First CV9035 delivered

[lucklucky]

That is a proper upgrade. Well done.

[Dark_Falcon]

49 minutes ago, lucklucky said:

That is a proper upgrade. Well done.

Agreed. THE US Army should seek a production license for the CV-90 and not try for some super-advanced pie-in-the-sky.

[Ssnake]

Ah, but which one.

Hägglunds/BAE have tailored their business model to build "fleets" of 50 vehicles. Yes there are parts that are similar in all vehicles, but effectively the CV90/40, /35, /30 are at least four if not five different vehicles designed more or less from thr ground up. The CV90/35, while certainly coming with potent armament, has a rather pitiful ammunition supply; with five-round KETF bursts the norm for most IFV vs infantry engagements and 35 rounds per belt, that's an average of maybe eight, nine targets before it needs to pull back for reload.

I don't think anyone is suggesting the 40mm L70 gun?

That leaves the 30mm option, all of which are aging, with little growth potential.

 

...soooo... a new CV90?

Wasn't that what you wanted to avoid in the first place?

[Burncycle360]

Nice. Wish the US had opted for them, either 35 or 40mm

[Olof Larsson]

2 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Ah, but which one.

Hägglunds/BAE have tailored their business model to build "fleets" of 50 vehicles. Yes there are parts that are similar in all vehicles, but effectively the CV90/40, /35, /30 are at least four if not five different vehicles designed more or less from thr ground up. The CV90/35, while certainly coming with potent armament, has a rather pitiful ammunition supply; with five-round KETF bursts the norm for most IFV vs infantry engagements and 35 rounds per belt, that's an average of maybe eight, nine targets before it needs to pull back for reload.

I don't think anyone is suggesting the 40mm L70 gun?

That leaves the 30mm option, all of which are aging, with little growth potential.

 

...soooo... a new CV90?

Wasn't that what you wanted to avoid in the first place?

Of the three I prefere the 9040. It's much easier to top up the ready racks/mags, than with any of the beltfeeds and I prefere the 3P over the AHEAD rounds. That said, 8x3 rounds can run out quickly.

[Burncycle360]

40 CT could be the best of both worlds

[bojan]

Yes, but 40mm CTA it was not there 20+ years ago when CV90 was taking tankin over all other IFVs by the storm and now none wants to change caliber.

Edited September 29, 2022 by bojan

[Olof Larsson]

3 hours ago, Burncycle360 said:

40 CT could be the best of both worlds

Certainly, though I wouldn't mind a 50mm, 57mm or 60mm CTG either for a ICV. That said, 40mm CTG is small enough to also be useful for armoured cars and the like. Well, and it also exists as a OTS-system..

[MikeKiloPapa]

On 9/29/2022 at 4:13 PM, Ssnake said:

Ah, but which one.

Hägglunds/BAE have tailored their business model to build "fleets" of 50 vehicles. Yes there are parts that are similar in all vehicles, but effectively the CV90/40, /35, /30 are at least four if not five different vehicles designed more or less from thr ground up. The CV90/35, while certainly coming with potent armament, has a rather pitiful ammunition supply; with five-round KETF bursts the norm for most IFV vs infantry engagements and 35 rounds per belt, that's an average of maybe eight, nine targets before it needs to pull back for reload.

I don't think anyone is suggesting the 40mm L70 gun?

That leaves the 30mm option, all of which are aging, with little growth potential.

 

...soooo... a new CV90?

Wasn't that what you wanted to avoid in the first place?

I do wonder Nils, is it the tedious FCS programming in SB , or typing in the long-winded release note entries that gives you this itch you apparently have to scratch every time someone posts something nice or positive about the CV90 ...35 in particular ?    Look i get it , you dont like it , its fine you dont have to, but this is at least the 3rd time you have posted almost the same anti-CV90 rant here on TN, and just like the other times a lot of what you write is simply incorrect, and verifiably so .

The "fleets of 50 vehicles " claim is just pure hyperpole. Apart from the 45 IFVs for DK , every single order Häggllunds has got for the CV90 has numbered between 100-250 vehicles, with the original swedish one totalling a whopping 600+.  

About the different models, yeah surprise the CV90 has evolved over time to meet more demanding requirements ( just like the Leo 2 in fact) , but there is still a large degree of  design and parts commonality within each of the 5 separate generations , regardless of gun caliber.  And as you cant get a new mk 0, I, II or III today the only relevant model is the mkIV , so i dont get what your point is exactly .

The C9035 does not have an impressive amount of ready ammo that is true,  a weakness clearly admitted and sought partly rectified in the Dutch CV9035 MLU . With 84 rounds it has a little over half as many ready rounds as the CV9030 , but also boasts roughly twice the firepower ( despite your deliberate understating  of exatly HOW much more powerful it is ) It is still not a lot of rounds granted, but what you get in return is a significantly more accurate weapon system that allows you to engage and defeat the same targets at much longer range , using fewer rounds.

Im pretty sure your claim of 5-round KETF bursts being the norm (outside demonstration shoots) has been debunked several times already , so why to you keep repeating it?   

Just like with every other caliber the 35mm represents a compromise and not every user ( or you) agrees that it strikes the right balance, however there are now 5 , soon perhaps 6, IFV users which have adopted this caliber , and with a likely prospect of more to follow in the future as the 30mm becomes increasingly inadequate.

So clearly someone thinks that the strength of the 35mm round outweighs its drawbacks. And with an upgrade path to 50mm being availabe for all Bushmaster III users there is far more growth potential left in that weapon system than either the 30mm or 40mm bofors counterparts.  40mm CTA looks great now ( if you disregard extreme ammo cost and some big ? regarding reliability and barrel wear) , but the nature of the ammo means it inherently has zero growth potential left. 

 

[Ssnake]

11 hours ago, MikeKiloPapa said:

So clearly someone thinks that the strength of the 35mm round outweighs its drawbacks.

Sure. I have my doubts. The question may be, what kind of conflict do we have in mind. Depending on the answer some might consider the compromise good, or not so good.

 

11 hours ago, MikeKiloPapa said:

this itch you apparently have to scratch every time someone posts something nice or positive about the CV90 ...35 in particular ?    Look i get it , you dont like it , its fine you dont have to, but this is at least the 3rd time you have posted almost the same anti-CV90 rant here on TN

Well, I just refuse to be a CV90 fanboy ... and at least I'm consistent. Can't help it that you don't like my opinion, but it's just an opinion, good as any other. And it's an objective fact that the CV90/35 especially simply cannot deliver sustained suppressive fire. One may consider this to be an acceptable limitation given the considerable strengths of the design - which I do not deny - but I think it's a considerable tactical weakness when thrown into a target-rich environment that offers lots of cover and concealment.

By design and doctrine, the five-round wide or deep burst is intended to take out one infantry squad. With 35 rounds in one feed, that's seven squads, which is probably still fine as long as they do you the favor of attacking you over open ground. Which they won't. Sure, you can conserve ammo by firing in point mode, but then you largely forfeit that sweet area effect which KETF offers - and disproportionally reduce its effectiveness. Five rounds fired in point mode do not equate one squad killed, but maybe only three dismounts, possibly just two. With a 35 round belt you can expect to take out maybe two squads, not seven.

Does that not concern you?

 

A fleet of 200 vehicles may be four times larger than the Danish fleet, it's still a symptom of the bigger problem that we have in Europe that we apparently cannot coordinate our procurement between nations. As a result we're basically incapable of supporting, say, Ukraine, with anything other than what the US has available, anti-tank missiles, and some 155mm artillery munitions. This isn't a CV90 problem, the CV90 is merely a symptom of a bigger problem, but that problem is undeniably at our feet, and has been for at least the last 30 years. All European nations together outspend Russia by mabe a factor ten in defense. Do we actually have a force that is ten times as strong as Russia's? No? Can we then finally stop pretending that everything is hunky-dory?

Losing 50 vehicles is bad when you have 500 of them. It's near-crippling when your fleet is just 200 vehicles strong. At some point, much sooner than we like to admid, we lose the ability to employ a force in a cohesive fashion. I don't know about you, but this doesn't give me good sleep. We have one factory for tank ammunition in Unterlüß. There's one from Nexter in France. Mecar in Belgium makes only 150mm and smaller calibers. Only Nammo and Oerlikon produce medium caliber rounds, and the Swiss want to have a say where and when we can use these rounds, and their ideas are very different as has become obvious in the last months. The next best option to source larger caliber munitions would be, drumroll, Serbia.

 

I'm mentioning this because there is a common topic to this and the CV90, and that's force sustainment. Europe has a strong defense at first sight, but with a glass chin. We can't afford to lose more than a handful of vehicles, we can't afford to lose a single one of the few ammunition factories that we have, we have trimmed our war stocks to a party of four weeks duration if the Russians invite themselves and therefore struggle to deliver even a single artillery battalion worth of howitzers to Ukraine for fear of denuding our own defense. This is a terrible, terrible situation.

None of this is the CV90's fault. Hägglunds and BAE do what they must to keep their factory running and the specialist workers and engineers employed. It's good that there still is some construction bureau that maintains the needed know-how, but it's an incredibly fragile situation, one with which nobody (but Russians) could possibly be happy if we take a serious and honest look at the whole picture.

[sunday]

18 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

we have trimmed our war stocks to a party of four weeks duration

That could be too optimistic

Quote

The German Army (Bundeswehr) has enough ammunition for only one or two days of warfare, the German edition of news website Business Insider (BI) reported on Saturday, citing defense industry and parliamentary sources.

According to BI, Berlin is significantly lagging behind the NATO requirement of maintaining stocks for at least 30 days of fighting. It was said that the problem “has been known for years,” as military drills have suffered from insufficient stores.

Quote

The situation with the shortage “will not improve if ammunition is removed from the Bundeswehr stocks, while corresponding orders are not placed on the defense industry at the same time,” Hans Christoph Atzpodien, CEO of the German Security and Defense Industry Association (BDSV), told BI. The outlet’s sources, meanwhile, were quoted as saying that there have been “no significant orders” for defense companies to produce more armaments.

Eva Hoegl, the German parliament’s defense commissioner, told BI that an additional €20 billion ($19.5bn) is needed to replenish the stocks.

 

[Ssnake]

I might point out that I'm just as critical of the Leopard 2's hull ammunition storage. It was the wrong design decision, period. Yes, it allows for faster refills of the ready stowage, but the price is, once again, fragility - arguably the one weakness that you can afford least on the weapon system that is supposedly made for high intensity combat. Ultimately IFVs have to meet the same criterion, survivability where the danger is at peak levels.

[Daan]

The upgrade enlarges the number of ready rounds by 20-25% according to the link on the previous page.