useful for AA with only 90 rounds.

More range and payload.

O T O M A T I C

[Fordorsia]

Lots of 30mm guns > One 70mm gun

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

For once, have to agree with Fordork. Faster firing guns increases the likelihood of a hit.

[Korva]

Lots of 30mm guns > One 70mm gun

If your 30mm doesn't outrange ATGMs then rip DDD:

[Fordorsia]

For once, have to agree with Fordork. Faster firing guns increases the likelihood of a hit.

Alexander was a cuck

Lots of 30mm guns > One 70mm gun

If your 30mm doesn't outrange ATGMs then rip DDD:

tRIPLE THE PROPELLANT

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

30 mm shell, 250 lbs of propellant.

(On a more serious note, DART > uselessly wasting 30 mm rounds.)

[Gallia-]

For once, have to agree with Fordork. Faster firing guns increases the likelihood of a hit.

No it doesn't. At least not directly. It increases the likelihood of engaging fleeting targets like fixed-wing aircraft, but missiles are better at that job than a cannon. A helicopter is generally incapable of maneuvering enough to avoid even slow firing AAA. ~40mm is probably the optimal for gun AAA. 25mm is the optimal for helicopter defense because a 25mm gun can cover the dead zone of a FIM-92 or similar MPADS, though Lvkv 40 is pretty cool.

That said, Otomatic had the same rate of fire as the old Bofors 40mms. Its volume of fire was greater because the shells had greater explosive content and better fusing. It renders the missiles mostly redundant for helicopter defense but missiles are also better.

30 mm shell, 250 lbs of propellant.

(On a more serious note, DART > uselessly wasting 30 mm rounds.)

DART is basically a failure though. It was supposed to be cheaper than missiles but it's not. It's the same price as a MPADS but has a lower effective range because it has less energy. It's just a missile minus the rocket motor, with a smaller warhead to boot. Ditto for the Saab thing the US Navy was looking at for LCS.

Stinger or something similar, supported by a 25mm Bushmaster or GAU-12/A, is probably the best air defense system for small subunits. The 25mm has an effective range to cover the kilometer or so dead zone of the Stinger, and the Stinger is sufficiently capable to kill helicopters out to ~4 km.

Guided gun rounds are just in a bad halfway house between fused ammunition and guided missiles. However that didn't stop me from having an early incarnation of Galla using Vought TF-120s with 30mm cannons firing radar guided shells.

[Fordorsia]

(Image)

How long range are those long range ones? I take it they're not for taking out mere fighters?

[The Akasha Colony]

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Tagging in with a new SPAAG. Expect a Tor-alike soon.

Is the 70mm for AA as well as the missiles? Doesn't seem that useful for AA with only 90 rounds.

I was around when Anemos first mooted the concept. Galla was too. And Kyiv (though he hasn't commented this time yet).

The idea was that while conventional autocannon calibers (20-40 mm) are fine at ranges up to a few kilometers, a helicopter armed with a modern ATGM like Hellfire or Spike-ER or maybe some kind of helicopter-adapted Brimstone could engage at ranges well beyond this, up to 8 km. Adding additional autocannons in the same calibers would not change this; range is obviously not additive regardless of how many guns you use.

Missiles are the obvious response but generally existing MANPAD-class SAMs are not particularly fast and IIRC Anemos mentioned something about engagement cycle which would be problematic for pop-up targets like helicopters armed with F&F missiles. Stinger is one of the faster ones and still does only 700-750 m/s, requiring more than ten seconds to reach a target at 8 km. Starstreak is significantly faster but is also a lot bigger.

A large-caliber gun though firing at a reasonable rate and with a good muzzle velocity though could close some of this range gap. It would have a shorter time-of-flight than most missiles and the system could carry more stowed cannon rounds than it could missiles. And it was primarily intended to deal with less-maneuverable helicopter threats, while missiles would be employed against anything at greater ranges or with better kinematic performance.

[Gallia-]

(Image)

How long range are those long range ones? I take it they're not for taking out mere fighters?

Corps is roughly MIM-104.

Front is able to defend multiple Corps or a medium sized country. So S-400.

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

For the SPAAG why not just make a faster missile if you want to engage pop-up targets at long range? The average velocity of a shell over 8 kilometers is going to be slower than a missile, the 76mm L/62 for example only has a muzzle velocity of 900 m/s and will only loose velocity with distance as the shell decelerates due to drag. The the pantsir's 57E6-E and the starsteak burnout at around 1,300 m/s while something like LOSAT/CKEM would burn out at 2+ km/s, over twice as fast as the large-caliber autocannon. A missile can also have a boost-sustain motor (I believe the 57E6-E does) and thus not necessarily loose energy after burnout as the sustain motor keeps its velocity constant, thus the time-to-target difference between the gun and missile is probably even greater than the difference in muzzle velocity and burnout speed between the gun and missile (respectively) would suggest.

[Gallia-]

Fused shells are cheaper than missiles.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Is the 70mm for AA as well as the missiles? Doesn't seem that useful for AA with only 90 rounds.

I was around when Anemos first mooted the concept. Galla was too. And Kyiv (though he hasn't commented this time yet).

The idea was that while conventional autocannon calibers (20-40 mm) are fine at ranges up to a few kilometers, a helicopter armed with a modern ATGM like Hellfire or Spike-ER or maybe some kind of helicopter-adapted Brimstone could engage at ranges well beyond this, up to 8 km. Adding additional autocannons in the same calibers would not change this; range is obviously not additive regardless of how many guns you use.

Missiles are the obvious response but generally existing MANPAD-class SAMs are not particularly fast and IIRC Anemos mentioned something about engagement cycle which would be problematic for pop-up targets like helicopters armed with F&F missiles. Stinger is one of the faster ones and still does only 700-750 m/s, requiring more than ten seconds to reach a target at 8 km. Starstreak is significantly faster but is also a lot bigger.

A large-caliber gun though firing at a reasonable rate and with a good muzzle velocity though could close some of this range gap. It would have a shorter time-of-flight than most missiles and the system could carry more stowed cannon rounds than it could missiles. And it was primarily intended to deal with less-maneuverable helicopter threats, while missiles would be employed against anything at greater ranges or with better kinematic performance.

Good logic, but achieving better than Stinger velocities is going to be difficult, as stuff like the 3"/L50 types only tend to do 820m/s at the muzzle.

OTOH, they pre-fire to lay down a barrage (AA suppressive-fire).

Although the US Navy appeared to agree with this logic that half as many bigger guns was better

L62 and L70 3" guns start actually looking good, but only cut that 10 second time to target down to 9. So you still have engagement cycle issues unless you can achieve firing-solution before they get within range and saturate the threat-area at maybe 1 rd every 3 second intervals.

[The Akasha Colony]

Good logic, but achieving better than Stinger velocities is going to be difficult, as stuff like the 3"/L50 types only tend to do 820m/s at the muzzle.

OTOH, they pre-fire to lay down a barrage (AA suppressive-fire).

Although the US Navy appeared to agree with this logic that half as many bigger guns was better

L62 and L70 3" guns start actually looking good, but only cut that 10 second time to target down to 9. So you still have engagement cycle issues unless you can achieve firing-solution before they get within range and saturate the threat-area at maybe 1 rd every 3 second intervals.

I don't think a relatively short-barreled piece is a very good point of comparison, seeing as how the 3" L/70 could do over 1,000 m/s as well and the modern 76 mm L/62 Compact and SR can do in the range of 920 m/s. It's a very unusual and arguably unfair comparison given that the smaller-caliber autocannons used in the anti-aircraft role like the 40 mm Bofors, Goalkeeper, and most others all have similarly long if not longer barrels. A HV gun designed for the role that could manage 1,100 m/s (very achievable) would be nearly 50% faster than Stinger. This is to say nothing of sub-caliber rounds like DART which are capable of even greater muzzle velocities.

Even if we push the average velocity down to something like 950 m/s to account for velocity losses for the unpowered projectile, that's a flight time of 8.4 seconds to 8,000 meters versus one of 10.7 seconds for a Stinger. That's a 20% reduction in flight time, important when you're trying to disrupt pop-up targets before they can lock and launch their own missiles. And that doesn't include savings in lock-on time, since Stinger as an IR missile has to lock the target before launch, whereas a radar-directed gun can start firing the moment the target is spotted on radar and the gun has been laid.

You could theoretically make some fancy LOAL multi-mode hypervelocity missile, capable of being guided to a target mid-course and having a beefy engine for high sustained cruise speeds, but then the cost argument starts coming into play again and the missiles start getting pretty big.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Good logic, but achieving better than Stinger velocities is going to be difficult, as stuff like the 3"/L50 types only tend to do 820m/s at the muzzle.

OTOH, they pre-fire to lay down a barrage (AA suppressive-fire).

Although the US Navy appeared to agree with this logic that half as many bigger guns was better

L62 and L70 3" guns start actually looking good, but only cut that 10 second time to target down to 9. So you still have engagement cycle issues unless you can achieve firing-solution before they get within range and saturate the threat-area at maybe 1 rd every 3 second intervals.

I don't think a relatively short-barreled piece is a very good point of comparison, seeing as how the 3" L/70 could do over 1,000 m/s as well and the modern 76 mm L/62 Compact and SR can do in the range of 920 m/s. It's a very unusual and arguably unfair comparison given that the smaller-caliber autocannons used in the anti-aircraft role like the 40 mm Bofors, Goalkeeper, and most others all have similarly long if not longer barrels. A HV gun designed for the role that could manage 1,100 m/s (very achievable) would be nearly 50% faster than Stinger. This is to say nothing of sub-caliber rounds like DART which are capable of even greater muzzle velocities.

Even if we push the average velocity down to something like 950 m/s to account for velocity losses for the unpowered projectile, that's a flight time of 8.4 seconds to 8,000 meters versus one of 10.7 seconds for a Stinger. That's a 20% reduction in flight time, important when you're trying to disrupt pop-up targets before they can lock and launch their own missiles. And that doesn't include savings in lock-on time, since Stinger as an IR missile has to lock the target before launch, whereas a radar-directed gun can start firing the moment the target is spotted on radar and the gun has been laid.

You could theoretically make some fancy LOAL multi-mode hypervelocity missile, capable of being guided to a target mid-course and having a beefy engine for high sustained cruise speeds, but then the cost argument starts coming into play again and the missiles start getting pretty big.

Well... cost can go back down if LOAL is a Stinger-manpad strapped to a manapult or obsolete zero-zero ejection-seat.

/Doing it the Hurti way

---

Oh, and I'm thinking about doing a multibank light tank thing again.

Like an M5 Stuart with an FV101 hull but with some recoilless-rifles from the M50 Ontos strapped to it.
-Yeah, it's pretty much a Scimitar... but I want mine in 35mm with a double-barreled 105.

If used in conjunction with an AT-team riding on the hull-bustle, how would it fare compared to some BMP-3s?

[Gallia-]

Weapons team is shredded by HEVT?

The only major difference?

Also Starstreak isn't very big.

e: Also Otomatic could dream of having 8 km range. The standard was 4 km. Then helicopters ceased being a credible battlefield threat. The best MPADS today in terms of launch performance is Starstreak but it's also the newest by far of all Western MPADS. I doubt you'd be looking at much better than ~M4 at sea level. So two seconds to 8 km. Or less. Rockets are still king in a world where subcaliber guided ammo costs as much as a missile and has worse performance.

I suppose it's not entirely unreasonable if you want something to cover an unusually large dead zone or something.

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

A unit designation that I have decided Prussia is the Independent Tank Regiment. ITRs are armored formations designed to be able to be rapidly shifted around the front to be used as rapid response units to either exploit weaknesses in the enemy lines or rapidly counterattack enemy armored thrusts.

The main AFV of the Independent Tank Regiment is the highly mobile Leopard 1. Production of the Leopard 1 is not yet complete enough to outfit the entire Prussian armored force with the tank, and so the rest of the army makes do with German-modified M48A3 main battle tanks.

The standard planned structure of the ITR is as follows:

1st Company:
12x Leopard 1
1x M163 VADS
1x Raketenjagdpanzer 1

2nd Company:
8x Leopard 1
4x M113G Mortar Carriers
2x Raketenjagdpanzer 1

3rd Company:
12x Leopard 1
1x M163 VADS
1x Raketenjagdpanzer 1

4th Company:
13x Leopard 1
1x M163 VADS

H&S Company:
2x Leopard 1 'Biber' Bridgelayer
6x M88 Bergepanzer 1
4x Pionierpanzer 1
2x M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle
6x M151 Utility Truck

How's it look? I wanted to have organic fire support without the need to rely on outside air and artillery, so I included the mortar carriers, and I wanted to make sure I had adequate AAA, because this many tanks is going to be a big target.

I'm not really sure what goes into an H&S Company, so I included what looked like the basic vehicles needed to repair and drag tanks around, get through obstacles, and move shit around.

[Gallia-]

AAA shouldn't be in companies. They won't be used.

The regiment should have an air defense battery or something.

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

What if the tank regiment has to be shifted around away from other units? Or would commanders pretty much always make sure there is local air defense for the tanks?

[The Akasha Colony]

What if the tank regiment has to be shifted around away from other units? Or would commanders pretty much always make sure there is local air defense for the tanks?

If the SPAAGs are attached to the regiment, wouldn't they presumably follow the regiment around if it's shifted elsewhere?

[Gallia-]

What if the tank regiment has to be shifted around away from other units? Or would commanders pretty much always make sure there is local air defense for the tanks?

The air defense battery is part of the regiment.

As much as the line companies of tanks and the combat trains.

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

Oh, so consolidate the air defense battery into one company within the tank regiment? Sorry, misunderstood.

In that case, would it make more sense to have multiple layers of air defense? I'm thinking an MIM-72 and the associated search radar for longer range defense, and the VADS for short range and anti-helicopter work. Anything farther out than the MIM-72's range would have to be taken on by friendly airplanes or more powerful SAMs.

[Fordorsia]

UC sized vehicle with a short 105mm for infantry support y/n