Polish Armoured Vehicles And Their Modernizations.

[sunday]

Very nice bridging footage!

[Mighty_Zuk]

29 minutes ago, Damian said:

There is a lot going on right now, than what western media report. In fact current liberal government is continuing same programs and politics regarding defence, that previous conservative government started.

This is great news!

In Israel we've always had a consensus on importance of security, and seeing this in Europe is amazing!

Now let's see if it stands the test of time.

[Perun]

55 minutes ago, Damian said:

There is a lot going on right now, than what western media report. In fact current liberal government is continuing same programs and politics regarding defence, that previous conservative government started.

Meanwhile here a video made by my friend.

@Stuart Galbraith@Markus Becker@sunday@urbanoid@alejandro_@Harkonnen@Mighty_Zuk

Nice video 🙂

[Damian]

46 minutes ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

This is great news!

In Israel we've always had a consensus on importance of security, and seeing this in Europe is amazing!

Now let's see if it stands the test of time.

So far agreements negotiated and prepared by previous government, are being signed under the new MoD. But yes, we will see how this will go on. Right now MoD and Armaments Agency plans to sign around 150 various contracts for various weapon systems and equipment.

[txtree99]

Looks like there might be another country with K2’s

[Damian]

23 minutes ago, txtree99 said:

Looks like there might be another country with K2’s

K2 have pros and cons. However Polish Army is very happy with these vehicles. In general Polish Army considers M1 and K2 as two tanks that complement each other very well.

[DogDodger]

On 5/29/2024 at 11:44 AM, Damian said:

Meanwhile here a video made by my friend.

 

Great video. Just the rear axle spinning on the truck at 3:30?

[DogDodger]

Double post; see above.

Edited May 30 by DogDodger
Double

[Damian]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Polish_Land_Forces

This is quiet accurate list of Polish Ground Forces weapon systems and equipment, altough some things are not specified on it. Still it shows current scale of procurement.

@Stuart Galbraith@Perun@DogDodger@Markus Becker@sunday@urbanoid@Mighty_Zuk@alejandro_@Harkonnen

[sunday]

Thanks!

Looks the number of infantry NVS is a bit low.

[Damian]

12 minutes ago, sunday said:

Thanks!

Looks the number of infantry NVS is a bit low.

IMHO so numbers might not be correct. You need to remember that Polish Armed Forces like to keep some procurement as secret. Altough NSV's were not procured in large numbers AFAIK, especially that after WarPact dissolved, and NATO membership become realistic, WKM-B was developed that is using NATO standard belts and 12,7x99mm ammunition instead of Soviet 12,7x108mm.

However in my opinion, and some other people, we should completely abandon rechambered soviet GPMG/HMG and simply produce FN MAG/M240 and M2A1 on license. It would make a lot of things simpler.

Tough UKM-2000 have one decisive advantage over M240 as a GPMG for infantry, it is significantly lighter.

Edited June 3 by Damian

[sunday]

29 minutes ago, Damian said:

IMHO so numbers might not be correct. You need to remember that Polish Armed Forces like to keep some procurement as secret. Altough NSV's were not procured in large numbers AFAIK, especially that after WarPact dissolved, and NATO membership become realistic, WKM-B was developed that is using NATO standard belts and 12,7x99mm ammunition instead of Soviet 12,7x108mm.

However in my opinion, and some other people, we should completely abandon rechambered soviet GPMG/HMG and simply produce FN MAG/M240 and M2A1 on license. It would make a lot of things simpler.

Tough UKM-2000 have one decisive advantage over M240 as a GPMG for infantry, it is significantly lighter.

Sorry, I meant NVS as in Night Vision Systems. 🙂

Agree on the advantages of the UKM GPMG, of course. Simon Tan was a fan of the PK platform.

Edited June 3 by sunday

[bojan]

1 hour ago, Damian said:

...
However in my opinion, and some other people, we should completely abandon rechambered soviet GPMG/HMG and simply produce FN MAG/M240 and M2A1 on license. It would make a lot of things simpler.

Or not. Read about what Ukrainian weapon instructor and armorer has to say about MAG, M2 and... Grot. 

Quote

Tough UKM-2000 have one decisive advantage over M240 as a GPMG for infantry, it is significantly lighter.

And probably more reliable in less than ideal conditions, unless change of feed system really messed it up.

 

1 hour ago, sunday said:

Simon Tan was a fan of the PK platform.

See link about interview above if you have not already. Money shot:

"PKM is a gold standard for reliability, not just among MGs, but in general among all other weapons. Amount of abuse it can stand is phenomenal."

 

Edited June 3 by bojan

[Perun]

6 hours ago, Damian said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Polish_Land_Forces

This is quiet accurate list of Polish Ground Forces weapon systems and equipment, altough some things are not specified on it. Still it shows current scale of procurement.

@Stuart Galbraith@Perun@DogDodger@Markus Becker@sunday@urbanoid@Mighty_Zuk@alejandro_@Harkonnen

Thanks mate

[Markus Becker]

16 hours ago, bojan said:

Or not. Read about what Ukrainian weapon instructor and armorer has to say about MAG, M2 and... Grot. 

 

 

This drawback is probably outweight by using the same super heavy machine gun as everyone else. 

Also to consider: If the .50 cal is indeed that much if a handful in this regard, why has nobody improved the design? 

[bojan]

M2A1 somewhat improved it, but there is only so much improvement that can be slapped on legacy system. And massive stockpiles of legacy MGs that will last couple of soldier's lifetimes + existing manufacture. IOW, money, as usual.

Additionally, majority of those problems would not show in the peacetime, or even "colonial" wars of the '90s/early 2000s.

Edited June 4 by bojan

[Damian]

FN MAG/M240 is superior as a vehicle weapon to PK and it's clones. This is because MAG uses milled receiver instead of stamped one.

M2A1 in general is also seen as better than another close of NSV.

There are reasons, I even talked about that with one of engineers at ZMT, who said that of course they can further modify soviet designs, but perhaps a better solution is to swich to western designs, that simply fit in to vehicles without the need for serious modifications.

Infantry is a different thing.

By the way, Ukraine received older Grot A0 and A1 rifles, that indeed have some issues, like all new weapons. Most of these issues are already solved with Grot A2, which is still an interim design. Right now new Grot A3 is being prepared. However Ukraine was a good proving ground to learn about pros and cons, and iron out all issues.

[bojan]

1 hour ago, Damian said:

FN MAG/M240 is superior as a vehicle weapon to PK and it's clones. This is because MAG uses milled receiver instead of stamped one.

Longevity of the receiver is only relevant if you don't buy spare MGs. As for superiority, even period US army tests disagreed. It is not that MAG is bad, but it is basically WW2 tech and horribly inefficient for mass manufacture and needs way more maintenance in order to function as reliably as PKM. 

Quote

M2A1 in general is also seen as better than another close of NSV.

Sorry, but not even close. It has better dispersion (now, how much is that issue with HMG is another question), and it has to adjust timing for different ammo batches (because, you know, all NATO standards about ammo are very flexible). W/o timing precisely adjusted to an ammo used it will start to choke. NSV will eat any ammo w/o issue, even utter junk.

Quote

There are reasons, I even talked about that with one of engineers at ZMT, who said that of course they can further modify soviet designs, but perhaps a better solution is to swich to western designs, that simply fit in to vehicles without the need for serious modifications.

Solution in which case more money will be allocated to a factory due the retooling. Like when someone from Zastava was lobbying for Tavor (what a bullet did we dodge there).  

Quote

...By the way, Ukraine received older Grot A0 and A1 rifles, that indeed have some issues, like all new weapons...

Issues he mention are not issues that plague new weapons, they are indicator of something deeply rotten in the manufacturing process, since issues like steel that rusts like crazy, porous aluminium parts, polymers that become fragile when cold are things  that were solved industry wide 40-50 years ago. If that was fixed - great, but such systematic issues take way more to fix than new rifle designation.

Contrast this to BREN 1/2 - 1 had real teething issues, due the choices made while designing gun, not due the inferior materials used.

Edited June 4 by bojan

[Markus Becker]

1 hour ago, bojan said:

M2A1 somewhat improved it, but there is only so much improvement that can be slapped on legacy system. And massive stockpiles of legacy MGs that will last couple of soldier's lifetimes + existing manufacture. IOW, money, as usual.

Additionally, majority of those problems would not show in the peacetime, or even "colonial" wars of the '90s/early 2000s.

The gun has been involved in plenty of conflicts. Vietnam, Korea and that unpleasantness in the early 40s. 

Any chance we are seeing the PKM effect? The Perfect makes everything else look flawed when in reality it's just not as good? Like MG3 vs PKM.

[bojan]

Not PKM effect, gun that needs timing adjustment depending on which manufacturer of the "standardized" ammo is just not up the today standards. It was perfectly acceptable 80, or even 60* years ago. Today it is pointless complication, being there because it is impossible to solve on the legacy system which originated from a different time when such things were OK.

*Last significant conflict where it was really involved in conditions even close to Ukrainian and we have feedback from was Vietnam. Even then conclusion was "it has issues, but it is not worth replacing it, and even if we wanted to there is nothing better** ATM"

**Once NSV (and CIS .50) appeared - it became obsolescent. Changing from NSV to M2 production is fundamentally like changing from modern rifle to AKM, FAL or G3. Yes, those are still used, yes, they are "OK", but there is no real reason why would you do so.

Edited June 4 by bojan

[Damian]

2 hours ago, bojan said:

Issues he mention are not issues that plague new weapons, they are indicator of something deeply rotten in the manufacturing process, since issues like steel that rusts like crazy, porous aluminium parts, polymers that become fragile when cold are things  that were solved industry wide 40-50 years ago. If that was fixed - great, but such systematic issues take way more to fix than new rifle designation.

Contrast this to BREN 1/2 - 1 had real teething issues, due the choices made while designing gun, not due the inferior materials used.

Issues with Grot are overexagarated. Yes there were problems, but not with all rifles. Some had better, some worse quality. One of my colleagues own a civilian Grot variant, and for several years, he tested that rifle a lot, no issues with it, even tough this is one of the first produced civilian variant rifles.

Grot will be further improved, as improved will be manufacturing. FB had some problems with subcontractors, because not everything had been made by FB, their production capabilities are still too small to do everything on their own. As I heard this is where some quality control issues originate from.

Grot A3 will probably be last in the series for, first Grot iteration. There is a lot of talk about slightly changing it's design, maybe even reducing the modularity, like completely scrapping bullpup variant based on common upper receiver. Evolution will be somewhat similar to BREN1 and BREN2.

Edited June 4 by Damian

[bojan]

1 hour ago, Damian said:

... FB had some problems with subcontractors, because not everything had been made by FB, their production capabilities are still too small to do everything on their own. As I heard this is where some quality control issues originate from.

Sounds reasonable, in which case subcontractors* can be changed to some who do know how to use 40+ y/o technology.

PS. Not that FB is unique with that problem, there were other bigger companies that had fuckups. Some fixed them, some went down because of those.

[Damian]

1 hour ago, bojan said:

Sounds reasonable, in which case subcontractors* can be changed to some who do know how to use 40+ y/o technology.

PS. Not that FB is unique with that problem, there were other bigger companies that had fuckups. Some fixed them, some went down because of those.

If I recall it correctly, subcontractors were mostly used for polymer made parts. There will be some significant changes in Grot A3 design, like a different stock, it seems that Army right now prefers AR style stock. There might some other, also internal changes, and changes to charing handle design with better sealing.

The Grot A2 that is currently produced, have mainly technological changes as it is called. A0 version is not used anymore by the Polish Army, all were sent to Ukraine, also A1's are right now minority.

In general there will be a lot of design and technological changes in Grot A3 rifle, or rather carbine.

[Markus Becker]

It seems the NSV is made in Poland and not imported like the RPG-7. But if it's much easier to install M2s into western AFV than NSV...MG34 were kept in production for the same reason.

BTW, not lot of Soviet weapons and equipment left in Polish inventory. Aside from 300k AKM.

[sunday]

Still, no one thinks that the inventory of night vision systems is a bit low?