Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "Matsimus" channel.

  1. A light MBT like the Type 10 would also be much easier to transport by air. While the C-5 Galaxy can carry a single M1 Abrams, it would be able to carry 3 of the Type 10.
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  2.  CR BZ  Well they have the Draco now. An upgraded OTOMATIC on a Centauro chassis.
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  3. The Sgt. York seems like it was the worst of the DIVAD offerings, and it seems like there was a predetermined decision on the basis of lobbying that Ford's design would get chosen.
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  4. Plus it has to be physically larger, meaning it needs more space on the ship. Not only in terms of deck space, but also below-deck space for the motor and ammo storage. The Type 1130 11-barrel CIWS is already large, but the PLAN has been able to put it on their Type 052D destroyers and Type 054A frigates. A 20-barrel version I can't imagine fitting on anything smaller than the 13,000 ton Type 055 "destroyers".
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  5. BAE Hägglunds really should offer a CV90 with a 57mm Bofors AA gun.
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  6. The CV90105 also exists. I think the 105mm gun choice was a mistake, but even with that choice it's not a reason to exclude the CV90. Unfortunately, the CV90105 wasn't even in consideration, since for whatever reason BAE offered an upgraded M8 AGS instead. (Presumably they thought a design of American origin would have a better chance of winning even if it was a clearly worse vehicle than the CV90.) What's even more inexplicable is that the CV90 isn't one of the contenders of the XM30 MICV either. Instead it's between the Rheinmetall Lynx KF41 and GDLS Griffin III. I'd say the Griffin III is a shoe-in since the Lynx is a foreign design and the Griffin II just got adopted as the M10 Booker.
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  7.  @petros311  That's pretty much what McDonnell Douglas and the US Navy did with the F/A-18E Super Hornet. It's the same basic shape as the F/A-18 Hornet and has the same cockpit. That's about where the similarities end. The Navy was fully aware of this from the start, they point of the scam was to make Congress think it was a simple low-risk upgrade to an existing design when it was actually a whole new plane that's significantly larger and more expensive.
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  8. The problem was that the Stryker ended up not actually being deployable by C-130. It will barely fit into a C-130 and the C-130 can take off with it in the bay, but both of those statements are only true if you leave behind the add-on armor. And even if you do just operate without the slat armor and accept the vulnerability to RPGs and such, the fact that (in both height and weight) the Stryker is at the very limit of C-130 capacity means it's typically going to ride in a C-17 anyway.
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  9. The S-tank doesn't have a turret, it is a turret.
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  10. As for the gun, how about the OTO Melara 76mm Super Rapid? It's already shown to be workable on an SPAA platform (most recently the Draco). And it's already in the US Navy's inventory, which would probably help in selling the idea to Congress.
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  11.  @vemundr9263  Ford sold the Army on that by pointing out how great the F-16's radar is. Seeing as the Army hadn't operated its own fighters since World War II, none of the Army brass knew enough about aircraft radars to realize they have different requirements than ground-based radars.
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  12.  @Elenrai  Not only would simply buying the Gepard (or putting the Gepard turret on some American chassis if they preferred) have been a better option, so would just about any of the other competing designs that the XM427 "defeated" in the competition. The whole thing was rigged to get the worst option selected.
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  13. Now I want to see BAE Systems Hägglunds make a CV90 variant with the Bofors 57mm Mk 3, just to see how it stacks up to the Derivaciya.
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  14. The United States also should've gone with this instead of the M10 Booker (which like the Ajax is developed from the ASCOD). And for the XM30 to replace the Bradley. But for some reason it wasn't even in either competition.
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  15. It's all well and good that the M10 Booker's job isn't to fight tanks, but the issue with that thinking is that the enemy also gets a vote. Just because its job isn't to fight tanks doesn't mean it won't have to fight tanks. The 120mm gun is just a better choice. The most bizarre part about this competition isn't that the GDLS Griffin was the design chosen to be the M10, it's that the CV90120 (or CV90105, which also exists, given the insistence on a 105mm gun) wasn't even a competitor. BAE offered an upgraded version of the M8 AGS instead.
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  16. India wanted to learn how to design a modern tank. They gave themselves an object lesson in how not to do so.
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  17. M247 locks onto bathroom. EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!
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  18.  @richarddavies7127  Found On the Road Dead
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  19. The real question is, why isn't the US Army using it? This is what should've been chosen for the Mobile Protected Firepower and Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle programs, but inexplicably it wasn't even in either competition. And it can't be the usual "not invented here" factor, because the M10 Booker is derived from an Austrian design (the ASCOD), and the XM30 competitors are the German Lynx KF41 and the Griffin III (another ASCOD descendant). The clear best choice for the Army's not-a-light-tank and Bradley replacement programs simply wasn't even considered for either role.
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  20. I consider it a big mistake that a CV90105 wasn't chosen to be the M10 Booker. And that the CV90 Mk IV (preferably with the 50mm gun) isn't in contention for the XM30.
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  21.  @SkunkdMonk  The thing is, the options chosen instead were still of foreign origin. The M10 Booker is a modification of the Austrian ASCOD. Only the turret is American. It would've been better to mount that same turret on CV90 hull. Likewise, the XM30 competitors are another modified ASCOD, and the German KF41 Lynx.
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  22.  @derekhenschel3191  And then there's the Renault VBC-90, that was used by the Mobile Gendarmerie. Which leaves me wondering if French street gangs are more formidable than anybody would've expected, seeing as France has a police force with anti-tank capability.
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  23. The Soviets did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2A3_Kondensator_2P
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  24. Now do the XM800W. It was the loser of the competition for good reason, but that articulated chassis made it the more interesting of the two prototypes.
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  25.  @johndane9754  Seems to me that NATO as a whole ought to take another look at the OTOMATIC. With its much longer range than a 35mm or 40mm cannon, it seems really well-suited for countering the drone threat.
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  26. With regards to engagement range, that's why I don't understand how nobody ever bought OTOMATIC or DRACO to supplement the smaller autocannons. A OTO Melara Super Rapid on a tank or 8x8 armored car chassis can go anywhere you need SPAA, while having about double the effective range of the smaller guns and a much larger blast radius. You lose out on rate of fire and ammo capacity, but that's why you'd have it in a mix with a larger number of (probably about a 3 to 1 ratio) of 35mm Oerlikon or 40mm Bofors vehicles. For drone swarms, it could whittle down the numbers by detonating shells in the middle of the swarm 8km away, then the faster-firing guns start wiping out the remnants as they get closer. And in the counter-insurgency warfare that's so common now, they'd be equally valid for shooting down individual IED-carrying suicide drones or demolishing concrete structures to support infantry. And against helicopters, again the superior range would be beneficial. Most AA guns don't have reach anywhere near as long as a helicopter-launched ATGM (hence guns normally being secondary to missiles when it comes to taking down helicopters). An OTO Melara 76mm gun does.
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  27. The Gripen is the Eurofigher's smaller, better-looking cousin.
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  28. I don't understand why the Royal Navy doesn't field a tilt-rotor AEW aircraft. That would allow a bigger radar to be carried at higher altitude, while still not needing any catapult and arrestor gear.
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  29.  @thatontariofarmer  IIRC, the WW2 battleship HMS King George V was originally going to be named King George VI. It had long been common practice for one of the first capital ships of a monarch's reign to be named after him or her. But George VI preferred the ship be named after his father. And since that battleship remained in commission for the rest of his reign, it would've been confusing to have both HMS King George V and HMS King George VI. At any rate, it was announced in May that the 4th Dreadnought-class missile submarine will be HMS King George VI.
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  30. I said at the time the Challenger 3 was announced that Britain missed a good chance to get ahead of the game by adopting the 130mm.
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  31. Maybe the British Army will need to use crowdfunding for better equipment. Not as if Parliament is going to keep them funded.
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  32. Why all these "SEP" upgrade designations instead of just calling it M1A3 already? It seems to me that the difference between the baseline M1A2 and M1A2 SEP V4 is larger than the difference between M1A1 and M1A2.
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  33. I'm hoping that by 2040 when the next British Army tank comes, it won't be called Challenger 4. There's no reason every British MBT from 1983 onward needs to be named "Challenger". There are other names that begin with "C", after all.
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  34. I remain amazed by how Saab managed to pack so much capability into a fighter that's so much lighter than its competitors. And in the process making a fighter with lower operating costs than those competitors.
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  35.  @Sedna063  Well yeah, you can't get something for nothing. But the Gripen is ideal for nations with a smaller budget relative to how many fighters they need.
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  36. All I want to say about the Arjun is, for Krishna's sake, why isn't the Indian Army replacing that outdated 120mm rifle with the same 2A46 125mm smoothbore as used on their own T-90S Bhishma fleet? That would both simplify logistics and give them an APFSDS round that's actually good.
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  37. The thing is, the F11F-1F Super Tiger was comparable to the F-104 in straight-line performance, while also being more maneuverable and more forgiving to fly. It was literally the "I'm you, but better" meme to the F-104.
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  38.  @termitreter6545  Given the limited numbers, I'm wondering if it would've been better to go with the Rheinmetall 130mm gun. Hell, given the downsizing in terms of personnel the British Army is going through, the fact that the 130mm would require an autoloader is a bonus. Would allow them to keep up their tank numbers even when the number of men available to operate them is reduced.
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  39.  @UgandanAirForce  Something along those lines would also be well-suited for the USMC. The main difference I'd want compared to the ZTQ-15 is a 120mm rather than 105mm gun. We know that's achievable on a sub-40 ton platform.
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  40. Apparently so.
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  41.  @TheTrueAdept  Even if all the kinks were worked out, there were some more fundamental problems with the M247. One of those innate flaws was imposed by the Army's own requirement for reusing the M48 Patton hull. That resulted in a vehicle that's too slow to keep up with the M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley that it was supposed to protect from air attack. If the Army wanted to reduce costs by reusing an existing chassis instead of building something from scratch, they should've looking into buying old Leopard 1 hulls from Germany since the Leopard 2 was entering service at the same time as the DIVAD competition was happening. The Leopard 1 hull would still be slower than the Abrams (though only by 5 mph on roads), but slightly faster than the Bradley. And working the kinks out of the M247 would've likely required replacing the tracking radar entirely. The modified AN/APG-66 that Ford used was a poor choice, because it's designed to operate looking down from the sky rather than looking up from the ground.
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  42.  @bryanmartinez6600  There's a reason that the KV-2 had two loaders.
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  43. The biggest reason we don't have battleships anymore is that they're so manpower-intensive. One Iowa-class battleship required about 1800 men to operate. That's equivalent to the crew of six Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. Each of those destroyers packs 96 missiles in their VLS tubes, compared to 32 Tomahawks that an Iowa could carry after their refit. And given modern radar, aircraft, and missiles, it's not likely that warships will come within gun range of each other. Granted, that's with the WW2-built battleships. There's only so far you can go in refitting an old ship, . A new-built battleship could be much more automated. But the thing is, a 50,000 ton battleship is going to have a much higher per-unit cost than a 10,000 ton destroyer. And those destroyers already cost around $2 billion apiece. Even if the total amount spent would be the same (due to cancelling a few DDGs to built the BBs), that kind of per-unit cost is probably going to be rejected by Congress. And there's also the factor of a larger ship being a bigger target and being harder to replace if it's sunk. If a Burke-class DDG gets sunk, that's a significant amount of firepower that's lost, but it's only one of 68 ships of the class so far, with more being built every year. If battleships were built, there'd be only a handful of them and any that gets lost would take many years to build a replacement for. Granted, a battleship would be individually harder to sink than a destroyer, but there's no such thing as an unsinkable ship.
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  44. Max Jones  That's true, but like I said that would have a much higher initial purchase price. And Congress would likely balk at that, even if the overall naval budget was the same. Look at what happened with the Zumwalt-class destroyers. When the per-unit cost ballooned to more than double that of an Arleigh Burke, Congress forced the cancellation of all but the first 3 ships. (But then, given how poorly the Zumwalts have turned out, with the 155mm guns they were built around now being nonfunctional, maybe the Navy dodged a bullet by not being allowed to make 29 more of them like they wanted.)
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  45. With all those 125mm smoothbores already in service, I have to wonder why your army went with a 120mm rifle on the Arjun. That gun with its 2-piece ammunition simply can't fire long-rod APFSDS and thus its APFSDS will never be as good as what the T-90s can use. And the PCB round should make HESH redundant. So just make a 125mm version of that shell and re-gun the Arjun with the same 2A46M-5 mounted on the T-90S Bhishma.
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  46. Come on, China. You already literally went up to 11 with the Type 1130 on Liaoning and Shandong. A 20-barrel Gatling is just ridiculous.
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  47.  @KaptenN  In the late 1950s, Britain did some testing on the concept of using a fuel tank as part of the "armor" for the FV4401 (an airborne tank destroyer project that ended up being cancelled). Apparently, the testing showed that in terms of stopping a projectile, 3 inches of diesel is equivalent to 1 inch of RHA steel plate.
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  48. I'd always thought that the lack of CATOBAR was a mistake in limiting the ship's flexibility. But whether that actually turns out to be limiting depends on how aircraft development goes in the future. It could well end up that you'll have no reason to even want non-STOVL aircraft, if the technology advances to the point that there's no actual downside compared to conventional jets. I still think you guys ought to invest in a tilt-rotor AEW aircraft, since an AEW helicopter can only fly so high and thus can't see nearly as far, though.
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  49. I still think it's just wrong to not have an aircraft carrier named Ark Royal. Just like the US Navy needs to always have an Enterprise.
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  50. @ClickNSpam The Eurofighter's first flight came 7 and a half years after the Gripen's.
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