Military Equipment Sperging Thread - The Tiger II is a better tank than the M1 Abrams edition

[Curzon Dax-sama]

What's more kino, infantry or armor?

Yes.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

The first time that this was shown to be a remarkable tool was in the 2020 Azeri-Armenian war where the Azerbaijani forces used extensive amount of drones to spot for artillery and the result was that the army that was still stuck in the early 2000's ended up getting absolutely smacked, undoing the gains the Armenians had made in the early 90's. This also is one of the major reasons why nobody has been able to much of a dent in the Russo-Ukrainian front-lines because any major concentration of armored forces inevitably becomes spotted and then given maximum priority for all indirect available. Infantry at least can dig foxholes to avoid the worst shrapnel, vehicles need actual bunkers.

Vehicles under artillery fire move and try to avoid a direct hit.

20+ meters of separation from a 152/155m artillery shell to a modern tank/IFV/APC is survivable. Sometimes closer depending on other factors.

When I say drone Im not specifically talking about pizza boxed sized ones with rpgs jurry rigged to them. Im talking about Predator/Reaper sized drones.

In a non retarded world a small craft capable of carrying 1000-2000 pound payload would be trivial to mass produced.

Have you ever seen an tube artillery unit in action? They are not agile. Counter battery fire is a massive threat to tube arty, especially tubes that arent self propelled. And they have a long logistics trail behind to support those 7-10 dudes per gun and the two trucks minimum to haul that gun and ammo.

In GWOT where you could park and forget a gun, that wasnt a problem. Its gonna be a problem against a near peer in a total war scenario.

Russian and Ukrainians use this magical trick of making a few little bunkers near static artillery and... Getting in them after they fire 1-3 shells. They only bring 1-3 shells out from there mini ammo dumps too so there isn't anything explosive near the gun once they've fired everything.

Finding one gun in a 1 sq kilometer forest belt that under a camo tarp / natural camouflage isn't easy unless a drone sees it exactly as it's firing or you see it getting parked.

How do drones not? When you're hammering a infantry formation with a plane, you want as many bombs as possible. A F-16 can carry 12 500 pound mk 82 bombs. A MQ-9 Reaper, this:
View attachment 6545929
Can only carry two 500 pound bombs, laser guided usually. That is only useful for point targets, not wiping out formations and the like.

If you want to go deeper, the US Army's Grey Eagle can only carry 4 Hellfire missiles, which are in the 100 pound weight class:
View attachment 6545938
It cannot carry bombs. It is only useful against point targets.

Now take this M109A7 howitzer
View attachment 6545941
It can keep shelling for hours with HE, including precision munitions like EXCALIBUR, anti armor like BONUS, and regular HE. All while sitting 30 km away from the action. It shoots off some rounds, then scoots away, rinse, repeat

YEP. Artillery units in Ukraine can shoot and move in under 120 seconds these days with 90 seconds or less being the goal.

Also, towed tube artillery is retardedly cheap and when the barrel wears out after THOUSANDS of rounds you just.... Put a new one in the carriage.

SPHs on truck chassis aren't that much more expensive and if you are smart and use a pre-existing tank or IFV/APC hell for SPH artillery it's not insanely expensive either.

The ONLY thing putting more HE on a target faster than tube artillery is rocket artillery and it's reload times are bad

Because more than half their weight is engine and fuel. They are made to loiter and drop whatever they can carry. Any extra weight drags their range significantly and after they drop they payload they have to go for the long flight back to base

That's any aircraft carrying a useful load any distance.

Your magical one shot drone carrying even something the size of a basic bitch RPG-7 HEAT warhead is already $1-$3k if you want double digit minutes flight times and ranges exceeding 1 kilometer.

Now you've made an RPG-7 cost thousands of dollars.

Oh what about jamming? Broad spectrum jamming exists.

What about troops with automatic rifles and shotguns.... Shooting it down as it buzzes around a few dozen meters above the ground looking for a target?

Or it flies into a tree and gets stuck.... Whoops we've just wasted a shot, let's throw another few thousand dollar FLYING grenade or RPG-7 warhead and see what happens.

Then your video signal is tracked back to the house you're operating out of an a howitzer 10+ kilometers away fires a laser guided shell into it guided in by a drone flying at 10,000 feet you never knew was up there...

WHOOPS

 

[Autistic Gunspergings]

What's more kino, infantry or armor?

Infantry AND armor.

 

[Hillary Clinton's Ass]

What's more kino, infantry or armor?

Combined arms.

 

[Blue Flying Leaf]

Finding one gun in a 1 sq kilometer forest belt that under a camo tarp / natural camouflage isn't easy unless a drone sees it exactly as it's firing or you see it getting parked.

Counter battery radars are a real thing and you can get enemy return fire before your shell even lands, auto aimed of course.

YEP. Artillery units in Ukraine can shoot and move in under 120 seconds these days with 90 seconds or less being the goal.

Useless. Artillery relies on correcting their shots and a significant volume of fire to reach objective.
The rest, I'm not even gonna bother. RPG's are around 100 per pop and you can reuse a drone, that's the whole objective. Unless you want to go "for mother russia" with an RPG 7 vs ERA tank, but that's just your personal suicide mission.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Artillery relies on correcting their shots and a significant volume of fire to reach objective.

Modern ballistic computers and postion finding allow the first shot of artillery to be for effect.

 

[Blue Flying Leaf]

Modern ballistic computers and position finding allow the first shot of artillery to be for effect.

It's actually the second shot since first just seats gun into ground. Accuracy is still off and you compensate on the go. It gets you close enough on near ranges, which is enough for most tasks since you don't have only one gun firing.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

What's more kino, infantry or armor?

Infantry

 

[JesusChristDenton]

I don't know if it's because I played too much Armored Patrol on Roblox when I was younger, but I just love this silly little guy:

Unfortunately it doesn't have a 105mm cannon and a 25mm autocannon IRL, just the 25mm.

 

[WelperHelper99]

YEP. Artillery units in Ukraine can shoot and move in under 120 seconds these days with 90 seconds or less being the goal.

Also, towed tube artillery is retardedly cheap and when the barrel wears out after THOUSANDS of rounds you just.... Put a new one in the carriage.

SPHs on truck chassis aren't that much more expensive and if you are smart and use a pre-existing tank or IFV/APC hell for SPH artillery it's not insanely expensive either.

The ONLY thing putting more HE on a target faster than tube artillery is rocket artillery and it's reload times are bad

Late reply, I know. Everything you said is correct. Tube artillery is cheap to shoot, fires fast, easy to maintain, and there is even DIRECT FIRE if a tank or infantry gets too close.

And yes if a tank takes a 100 pound 155mm round to the face, even if it doesn't pen, things are going to HURT. The crew in the vehicle is probably fucking dead or incapacitated to such a degree they can't fight, tracks are gone, gun on the tank is fucked, optics shattered, etc.
----
For the thread tax, Probably one of my favorite SPG's has to go to the Krab:

A unholy fusion of a South Korean K9 chassis, British turret, French based 52 cal gun, and Polish fire control. I find it's Frankenstein like creation the neatest part of it. 30km with base bleed, 40km with Excalibur rounds.

In general I find the Polish military interesting. It's a European military that gives a shit. Which is amazing in of itself. They're buying Abrams, K2 black panthers, upgrading their Leopard 2s, etc. Lets not even get started on how they ordered 96 Apache helicopters, making them the 2nd biggest operator in the world. Even their small arms are interesting. Navy is cool too. Small bit specialized, specifically on landing craft that double as mine layers, the Lublin class, these:

Poland is just neat in my opinion with its military.

 

[TiggerNits]

I had dinner with a retired Soviet, then Israeli pilot who my office had flown down to subcontract on a proposal for us. He has about 80 hours in the Yak38, so he and I talked VTOL all evening while wives and coworkers left us at the bar to make hand airplanes.

According to him, the 38 was easily the most shitty aircraft the Russians ever built. Can't sustain a 3.5g turn with anything on the pylons or more than a third of a tank of gas without a loss of control stall at about 135 degrees. Never had a successful atoll launch in training. Anything over 5Gs in the vertical would bend the wing and it wasn't a sure thing that it would be able to flex back, so all rocket attacks had to be completed on the first pass or you were shooting all over the place. The average 38 pilot on a sea tour would come back from 4 months with less than a dozen hours flown because sea air destroyed turbines so fast that they would be rusting at the blades and compressors after a handful of weeks. And the spare turbines they carried were often factory rejects that the ships crew were supposed to attempt to rebuild enroute with parts from the active aircraft.

Apparently the only thing it was good at was landing vertically.

The guys who flew them would look 8x the hours on handful of MiG21s the squadrons would use on land to train for the 38, and the ones who did really well in the 21s would also get ear marked to go train Polish and Czech attack squadrons

 

[The Grognard]

I assume they only wanted the Yak-38 more as a propaganda piece and to say "Look, we have jump jets from carriers too!" to their western counterparts.

Edit: I actually went looking at this on the internet and found this picture of the Soviet admiral in chief at the time that was amusing enough to share here.

 

[The Foxtrot]

I had dinner with a retired Soviet, then Israeli pilot who my office had flown down to subcontract on a proposal for us. He has about 80 hours in the Yak38, so he and I talked VTOL all evening while wives and coworkers left us at the bar to make hand airplanes.

According to him, the 38 was easily the most shitty aircraft the Russians ever built. Can't sustain a 3.5g turn with anything on the pylons or more than a third of a tank of gas without a loss of control stall at about 135 degrees. Never had a successful atoll launch in training. Anything over 5Gs in the vertical would bend the wing and it wasn't a sure thing that it would be able to flex back, so all rocket attacks had to be completed on the first pass or you were shooting all over the place. The average 38 pilot on a sea tour would come back from 4 months with less than a dozen hours flown because sea air destroyed turbines so fast that they would be rusting at the blades and compressors after a handful of weeks. And the spare turbines they carried were often factory rejects that the ships crew were supposed to attempt to rebuild enroute with parts from the active aircraft.

Apparently the only thing it was good at was landing vertically.

The guys who flew them would look 8x the hours on handful of MiG21s the squadrons would use on land to train for the 38, and the ones who did really well in the 21s would also get ear marked to go train Polish and Czech attack squadrons

This was very informative, and...it matches up with a lot of other shit I've heard about the general state of the Soviet military.

I assume they only wanted the Yak-38 more as a propaganda piece and to say "Look, we have jump jets from carriers too!" to their western counterparts.

The Kiev-class "Heavy Aircraft Cruisers" were almost definitely an answer to the Western concept of the "Landing Platform - Helicopter".

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

It's a European military that gives a shit. Which is amazing in of itself. They're buying Abrams, K2 black panthers, upgrading their Leopard 2s, etc. Lets not even get started on how they ordered 96 Apache helicopters, making them the 2nd biggest operator in the world

That Apache order is almost certainly getting cut when the bills come due.

I'd guess they'll end up with ~48 or so.

They're also fed up with German idiocy around their Leopard 2PL upgrade program so they'll probably be moving the Leopards into the reserves national guard and the main tanks will be the K2PL and the M1A2s.

Poland's biggest "must haves " are hundreds more SPHs (K9s), more modern tanks, and an air force update (F-35, F/A-50) and a SHITLOAD of rocket artillery systems

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

Useless. Artillery relies on correcting their shots and a significant volume of fire to reach objective.
The rest, I'm not even gonna bother. RPG's are around 100 per pop and you can reuse a drone, that's the whole objective. Unless you want to go "for mother russia" with an RPG 7 vs ERA tank, but that's just your personal suicide mission

Oh so now the drone launches RPG warheads, now you've made it even heavier and even more expensive.

You're getting close to a Byraktar 2 class drones which costs millions of dollars.

Either it holds a RPG tube under it and gets one shot or it carries two tubes and gets... Two shots.

Sounds like an absolute winner and a cinch to aim and use. Why didn't ANYONE ELSE THINK OF THIS?!??!?

Thankfully, jamming, ERA and APS don't exist. Or anything counter drone.

The majority of drones used in Ukraine weight less than 5 kg and an even greater % weight less than 20kg and they still carry hand grenades or 40mm grenades or, at max, a SINGLE RPG-7 class warhead.

It's actually the second shot since first just seats gun into ground. Accuracy is still off and you compensate on the go. It gets you close enough on near ranges, which is enough for most tasks since you don't have only one gun firing.

Ah yes explain how a tracked SPH "seats itself in the ground".

A first round GPS or laser guided shell is ridiculously accurate.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

A first round GPS or laser guided shell is ridiculously accurate.

(He doesn't realize the projectile is guided and self correcting)

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

(He doesn't realize the projectile is guided and self correcting)

Yep, probably thinking about Jews too much or something.

Or thinking about howitzers needing to dig themselves into the ground to have any sort of accuracy....

 

[WelperHelper99]

That Apache order is almost certainly getting cut when the bills come due.

I'd guess they'll end up with ~48 or so.

I can hope and dream they get the full 96. It'd be cool lol.

They're also fed up with German idiocy around their Leopard 2PL upgrade program so they'll probably be moving the Leopards into the reserves national guard and the main tanks will be the K2PL and the M1A2s.

Poland's biggest "must haves " are hundreds more SPHs (K9s), more modern tanks, and an air force update (F-35, F/A-50) and a SHITLOAD of rocket artillery systems

Did hear that about the lepoards. But yeah, they are pretty well overhauling everything. Its a sight to behold honestly, just from the outside.

 

[Blue Flying Leaf]

Oh so now the drone launches RPG warheads, now you've made it even heavier and even more expensive.

You are just making more shit up trying to prove your point. Drone is cheaper than Fagot, Javelin or any other kind of wire or fire and forget missile, esp. one with tandem charges. Two shots will create a mobility kill on any tank from above and will obliterate entire crew in apc., usually just one is enough to disable russian pancake. That is also why javelin has top down attack mode, that's where tank is weakest.
Tanks are a dead weight in modern battlefield.

Ah yes explain how a tracked SPH "seats itself in the ground".

You were talking about regular artillery, but it bothers me how you don't know that arty pieces come with a giant shovel, legs or some other form of stabilization: example archer, brutus, regular arty pieces like m777 etc. Exceptions are american Paladin, german Pzh2000 and some other lightweight vehicles that don't rely on ground brake at the expense of accuracy and rely on shorter barrels and larger compensators for less recoil. Such vehicles also have an immense thermal signature and are easy to spot and track.

A first round GPS or laser guided shell is ridiculously accurate.

GPS round needs settling time and GPS was already jammed by russians as early as 2005 with sufficient technology it would make your tracker drift. Laser guided shells are simply not needed, regular HE does the job better and provides more bang per buck. Cheap is the name of game with arty and at regular ranges and skilled crew, you don't need guidance.

Or thinking about howitzers needing to dig themselves into the ground to have any sort of accuracy....

You are the one thinking you will hit anything without proper preparation. Same mentality as ukrainians finding out that you need to dig into frozen ground or else your arty will just slide back a meter with each shot and you'll miss everything.

The average 38 pilot on a sea tour would come back from 4 months with less than a dozen hours flown because sea air destroyed turbines so fast that they would be rusting at the blades and compressors after a handful of weeks. And the spare turbines they carried were often factory rejects that the ships crew were supposed to attempt to rebuild enroute with parts from the active aircraft.

Turbines made to handle salt spray use different metallurgy. Salt/chloride corrosion is a known issue of all turbines. Slight rust isn't as much as an issue as forming corrosion cracks which are sometimes invisible and will turn your jet engine into a shrapnel generator and craft into a brick in a sky. Factory rejects on a VTOL craft just sound like a suicide mission. If they suffered an internal blade failure that can be replaced and rebuilt, but that would be done at factory as well since there's no point in throwing away a good core and shell over something as simple as a blade swap, so the damage must have been more severe.

 

[TiggerNits]

Let's talk and the F3H Demon




The American MiG17 looked cooler and was, theoretically atleast,a better interceptor, but was ultimately way too terrible to be acceptable for naval aviation. The Navy liked the concept but the idea behind a subsonic carrier interceptor that can't loiter for now than 15 minutes didn't make sense. Not to mention they were harder to land than a sober 9 with citizenship in Miami. The entire concept around the Demon was it could carry sparrows and the radar could, theoretically again, follow the beam from US Navy ship to pick up targets, a trick we wouldn't actually develop until the F14 twenty years later.

The plane would only spend 7 years on carriers before getting displaced by the F4, which she shares a string family resemblance with. By making the intakes larger, switching to a Delta wing and twin engines, the evolution to the Phantom is one you can eyeball pretty easily.