Originally posted by drhuy
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"There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember Scrooge, time is short, and suddenly, you're not there any more." -Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge
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Field - tank armament
Question - What is the motivation behind using missiles fired from the main gun? What are the pros, cons and technical challenges involved?
Why have the Russians been so determined to make them work while western nations have ignored or made half-hearted attempts at e.g. M551, M60A2?
Do you see any future for missile armed tanks?
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Originally posted by Burnet View PostQuestion - What is the motivation behind using missiles fired from the main gun? What are the pros, cons and technical challenges involved?
Why have the Russians been so determined to make them work while western nations have ignored or made half-hearted attempts at e.g. M551, M60A2?
Do you see any future for missile armed tanks?Last edited by jlvfr; 21 Nov 15,, 18:13.
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From a US standpoint the MGM-51 was designed because the latest soviet armor was thicker than what could be defeated by the 90mm gus we had (late 50s) It was a stopgap measure until heavier tanks with bigger guns (MTB-70) could come on line. The biggest user was the 82d Airborne. It was suppose to give them a tank stopping capability on a light frame.
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Gentlemen - I was screwing around this evening, looking at some Google Earth imagery of the Sierra Army Depot and was, frankly, blown away by how many frickin' vehicles we have sitting out in the middle of the high desert of north-eastern California; there are literally THOUSANDS, if not tens of thousands, of vehicles of all shapes and sizes out in the middle of nowhere.
What really blew me away is that there are literally HUNDREDS of M1 tanks at the depot, half of them in the old NATO brown/green/black pattern, and the other half in the more modern sand color; I have never seen so many tanks all in one place at one time. It makes me believe the Army when they say they REALLY don't need any more M1's, even though Congress is trying to continue production (I think I posted a thread about that a while back somewhere); I assume these are mostly older M1's and M1A1's but, still, that's A LOT of MBT's!
The picture below shows the Abrams area, which is at the north-western edge of the storage area, and only represents about 1/10th of the total storage area, which seems to contain mostly wheeled vehicles, as opposed to tanks and APC's:
Go here if you want to check it out for yourself.Last edited by Stitch; 22 Apr 16,, 16:15."There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember Scrooge, time is short, and suddenly, you're not there any more." -Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge
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Stitch,
You have stumbled on to the ultimate Indiana Jones Government warehouse.
Sierra Army Depot has the mission of handling all of the retrofit of all classes of supply for the Army from anywhere in the world. All the stuff we shipped out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Europe, you name it, ended here if it did not belong to a specific unit. From there it is processed, placed back into the supply system, onward to a depot for rebuild (like the M1s you mentioned), reissued to units, kitted up into unit equipment sets prepositioned both afloat and in overseas depots or deprocessed and sold to civilian agencies or foreign military sales (FMS) or finally disposed of as scrap. It literally saves the Army hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It is run by the US Army Tank-automotive & Armaments Command, part of the US Army Materiel Command (aka A Million Civilians).
The following video does a pretty good job explaining their mission.
https://youtu.be/SAQQ7kdqmlU
As a side note I was out there last fall. The logistics enterprise system I was working on at the time was fielding to SIAD...I was the fielding manager for the PM. I met and worked through Don Olson. He and the other dedicated professionals at SIAD, both government civilian and contractors, bust their ass to get the most value for the dollar and to give the best to the Soldier. They take their jobs very seriously.“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
Mark Twain
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Originally posted by jlvfr View PostMy theory: the large distances the US had to deal from day 1. The sheer size of the US, much of it empty space, mandates proper logistics for anything to be done. For the average EU country, 100km is quite a distance. In the case of my country, it's almost a third of our lengh! What's that for a US citizen? Comute? Not only that, the EU's average population and habitacional density means that supplies are always relatively near (hence Napoleon's tactic of moving with few supplies; he knew he could get more on a quick march into enemy territory). Add the need to cover great distances with a good industrial capacity, and you get good long-range logistics.
Incidently, this also helped develop US long-range aviation. While all countries started thinking of "cross country flying" very soon, to the average EU country this meant aircraft with 300-500km range. To the US, that's just half of what was needed...
Thus proving, again, the old proverb: "Necessity is the mother of invention".No such thing as a good tax - Churchill
To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.
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"By that logic, Russians should be masters of logistics. Are they?"
Think you're getting into one of the ways Americans have differed from Russians. Told that your piece of the pie awaits you further down the road drove Americans into all corners of our land and spurred the necessity to provide the logistical underpinnings to sustain our presence. It isn't any easier living in Arizona, N. Dakota or northern Wisconsin than Russia. Our population was incentivized to do so.
Russians seemed to look at life east of the Urals as an imposition of punishment. And, indeed, for the longest time it was exactly that. Thus, despite eight time zones, there's never been any compelling incentive to provide for the proper development and exploitation of all available Russian resources."This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs
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Originally posted by Doktor View PostBy that logic, Russians should be masters of logistics. Are they?
Which means Russia/USSR arrived at the early 20th century with the need (large area) but without the tech & admin base to carry out the job, unlike the US.
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