- Joined
- Mar 1, 2020
I have spoken with Mike Sparks before, and I do 3D models of futuristic armored vehicles. One of the last ones I did was of a special turret for the BAE Black Knight UGV chassis that turned it into an assault gun with an auto-loading, soft-recoil version of the Royal Ordnance L9/M135 165mm demolition gun found on the M728 CEV, basically turning the petite UGV into a bunker-remover. Now, why slap a turret like that on a UGV? Simple. The Army lacks an assault gun. The M728 CEV is not an assault gun. It’s a vehicle for combat engineers. It’s slow and poorly protected, due to the aging Patton tank chassis.
The gun system could be used as the basis of an assault gun, with its nice 165mm HESH shells, but what do you put it on? An unmanned ground vehicle. Why? Because. If it takes a bad hit, the secondary explosion will be tremendous. If it’s unmanned, you can keep it away from your own guys, and it doesn’t really matter if it gets blown up.
So, anyway, this is the very basic 3D model I made of it.
The chassis and turret are based on a real prototype, the Black Knight UGV, and are designed to have parts commonality with it:
Why did I come up with an assault gun based on a UGV prototype that never went anywhere? Well, that's simple. I've analyzed dozens and dozens of videos from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I've noticed that most firefights follow a very common pattern:
- There's some fucker over there who's shooting at us! Let's suppress his position for the next half an hour to an hour with all the 5.56x45mm ammo we have!
- He's in an adobe/mud brick structure, our rounds can't get through it! He's hiding under the windowsill!
- Durr, I know! Call in the F-16!
- JDAM turns entire building into plume of rubble.
- Hooting and hollering and much celebration.
I had an epiphany when I saw the conflict in Syria, and the use of "Hell Cannon" spigot mortars by the rebels. These were incredibly primitive weapons. Literally just flying propane cylinders packed with fucking explosives.
When I saw their effects on-target, it occurred to me, y'know, the Army doesn't have anything like this. They don't have a direct-fire weapon in common usage that can just take that bunker or building and reduce it to rubble immediately. Why waste ammunition for 30 fucking minutes? Why risk your troops by taking return fire that long? If you start taking fire from a building, and you have an assault gun in the formation, you can move it up, take out the structure, and there you go. It's done. The sniper is dead. Ambush over. There is no need for the flyboys to do anything.
Yes, yes, I know what you're going to say. "Oh noes, my ROE, my collateral damage! The guys on the ground can't see anything!"
Just send a drone up to make sure there are no civilians who will get caught up in the conflagration when the assault gun starts doing its work. Jesus. I have a fucking DJI Mavic Pro that could do the job of somewhat decent reconnaissance. There is no excuse. None.
To be honest, I think people give Mike Sparks way too much shit. People on SpaceBattles used to make fun of him all the time. The general thrust of his argument, that you can avoid mines if you’re willing to go cross-country with light tracks, is completely sound. The problem is that the M113 (actually not called a Gavin, that name is a Sparky invention) is an obsolete death trap no matter how much appliqué you slap on it. Better to go with a completely new light track chassis.
How come every time the Army or Marines try and come up with a light track these days, it turns into a bloated-ass medium track? Why does everything have to be over 30 tons? Look at the canceled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. They wanted an amphib. It was 36 fucking tons! The Russians are happy to put troops in tracks that are like 12 to 20 tons and have next to no armor. Just drive around the damn IEDs, goddammit. They can’t plant one in your path if you don’t stay on the road. IED makers aren’t clairvoyant nor do they have the ability to create real minefields. If roadside bombs are they best they can do, don’t use roads.
Jesus, Iraq is flat as fuck and full of dirt roads. There is basically no difference between driving on a road over there and going cross-country, provided the vehicle can handle a few bumps and you’re willing to pay for the fuel and maintenance.
The Army spent a fortune on wheeled MRAPs, and then, most of them ended up scrapped in the sandbox rather than being shipped home. Too expensive to ship back. Billions of dollars’ worth of the fuckers were shredded in Afghanistan.
Majority of US MRAPs To Be Scrapped or Stored | CSBA
CSBA is an independent, non-partisan policy research institute established to promote innovative thinking and debate about national security strategy and investment options.
csbaonline.org
A million dollars apiece and they ripped ‘em up and sold them for a few thousand dollars in steel, each.
Now that’s fucking retarded.
But you know what's even more retarded? It's the fact that the canceled Future Combat Systems program and its successor, the Brigade Combat Team modernization program, have yet to deliver a single fucking new vehicle to the Army other than the JLTV. They're currently stuck with goddamn Cold War era hardware (or ham-fisted upgrades thereof) while our international rivals are adopting brand-new tanks with unmanned turrets and fancy active protection systems.
The Army is looking to field the the M-1A2C, now. It's an Abrams with a Trophy and some additional armor slapped on the front of the turret. Big fucking deal. Doesn't change the fact that it's a 40-year-old chassis underneath.
Let me tell you what I'd do.
One unmanned track. Maybe the Black Knight chassis mentioned above.
Three different manned tracks. Light, Medium, and Heavy.
The Light would be a scout and light transport, akin to a BMP. It would be 10 to 20 tons and have a machine gun or GMG in a remote weapon station, and amphibious capability. There would be a version with an optional autocannon turret that would raise it to the 20 to 30 ton weight regime and give it some added firepower.
The Medium would be the Bradley replacement and would be somewhere in the area of 30 to 45 tons, and it would have equivalent firepower to a CV9040. It would have either a 35 or 40mm gun, because let's face it, the 25mm M242 Bushmaster has very limited penetration. This version would have many different turret variants, including a command and control version, and also, a version that mounts a turreted version of MGM-166 LOSAT missile. The LOSAT was originally intended to be used on a tracked, turreted platform, and not slapped on the roof of a fucking Humvee. There is no stopping a LOSAT. No APS can stop it. Shoot it down with a Trophy or Arena APS? Pointless. It has so much mass and so much momentum, there's no throwing it off-course before it slams into the target and reduces it to a cloud of debris. They tried shrinking it into the "CKEM" or Compact Kinetic Energy Missile, before canceling the program altogether. The LOSAT had some ridiculous impact energy like 40 fucking megajoules or something like that. It really was overkill. It was badass. It struck fear in the hearts of America's enemies. We need to bring it back.
The Heavy would feature an unmanned turret with a 140mm gun. Resurrect the Abrams "Thumper"/CATTB. Show those Ruskies who's boss. Everything drive-by-wire, maximum situational awareness. Augmented reality headsets for the crew, with pass-through capability so they can see the controls inside the tank. They'd be able to see "through" the hull of the vehicle with cameras mounted to the outside.
All three of the manned tracks would have the option of having BAE ADAPTIV thermal stealth tiles applied to the outside.
All three of the manned tracks would have APS of some type, like Trophy.
All three of the manned tracks would have a hybrid drivetrain that does away with the transmission entirely and uses a generator for a prime mover and drive motors to turn the sprockets. That way, you don't need a differential or cross-drive transmission of any kind, just individual motors on each sprocket, independently driven. Plenty of advantages. One of the main limiting factors in armored vehicle speed is gearing and wear and tear on the transmission. Electric motors do not have this problem. You have instant torque and huge acceleration right off the line, just like a Tesla. Also, if you have batteries, you can shut down the engine and run in a low-noise stealth mode without producing any hot exhaust plume. Another thing you can do with hybrids is give them a "sprint" capability. Let's say you had a prime mover with 1500 horsepower, but drive motors with 3000 peak horsepower. You can do that. You can use batteries as a buffer and temporarily draw far more juice than the generator can actually put out.
Picture an Abrams, but with twice the horsepower-per-ton off the line. Once it gets up to speed, the power draw tapers off automatically, bringing it back down below what the generator can manage. Now that is agility.
It's also important to note that not only has the tech to do a hybrid tank with acceptable performance existed for two fucking decades, some of the very first armored vehicles ever built were engine-electric. The Holt and the Saint-Chamond were both engine-electric. Both of them were failures. The tech is much, much better nowadays, obviously.
Now, remember that rifle concept I mentioned earlier, with the grid-finder built into the scope, and every infantryman operating as a forward observer? This ties into the vehicle upgrades. Every vehicle would have an encrypted digital radio link that forms a mesh network with every infantryman in the area, also passing contacts further up the chain. If some guy sees a baddie and marks their position, now, every goddamn track in the area knows exactly where that fucker is. The guys with the augmented-reality headsets in the tanks actually see a little red mark floating over the enemy contact's position, like this was Ghost Recon or some shit. All they need to do is lob a shell or two over there.
Situational awareness and avoiding tunnel vision is the most important part of the modern battlefield. Having a general sense of where the enemy is and where he might ambush you from is paramount. If every infantryman can act as a forward observer, and if they can mark contacts for a digital battlefield network as part of an overall C4ISR regime, then vehicle crews know how to avoid getting blindsided by rockets and ATGMs. Not only can they avoid enemy fire more easily, they can counter-attack more easily. It cuts both ways, and it all boils down to knowing exactly where the enemy is at all times, as quickly and precisely as possible.
France has the FELIN system, Russia has the Ratnik... where the fuck did Future Force Warrior go?
They're leaving us behind, goddammit. America can do better than this. We have the biggest fucking military budget in the world. Why do we keep canceling programs and leaving our troops with blue balls?
Do people think I'm that stupid? I knew they were gonna make a thread the moment they had my actual name, no matter what I did, or if I fucked off or not. I figured I may as well have fun with it.
