On the way

Personally, I think it was a copy. But not an exact copy. It was modified to fit the much lighter and smaller AMX-13. Up till today, I would say its the most accurate gun in the world under 100mm. The IDF love the accuracy, as did the Singapore Army. The last version that was developed for the SAF, combined with a laser range finder and ballistic computer, gave really good first hit probability at 1200m. You have 90mm Cockerills effective up to 900m. And then you have this gun, good up to 1500m and beyond.

Yes, that's right. The later versions of the Singapore Army's AMX-13SM1 had additional turret armor protection for up to 20mm rounds. Also, don't forget the engine and transmission are in the front of the tank, so frontally, there is some decent level of protection. The French keep claiming the AMX-13's 75mm is not a copy of the Panther 75mm kwk 42 gun. I think it is. The Panther's gun is a vertical breech block. Meaning it goes up and down. The AMX 13 is a horizontal breech block, with the breech going to right in open position. That is why on the gunners side, there is a plate that protects the gunner's laft arm from being hit by the breech block during firing. But the breech block assembly looks very similar in both guns. I would not be surprised if the French took a Kwk 42 and turn it on its side, in order to accommodate the low roof line of the turret. The Singapore Army never saw the need to upgun to 90mm or 105mm. The FRench did it order to give the gun a better anti tank capability because it could use larger calibre HEAT rounds. We just went with the development of an APFSDS round for the 75mm.

Yes, definitely defensive. The tank can't travel as fast and be as mobile as say a truck mounted with 2 X 12.7mm heavy machine guns. The Ukrainians are driving these trucks around rapidly to where drones have been reported and shooting them down. The tank can't be that mobile. For defensive purposes, the drones are coming for the tank anyway, whether the tank likes it or not. The ability of the tank to fire beehive at the drone, whether it is traveling with anti drone teams, or not, just adds to the their protection.

Yes. Could a proximity fuse work in this case, instead of manually setting the range?

Good points you raise. And I would even say if its possible to add proximity fuse to such a round to detonate near drones, would create a better kill probability. That would remove the need to manually set the fuse and save time. As for the FCS, yes, it would need a software update if that is even possible to engage aerial targets. But if such a system already exists for 30mm and 35mm caliber, can it not be translated to a 105mm or 120mm caliber? Anyway, its just a theoretical exercise in defeating drones, and perhaps a method not considered before.

Rounds like the 105mm M546 APERS, I would think would be effective against drones. They are employing small arms and heavy machine guns on trucks to combat drones, especially the quad copter types and they seem to be quite effective. I mean we are talking Russian 12.7mm heavy machine guns able to shoot down most of the lower flying drones. I would imagine these rounds, if brought back into production would work great too. We are talking 8000 8grain flechettes with a spread pattern that would be quite wide at say 3000m and beyond. They can be fused up 100 seconds. The dispersal cone at 300m is 110m wide. I know its intended for close range use, but if the fused could be designed for a longer detonation, out to 2000m-3000m, it should take out drones at that range. Maybe use the optics on the tank to seek out drones? http://uxoinfo.com/blogcfc/client/includes/uxopages/Mulvaney_Details.cfm?Ord_Id=P183

Try 2DAY20 for an online promo code. Its offered on their FB page. Was there last Oct. Had a great time there, spend the whole day. If you need the name of the taxi company to get there from the train station, let me know. P.S. I was shocked that they were storing the Spits and other warbirds in flying condition in that old ass hanger. It was so drafty and you could see between the wall planks. Its not much better then being out in the elements. It is what it is.

I was an Armor officer with the Singapore Army in the 80s and our tank fleet consisted of around 450 AMX-13 - 75. I must have put hundreds of 75mm tank rounds down range in my time with the Army, I can't even begin to recall how many. I think there are some misunderstandings in your post about the AMX-13. If I may, ......... 1) The AMX-13 DOES not have an autoloader. By that, I mean it does not have a system where you press a couple of buttons and the computer spins the carousel and read the bar code and selects the correct round, load it, ram it into the breech etc. In the AMX-13 system, a human has to be involved from start to end. The system consists of 2 X 6 round drum magazines, which can be pre-loaded with whatever mix you want. eg. One drum could be HE, one drum could be smoke, or APFSDS. In my time with the SAF, we used exclusively HE rounds. The procedure is to unlock the drums, and select which side you want. Then you hand crank the drum, if I recall corectly, either the commander or gunner can do this. The drum rotates, and one round slides out onto the tray. The crew then has to activate another lever, which is attached to a ramming rod, which then rams the round into the breech and the breech automatically locks after the round goes in. So, a crew has to manually rotate the drum, and then manually activate the rammer on every single firing. SO, not a true autoloader. More like a SEMI AUTOLOADER in my opinion. 2) Since HE rounds were all we fired, I don't recall the loading system being rough on them at all. I never had a failure on the loading system. Most of the time, if there was a failure, it would be the recoil system. Occasionally, the rounds may not align properly with the breech and so when the rammer hits it, it bounces against the breechblock and gets damaged. I know a tank commander that repeatedly tried to ram in a live HE round damaged in this way, until the head of the round was so disfigured, it got jammed in the breech and could not be extracted. Fortunately the rounds have a minimum distance fuse on them, or else, it would have exploded in the turret. LOL. Other then that, the loading system worked well with HE rounds. I could probably fire 50 HE rounds during an exercise with no failure in the loading system. 3) The only ammo that are hand loaded are the 5 rounds in the turret basket on the commander's side. Most of the time, the rack is empty as the commander's station is tight enough as it is. But if we carry a full belly load, the 5 ready rounds there are supposed to be HEAT rounds, which don't fit in the drum magazines. Of course that is the SAF's belly load. The French, IDF, etc might have a different use for that space. 4) I have lined up my platoon of 3 tanks on the firing range, and we have discharged all 12 rounds in the drums within one minute. That's 36 X 75 mm rounds in a minute. There is no faster firepower in any tank platoons that I know of. The rate of fire is a force multiplier. Great for ambushes, and hit and runs. So, as far as I can say from my personal experience, this was never an issue that had to be overcome.

The Singapore Army has picked Colt’s IAR6940 as its new section automatic weapon, and so it will eventually replace the venerable ST Engineering Ultimax 100 that has served the army for more than 30 years. The selection was revealed in the army work plan video for the last fiscal year. Singapore’s MINDEF told Shephard: ‘Our army has conducted extensive trials and evaluations of various weapon models as part of continued force modernisation efforts. The Colt Infantry Automatic Rifle has been assessed to be a suitable replacement for the SAW.’ The Colt IAR6940 lost out to the M27 in the USMC

In a war like the Ukraine war, you have 2 combatants that really hate each other. I don't think they give a rat's ass whether WP is used legally or illegally. As far as I can see, there is no denying the effectiveness of the WP round against personnel in a confined or build up area. So, why has this round not been widely used? Is the storage of the round really that difficult to overcome?

But the same applies to HEAT rounds too. They have to be stored vertically, the there was an expiration date on the rounds due to the chemicals in it. It was thin skinned too, yet HEAT was standard in the belly loads on some western army tanks.

Its actually not, I looked into it

I know its only a movie, but you see the employment of WP rounds in "Fury". It makes sense to me to fire a WP round into an opening in a building or bunker or even trench then to fire a HE round. As an anti personnel round, I would imagine it to be more effective then HE, or HESH. But other then being used to mark targets or for screening purposes, I don't see it being used in the anti personnel role. Not in the Ukraine war for sure. And even a modern tank belly load hardly contains any WP rounds. Why is this?

Judging by the speed, and cockpit, is that a SU-25 Frogfoot?

I will have to assume you were drunk when typing this up. If Ukraine losses the war, their KIA will not be 250000 soldiers killed. It will be more then a million. Their KIA will include every single Ukrainian who put on a uniform and every militia, reserve and police officer. The Russians will see to that. And not to mention the non military losses will number more then that. Civilians always suffer casualties in the multiple times to the military losses. As for the country picking up the shattered pieces. Wrong. There will be no country. It will be part of Russia. There is no picking up the pieces. A loss in the war by the Ukraine will end in occupation by the Russians of the entire country, the elimination of Ukraine as an independent country, and absorption into the Russia.

That is exactly right. I am sure there are many Ukrainian transport and helo pilots with no rides. Right now the US and West for whatever reason are not sending fast jets from their inventory. SO, rather then have nothing, I don't see why the US and the West can't buy A-29 Super Tucanos from Brazil, (a neutral country as much as you can define that these days) and give them to the Ukrainians. A Ukrainian helo or transport pilot should be proficient in the A-29 within 3-6 months. The same with the training of the ground crew. On the other hand, to convert a Ukrainian fighter pilot and ground crew to a say Panavia Tornado, F-16, or Mirage 2000 will take 1 year at the minimum. And the Ukrainians need anything in the air right now.

What AD assets do the Russians have in the Crimea Peninsula? There is no SAM or AD umbrella over the Crimea. I am sure the Ukrainians have already figured out the gaps in coverage there. And why do you assume a COIN/LAAR is automatically dead in the face of AD? They have flares, chaff, radar warning receivers, etc. Are they going to have zero losses? Of course not. But modern fast jets will also have losses in the face of AD.

Yeah, its a COIN/LAAR aircraft, not an actual fighter. Which part of this are you confused about?

PLN : "Hmmm, how do we test the capabilities of modern Western navies against our own, and how do we figure out what capabilities they have?" PLN: "Oh, I know, we will call up Singapore and ask them for a Naval exercise. Those suckers will for sure bring out their shiny western build naval toys and show it around" China, Singapore plan military drills as Beijing forges defence ties Reuters BEIJING, April 24 (Reuters) - China and Singapore will hold a joint military exercise as soon as this week, their first combined drills since 2021, as Beijing deepens its defence and security ties with Southeast Asia, a region with strong existing U.S. alliances. The Chinese navy will deploy a missile-bearing frigate, the Yulin, and a mine-hunting ship, the Chibi, to the joint maritime exercise which will last from late April to early May, the Chinese defence ministry said in a statement on its website on Monday, without specifying the location. Two years ago, China and Singapore held a combined military drill in international waters at the southern tip of the South China Sea, following the upgrade of a bilateral defence pact in 2019 to include bigger-scale exercises among their army, navy and air force. The deeper China-Singapore military cooperation comes as a time of heightened tensions in the South China Sea, an area spanning 3.5 million square km (1.4 million square miles) that is often traversed by Western navies including U.S. vessels conducting freedom of navigation operations. Such passages annoy China, which lays claims to nearly all of the South China Sea despite an international ruling to the contrary.

That is a ridiculous logic. Not being able to sustain the operational tempo has nothing to do with losses. A hull loss means the aircraft is forever taken out of future missions. A damaged aircraft, repaired and put back into service is a temporary unavailability for missions. And for your information, NO high paced Operational tempo can sustain long periods even if you have no aircraft losses or damaged aircraft. Even well maintained aircraft will start breaking down in up tempo ops, without a bullet even scratching them. And aircraft availability will decrease as ops continue, just by aircraft being pulled off the line to have parts replaced and other parts maintained.

I agree 100%. But the US are not going to send A-10 to Ukraine or gift/sell them to the Ukrainians. The next best solution is a COIN/LAAR aircraft like the A-29N Tucano. Its not the perfect replacement for the A-10, but its the best available.

I don't know where you all get this urban fantasy of A-10 "suffered too many losses against AD". I am going back through all the USAF combat losses since 1983. There has been a total of only 6 A-10 combat losses out of tens of thousands of missions. In the Gulf War alone, they flew 8100 missions. 6 losses for the ground attack role is very low, based on the number of missions flown. Kindly get with the facts.

Are you incoherent again? How will China level chip factories in the US? ICBM attacks? Yeah, right. They wouldn't dare. As for an attack on Singapore, good luck to that too. There are 1 million PRC citizens living in Singapore. ANd Taiwanese chip technology is way ahead of the US and Singapore.

China cannot dominate in the chip industry because after the fighting ends on Taiwan island, every single semi conductor factory in Taiwan will be a smoking pile of ruins. Either destroyed by Chinese bombs and missiles or by the Taiwanese to prevent it from falling into Chinese hands. China will inherit nothing. ALl the technical knowledge in chip making will be transferred electronically to some factories in Singapore or US, and production will continue from there.

Not to mention that it will take any of their LSTs or converted ferries anywhere from 8-10 hours of sailing to get to Taiwan island. That does not include the several hours it will take to load the vessels in port. I take the 8-10 hours number from the Keelung to Matsu Islands ferry. This ferry currently runs from Keelung (the nearest port to Taipeh) and Dongyin Island and Nangan Fuao port just off the coast of Mainland China. And that is the length of time for the crossing. Any PLA fleet will take at least this long to cross too. That is a heck of a long time to come under hostile fire and enemy action. I would think 50% losses on the crossing would be a conservative number.