Military Ground Vehicles of Your Nation Mk X

[Gallia-]

Even though technological development has slowed down (M1 Abrams is still better off than any flavor of M4 Sherman, despite being over twice as far away in temporal distance) that really just means they bought another 10 years between land weapon generations. And we passed that about 10 years ago. Thanks Shinseki for making dumb meme dreams too aggressive, but even Army After Next was of dubious nature since it was drawn out over too long a period and even without the Long War sapping funds, experience, and mental capacities in favor of things like fuel truck armor and Air Mobility Command shuttle services instead of main battle tanks it's unlikely to have been finished on a more traditional 20-year procurement time table than it was Shinseki's "10 years or less" time table. A lot of the stuff AAN talked about is still being talked about today, somehow, like intercontinental space shuttles and MEMS turbines. So really they might have been able to field the tankus and a really lame radio if they pressed on FCS for another 10 years and end up getting blown apart by 155mm splinter and ICM bomblets.

I'm not sure anyone would have been able to convince Congress or the White House that the real threat was lurking in Moscow and Beijing when they were so hyperfocused on Mega!Iran invading the Saudis though. That's "old nouns" I guess.

Sadly, America's war industry was rapidly dismantled between 1991-2008 due to a series of seemingly never ending major recessions in the early-mid 1990s, early-mid 2000s, and mid-late 2000s, with only one minor reprieve between that (the dot-com boom, which itself ended in a recession) and lack of serious cares on part of the Congress I guess. Now the land development industry is all owned by funny foreigners from "the UK" or whatever and that probably explains why United Defense/"BAE Systems, inc." hasn't made anything actually new since 2010 more than any other single thing TBH. When you let the people responsible for the stunningly successful "Challenger 2E" and "Warrior 2000" run your defense procurement for land vehicles you know you have entered terminal decline with no hope of recovery TBH.

Probably the real reason Sweden's MIC has collapsed is because they let the British buy it, as opposed to the Japanese or the Americans.

But yeah M1300 Devers would be a cool tanku no doubt. Too bad the West is too morally bankrupt to fund any major arms buildups anymore. It prefers to try to fight a global war with the budget of a peacetime army instead.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Compared to the weapons systems currently in service, the M1A2 Abrams is adequate to meet the needs of the United States. It can survive most threats and even if the vehicle dies, the crew is likely to survive. Comparing the M1 Abrams to an M4 Sherman is like comparing a P-51 to an F-15C.

[Gallia-]

Compared to the weapons systems currently in service, the M1A2 Abrams is adequate

No it isn't. That's the point.

the crew is likely to survive.

Until they're machine gunned to death exiting the tank? Or killed when a Russian drops a grenade down the commander's hatch? Or when the fire extinguisher's lack of Halon means they die from breathing noxious HCl fumes? Or the hydraulics catch fire and their flesh is melted from their bones? There are a thousand ways to die in an M1 that all involve the vehicle getting hit and destroyed. So you don't know what you're talking about, because you don't even work on tanks tbh, let alone know that the problem is that America is lagging behind its enemies in Moscow and Beijing in development of new weapons in general. The Chinese already have tanks comparable to M1 in the ZTZ-99 and will surpass it in 10-12 years. Where will America be in 10-12 years? Spinning its wheels probably, at least the Army will be. The Navy and Air Force will have new ships and fighter jets though.

You're just trying to either excuse the fact that FCS failed and the Army has nothing new as being a good thing (a gross revisionist viewpoint) or sour grapes'ing away the threat of enemy rearmament (a stupid viewpoint).

Perhaps the USAF should been less enthusiastic during the Bosnian War and we would have avoided this whole she-bang in the first place. The Army wouldn't feel slighted by its lack of air transportation and seek a solution in making intercontinental helicopters and 20-ton tankettes to fight the colonial wars of the far future (2000s) that fails to mature into anything and the Air Force would still get F-35 and F-22 anyway because Air Forces are more Hegelian than armies. Though the cancer that is currently (literally) killing the U.S. Army is visible as far back as Mogadishu when it didn't want to send M1/M2 combat teams into Mogadishu to save the Rangers and D-Bois from being obliterated by Somalis.

What will probably happen is the U.S. Army will be defeated in the next war by the Chinese or Russians (or worse, their proxies) while the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy wonder what the fuck it did for the past 20 years that it got so bad it was beaten by a bunch of farmers and cubicle drones armed with SKS fighting for self-determination and Putin/the Politburo. Then it learns that tanks are, in fact, not obsolete; that air-mechanization is an oxymoron par excellence; that it may even learn something about planning for strategic contingencies from the Air Force and the Navy; that it might even accept Hegelianism into its brain instead of trying to forge its own path through philosophical worldviews when really it's muddling through 2nd century BC problems because the collective IQ of the U.S. Army is probably only on par with Socrates or Plato and is constantly being ravaged by Retirement/collective advanced Alzheimer's; and it might buy a new tanku and IFV to replace shitty Abrams/Bradley combat team and a new howitzer to replace the now two-generations obsolete M109A6.

Maybe then it also would realize it could solve all problems with mechanized maneuver and tactical nuclear weapons and focus on that instead of trying to wriggle its way around problems by throwing USSOCOM at them.

Really the U.S. Army's two biggest flaws are its chronic stoicism and refusal to accept help from ANYONE except the USAF sometimes maybe if you want I didn't ask for your help and it's not like I like your C-17s b-baka.

The USAF even bought 250 C-17s just so the U.S. Army could motor around the world with 60-ton tank divisions instead of needing to buy Army After Next nonsense too. Aww so kawaii too bad U.S. Army is so Tsun and still tried to buy the Intercontinental Helicopters so it could wrest away the strategic airlift mission from the USAF (after all, they might have bought those C-17s to deliver crates of hentai and it could also be an amphibious plane so they can go fishing for tuna or something) instead of working with the USAF and accepting all that entails. Like the U.S. Army never having a serious tactical fixed-wing aviation arm ever again.

Meanwhile US Army tries to constantly get in the Navy's pants and while the Navy doesn't really mind in the sense of a shallow aloofness because the US Army is so cute and endearing, rather than creepy, it still is fairly shallow about it and doesn't really see them as anything more than friends which is probably why it hasn't bothered to recapitalize the maritime sealift force in canine centuries. Maybe the U.S. Army just has a Thing for Big Steel and Big Turbines? Maybe the Army just sees SL-7s and thinks "wow that's a big snugglebus" and gushes all over the place. That's OK. USAF doesn't mind because it knows when it comes down to the wire and the Navy has left behind the surface carrier force for an all submarine force and leaves the Army high and dry and wanting tactical air power, it will be there with a wall of F-35s to save Pusan from being overrun by the bad guys. He'll also give the Army a shoulder to cry on when the Navy tries to steal his strategic air assault/airfield seizure mission with the U.S. Paramarine Corps too even though the U.S. Army knows so much more about tanku-chans and mass airfield seizure/destruction with the 75th Ranger Regiment and having a whole Airborne Corps all of that's "[almost] bigger than the VDV" and a glimmer of hope with "maybe we could still do a mass tac with 7,000 paratroopers like it's 1944?". owo

USAF really is U.S. Army's closest friend and he thinks he's not; it is truly the saddest of yaoi doujins. ;_;

The alt. character interpretation is that the branch services are all creeper-samas, locked in the same room, with nothing to do but oogle each other. The exception (of course) is the U.S. Marines, which tries to distance itself as far as possible from the creepy incest thing, by having its own air force, refueling capability, mechanized maneuver units, and light infantry all in one, with the only piece missing being the ships to carry them all and it reluctantly has to work with the Navy which is probably the least creepy of the creeper-samas because it has an independent air force and light infantry force but it's uncomfortably attached to the USMC too but c'est la vie.

The US Army-USAF tsundere relationship becomes mutually creepy in that the Air Force is lusting after the Army is lusting after the Navy is lusting after the Marines is lusting after...well the USMC has no sex drive I guess.

Truly the saddest of yaoi doujins.

an F-15C.

Yes, the F-15C, an aircraft so old it literally breaks apart flying in a straight line. It is being replaced by F-35. Shocking.

That aside, P-51 and F-15C are contemporaries in the same sense F-15SE and F-35 are contemporary. One is old and busted and getting replaced. The other is new and fresh. It's rather the opposite of the M1 Abrams, where America keeps using F-15Cs to try to fight F-22s. Or for that matter, keeps using 688s to fight F-22s. No, instead, America builds F-22s (or rather, F-35s) and 774s to replace shitty old planes and shitty old subs. Where is the M1300 to replace the shitty old tank? Oh that's right, the Army is broken both fiscally and intellectually.

[The Akasha Colony]

-snip-

Never use ten words when 1,200 words and the 34,643rd repetition of the same old rant will do.

For someone who complains about "bad memes" and "brain bugs..."

[Gallia-]

Ok. Do you have an actual rebuttal or something, or is M1 Abrams OK because it's old, but F-15 isn't OK because it's also old?

[The Akasha Colony]

or is M1 Abrams OK because it's old, but F-15 isn't OK because it's also old?

Did I ever say anything to that effect?

It's one thing to say that Abrams is old, or F-15C is old. They are. They should be replaced.

It doesn't take over 1,200 words and some long rant about the US losing to China and Russia and some random stuff about VDV and USSOCOM and C-17s and Hegel. I won a round of bingo the moment "IQ" came up.

And yet that seems to happen with what seems to be increasing regularity just as the predictions seem to get more apocalyptic, as if the internal echo chamber is getting worse. As much as I dislike his rambling, if you're going to criticize Manokan for the length of his posts and his seemingly irrelevant tangents, it seems wise to be self-aware of one's own habits.

Kyiv could point out Abrams' shortcomings in like a paragraph, sans faux Ralph Peters redux. You even managed to do this in the first paragraph, which would have been fine on its own.

[Gallia-]

some long rant about the US losing to China and Russia

If you actually read it you would realize this really is about 10 words.

And yet that seems to happen with what seems to be increasing regularity just as the predictions seem to get more apocalyptic,

Saying "America gets beaten in the next Korean War" is "more apocalyptic" than when I said "America gets beaten in the next Korean War" last year? Or the year before? I'm not really sure you're actually reading it, you just think you are. It's one thing to argue it's the same thing being said, which is true. It's another thing to argue that I go from saying "Putin will beat America in the Baltics" to "Putin will plant the Russian flag in the Florida Keys because we don't have enough M9001 Mattis tanku-chans" TBH.

re: Hegel and VDV, Hegel is an appropriation from literally this year (it's newer/fresher than "absolute unit"!) and VDV is something I've never quite used before and probably won't use again since it turns out the VDV has a few real actual divisions left in its organizational structure and they're not all glorified brigades so me saying the U.S. Army saying that the XVIII ABN Corps is "totes bigger than" the VDV didn't quite work out like I wanted it to. I'm not sure if I mentioned that I read/was told that one of the reasons the U.S. Army thought intercontinental helicopters were a good idea in 199X was because it wasn't clear if the Congress would give the USAF appropriate funding for the fleet of Globemasters that AMC would need to move tanks around the post-Cold War world or not (I think they did buy the minimum 250, unless the "minimum" was 300 or something). Fair on losing to China economically, losing to Russia militarily, IQ, and SOCOM, although IQ is relatively newer than any of the others.

What I think is happening is that I'm saying the exact same things, with the injection of New Memes, and you're skirting over the posts and filling in the resulting gaps with an invented perception instead of reality. The problem on my end may be that I'm not trimming out the Old Memes, so their presence makes the New Memes less obvious, which contributes to that invented perception, because it means you're less likely to read the posts and more likely to fill in gaps with perception rather than reality.

H/e I'm a big believer in preformed beliefs, stereotypical thinking, and the power these things have over people's thincc so I'm not really inclined to change it either because I suspect it won't be worth the effort. I guess also I feel like shaving down the Old Memes means I might lose track of them or something, too, but that is less an obstacle than my physical/cognitive laziness to prune my own posts.

As much as I dislike his rambling, if you're going to criticize Manokan for the length of his posts and his seemingly irrelevant tangents, it seems wise to be self-aware of one's own habits.

Yes this is true. I suspect the mirror-like aspects of Manokan are why I "criticize" him so much in the first place.

Kyiv could point out Abrams' shortcomings in like a paragraph,

That's boring.

sans faux Ralph Peters redux. You even managed to do this in the first paragraph, which would have been fine on its own.

But then I wouldn't be able to equate the DOD inter-service bureaucracy with a yaoi doujin.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

yaoi doujin.

Seek professional help.

[Gallia-]

yaoi doujin.

Seek professional help.

It would be a billion times better than Hetalia.

[The Manticoran Empire]

If the Abrams is obsolete, what is your suggestion? I had previously asked about FCS, only to be told it was an impossible task set by an Army that wanted things that it couldn't have.

[Gallia-]

If the Abrams is obsolete, what is your suggestion?

But yeah M1300 Devers would be a cool tanku no doubt.

I had previously asked about FCS, only to be told it was an impossible task set by an Army that wanted things that it couldn't have.

FCS is only impossible in hindsight. Anything is possible if you believe in yourself. Just ask Ray "AI by 2020" Kurzweil.

[The Manticoran Empire]

If the Abrams is obsolete, what is your suggestion?

But yeah M1300 Devers would be a cool tanku no doubt.

I had previously asked about FCS, only to be told it was an impossible task set by an Army that wanted things that it couldn't have.

FCS is only impossible in hindsight. Anything is possible if you believe in yourself. Just ask Ray "AI by 2020" Kurzweil.

What is the M1300 Devers?

[Gallia-]

What is the M1300 Devers?

A tank named after General Devers that is presumably in the future since the latest U.S. Army fighting vehicle designation I'm aware of is "1296" which is 4 slots short of "1300".

Finally, all will be set right. Although I guess at this point the U.S. Army will name it after a dead PFC or 2LT or something due to lack of actual combat experienced, dead battle generals to name the fighting vehicles for.

The important thing is that it's naming these things for dead people I guess but "Private First Class Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle" doesn't have the same panache as "General Bradley" or "General Abrams" or "General Sheridan" TBH.

Alt. idea is they resurrect absolutely ancient meme and name the next scout vehicle (after Oshkosh's humongous giga!SUV) the General Dozier.

[The Manticoran Empire]

What is the M1300 Devers?

A tank named after General Devers that is presumably in the future since the latest U.S. Army fighting vehicle designation I'm aware of is "1296" which is 4 slots short of "1300".

Finally, all will be set right. Although I guess at this point the U.S. Army will name it after a dead PFC or 2LT or something due to lack of actual combat experienced, dead battle generals to name the fighting vehicles for.

The important thing is that it's naming these things for dead people I guess but "Private First Class Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle" doesn't have the same panache as "General Bradley" or "General Abrams" or "General Sheridan" TBH.

Alt. idea is they resurrect absolutely ancient meme and name the next scout vehicle (after Oshkosh's humongous giga!SUV) the General Dozier.

No concept art?

[Gallia-]

No concept art?

draw it yourself???

unless you mean IRL or something in which case what are you asking about? America hasn't had a single new tank since FCS and that was 10 years ago:

Component Advanced Tank Test Bed, Tank Testbed, Surrogate Research Vehicle, and Future Main Battle Tank ended up at best being research pieces for "what do we need for a new tank?" (the former three) or a wooden mockup built at Detroit Arsenal or something (FMBT) that fed into Block III tank which died before it drew pixels let alone cut wood/bent metal/painted canvas. The British MBT-80 got much further and produced more concept art and that concept art had squares for wheels because :80s CAD: I guess. Future Combat System (not Systems) showed up in the mid-90s after Block III is kill and says the next tank can be about 50-55 tons with a three-man crew and we might be able to reduce that to 45-50 tons with a 2-man crew. So you get WOMBAT. Then you go from WOMBAT to "we need to go lighter" and Watervliet Arsenal or something makes Composite Armored Vehicle Advanced Technology Demonstrator which [predictably, at this point but remember the death of the American MIC is still a hot new meme in the mid-90s! their last (and not just "last successful" at that) tank program was run from "a twinkle in Big Green's eye" to "Full Rate Production" in less than 5 years!] failed to meet its protection objectives. This meant that the Army After Next/Objective Force would need to drive around in Bradley sized instead of M8 AGS sized vehicles. Yet they pressed on and eschewed all attempts to modernize the "legacy" force, appropriating the language and putting on airs of the culture from Silicon Valley (instead of embracing their own rich history?), which meant they ended up 10 years later (at this point it's 1997-1998) with a tank that weighs 10 tons too much and barely meets protection requirements at that.

[The Manticoran Empire]

No concept art?

draw it yourself???

It would end up looking like a box.

[Gallia-]

draw it yourself???

It would end up looking like a box.

most tanks do

just draw it and get it out of your system so you can start experimenting with pixel shading and HSV values until you produce the Correct and Proper shade of the mysterious-because-its-actually-not-one-pigment-but-a-lot-them-defined-by-manufacturers-and-accepted-by-the-army-within-a-certain-range-of-values-tbh-and-even-if-it-were-then-age-and-photographic-degradation-would-still-make-people-fret-over-it-anyway "OG-107"

anyway i'm not sure what youre asking there so i gave you a brief synopsis of the American tank building post-M1/M2 instead since that seems relevant to topic because youre asking for concept art about something youre clearly ignorant of: which is to say there is nothing called "M1300 Devers" obviously, it's something i literally just made up a little bit ago because "it's Viyk talking about the Abrams" and Devers is the best guy who read German field manuals

no one knows what the next US Army tank will like because the US Army hasnt made a new tank in the 50-55 ton weight class in 50 years so it's not clear what it will actually produce

but you can extrapolate based on design defects of the Abrams like its hydraulics (the U.S. Army may yet innovate and produce a new form of thincc that allows it to make a less dangerous method of hydraulic power turret), literal tons of copper cabling, age problems like its old gun armament, old engine [old everything], the placement of the ammunition, and overall controls of the M1 like the gunner's monocular optic and the lack of digitization/touch screens present in the vehicle overall except those that are duct taped by the crew to the bulkheads

much of the things the US Army will do have already been looked at decades ago (T-14 is literally a kitbashing of parts the Russians found lying around outside Kubinka, for instance) because both Soviet and American tank designers ended with their peaks in the 1980s and 1990s and more or less have been running modernization programs to keep the physical skills up while letting the theoretical/abstract skills decay over time, like the Germans have, to preserve the physical industry from deindustrialization

really if you just google the expanded names of the things i talk about (ok TARDEC's "Future Combat System" might get you bad mojo straight outta AUSA) above you would learn a bit and be able to go further from there

[Fordorsia]

(Image)
(Image)

Thought this was a mech with teeny tiny legs for a second.
But in seriousnessness, it seems kind of risky to block half the commander's periscopes. You got that camera but it looks pretty easy to shoot off.

4 small cameras for 360 visibility, and the RWS isn't really any more vulnerable than any other. Maybe even less vulnerable because it's all armoured.

[Fordorsia]

Hull length: 8.47m
Total length: 12.18m
Turret roof height: 2.98m
Total height: 3.77m
Width: 4.45m

Armament:
150mm smoothbore gun 18 rounds
15mm coax 2000 ready rounds, 2000 stowed rounds
20mm RWS 200 rounds

[Iltica]

Falcon Armata? Noice.
The real Falcon is like that too but it always seemed like the bustle, which is presumably an autoloader, being wider than the rest of the turret left it exposed from the front? If it goes off it wouldn't destroy the tank but seems like it would make it very easy to disable unless the internal parts are much narrower than the shape would suggest?

[Fordorsia]

Falcon Armata? Noice.
The real Falcon is like that too but it always seemed like the bustle, which is presumably an autoloader, being wider than the rest of the turret left it exposed from the front? If it goes off it wouldn't destroy the tank but seems like it would make it very easy to disable unless the internal parts are much narrower than the shape would suggest?

The front of those sticking out bits are still fairly well protected. And if the bustle is hit, it has a fire wall and blowout panels. No more vulnerable to being taken out of the fight than any tank that has its ammo in the bustle.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

I'm bored. Let's post Trux in YN.

[Gallia-]

[Theodosiya]

Unimogs, Urals, KAMAZ, US made... All sorts, 4x4, 6x6, 8x8, 10x10

[Hamittia]

did better battlemobiles ever grace this planet? one is left to ponder.