Infantry Discussion Thread part 11: Gallas Razor edition.

[Triplebaconation]

No, it means you're not using even a modicum of common sense and I have better sources than you. Norman Friedman's "Naval Anti-Aircraft Guns and Gunnery" and Terry Gander's "The Bofors Gun," just to name two.

Okay, according to the E-Book source of Terry Gander's "The Bofor's Gun", on page 27 it says the entire gun "in action" weighs 1,920 kilograms or about 4,000 pounds, and in the other book I can't find much information given how many pages aren't available. The L/43 might have been 1000 pounds, but I did specifically mention the L/60 and L/70. If you would be so kind to point out where the gun weight itself was only 1,000 pounds in these books, I would be much obliged.

Friedman, page 995. Note that the naval variant was somewhat heavier than the army version because it was water-cooled. TM 9-1252 has all you need to know about the Army L60 (including 1036 lb gun weight), and should be freely available online.

[Crookfur]

Alright folks, I was curious on all of your thoughts and opinions on armored fighting vehicles sporting large caliber tank guns such as the M1128 Mobile Gun System, Italian Centauro II, South African Rooikat, French AMX-10 RC, and South Korean Rotem Jupiter. What are the benefits of these weapon systems and what are some of the cons of these systems? Obviously having a wheeled weapon system such as these enable a swift deployment of sizable firepower across the battlefield but then on the opposite side of the spectrum you have the issue of armor on many of these vehicles. If you all could offer me a bit of your own thoughts and insight into these types of weapon systems, it would be greatly appreciated!

Basically the point of sticking a big gun on your wapc is to create a tank with tactical and strategic mobility that matches your wapcs.
Wheeled afvs are easier and cheaper to move on road networks over large distances or possibly airlift but they don't have the same off road capability as tracked vehicles. Thus mixing tracked and wheeled armoured elements in the same tactical formation isn't the ideal solution.

Typically such "medium" forces are used for mechanised rapid response deployments. You might want to look into some of the British "strike brigade" concepts of a force capable of self deploying over fairly long distances. Of course being RL british means that things get messed up by the lack of available stuff and funding/priority for the correct stuff.
Rooikat is a bit different as it's designed around some what unique South African requirements and roles but it's still worth having a look at in the context of the larger south African operational concepts.

[Triplebaconation]

Thanks for the insight Manokan!

Probably best not to take tank advice from someone who thinks they should have Sidewinder missiles glued to the side.

A wheeled unit will rarely outmaneuver a tracked unit of equivalent competence. The South Africans were able to pull off cavalry style tactics for a while in terrain uniquely well suited to it for a while, but abandoned them for fighting from dug-in positions as their adversaries gained skill and better equipment (while experimenting with actual 50-ton wheeled tanks). The Toyota War was rarely tanks vs. technicals - it was mainly surprise attacks on isolated Libyan garrisons and supply bases, with the Libyans being deprived of their main advantages by French and US assistance to the Chadians. Toyotas were used primarily as personnel transports, the Chadians fighting mostly dismounted.

As Crookfur said the main advantage of these vehicles is their relatively low logistic footprint and strategic mobility, which makes them well-suited for rapid deployment forces and peacekeeping.

Against proper armored forces with decent training and leadership, wheeled units will tend to fight on the defensive. The gun carriers and ATGMs will fight from dug-in positions, but the main anti-tank strength will be the infantry. Their mobility is best used for quick withdraws, trading space for time and hopefully drawing the enemy into a position for your own armor to flank and destroy. If you don't have your own armor, you'd probably want to use the gun carriers as the nucleus of a flanking force instead.

On the offense, they're best used to exploit and consolidate breakthroughs made by heavy armor.

Wheeled guns are a little bit of a paradox. Most people think of them as fast cavalry but they're really best in restricted terrain.

[Austrasien]

Actually for what I'm envisioning it might be fine, as long as it was remote controlled and could be angled at, really high angles. The whole point is not a complete replacement for all artillery or mortars, only a quick reacting mortar that could be easily mounted for relatively low weight to an armored vehicle that normally has some other purpose. You could do something like, type in GPS coordinates and have the round fire in the direction you chose, or you could relay the command to someone in the vehicle to do it for you. The idea is not to replicate every single function of a mortar, hence the idea of making it smaller, but to have something that can fire quickly with a high explosive shell, or shell filled with something else like smoke, on demand. The idea is just to fire a mortar like round at the enemy. Firing it at a different angle to compensate for the higher static velocity would probably be fine. Worst case scenario, there are other ways to effect velocity, such as electrically activated propellants (such as found in the metal storm guns), that allow only certain propellants to be set off at a given time, or a way to adjust barrel length (such as an extendable tubular sleeve), but honestly I think it's just silly. Angling it slightly different would be fine. In many cases direct fire would be better, such as for close range support, and you could use air-bursting rounds to achieve the effect of a high angle.

Perhaps the easiest way to adjust mortar velocity is to adjust the power of the round itself, like with liquid propellants, hydrogen-gas guns, or something like a railgun. There is a DARPA designed coil-gun assisted 120mm mortar that can augment the power of existing mortar rounds, using electricity to vary the level of power instead of altering the propellant, by up to 30%. This has already been proposed to allow for alternating the level of power with the gun without having to change propellants, and has performed well in experiments. This could be powered by a hybrid electric engine of a vehicle, so you wouldn't even need a separate generator or pack of batteries, or they wouldn't be very large, and would be good to replace actual vehicle mortars especially if it was autoloaded. But honestly, I just don't think you need to replicate every single little feature of a mortar in to something meant to be slapped on to armored vehicles at a whim. The goal is big splodey thing to shoot the enemy with really fast. It just doesn't need to be this complicated. Adding an air-bursting feature to a giant oversized grenade launching chaingun and calling it a day seems fine to me.

Well I am glad you have taken the recommendation of myself, Triplebaconation and others to heart and realized an automatic grenade launcher is a much better idea than a mortar stapled to an RWS you would save yourself a lot of time if you just admitted this and didn't pretend there was deep ontological confusion about "what is a mortar, really?". You didn't mean automatic grenade launcher when you were saying mortar all along, you meant mortar, were informed quite a while ago at length that was a rather bad idea and AGLs are much better for that, and now are trying to pretend you really meant automatic grenade launcher all along.

The posts where we told you to use an automatic grenade launcher, not a mortar, are still available for all to see. So what is the point of this absurd deception? Mortar and automatic grenade launcher are clearly distinct in usage. You can find as many obscure exceptions as you want. I'll help you. But it doesn't change anything, no one else fails to distinguish this and this or finds it particularly challenging to do so - and neither do you.

[Spirit of Hope]

I would argue the primary advantage of almost any wheeled armored vehicle is cost, they generally cost less to procure and they cost less to maintain and operate.

While they do have better road mobility that is of limited usefulness, in my opinion, as for strategic redeployment you are, probably going to be using rail or ship anyways. You are basically never going to move a large force by air, limited numbers of airframes means rail and ship can still move large numbers of vehicles faster, and air deployment isnt going to keep a unit supplied in a contested environment.

They have worse off road mobility, and you fight off roads.

All that said cost constraints are real, and a wheeled armored vehicle is better than no armored vehicle. The would probably serve best as reserves to other units, defensively rapidly moving to contain any breach or major assault, offensively exploiting any breakthrough another unit achieves. If your entire force is wheeled, you use them like any other armored force, just realizing their terrain restrictions.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Manokans should be struck with a rod of iron

[Austrasien]

Alright folks, I was curious on all of your thoughts and opinions on armored fighting vehicles sporting large caliber tank guns such as the M1128 Mobile Gun System, Italian Centauro II, South African Rooikat, French AMX-10 RC, and South Korean Rotem Jupiter. What are the benefits of these weapon systems and what are some of the cons of these systems? Obviously having a wheeled weapon system such as these enable a swift deployment of sizable firepower across the battlefield but then on the opposite side of the spectrum you have the issue of armor on many of these vehicles. If you all could offer me a bit of your own thoughts and insight into these types of weapon systems, it would be greatly appreciated!

They are essentially light tanks. Like light tanks they can do more or less anything tanks can do, but more of them will die in the process.

There are two things which can be concluded from this:

• Like tanks it is essential they have a powerful and accurate main armament capable of killing anything it encounters up to and including a tank. The Centauro II is the only operational vehicle of this kind with sufficient armament - a 120 mm high-pressure gun.
• Like tanks, they should still be deployed en masse whenever possible. On modern battlefields, which tend to be fairly low density, this means in company and battalion strength. Penny packets like the single platoon of MGS in SBCT infantry companies are highly undesirable.

The best ways to implement such vehicles are either in a combined arms formation similar to US heavy battalions - alternative companies of mobile guns and IFVs/APCs - or by integrating one or more battalions of mobile guns into infantry regiments/brigades. Both alternatives strike a good balance between concentration and dispersion.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Alright folks, I was curious on all of your thoughts and opinions on armored fighting vehicles sporting large caliber tank guns such as the M1128 Mobile Gun System, Italian Centauro II, South African Rooikat, French AMX-10 RC, and South Korean Rotem Jupiter. What are the benefits of these weapon systems and what are some of the cons of these systems? Obviously having a wheeled weapon system such as these enable a swift deployment of sizable firepower across the battlefield but then on the opposite side of the spectrum you have the issue of armor on many of these vehicles. If you all could offer me a bit of your own thoughts and insight into these types of weapon systems, it would be greatly appreciated!

They are essentially light tanks. Like light tanks they can do more or less anything tanks can do, but more of them will die in the process.

There are two things which can be concluded from this:

• Like tanks it is essential they have a powerful and accurate main armament capable of killing anything it encounters up to and including a tank. The Centauro II is the only operational vehicle of this kind with sufficient armament - a 120 mm high-pressure gun.
• Like tanks, they should still be deployed en masse whenever possible. On modern battlefields, which tend to be fairly low density, this means in company and battalion strength. Penny packets like the single platoon of MGS in SBCT infantry companies are highly undesirable.

The best ways to implement such vehicles are either in a combined arms formation similar to US heavy battalions - alternative companies of mobile guns and IFVs/APCs - or by integrating one or more battalions of mobile guns into infantry regiments/brigades. Both alternatives strike a good balance between concentration and dispersion.

So if you are going to have light tanks, you might as well pull out all the stops and put them into something more like the ABCT than the SBCT?

[Theodosiya]

Would putting a company in each battalions, and having a battalion made 3/4 of this light tank in a brigade a good idea?

[The Manticoran Empire]

Would putting a company in each battalions, and having a battalion made 3/4 of this light tank in a brigade a good idea?

At that point just make an ABCT with light tanks instead of MBTs.

[Austrasien]

Would putting a company in each battalions, and having a battalion made 3/4 of this light tank in a brigade a good idea?

You could. Or you could split up a single battalion of MGS into separate companies and attach each to an infantry battalion when needed.

So if you are going to have light tanks, you might as well pull out all the stops and put them into something more like the ABCT than the SBCT?

Yes. The basics of good armoured handling don't change just because the label has.

• Use terrain to minimize exposure*
• Move constantly in combat
• See first, shoot first, hit first, penetrate first
• Mass in sufficient numbers that the battle is not decided by a single ambush

*While this does not seem unique it should be recalled the terrain of interest to an armoured vehicle occurs over a scale maybe ten times as large as it does for an infantryman owing to their larger size and greater speed, it is not entirely wrong to say armoured or perhaps mobile warfare is being fought at a higher level than infantry combat.

[Manokan Republic]

Actually for what I'm envisioning it might be fine, as long as it was remote controlled and could be angled at, really high angles. The whole point is not a complete replacement for all artillery or mortars, only a quick reacting mortar that could be easily mounted for relatively low weight to an armored vehicle that normally has some other purpose. You could do something like, type in GPS coordinates and have the round fire in the direction you chose, or you could relay the command to someone in the vehicle to do it for you. The idea is not to replicate every single function of a mortar, hence the idea of making it smaller, but to have something that can fire quickly with a high explosive shell, or shell filled with something else like smoke, on demand. The idea is just to fire a mortar like round at the enemy. Firing it at a different angle to compensate for the higher static velocity would probably be fine. Worst case scenario, there are other ways to effect velocity, such as electrically activated propellants (such as found in the metal storm guns), that allow only certain propellants to be set off at a given time, or a way to adjust barrel length (such as an extendable tubular sleeve), but honestly I think it's just silly. Angling it slightly different would be fine. In many cases direct fire would be better, such as for close range support, and you could use air-bursting rounds to achieve the effect of a high angle.

Perhaps the easiest way to adjust mortar velocity is to adjust the power of the round itself, like with liquid propellants, hydrogen-gas guns, or something like a railgun. There is a DARPA designed coil-gun assisted 120mm mortar that can augment the power of existing mortar rounds, using electricity to vary the level of power instead of altering the propellant, by up to 30%. This has already been proposed to allow for alternating the level of power with the gun without having to change propellants, and has performed well in experiments. This could be powered by a hybrid electric engine of a vehicle, so you wouldn't even need a separate generator or pack of batteries, or they wouldn't be very large, and would be good to replace actual vehicle mortars especially if it was autoloaded. But honestly, I just don't think you need to replicate every single little feature of a mortar in to something meant to be slapped on to armored vehicles at a whim. The goal is big splodey thing to shoot the enemy with really fast. It just doesn't need to be this complicated. Adding an air-bursting feature to a giant oversized grenade launching chaingun and calling it a day seems fine to me.

Well I am glad you have taken the recommendation of myself, Triplebaconation and others to heart and realized an automatic grenade launcher is a much better idea than a mortar stapled to an RWS you would save yourself a lot of time if you just admitted this and didn't pretend there was deep ontological confusion about "what is a mortar, really?". You didn't mean automatic grenade launcher when you were saying mortar all along, you meant mortar, were informed quite a while ago at length that was a rather bad idea and AGLs are much better for that, and now are trying to pretend you really meant automatic grenade launcher all along.

The posts where we told you to use an automatic grenade launcher, not a mortar, are still available for all to see. So what is the point of this absurd deception? Mortar and automatic grenade launcher are clearly distinct in usage. You can find as many obscure exceptions as you want. I'll help you. But it doesn't change anything, no one else fails to distinguish this and this or finds it particularly challenging to do so - and neither do you.

The idea is something akin to an automatic mortar, firing something of equivalent power to a mortar round. The argument of semantics is beyond dumb, as mortar is essentially a gigantic grenade luancher and vice versa, grenade launchers tend to share many attributes with mortars, they are just smaller. Your only argument is that due to an arbitrary requirements you made up, that it can't be considered a mortar launcher, even if it fires a mortar round. Which is basically what a mortar launcher is. The idea is to fire mortar rounds out of an automatic weapon, regardless of what that system is. The idea this must be a grenade launcher due to some made-up semantic reason is silly at best. It's annoying and pedantic and does nothing to actually further the conversation of how to effectively use or design such a weapon. If you want to give yourself rotor-cuff surgery becuase you're patting yourself on the back so hard for coming up with a made-up definition of what a mortar launcher is, then that's fine, but it really just bogs down any meaningful conversation.

[Taihei Tengoku]

[Gallia-]

>m'rawr x3 *pounces on you*
>"Jagare, ga av!"
>uwu u so warm
>"Jagare! Av! Av!"

if youre afraid of being bitten by a dog how does getting into a WRASSLIN' match with a cougar size big cat sound? :thinking:

[Triplebaconation]

mortar launcher

mortar launcher

mortar launcher

It couldn't be clearer!

[Manokan Republic]

Okay, according to the E-Book source of Terry Gander's "The Bofor's Gun", on page 27 it says the entire gun "in action" weighs 1,920 kilograms or about 4,000 pounds, and in the other book I can't find much information given how many pages aren't available. The L/43 might have been 1000 pounds, but I did specifically mention the L/60 and L/70. If you would be so kind to point out where the gun weight itself was only 1,000 pounds in these books, I would be much obliged.

Friedman, page 995. Note that the naval variant was somewhat heavier than the army version because it was water-cooled. TM 9-1252 has all you need to know about the Army L60 (including 1036 lb gun weight), and should be freely available online.

Well this is the L/56, but this seems to be the barrel and barrel assembly, but it does't include the weight of the autoloading mechanism. There's not 995 pages, and unfortunately the preview still doesn't show it on the 395th page. According to the first source you mentioned though, the autoloading mechanism is considered to be separate from the gun. So, when the "gun weight by itself" is mentioned, it's actually excluding the autoloading mechanism which *presumably* would be one of the heaviest parts. From your first source, the 40mm Bofors by Tarry Gander, Chapter 2 page 16: ""The heart of the 40mm L/60 Bofors Gun was the gun itself but what at first appeared to be just the gun was in fact two entirely different items. What looked like the gun body at the breech end was actually a breech casing supporting and containing the loading mechanism, or autoloader. The gun itself consisted of three main components: the barrel, the breech ring and the breech casing." So, the confusion may simply lie in the fact the autoloader is not counted as a part of "the gun", even though you would think it was.

Nonetheless, one of my points was that, the entire recoil assembly, that is the thing needed to absorb recoil, for guns like this needed to be very large to absorb the recoil of the reciprocating parts. With something like a chaingun this is often not the case, possessing no need for recoiling parts as it is not powered by the backwards force of the bullet, allowing the gun and what it's fixed to be much smaller. This also contributes to the smaller size in practice.

[Manokan Republic]

Thanks for the insight Manokan!

Probably best not to take tank advice from someone who thinks they should have Sidewinder missiles glued to the side.

A wheeled unit will rarely outmaneuver a tracked unit of equivalent competence. The South Africans were able to pull off cavalry style tactics for a while in terrain uniquely well suited to it for a while, but abandoned them for fighting from dug-in positions as their adversaries gained skill and better equipment (while experimenting with actual 50-ton wheeled tanks). The Toyota War was rarely tanks vs. technicals - it was mainly surprise attacks on isolated Libyan garrisons and supply bases, with the Libyans being deprived of their main advantages by French and US assistance to the Chadians. Toyotas were used primarily as personnel transports, the Chadians fighting mostly dismounted.

As Crookfur said the main advantage of these vehicles is their relatively low logistic footprint and strategic mobility, which makes them well-suited for rapid deployment forces and peacekeeping.

Against proper armored forces with decent training and leadership, wheeled units will tend to fight on the defensive. The gun carriers and ATGMs will fight from dug-in positions, but the main anti-tank strength will be the infantry. Their mobility is best used for quick withdraws, trading space for time and hopefully drawing the enemy into a position for your own armor to flank and destroy. If you don't have your own armor, you'd probably want to use the gun carriers as the nucleus of a flanking force instead.

On the offense, they're best used to exploit and consolidate breakthroughs made by heavy armor.

Wheeled guns are a little bit of a paradox. Most people think of them as fast cavalry but they're really best in restricted terrain.

*Le takes drawing of something that looks like a sidewinder on the side of a tank as if it's an actual sidewinder*: Seems legit.

My argument is not that the Toyota trucks only fought tanks, but that they fought armored vehicles, and the main purpose of tanks is to fight armored vehicles. While it's true that tanks battles against technicals were relatively rare, this is only because Tanks are relatively rare on the battlefield, and not because Technicals weren't the main method they used to fight tanks. The Chadians largely deployed highly effective Milan missiles mounted on the back of Toyotas as their main anti-tank weapon, not dismounting needlessly to fire the relatively large missiles. The basis of the Toyota wars example is just a representation of how speed and maneuverability can outdo armor, not that you should base your tank-fighting tactics exactly on the Toyota wars, it's just a good illustration of the big gun strategy. It can be employed against tanks, other armored vehicles, and so on. A key advantage was the ability to mount massive anti-tank weapon's on the vehicles, not that infantry fought the tanks and armored vehicles. While light armored vehicles like the Bradley are the ideal anti-tank platform, the Toyota wars demonstrated that even very crappy Toyota trucks with large guns mounted on them could do a very good job against tanks, employing the same basic strategy of using speed for both defense and offense. The idea is simply that killing the enemy first prevents them from killing you, so agility becomes your armor.

"The gun carriers and ATGMs will fight from dug-in positions, but the main anti-tank strength will be the infantry."- Umm.... nuuuuu. Given the weight and cost of decent infantry anti-tank rocket launchers, such as the javeline, and the higher effectiveness of heavier missiles which can be fired more easily from a vehicle, it is far better to use a vehicle as the platform to fire the missile, such as with the Bradley, BMP, Marder, and virtually every other IFV. Infantry do contribute, but the main anti-tank weapons are generally mounted on vehicles for a reason. There are several obvious advantages, the main one's being speed and maneuverability, the second being a higher payload, the third being a faster set-up time, and fourth being the fact that infantry would have to be transported in vehicles anyways (and aren't exposed to enemy fire by leaving the vehicle). Instead of transporting a vehicle full of infantry on to sight, and having them jump off the truck and set up their guns, it's much faster and easier simply to have the rocket launcher mounted on the vehicle and fire immediately once you get to sight. A decent anti-tank missile will typically be between 50 and 100 pounds, and given that your average infantry soldier can maybe carry one such rocket, and that only 1 in 3-4 soldiers will be able to carry one, an entire squad of soldiers will not be able to realistically carry as much as the vehicle that brought them in. We're talking like 2-3 rockets per squad at best, vs. potentially dozens on a vehicle, a good example being the BMP-3 with over 40. Infantry realistically can only move about 3 mph when deployed on foot, where as vehicles can move 30-60 mph, so once you set up your weapon you can't move very far or fast, in comparison to the vehicle which can fire and move immediately afterwards to avoid retaliation or counter battery fire. Vehicles can move in and escape faster, avoiding return fire that will inevitably be drawn towards them given the backblast of the weapons. You don't need to set the weapon up, as it is automatically set up on the vehicle, and more sophisticated tracking systems along with larger missiles can be used than can realistically be deployed by infantry. A 75-100 pound missile would be way heavier than what infantry could practically use, and not even large comparatively to various other anti-tank missiles.

Size also potentially reduces the cost of each missile, with something 2-3 times bigger usually not being nearly as expensive as something which must use a lot of expensive materials or design techniques to be efficient for it's weight, in particular with rockets and computerized electronics. It's much more practical to mount it on the vehicle which can theoretically carry thousands of pounds worth of weight and move much faster. Set-up is as simple as standing still for a few moments and then firing. This is known as the shoot-and-scoot strategy, and is employed by both tanks and artillery for much the same purpose. A key element of the Abram's and Bradley's success was their mobility against enemy tanks in the war. Despite the heavy armor of the Abrams, they destroyed thousands of armored vehicles while few of the vehicles were even damaged by enemy fire, with only about 23 or so damaged, and around the same or 28 for the Bradley. [1] Largely it was friendly fire incidents and landmines as well, so essentially, the enemy rarely got off an accurate return fire round on the Abrams or Bradley. If the Abrams had had almost no armor, it would have done almost as well, given that so few were even hit in action. So getting the first shot is a bigger deal than having armor, which is why lighter gun-systems and tank destroyers tend to have an advantage. Your primary defense AND offense is speed, and this also includes good aiming systems to take a shot at longer ranges or more quickly than the enemy. As for yet more real life examples, the U.S. military is actually pursuing a new light tank, that is also designed to be more easily air transportable, basically for the same reason described above. [1][2]

[Manokan Republic]

I would argue the primary advantage of almost any wheeled armored vehicle is cost, they generally cost less to procure and they cost less to maintain and operate.

While they do have better road mobility that is of limited usefulness, in my opinion, as for strategic redeployment you are, probably going to be using rail or ship anyways. You are basically never going to move a large force by air, limited numbers of airframes means rail and ship can still move large numbers of vehicles faster, and air deployment isnt going to keep a unit supplied in a contested environment.

They have worse off road mobility, and you fight off roads.

All that said cost constraints are real, and a wheeled armored vehicle is better than no armored vehicle. The would probably serve best as reserves to other units, defensively rapidly moving to contain any breach or major assault, offensively exploiting any breakthrough another unit achieves. If your entire force is wheeled, you use them like any other armored force, just realizing their terrain restrictions.

Well actually, the U.S. military consistently plans on air deploying a good chunk of it's vehicles. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as the persian gulf wars, serious logistics constraints on the time it took to deploy tanks was a major issue, to such an extent that Bradley's did a good chunk of the fighting, mostly because they were there first. Out of 3000 tanks deployed to the persian gulf, about 1200 were by air, and 1800 were by sea. [1][2] The U.S. military is pursuing easily air transportable armored vehicles and light tanks, for rapid deployment, to later to be phased in to support roles as a war progresses. [3][4]

You're right in that, air transport of vehicles is not all that common by most military's and only a portion of vehicles are air-lifted in to combat. However, for a smaller military, it might be worth pursuing lighter vehicles for the ease of deployment on the battlefield. Wheels and tracks both possess advantages and disadvantages, and one is not really better than the other per se. It depends on the specific purpose of the intent, or what trade offs you're willing to take. A tracked vehicle may be sufficient for most purposes, or you may really want the fuel efficiency, reduced maintenance and cost advantage of a wheeled vehicle. Your main APC may be a wheeled vehicle, and thus commonality is more important than a brand new dedicated light tank. Something to bear in mind is that most country's have little to no Navy and a larger airforce typically. The U.S. for example has a navy larger than the next largest 17 navies combined, and many countries in the world simply have no real practical Navy. Air deployment is ironically more available than naval transport in many cases, so unless you have good naval transport vessels, it may be wise to plan to deploy most of your vehicles via aircraft, which tend to be more broadly available. If you have neither an effective air force or navy, than going as quickly as possible over road is your last real option, which means large wheeled transport vehicles, or wheels on the vehicles themselves does make sense. France uses almost all wheeled vehicles for this reason, in that it's easier to transport long distances this way. However that being said, if you have a decent navy or rail system, then you would probably use this instead. Just some food for thought to add to the points.

[Triplebaconation]

There's not 995 pages, and unfortunately the preview still doesn't show it on the 395th page. According to the first source you mentioned though, the autoloading mechanism is considered to be separate from the gun. So, when the "gun weight by itself" is mentioned, it's actually excluding the autoloading mechanism which *presumably* would be one of the heaviest parts.

There are 999 pages in my Kindle edition. Are you going to argue about that too?

The US M1 L/56 and the Bofors L/60 are identical. Americans measured the barrel length, Swedish custom was to measure the total length of the gun.

Do you think the 7-10 round autoloader on the Bofors gun weighs 3000 pounds?



Do you think increasing the capacity to 26 rounds added nearly 6000 pounds to that on the L70?



You might, actually. More you likely you'll pretend you do.

[Doppio Giudici]

Would anyone here know if shear thickening fluid/Kevlar composite is better then UHMWPE, when used in the same applications?

It's like mixing liquid armor and kevlar, compared to Dyneema.

[Sevvania]

(Image)

>m'rawr x3 *pounces on you*
>"Jagare, ga av!"
>uwu u so warm
>"Jagare! Av! Av!"

if youre afraid of being bitten by a dog how does getting into a WRASSLIN' match with a cougar size big cat sound? :thinking:

You gotta make friends with that fear.

[Gallia-]

It's potentially useful for motorcycle technical wear in abrasion-impact resistance. It mostly gives you slightly thinner thigh/back/knee pads for protection when falling off the bike. D3O pads are made of STF composites, for example, and I use one in my summertime motorbike jacket. It cost about $30. It's also literally the worst backpad I've ever worn.

Aside from that they have no application in replacing more "traditional" abrasion resistance materials like Kevlar/Dyneema in the technical wear field.

(Image)

>m'rawr x3 *pounces on you*
>"Jagare, ga av!"
>uwu u so warm
>"Jagare! Av! Av!"

if youre afraid of being bitten by a dog how does getting into a WRASSLIN' match with a cougar size big cat sound? :thinking:

You gotta make friends with that fear.

It would probably be terrifying in real life.

Police dogs are scrawny compared to a cougar-sized cat, let alone a well-fed and trained one, and they will still take hunks out of your flesh without any control once they start biting, because they're uncontrollable animals. A cougar sized cat that can leap up to a rooftop of a house and follow you through people's backyards before glomping you with a flying tackle and wrestling you to the ground, yeah. The only reason people survive most cougar attacks is because the cougars are emaciated and malnourished from lack of adequate hunting, desperate, tired, young, and inexperienced. Pound for pound a cat is more vicious, more competent, and deadlier than any attack dog, and the fact that cougars are considered frightening threats (or even bobcats, which are tiny) even when starving, juvenile kittens, says a lot.

Combine that with a cat that weighs twice as much as an attack dog and you are probably looking at severed necks and paralysis being common, if only from drop injuries caused by a man-sized animal landing on you from 20 feet above. Would be an extremely good sentry animal for military use though, assuming the military has no qualms about killing trespassers or whatever.

Of course since it's a cougar sized lynx that acts like a lion, I can also handwave away the issue of training and say it's just trained to grapple and pin down people, rather than gore them, because it gets treats when it responds to verbal commands and punished when it doesn't, and it gets punished for killing people rather than restraining them. So you're not going to be disemboweled by it (usually) but you might have some pretty nasty scratches/gouges/deep cuts on your chest and back.

[Doppio Giudici]

It's potentially useful for motorcycle technical wear in abrasion-impact resistance. It mostly gives you slightly thinner thigh/back/knee pads for protection when falling off the bike. D3O pads are made of STF composites, for example, and I use one in my summertime motorbike jacket. It cost about $30. It's also literally the worst backpad I've ever worn.

Aside from that they have no application in replacing more "traditional" abrasion resistance materials like Kevlar/Dyneema in the technical wear field.

And the ability to spot handgun rounds with less weight and layers compared to kevlar according to testing? UHMWPE is just too good?

[Gallia-]

It's potentially useful for motorcycle technical wear in abrasion-impact resistance. It mostly gives you slightly thinner thigh/back/knee pads for protection when falling off the bike. D3O pads are made of STF composites, for example, and I use one in my summertime motorbike jacket. It cost about $30. It's also literally the worst backpad I've ever worn.

Aside from that they have no application in replacing more "traditional" abrasion resistance materials like Kevlar/Dyneema in the technical wear field.

And the ability to spot handgun rounds with less weight and layers compared to kevlar according to testing? UHMWPE is just too good?

What?

No, it's for abrasion/impact resistance when you fall off a motorcycle at 100 kph/60 mph. If you don't regularly wear it it'll settle into a small blob because it's a semi-stable liquid and if you do regularly wear it it'll be uncomfortable and bad. It's extremely overrated compared to traditional waxed leather but it's fairly cheap and replicates the abrasion resistances of leather reasonably well. It's stiffer and more annoying to wear, and it's hotter, and generally worse, than more traditional plastic/moulded armor panels, but it's slightly thinner. I don't know how well it works for doped fibers but I imagine they would also be thinner for similar abrasion resistance, but stiffer and less flexible, which is probably why it never caught on for things like gloves and pants.

Since its inherent stiffness doesn't matter a lot (after all, we're talking about a fabric doped with a liquid, it'll be stiffer than any neat fabric) for things like boots I guess that would be the next place to see STF kevlar for helping motorcyclists avoid injury: soft leather or kevlar boots/socks to reduce ankle injuries. Maybe knee sleeves or something, too.

We already know how to stop handgun rounds and "shear thickening fluid" does literally nothing for that. 20 layers of the latest Kevlar is lighter than 5 layers of STF doped Dyneema and won't fail in high temperatures.

You're better off trying to find stronger or better ceramic plates (you won't, though) or something.

[Doppio Giudici]

Just google "shear thickening fluid, body armor" and pick from any of the stuff that comes up.

I'm, asking you to compare to kelvar or UHMWPE, the gold standards for pistol body armor and recently, civilian rifle plates.

You know UHMWPE and "Liquid Armor" are right?

EDIT:

"20 layers of the latest Kevlar is lighter than 5 layers of STF doped Dyneema and won't fail in high temperatures."

Its kevlar dipped in STF and its 1/2 to 1/3rd the weight for the same effect.