Uk Surges Ahead With Challenger 2 Upgrade

[DB]

Titan and Trojan were definitely a different build standard of engine when I worked on a maintenance trainer for them. I think the engine bay was somewhat different to aid cooling also, but I'm less certain of that. Mind you, the engine management was still branded Vickers back then.

The references cited by Wikipedia seem to be a bit ambiguous to me - there is the pre-prep work on the vehicles to ready them for conversion to CR3 and this appears to involve upgrading to CV12-8A standard. What isn't clear is whether that standard includes the fuel injection upgrade to yield 1500hp.

[GJK]

7 hours ago, DB said:

Titan and Trojan were definitely a different build standard of engine when I worked on a maintenance trainer for them. I think the engine bay was somewhat different to aid cooling also, but I'm less certain of that. Mind you, the engine management was still branded Vickers back then.

The references cited by Wikipedia seem to be a bit ambiguous to me - there is the pre-prep work on the vehicles to ready them for conversion to CR3 and this appears to involve upgrading to CV12-8A standard. What isn't clear is whether that standard includes the fuel injection upgrade to yield 1500hp.

I suspect the difference must be the PTO.  The only time I had responsibility for a pack repair section was when I had one attached in Afghanistan.  The only CV12 packs we dealt with were 5a for CRARRV and 8a for Trojan.  I can't remember if the base CV12 engine for each was the same or not.  I suspect the fact that both have a PTO may be contributing to the mind fog.  That and the scary fact that it was ten years ago!

Best,

Greg.

[Stuart Galbraith]

I had no idea Horstman were even still going.

[methos]

Horstman is owned by Renk nowadays.

[lucklucky]

Which botched the LCS Freedom class transmission.

[Stuart Galbraith]

The transmission was right, the ship was wrong?

 

[lucklucky]

In this case both wrong 🙂

[Stuart Galbraith]

I can't confirm this yet, but if true it's an advance on 2028 which was the previous date given. Is someone worried?

 

[methos]

33 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I can't confirm this yet, but if true it's an advance on 2028 which was the previous date given. Is someone worried.

IOC was previously planned for 2027, FOC for 2030. I wonder if the acceleration of the IOC also will translate to an earlier FOC.

[Mighty_Zuk]

Delaying til 2030 would be a waste of money. It would be capability gained too late, when some countries will already have at least IOC with the next generation of tanks.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Cant see it. The Franco German Tank is still being kicked back and forth, the American one does not seem to have even  started. The only realistic one on the board is Armata which still seems to be langushing in production hell. I think most people are waiting to see if there even should be a next generation tank, until they have figured out whether PGM's are so going to dominate the battlespace that tanks have become irrelevant as the cavalry horse. I dont believe they have, at least not yet, but I can understand the reluctance to invest in developing exceptionally pricy pieces of hardware that might be irrelevant before they are even produced.

For the moment, I think upgrading past machines is going to the route of most industrial nations. After after the next big set to, I guess we will more clearly see the way forward.

[lucklucky]

Russia : Armada

Israel : Carmel

Others?: China, S.Korea, Japan?

[TonyE]

K2 from South Korea, being exported and offered for licence production.

[DB]

Here's the official policy change.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/british-army-unveils-most-radical-transformation-in-decades

Forward basing in Germany (yes, just one year after pulling out), Kenya and Oman.

PDF linked from the above article.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1036060/Future_Soldier_guide.pdf

It's a bit sporty, and the Ajax dependency needs to be solved quickly and relatively cheaply or there will be no chance for it, I'd say.

On Ajax, I have no direct information, but we see that the highest level authorisation is required to allow the vehicles to be used at all, even for simply "marshalling" them about. This on the noise grounds.

When the authorisation goes outside of the programme like this, it means it's been assigned the highest risk category in the risk matrix. Given that noise doesn't kill people generally speaking, I'd guess it's been slotted into the "Critical" severity category and as it obviously affects everyone using the vehicle and is an inevitable cumulative effect of exposure, it will be "Frequent" in occurrence, which is typically defined qualitatively as "occurs all the time". It would be acceptable for "minor bruising or abrasions" to occur "frequently", but that would be considered at best tolerable. (We're talking about the kind of abrasion you might get off a rough surface if you failed to wear your gloves, for example. In that case, it would be signed off OK because wearing gloves when touching rough surfaces is a typical mitigation and everyone does that kind of thing all the time.)

"Critical" typically means 1-2 deaths per occurrence or per year, or many severe injuries. Permanent deafness is considered to be life-changing and so is considered severe. I'm sure all the Royal Artillery veterans would be pleased to hear this, if they could hear anything.

If you have access to it, Francis Tusa's "Defence Analysis" monthly report tends to give information that is normally about as good as is publicly available. As usual, though, it's not always easy to separate journalistic speculation from factual content, and MoD appears to lie reflexively given the chance.

[Stuart Galbraith]

2 hours ago, lucklucky said:

Russia : Armada

Israel : Carmel

Others?: China, S.Korea, Japan?

Is this the same Armata that was supposed to have 3000 hulls by 2020?

Israel. Not fighting them anytime soon.

China, fair one. But if we are getting involved in a land war in Asia, dont we all want bigger armies anyway?

[lucklucky]

Well you wrote in the post before about Franco-German tank and the American tank... are you expecting to fight them? 😝

Rumours tell that Russians are not happy with Armata fire control.

[Stuart Galbraith]

6 hours ago, lucklucky said:

Well you wrote in the post before about Franco-German tank and the American tank... are you expecting to fight them? 😝

Rumours tell that Russians are not happy with Armata fire control.

Better safe than sorry.

Im sorry to hear that actually. The more I read about the vehicle, the more I admire it, and they have put some remarkable effort into it. It is rather like the Americans building Tigers instead of Shermans however. Its really not what they need.

[Mighty_Zuk]

The question of a next generation tank is not whether it's worthwhile to have one. Rather, it's a question of whether in the 2030's it would be worth keeping something as antique as today's tanks.

It's like a late 2000's computer versus one of today's.

A Mark IV tank was dirt cheap but it was crewed by 8 men. How long do you think a cheap tank will keep being more economical when it's used for over 40 years and all that time is crewed by twice as many men as needed. Or in the Mark's case, 4 times as much. Manpower is expensive, but it is also a hidden cost for AFVs.

Much of the next gen could be implemented on today's tanks, but the rationale to switch platforms is that today's platforms are extremely inefficient, and are worn out on top of that.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Its not a great comparison, because technology was much simpler then. I remember reading a British Civil Servant talking in the 1980's, whom said submarines in the second world war had a design life of 15 years. Yes, they were often extended, but it got ever more costly. He said at the time submarines had a design life of 30 years, maybe 35 if you look after them. Ditto aircraft. There are still A10's flying from when I was kid in the 1980's. Thats 35 years, and they still have life in them.

So that tanks have increased longevity, particularly in fiscally strapped times is no surprise. The only question in my mind is why we now need 130 tanks in a very dangerous era, when we bought 385 in 1996 when there were no threats on the horizon.

[Mighty_Zuk]

The Mark was only there to show a ridiculous number of crewmen. The point is if someone designs a tank today, it would actually be harder to design an 80's tank than a next gen one.

Tanks today are still more mechanically driven than the industry standard. And the industry standard is never the cutting edge or even state of the art. So we're lagging behind.

Upgrading mechanical parts is also far more expensive than software updates. So again it's a matter of money. We cannot afford to keep operating Abrams and Leopard and Merkava tanks. We need to cut back on expenses and buy the next gen.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Well it basically comes down to, do you build a next gen tank, or just avoid it and adopt newly emerging technology to fulfill the firepower role. There is no doubt that using PGM's to replicate a tanks firepower comes with a lot of risk. But its more mobile, possibly more effective and probably a lot cheaper. The negatives are you just  know they would skimp on the number of rounds, and its far from certain the technology is developed enough to provide a reliable tank killer, particular with ever more elaborate APS's being developed. Then there is stealth technology, whcih has barely been exploited in the tank. Is it viable to lower a tanks signature to the point where a PGM becomes an unreliable killer?

Im a cynic when it comes to new tech. You only have to look at technology examples in WW1 and WW2, rarely did they deliver what their plaudits originally said it would in a timely manner, and were only usually emerging into useful technology right at the end of the war. Ive no doubt PGMs and drones will at some point replace tanks. My only question is whether it will do it in the next war, or the one after that. And even if they do, does it allow the Tank to linger on in support roles, rather like the WW2 Battleships did, after losing their primary role to carriers? I would think it possible, at least in the short term.

Its why I like using the tanks we have until we can identify whether it makes sense to continue with tanks, go with a new technology solution. I think Challenger 3 has a lot of upgrade capability in it, and I can see why we are sticking with it. Id like it even more if were buying more than an afternoons worth of tanks.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Introducing Epsom armour.

 

[jmcmtank]

I have seen a ref to Farnham armour being used also-anyone know what this could be?

[DB]

I don't see "Epsom" mentioned in the graphic attached, so I don't see the official name being confirmed by anything in the tweet itself. Presumably the tweeter just didn't point at the actual evidence to support the claim that "Epsom" means anything.

However, at this point we have had Burlington, Chobham and Dorchester as names, adding in Epsom and Farnham could mean anything or nothing. I mean, two of those aren't even towns in Surrey.

On a side note, Wikipedia is hilariously wrong regarding Chobham, even 6 years after this  https://tankandafvnews.com/wo-194-1323-feasibility-study-on-burlington-chieftain/

Which shows that the "Burlington" module is simply spaced NERA.

Of course, that whole report could be disinformation or "Chobham" might be completely different to Burlington, with the mythical ceramics, after all the US is apparently talking up ceramics as the next big step, it seems.

Note: I don't think "Chobham" was ceramic armour, I think that's been put to bed everywhere but Wikipedia.

[Przezdzieblo]

There are many other British sources on Burlington, that clearly suggest this armour was what we called today NERA. There were many discussions on Tanknet in last 20 years that questioned ceramic-track. Wiki is pretty outdated, more than 6 years - my article about Burlington is 11 years old.

 

There were more Chobham names - Burlington for orginal project, Moustache for anti-Burlington measures, Almagest for armour pack for FV 4211, Buckhorse for armour pack presented to FRG, Sahara for armour pack to be proposed to Swiss, Pegeant for Iran, Starflower for Americanised Burlington. And all those in 60s and 70s.

 

Edited January 28, 2022 by Przezdzieblo