Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Merkava: The perfect Tank?" video.

@sergarlantyrell7847 It is however almost useless at offensive employment It could lay aim on a target as fast as any other medium tank of that time. So it was not really that handicapped of not having a turret. Michael Wittman drove his Tiger tank like he drove his StuGIIII - he used his tracks to quickly lay the gun on his target, because it took time for a turret to rotate. So World war II tanks would usually turn their entire tank around rather than only using their turret to get their guns on target. So having a turretless tank was therefore not as much a disadvantage as one first may think. StugIII also impressed the Swedish military after the war when it did some testing on that vehicle and saw what a superior traverse speed it had compared to almost every other tank of its day. The armor protection on the S-tank is not that impressive. But the protection is still good compared to other tanks of its day. Leopard1 and AMX30 were glass guns at least just as much as the S-tank, but would you claim that those tanks have no offensive potential because they easily can be destroyed? I think you would say "no". So then my question becomes, why don't you then judge the S-tank with the same standard? The tank do after all got just as much armor protection. And the armor is better angled. And the silhouette is much lower, so it is a target much harder to spot and to hit. Studies from World war 2 have shown that more than half of all hits tanks took were taken in the turret, while very few hits were scored on the hull. So if you had a tank without a turret, you also took away the easiest place for the enemy to hit. Furthermore could the S-tank be driven by only 1 crew member. And that do I think proves that this tank got more flexibility than the average tank and not less. It was a fast tank and it could be driven backwards just as fast as forward. It did of course have its limitations, but so do also every other tanks have. Personally I would rather sit in a S-tank than in a Leopard1, AMX30, M60 or T-55 if the Cold war had turned into a new world war.
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@erikakurosaka3734 Your ignorance is mind-blowing. Sweden have made world class weapon system in area after area: submarines, AA guns, tanks, IFVs, SPGs, fighter jets, motorcycles, anti tank weapons, combat boats... you name it. But how come that Sweden have not had an export success in proportion to the quality of their products? -The answer is that Sweden is not a Nato member. Nato countries prefer to buy products from other Nato countries. There do you have the reason why F16 have been sold to so many countries in Europe, despite that plane was not superior to non-Nato aircraft's like Viggen or French Mirage F1E (France was not a Nato member back then). Belgium would have preferred to buy the Mirage because of its cultural ties to France and because it was a better plane than F16, and they also preferred Viggen over F16. Denmark's favorite choice was to buy the Viggen, but they ended up buying F-16 instead. So countries prefer to buy inferior products to support other Nato members arms industries. USA have also actively worked to sabotage arms sales for other countries with unfair play. Like for example when India was interested in buying Viggen from Sweden, and the Americans responded with forbidding the sale of components for the engine in order to block this arms deal from taking place. For producing weapons in such a small number (and thereby with high unit costs, since there are no export market that can help reduce the cost of production) I would say that Sweden's arms industry is the most impressive in the world. It have punched above its own weight in area after area. Gripen, Gotlands class submarines, archer artillery, Combat vehicle 90 are all playing in the top of the list of the league of the best weapons systems in the world.
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There are a few exceptions to this rule. There can be a few weapons that are objectively best. But often do they quickly get copied by other nations so they no longer seem unique. Or history passes.. and their best days are gone.
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Having the engine at the front could make it easier for the enemy to see the heat signature of your tank as you show your warm engine at the front as you move towards him. I also think it would be less fun to repair a tank in the frontline if you had to do it at the front side of the tank and not the back. I also think that adding the engine at the front will make the tank very heavy at the forward parts of the tank. And a front heavy tank could tip forwards and somersault and wreck both the tank and the crew if you make it too unbalanced and only put all weight at the front. And that means that you have to put more weight at the rear of the tank to counter-weight the heavy engine at the front. So you will have to put your turret in the rear for example. But is this an optimal layout? I don't know. There are both advantages and disadvantages of having the turret in the rear of a tank, just as there are pros and cons of putting the turret at the front at the tank or in the middle. Your tank does not have to be that long when you point your gun forward with a tank with the turret at the rear. rotating
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I think the Chieftain tanks fate is sad. Judging by the looks and the size of its gun, it could very well have been a modern MBT just as M1 Abrams, Leopard 2 and Challanger2. But the problem with this tank was its bad engine. With a good engine and some modern armour added onto it it could still be a pretty decent TD with todays standards
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https://youtu.be/w1fUuTvsuXA?t=1639
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Sweden was a world leader in civilian nuclear power during 1960s. Sweden also had its own nuclear bomb program the 1950s and 1960s. So if Russia would have attacked, then Russia would have been nuked as well. USA did not like the development it saw in Sweden and prefer to see the country not developing any nukes. So it therefore offered Sweden a guarantee of nuclear retaliation against any country that would use nukes against it. And in exchange did Sweden drop its plans to get its own nuclear bombs.
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The Russian tree is based on earlier practical experience with tank designs that worked in the past: T34→T44→T55→T62→T64→t72→T80→T90 The Nato countries are not so similiar. But because of standardization within Nato have almost all Nato tanks used the British L7 105mm gun (Centurion, AMX30, Leopard1, M60, M1 Ambrams etc) and later on have the 120mm rheinmetall gun become standard (used on for example Leopard2, M1 Abrams) and also other tanks use120mm guns such as Leclerc, Challanger 2, Merkava, C1 Ariete. Priorities have been different for the many armies. British Chieftain was a slow tank with good armor and firepower. French AMX30 and German Leopard had bad armor protection, but their speed and firepower was excellent. And M50 Ontos, Merkava and Stridsvagn-103 could be seen as very odd birds, with very innovative designs. The last generation of MBTs are however much similar in many ways Merkava, M1 Abrams, Leopard2, Leclerk, Ariete, Challanger 2 do look much similar and all have 120mm guns. But there are of course also many differences. Abrams is a heavy tank while Challanger2 is much more lighter. Abrams use uranium ammunition, while German Leopard 2 doesn't and therefore have to get a new gun to be able to kill the newest Russian tanks without using uranium ammunition. Also Merkava could be upgraded and get a bigger gun. But today that is not so important. Using a 15cm gun to kill and old T-72 tank of Israels neighbors would be overkill. Why use a big an expensive shot to kill a cheap garbage tank if you can easily kill it with small shots instead? So it is better to stick with the old 120mm ammunition that is easier and faster to reload, and you can also carry more rounds of ammunition. When Israels neigbours get better tanks, then it can become time to reconsider doing an expensive upgrade of the gun and armor for Merkava. But today that is not so urgent. And Leclerk is a tank that will not be upgunned, because it can't be. Its turret ring is too small to carry a bigger gun, and that means that Leclerk will be unable to penetrate the armor of Russia's new Armata tank. Challanger 2 is a tank with much potential left. But the British government does not want to spend more money on that tank, and have even thought about buying Leopard2 tanks instead. And the Italians have much upgrades to do before their C1 Ariete can play in the same league as the other MBTs. That will of course cost money for the country with economic problems. As it is today however do this tank need better frontal armor, since even a world war 2 T34/85 tank would be able to penetrate the lower front plate. And the precision of the gun is under-performing.
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Hiroshima and Chernobyl are very different places. The latter got a hundred times more radiation and will be uninhabitable for 800 years, while Hiroshima got away with much less radioactivity. They got a big explosion and that was that. This is the reason why I prefer military nuclear energy over civilian.
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@Kieselmeister "becoming carbon neutral" As if "carbon neutral" matters when nuclear reactors contributes massively to global warming through other ways - only the tiny amount of Swedish nuclear plants creates over 200 Terawatts of waste heat, which is more than the amount of energy we spent to heat every home in cold Sweden for 1 year. So when you release all that waste heat into the ocean you contribute massively to global warming. And this heat also stimulates the growth of algae - and all algae growth sucks up all oxygen from the water so that all fish dies from lack of oxygen. "No other reactor design before or since has ever been as dangerous" According to IAEA are Swedish nuclear reactors even more unreliable than those 4 nuclear plants of Chernobyl type that are stationed outside St. Petersburg. On an average year are our old plants closed down more days for repairs than theirs. And there have also been incidents that were close to becoming nuclear disasters, but were stopped in the last moment. So therefore are they not much talked about in the news. "the only reason fukushima happened" Fukushima reactors are not safe in my opinion. Almost all (if not all) nuclear reactors in the world use an old analog technology instead of digital ones. In my opinion is that retarded. I have done some PLC programming myself, and I do not agree with the idea that analog is superior to digital. I would say it is the other way around. "The technology to make reactors which fail "safe" instead of failing "deadly" has existed for over 40 years" Nuclear energy have existed for so long, and still people market it as something "new" and "high tech" when it in fact is an old technology invented by a Swedish guy a hundred years ago. Meanwhile have seen disaster after disaster happen Sellafield, Harrisburg, Chernobyl, Tokaimura, Fukushima. And every time nuclear fanboys says its only "a one time event" "so unlikely that it would never happen". And yet they keep on happening. And people blame earth quakes, Communism, greedy Japanese companies and all kinds of things... except nuclear power itself. A dangerous energy source we have not yet learned to master, and yet we put the survival of the entire planet in danger. No one in the nuclear lobby gives an answer how we can safely store nuclear fuel safely for hundreds of thousands of years. Instead I usually only get a bullsh*t answer: "technology will solve this". But what if technology doesn't solve every problem in the world? What is plan B? If I was optimistic about technology solving every human problem, then I would rather drive my car on lingonberry juice than nuclear energy. "and are still operating dangerous 50 year old reactors instead of replacing them" And still there is no plan what to do with all the toxic radioactive plutonium, uranium, cesium. 75 years have passed since Hiroshima was bombed, and this problem have not been solved yet. Well I have lost my patience with the nuclear lobby. This problem should be fixed before more money is spent on nuclear power. There was enough nuclear waste located at Chernobyl to kill all life in Europe - and there was a high chance that a second nuclear explosion nearly did just that. In Fukushima there was even more spent fuel stored - and fuel which were even more dangerous than the one stored at Chernobyl. And if that fuel leaks out into the environment, it is enough to kill all life on this planet. We are with other words playing Russian roulette with all life on this planet. What happens the next time a disaster happen? Maybe we aren't that lucky. And once all nuclear waste leaks out there is no way you could get the genie back into the bottle. It is GAME OVER for the planet. And it doesn't matter if it happens because the Japanese were foolish to build nuclear plants in a land prone to earthquakes, or it happened because of an ISIS terrorist attack, or a meteorite falling down from the sky and blowing a hole into the metal container at Fukushima containing all spent fuel. We will all die. "But the USA's schizophrenic environmental lobby has demanded that all spent nuclear fuel be buried in the desert, while also refusing to allow the waste to be transported TO that desert because it would have to go past their houses, so it just sits forever in cans in swimming pools at the reactor sites." I think the world should come together and solve this problem once and for all. We should pump in money into USA so we can finish this storage facility in Arizona. And the "not in my backyard" club and their hypocritical governor should be thrown under the bus.
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Think it is fair to say that the S-tank was the best tank in the world when it entered service. But sadly would this revolutionary tank not remain so for long. New possibilities had opened itself up with new technologies, so the old classic turreted tank design could survive thanks to vertical stabilizers, chobham armor and such.
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Otto Carius described the umbrella hatch as one of the greatest improvements made to the late Tiger tank design over the earlier models where you opened it up like an ordinary door. And the problem with that early design was that your heavy steel "door" could suddenly fall down on your head and give a gigantic pain. This other new type of hatch did allow you to view the battlefield without any risk of head pains from a downfalling lid.
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I think that steel foam will become popular. It weight half as much as todays armor and is twice as strong. 15cm guns will be needed to kill the most well protected tanks in the world - such as the Armata. And guns with this high calibre is not suitable for manual loading. So autoloaders will take over and become the new norm in tank design. SAAB Barracuda Advanced Camouflage Systems will become popular too cool off the tank inside and increase the protection by stealth - the tank gets hidden for the eye and termal sensors.
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