New MBT(Leo 2, M1A2, or Challenger 2), new light tank (Stingray), or new DFSV (M8 or MGS)?

[Pallas Athena]

a_majoor said:


"... CASR site had [an article on modifying] a Leopard tank into an urban assault gun, replacing the 105mm cannon with a breach loading 120mm mortar and a multiplicity of secondary weapons (coax and mounted on OWS stations). Stand off armour and a dozer blade were also part of the package. Matt_Fisher was the author of this idea, and should perhaps comment in more depth."

The full CASR site is up and running. Matt Fisher's article can be seen at:

http://www.sfu.ca/casr/id-leo.htm

PA

 

[Armymatters]

The issue is the sheer age of the hulls of the Leopard C2's we have. We need new hulls in order do something similar. You can't keep running 40+ year old hulls forever, no matter how much you take care of them. Plus, those hulls have taken a beating over the years; I bet most of them aren't in good shape. I would prefer that we get new tanks, preferably the Leopard 2. I think the Germans still have some Leopard 2A4's in reserve stock; all are under 20 years of age, while the newest is around 14 years old. And apparantly, the Germans are motivated to get these tanks off their hands, so a good discount can probally be had for those tanks. What we can do is take enough A4's to replace our Leopard C2's, and have the Germans refurbish the tanks to a like-new state. Of course, we won't benefit from the latest improvements to the Leopard 2 series, such as the A6's redesigned turret, the new 120mm L55 gun, the auxiliary engine, and other various minor improvements. Otherwise, buying brand new A6's won't hurt; the Leopard 2 is a virtual NATO standard tank, with so many of our NATO allies adopting the tank as their primary MBT. Now, we just need a way of hauling them around to our deployments and back home...

 

[Slim]

The issue is the sheer age of the hulls of the Leopard C2's we have. We need new hulls in order do something similar. You can't keep running 40+ year old hulls forever, no matter how much you take care of them. Plus, those hulls have taken a beating over the years; I bet most of them aren't in good shape.

Not that I dissagree with you but I think that you'll find that the Leo hulls aren't nearly as old as you seem to think thaey are...

 

[Bzzliteyr]

They are mid 70's hulls.

 

[Slim]

They are mid 70's hulls.

PM inbound

 

[Armymatters]

Ok, 30 year old hulls. But the design dates back to the 1960's, and by the time we got them, they were already outdated by further advancements, and the introduction of newer Soviet tanks.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

The big costs these days are for the electronic bits and pieces (thermal sights, fire control computers, etc). The turret does cost money, but I don't think that money is the issue.

If we are going to have a vehicle that goes around blasting things at close range then it needs protection.  That means it needs to be heavy.  Might as well make it a tank.  M1s have done suprisingly well in urban operations and they also do well in wide open spaces. 

Cheers,

2B

p.s. And I promised myself I wouldn't post about tanks anymore...

 

[George Wallace]

OK, 30 year old hulls. But the design dates back to the 1960's, and by the time we got them, they were already outdated by further advancements, and the introduction of newer Soviet tanks.

Ref your statement on thirty year old hulls and 1960's design, a couple of points.  First some designs last a lot longer than that.  Look at the 1911 Browning High Power, and it is still around doing a lot of service in many militaries.  Modern Tanks are obsolete, as soon as they come off the drawing board.  The Leopard II and the M 1 are both 1970's designs, so don't get too hung up on how old a tank or tank design is.  Just think of how old our aircraft and ships are.  Military Hardware is 'old' and meant to last a long time.

As for the introduction of newer Soviet tanks......well that isn't really that serious a problem.  The Soviets have produced a large number of T-54/55 and exported them to so many countries, that they are still one of the more prominent tanks to be found on the battlefields of the world.  T-64 and T-72 models come next.  If you want to start looking at their later models, the T-80 and T-90, they are in limited production, compared to before the end of the Cold War, as the Soviets can't afford to produce them and haven't that many markets for them.

So, even if we kept the Leo 1 C2, it would still be a credible tank, as it still would be able to take on the large numbers of T-54 and T-55 that are out there.

 

[George Wallace]

p.s. And I promised myself I wouldn't post about tanks anymore...

Come on......we all know that that is one New Year's Resolution that you would never have been able to keep.      ;D

 

[Slim]

George

Tell them about the new hulls and turrets. No one listens to me about that stuff.

 

[TCBF]

"Look at the 1911 Browning High Power, and it is still around doing a lot of service in many militaries"

- The M1911/M1911A1 is the .45 ACP  powered "Ol' slab sides herself".  Not the 9mm M1935 FN Browning Hi-Power, which came out in 1935, some 6 years after the death of John Moses Browning, the designer of them both. The Cdn Army adopted the Hi-Power in 1944.  Ours were made by the John Inglis washing machine company in Toronto, Ontario.  They also made Bren Guns.

If you carry a Canadian Browning today, it will say JI on the magazine bottom plates, and Inglis on the gun itself.

"Not that I dissagree with you but I think that you'll find that the Leo hulls aren't nearly as old as you seem to think thaey are..."

-It ain't the age, but the usage.  The Germans and other euro-types absolutely freaked when they found out how high mileage our tanks were in the Eighties.  In the nineties, we had final drive issues which originated in the hull speading out at the bottom.  How?  Easy, it was cracked.  How?  Easy, the natural ground up rock/mud combo lining most tank trails in trg areas is mother natures own sandpaper.  Ever see a set of tank tracks on a trail and at the top of a hump in the trail is a smooth piece of rock hard packed mud?  That smooth piece was compressed and formed by the bottom of the tank, which, as a result, became shiny enough to almost shave in (go ahead, take a look at one) and a little bit thinner (due to the ground up rock in the mud).  So, after a LOT of km of this, the plate gets so thin, it can no longer support the increadible torques it has to absorb from the drive sprockets/final drives and the weight of the tank - so it splits.  When that happens, the final drives and power pack come out of alignment and things break.  Early fixes involved bolting a plate to the bottom of the hull.  Of course, a power pack flexing on it's motor mounts might just bottom out on the bolts, and when the SST lights come on as a result...

How do we find out how much wear there is?  We ultrasounded them, using the same gear and goo the doc used on our pregnant wives.

So, don't cry when you see a Leo hull as a 'GateGuard' outside the shacks or in front of an armoury, the hull may be toast.

When we got the old PzAufKlaBns Heavy SpahTruppe Leo1A5 s, why did we not get the low-use German hulls as well?  Good question.  Rumour at the time had it that the LCMM types recommended staying with the Cdn hulls because of some mods we had done to them.  I cannot confirm this.  Any ideas?

Tom

 

[Bzzliteyr]

I know for a (almost) fact that the Canadian hulls are the only ones in the world with the wiper mod, so if you see a hull that doesn't have the mod then maybe it is a "upgrade" hull.  I work at the school and was in the K-lines when we put all the tanks through here on their way to the regiments and I never saw any "sans-wiper" tanks.  I will ask Lance Wiebe today as I believe he was involved with KMW for the upgades.  I am not sure how much trouble we would have gone through to modify any snuck in "new" hulls that we may have purchased as "spare parts" but I doubt it was done.. More to follow once I have the info.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Roger that on the thin hull issue.  I believe that we took some powerpacks from the "thermal sight with a tank attached to it" program, but that we indeed kept our original hulls.  In addition to the mods issue, someone explained to me that since the "new" tanks had been sitting around for several years before we bought them there were concerns about them.

I have also been told that the program that gave us the C2 started as an attempt to give us a thermal sight for the C1.  Apparently it was cheaper to buy the complete Leo 1A5 from the Germans rather than retrofit a sight through a seperate program.  As a bonus we got a great fire control system to boot.  A good little project (ingenius really) to upgrade our capabilities without too much fuss up top.  FCS techs and FCS spare parts suddenly became things that Generals talked about during exercises!   

The C2 had (has) excellent firepower with great accuracy both static and on the move.  We can argue the hitting power part of the 105mm vs 120mm, but with the right ammo the 105mm can certainly get the job done against threat armour.  The thermal sight was (is) a tremendous piece of kit.  I was amazed at how much more we were picking up with it (infantry in tree lines etc).  Mobility was good, but of course protection was not so good.  We had excellent training in 2002/03 (RAMBLING BEAR, ROYAL FIST, RESOLUTE WARRIOR) and I would have gone on operations with confidence.  M1s would have been better but see my signature block.  Nightfighting against would have helped with the C2/LAV III team, but you don't always get to pick your time.  In a Cavalry role with a Coyote Sqn thrown in as well it would have been a good package.

Darn.  I did it again. 

 

[a_majoor]

We seem to have wandered off a bit here, I thought the original thought was: "Hey, we need vast numbers of tanks to support close assaults in complex terrain". Tanks are just great, but also due to expense etc. are not easily available in the numbers we would like. Tanks do have some disadvantages in complex terrain, since the size makes it difficult to move around, and the long gun barrel limits traverse, and short sight lines negate the advantage of a complex FCS. Matt Fisher's proposed mods to the Leopard C-1/C-2 were a way of kicking the thought process into gear, I am not stuck on that particular design, although it has lots of advantages from a Canadian perspective.

WRT hulls and wear and tear issues, this should not be considered a show stopper. Lots of armies rebuild/upgrade old tanks. If you look at Jane's, there are lots of rebuilds and rebuild "kits" for armies using T-55s, and Israel has made this sort of thing an art form. M-60's have been rebuilt to the Magach 7 configuration with vastly upgraded armour, drive trains etc., and the Centurion still soldiers on as the basis for all kinds of engineering vehicles in Israeli service, and the T-55 became the basis for the Ti-67 gun tank and the Achzarit HAPC. We have the Leopard hulls still, and can get more if we really want to, or we can move to a different platform.

An urban support vehicle can be built from a clean sheet of paper design, but as a practical matter, we want something quick and cheap. We want something well protected, has lots of short range hitting power and mobility. A tank hull provides 3/4 of what we want, and a turret with a breach loading mortar and basic fire control system provides the rest.

 

[George Wallace]

2B

I told you.

I believe the C2 turrets arrived on hulls.  Whether or not we used some of these hulls to replace worn out hulls, such as those from C Sqn RCD/A Sqn 8 CH in Gagetown that had hulls so worn in the mid '80s that you could see daylight through them or poke a broom handle through them, is another question.  2B will acknowledge that there were German hulls next to the C1 Turrets, awaiting their day out on the Ranges, being stored by the Airfield in Petawawa.  It would have made sense to have swapped low milage hulls for heavy milage hulls at that time.  The solution may have only been the Reduction in the Fleet and the creation of the  'Gate Guards'.

As for the Wiper argument, we always had wipers and when I was a driver, I had never heard anything saying that we were the only ones to have them.  That was a long time ago, and it only made sense to have wipers, no matter how much they really sucked in operation.  It sure beat having to pop you hatch all the time to wipe the episcopes off.......although there were times that you still had to, especially in Gagetown........and that usually involved getting out a shovel or two.   ;D

 

[George Wallace]

Andrew

The M 60 A2 was such a tank.  It saw limited production and landed up becoming more or less an Engineer Tank.  Its' Main Gun was the 152 mm gun/launcher. 

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Those hulls and turrets at the abandoned airfield were a depressing sight.

As a young troop leader attending a PD session in 1999 we received a briefing about the C2 program and the intentions WRT hulls and powerpacks.  What the actual outcome was I cannnot confirm and I was away from the Regt when the swap occured.  I was intimately familiar with the maintenance status of twenty-odd Leopards for their last year at the Regiment, but I was more concerned with the "here and now" of their maintenance status and I never thought to check on the history of the hull's in question.  New ORLs had all been started as the "new" tanks arrived at the Regiment.

The RCD tanks were all left in Wainwright, and I believe that some were pulled out of service due to hull thickness. 

Going back to the concept of a fire support tank, I doubt that we'd see something quick and cheap.  All AFVs are expensive now, especially if we want optics, FCS and protection against RPGs etc.  If we are indeed intending on fighting battles in urban or complex terrain then we might as well get MBTs.  We don't necessarily need a lot of them. 

 

[Armymatters]

I was told the issue with the German hulls that came with our turrets was the fact that the entire lot we got from the Germans had at least 3 different torsion bars, and various other differences that made any attempt to make them common expensive. And the Leopard 1A5 was basicially a Leopard 1A1 series tank, and that series had a total of 3 different subtypes, under the Leopard 1A1A1, 1A1A2, and 1A1A3 subtypes, on top of the basic Leopard 1A1. Differences range from track differences to armor thickness to even suspension differences.

 

[Bzzliteyr]

I spoke with Lance today.. and he says he will be coming in to help clear up the matter.  We bought 114 LEOPARD COMPLETE he told me.  That includes hulls, the issue was the fact (as Armymatters suggested) that the hulls were of many different types A1, A3, etc... We ended up using 3 hulls to fix some of our thin ones and the rest were stripped for parts.  He will elaborate more I am sure.

I can't remember where I read it, but I am sure it is just Us and maybe Denmark that have the wipers.

 

[Slim]

Well, Lance is the guy who would know...