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  • 8 months later...
Posted (edited)

Not the HMC, but, hey, since it's the same vehicle family and we're mentioning excessive weight, I thought I'd put it here:
Panne sèche à la Défense: tous les blindés belges équipés de canon sont.... en réparation
Des fissures détectées sur la quasi-totalité des véhicules blindés Piranha de l'armée (related)

1f7nFb2h.jpeg 

According to one news group, all 127 Mowag Piranha IIICs from the Belgian Army are unavailable due to being in sore need of repairs. Investigation showed that practically every unit suffers from hull cracks...some of them (18 Piranha DF90s) caused by an overweight 90mm Cockerill cannon. For the third time in five years. All of them are now awaiting fixes at the tank repair shop at Rocourt. This vehicle type, in service since 2008, is slated for replacement (French vehicles this time, since the government wants to cut down on expenses by having a common ecosystem with neighboring France, extending even to the soldier training system) but deliveries of Griffons and EBRC Jaguars by KNDS France aren't expected till 2026.

It should be noted already that the 90mm Piranha drew flak for boasting what is essentially a very...atypical caliber whose ammo can only come from one Belgian company (Mecar, now KNDS Belgium), which is, admittedly, far from ideal. There were enough difficulties (such as the spent casing refusing to fully vacate the gun's chamber) resulting from this poor procurement choice that the DF90 hasn't fired its main ammunition since January 2019. There were alternatives considered, such as Iveco's 105mm offer, but the upper brass nixed the idea, saying that the DF90 was supposed to be a medium-capability vehicle rather than a more ambitious platform capable of going up against enemy armor. It was bad enough that the original order of 40 DF90s was quickly whittled down to 18 and the option of 22 was never taken up afterwards. 30mm was otherwise preferred, resulting in the acquisition of Piranhas IIIC DF30s.

While the Army has come out to say that the Piranha's mine resistance is not affected by those cracks and that a number of these Piranhas can still be driven around (with or without restrictions), the fact remains that the few Belgian motorized units currently active will find themselves severely under-gunned and almost at half-strength, for two whole years, at a time when NATO is calling for increased readiness.

Edited by Renegade334
Posted

90mm was chosen because MECAR promised a capable APFSDS. But the recoil of that was too strong - at least that's how the story was relayed to me, as far as I remember it - and de-zeroed the sights with every shot, so that after a lot of tinkering the defense minister went full sour grapes and declared that lobbing HESH was all that it needed to do. I think the Belgian Army knew at that point that they had a stinker. Why then exercise the option for 22 more vehicles of dubious combat value? That at least was a decision I can get behind with.

Posted
5 hours ago, Ssnake said:

90mm was chosen because MECAR promised a capable APFSDS. But the recoil of that was too strong - at least that's how the story was relayed to me, as far as I remember it - and de-zeroed the sights with every shot, so that after a lot of tinkering the defense minister went full sour grapes and declared that lobbing HESH was all that it needed to do. I think the Belgian Army knew at that point that they had a stinker. Why then exercise the option for 22 more vehicles of dubious combat value? That at least was a decision I can get behind with.

I don't think a 90mm gun with a proper APFSDS passes basic scrutiny. Even quite an energetic round would immediately (at the time) be deemed inappropriate vs Russia, if indeed Russia was considered the reference threat. 

Else, it begs the question - do Belgium's armed forces have a reference threat? If so, what is it? I know it might be tempting to consider the last major deployment to be the reference threat, e.g. the minimally demanding GWOT, as an excuse to lower defense expenditure yet claim readiness.

Posted
2 hours ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

I don't think a 90mm gun with a proper APFSDS passes basic scrutiny. Even quite an energetic round would immediately (at the time) be deemed inappropriate vs Russia, if indeed Russia was considered the reference threat. 

a. I don't think a war with Russia was the intended use; more like, oops, the third worlders have a T-55, what do we do now?

b. I think everybody can see that this was a procurement that tried to maintain a minimum tank-like capability, on the cheap, and to keep a local defense corporation on life support.

Not trying to defend anything here, just my attempts to try and make sense of it all.

Posted
1 hour ago, Ssnake said:

a. I don't think a war with Russia was the intended use; more like, oops, the third worlders have a T-55, what do we do now?

b. I think everybody can see that this was a procurement that tried to maintain a minimum tank-like capability, on the cheap, and to keep a local defense corporation on life support.

Not trying to defend anything here, just my attempts to try and make sense of it all.

Your attempt is agreeable.

Is there a mechanism in NATO to set a reference threat or is anyone for themselves?

Posted (edited)

The Piranha IIICs hail back to 2008, so the Ministry of Defense staff had a different mindset back then. Most of the Belgian Leopard Is had been sold to a private arms seller (who, incidentally, got all rosy-cheeked when Belgium figured it would be nice if we could send Leopard Is to Ukraine, although we'd have to buy those tanks back at a higher price) on the cheap and, by then, the Belgian army was mostly involved in peacekeeping ops in third world countries, with the occasional F16 dropping JDAMs and launching Mavericks during the occasional regional spats and flare-ups that required NATO members to gather round and sing kumbaya beside the fire.

Do keep in mind that the move away from large-caliber guns is still ongoing: we're going to get rid of all DF90s in exchange for EBRC Jaguars and VBMR Griffons. Hell, we already had, since 2019 or thereabouts, to compensate for the loss of 90mm fire support by buying Spike-LR launchers.

 

Anyway, as I said in my previous post, the Belgian Army wanted something that was "median" (the exact adjective used in the articles). A bit of an assault gun, maybe, but definitely not on the Leopard I levels of firepower, because the DF90s weren't supposed to go act as tank destroyers (can you hear some US WW2 generals stirring in their grave, muttering "this feels familiar, somehow"?).

Maybe @Manic Moran can enlighten us a bit on the future direction of the Belgian Army since he was in Belgium not too long ago and even got to ride a Leo 1. 🙂

Edited by Renegade334

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