MikeKiloPapa

Hmm...Doesn't seem to be a very stable firing platform....i wonder if its even capable of accurate fire on the move with that kind of recoil impact on the suspension..

Me too....though with only 42 rounds carried in the new Warrior turret, i dont think we are going to see a whole lot of burst or full auto fire from it. My guess is that 90% of the time it will be operating in single shot mode.

Now we're on the subject...i have always been puzzled by the fact that even the slightest positive mention of a Heckler & Koch product will immediately label you a fanboy, ...but wax lyrical or heaping endless praise on FN FAL,FNC, MAG58, Minime etc etc will not ?

Several hundred ....and not once did i get a sore shoulder as a result. IMHO the "heavy" recoil of the g3 have been greatly exaggerated. The only ones in my unit who had any issues with it were a couple of 100 pound girls who were afraid to shoot anything. Also, when exactly did the UK, Norway,Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Greece,Iceland, Chile, Estonia, Turkey, Portugal, Lithuania and Cyprus etc, become 3rd world countries ? And these socalled "marginal" 7,62 assult rifles like the G3 and FAL have been succesfully used across the globe, doing what they were designed to do, for more than 50 years, arguably seing more action than the 5,56. I suppose that your point about scopes is right by todays standard, but in the 60's and 70's and right up to the 90's the G3 was nontheless used as a very capable DMR featuring a 4x Hensoldt scope( and i know other scopes were available). But i will concede that the claw type scope mount is not exactly an optimum solution compared to picatinny/weaver rails.

Henry was PoS, Spencer was hot stuff back then. Perhaps, but the Henry is prettier Besides, whereas the basic Henry design would live on in the form of several generations of succesful Winchester rifles, the Spencer was essentially a dead end.

Meh, the Americans haven't had a decent rifle since the Henry model 1860. How you can call a rifle that have been in use for more than 50 years, in countless wars and exported to some 70 odd countries, marginal , is beyond me. While it is prone to jamming when firing blanks , i have never had a single stoppage/malfunction when using live ammo. My experience with DI rifles have been exactly opposite, them often and regularly failing with real ammunition.

What is the purpose of the fabric ? The French have always praised the high level of accuracy of their Leclerc main battle tank while firing on the move . Basically, firing on the move at targets ranging between 300 and 4000 meters while moving cross-country at speed exceeding 35 kph. AFAIK, the thermal imager featured in the EMES-18 provides better image resolution than the thermal imager (WBG-X) used by the EMES-15. Nope....EMES-18 also use the common module WBG-X TI , and in fact so does the Marder and Luchs. The improvements in the EMES-18 were primarily in electronics and software i think. http://www.hellopro.de/Carl_Zeiss_Optronics_GmbH-5840-noprofil-2007371-13001-0-1-1-fr-societe.html http://www.defenceandsecurity-airbusds.com/web/guest/history

? And which European nations would that be ?....The Leopard 1 was fitted with the WBG-X TI (same as Leo 2 TI) from 1987 on, as part of the 1A5 upgrade , and AFAIK that version had more or less become the standard leo1 around the world by the early 90's. And here in DK we had TI's on our Centurions and M41's from the mid 1980's.

You sure about that ?....In late 2010/early 2011 i had a chance to talk to some of the guy's from 1.Tank's (USMC) when they first arrived at Camp Leatherneck, and according to them most of their tanks back home were still plain M1A1's. All the tanks in Afghanistan were M1A1AIM's though.

Which is no longer used, neither manufactured, it was long time ago replaced by 2nd generation FLIR, that is even mounted in tanks in export configurations. Introduced with the M1A2SEPv1 upgrade in 1999/2000ish IIRC ?

Yes, when they work !....The Ophelios-p TIM seems to be much more susceptible to moisture(for lack of a better word) internally(cooling) and so the quality of image varies wildly from tank to tank, ranging from excellent to useless. Plus it has been my experience that they are a lot less reliable than the gunners WBG-X. Unless there is heavy fog or rain , in which case its more like 800 meters But on the other hand, in the hot and extremely dry air of Helmand, Afghanistan, the WBG-X is(was) able to produce images with a remarkable level of "sharpness" and clarity, even at long range. But AIUI, it's virtually dead now, since it is no longer supported. That probably why most Leo users have begun, or are planning to upgrade their tanks with the ATTICA sights.

A series about "vikings" that features a grand total of 1 actual scandinavian(s)! Still ...historical inaccuracies aside, not a bad show though

You are most welcome :-).....A really interesting bit was the blurb about the loss of skill and know-how at Bofors post BAE takeover........interesting because it mirrors what i have heard from several people at Hägglunds. Apparently the British leadership didn't much care for the Swedish way of running a business and so it was not a happy "marriage" at first. Back to artillery, i'm afraid that its going to be anything but smooth ....so far the acquisition process has only been paused until after the general election(may-june i think) ...but i suspect the left will try to procrastinate as long as possible.

I think that after "slamming" the Gripen publicly in the fighter deal, the Norwegians are just trying to being polite about it . Here is some interesting info : http://milforum.net/threads/63146-Forsvaret-avslutter-kontrakt-p%C3%A5-Archer A little snippet : As for the ATMOS, i dont know why it won, ....rumor was that the CAESAR had been the favorite....but that evidently turned out to be wrong ;-)....all i know is that ATMOS is Israeli and that is apparently causing a bit of a shitstorm....seems our left wing parties are not too keen on us buying weapons from "little satan"

As for Denmark och Norway, they opted not to get new howitzers. Not to get something else instead of the Archer. The norwegian complaints seems to have been delivery time (all alternatives would take longer to get delivered, when the deal was broken, as that coincided with the first deliveries of the Archer) and the weight of the system (well known since day one of the project) So if the norwegians had a valid reason not to get the Archer, they never revealed what it was. My guess is that they need to save the money for the F-35's. Ehh...no we didn't...we are both in fact in the process of acquiring new artillery, and DK just selected the ATMOS (on a MAN SX chassis) . As for the real reason the norwegians quit the archer project : http://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/feature/150076/archer%3A-why-norway-pulled-the-plug.html Off the record i have also heard a Norwegian artillery officer explain the problems in a somewhat less diplomatic way Back when DK left the project(2006) i remember reading an internal army document , detailing the technical evaluation done by danish artillery staff assigned to the Archer development office. It wasn't exactly flattering to say the least, though of course it was still early days. But in conjunction with the increasing costs, it was apparently enough to dissuade us from continuing in the project.

http://www.hankintailmoitukset.fi/fi/notice/view/2015-007330/ I guess there are several possibilities.... - Archer is high tech but also very expensive. And it was also ditched by both Norway and Denmark......Finland would do well to wonder why. As for K9, CAESAR and ATMOS, they were recently tested as part of the danish artillery project, and all were found to be excellent systems, though somewhat surprisingly it seems ATMOS has come out on top in the competition. Buying a cheaper truckmounted solution would also allow Finland to procure more pieces , compared to tracked SPG's like K9, AS90 and PZH200

. For the amount of press the CV9035 has gotten I thought it would have been something more than that. What press ?....no really ....because the only press i remember it getting was in fact bad press, notably concerning all the teething troubles and reliability issues the mk III's had when they were new ..both in danish but especially in dutch service. So where you have got this idea from, that it would somehow be "more than that" is really beyond me.

That would also depend on the type of feed. Belted ammo for instance takes up much more space than individually stored rounds. ISTR that the CV9040 carries more rounds then the CV9035. Well you would seem to remember wrong then.....the CV9040B has 3 clips of 8 ready rounds and a further 210 in stowage... the CV9040C even less.(96 rounds? ) The Bushmaster III equipped CV's has 2x35 ready ammo and 210 rounds in stowage .. Performance wise the 35x228 is also closer to the 40 mm bofors than it is to the 30x173mm , and as such the cv9035 has the same or greater number of stowed kills despite the much smaller ammo capacity..

http://www.ndia.org/Divisions/Divisions/International/Documents/U.S.-Denmark%20Defense%20Industry%20Seminar/Danish%20frigate%20program%20visit%20USN%20May%202014.pdf Here is a nice overview of the frigate project ...though the qouted total project cost of $940 billion(only 840 with the current kroner to dollar exchange rate), has since been revised to ~$1 billion in todays dollars. So thats $330ish million per ship.........32 SM-2's , a 5" Mk45 and a 35 mm Millenium CIWS will add at least another 100 million to that price and if you count the cost of reused equipment ($70M per ship) you are looking at a unit cost of +$500 million. The planned BMD upgrade will add yet another 100M dollars per vessel. It must be said though that the issues with the gun armament mentioned in the DefenceNews article, is not entirely due to financial reasons. The Millenium system has had a lot of teething troubles and did not initially cope well with the maritime environment....as a result ALL the Millenium guns were returned to the manufacturer(Rheinmetall/ Oerlikon) to fix these issues and to be properly "marinized" .So this is why the Absalons/Huitfeldts is currently fitted with dummys. Wrt the "missing" 5" Mk45's , one has to remember that the frigates was always suppose to have an initial fit of 2x76mm, with the possibility of fitting a 5" and an extra CIWS later on. After all , the ships (and their crews) are not planned to reach full operational capability til the end of 2015, at the very earliest, so there is plenty of time to buy missiles and guns. Besides, after the experiences the RDN have had with the Mk45's on the Absalons, scuttlebutt is that the navy is now considering keeping the dual OTO fit permanently, since they are superior in the AAW role, ie the Huitfeldts core mission.

Actually,for the T26's main role of asw it would be decidedly underkill. As good as the Burkes are,their hull design and propulsion machinery is getting old and they were never optimized for asw in the first place.

the charge bin on the leopard 2 is a huge hazard as well, and the danes decided to drive with only the safely stored turret ammunition in afghanistan. Actually, that is not correct,....initially the first Leo2A5DK's shipped to Afghanistan had the lowest row of ammunition in the hull magazine, replaced with concrete rounds. But these first tanks where soon shipped home and replaced with the new Leo2A5Dk IntOps version , featuring mine protection kit, Barracuda camouflage , slat armor, a new suspended Autoflug drivers seat, new drivers thermal viewer front and rear, AND a new 22 round armored hull magazine. As far as i know the only time the Leo's rolled out of Camp Bastion or FOB Price without a full complement of ammunition was when we where running out of DM12 HEAT rounds (iirc we were down to about 30 rounds in total !) ..

WBG-X in the Swiss Panzer 87 :

Sorry for a bit of semi-necro posting ...But i think Sovngard is making a mistake when he lists all the horsepower and torque rating as gross figures. In fact only US engines should be given as such. SInce no european engine manufacturer have used the gross rating system for at least +40 years , the torque/HP rating for all the other engines is Net figures. According to Hunnicutt, the AGT-1500 has ~1230 NET horsepower and a max NET torque figure of ~5170Nm.

The heavy side skirts "only " weigh ~90 kg each, of which there is 6 .... So thats 540 kg in all, meaning even if they were twice as heavy as the old side skirts, they would still just represent an increase of ~270kg. As for the lighter side skirts covering the rest of the tracks, they won't even add 100 kg to the total weight of the vehicle.

Nope, Leopard 2A5 combat weight is 59,5 metric tons and thus 4350 kg heavier than the Leo 2A4. AFAIK, the composite armor package has been changed. Well i do know our Leo's received new armor inserts when they were upgraded to A5DK standard. I would imagine the German A5's and the Swedish STRV. 122 ( on which the A5DK is based) did as well. As for the applique armor , if the middle layer is rubber, then its some pretty hefty kind of rubber 'cause i've managed to break the tip of a screwdriver against it .....using a hammer I reckon its a resin compound of some sort . Since there are no bolt on covers around composite layers on the leopard 2 turret, I suppose changing the composite inserts on the leopard 2 turret would involve cutting open the existing steel armor, and thereby effectively rebuilding the turret structurally. Not really....you just cut open the thinner armor covering the armor cavities ,... pulling of the "lid" so to speak, replace the inserts, and weld it back up. It's a fairly trivial process, and if i'm not mistaken its much the same wrt the M1.