FV4034 Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank (British Army)

[shark bait]

I'd rather go for CR3, in this vein, and in conjunction with Krauss Maffei, now merged with Nexter:

My issue with this option is that in 15 years time, we will have 200 units of unique equipment, that we cant afford to support again.

[Ron5]

Thank you Mr Fred. So MoD/Treasury internal politics: "you got a big gun on tracks, you don't need another one"

[Tiny Toy]

Well, our new transformational medium weight technology will use network enabled technology and an agile methodology will enable our effects based concept to open up a different paradigm and be a real game changer.

I have tea in my nose now.

[mr.fred]

Thank you Mr Fred. So MoD/Treasury internal politics: "you got a big gun on tracks, you don't need another one"

More than likely. I'd not want to risk the future armoured formation dictated by a slack handful of light tanks with big guns.

I'd rather go for CR3, in this vein, and in conjunction with Krauss Maffei, now merged with Nexter:

My issue with this option is that in 15 years time, we will have 200 units of unique equipment, that we cant afford to support again.

Good reason, IMHO, to make sure that all the vehicles in the armoured formations get replaced with a coherent family of vehicles, from IFVs to MBTs to artillery and engineering vehicles, all based on common systems. That way you have 400-600 vehicles. Arguably they'll all be left to rot like CR2, but I guess that depends on what you design them for. An expeditionary army that expects to deploy from home probably doesn't want tanks with a minimum weight of 60-odd tonnes. Something a little lighter seems called for.

[marktigger]

if you can go lighter with same degree of protection, mobility and firepower then yes

[mr.fred]

Firepower and mobility would certainly be possible (though not assured). Protection might be challenging, but there a number of ways of reducing size and therefore weight from the CR2.
One method would be to make the vehicle(s) deployable with a reduced armour fit - tailoring the protection fit to the threat. If you took all the dorchester off a CR2, how much would it weigh and how much protection would it still have?

[arfah]

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[~UNiOnJaCk~]

Screw you Arfah! For a brief moment there i thought there was a faint glimmer of hope haha.

[mr.fred]

This may be of interest:
http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE ... HTML&src=0

The user requires the CR2 Main Battle Tank (MBT) Out of Service Date to be extended from 2025 to 2035, in order to continue to provide precision direct fire manoeuvre capability across a broad spectrum of operations. CR2 LEP seeks to address obsolescence issues to maintain main battle tank capability until 2035. This is a Category A Military Project (up to 700 000 000 GBP inclusive of VAT, including initial logistic support).

Googling around a bit suggests that Cat A projects start at £400m and the posted limit of £700m
Numbers given in the above document are 227 vehicles, so between £1.75m and £3m per vehicle.

[whitelancer]

Also in the above tender I noticed this

The Authority further advises that the CR2 MBT will have a minimum gross vehicle weight of 62.5 tonnes but, up to 12 vehicles could weigh up to 65 tonnes, and a further 22 could weigh up to 75 tonnes if certain items were to remain embodied on these particular vehicles.

I assume the extra weights apply to TES with the additional armour, but how come its so few?

[ArmChairCivvy]

TES with the additional armour, but how come its so few

Urban combat (MOUT)... we don't have any specialised units, so if half of one brigade's tanks can be of that variety, is it few?
- there's got to be a "mobility price" to be paid, ref. other types of manouevres

[~UNiOnJaCk~]

TES with the additional armour, but how come its so few

Urban combat (MOUT)... we don't have any specialised units, so if half of one brigade's tanks can be of that variety, is it few?
- there's got to be a "mobility price" to be paid, ref. other types of manouevres

It would certainly seem to imply that a number of vehicles will be equipped with the Streetfighter upgrade package on a ‘de facto’ permanent basis.

The 12 vehicles weighing up to 65 tonnes however is odd indeed. The lack of change in overall weight would also suggest to me, to my untrained eye that is, a very limited scope in terms of what the programme hopes to achieve - unless that is obsolescence removal activities serve to produce significant weight savings too.

[whitelancer]

So the streetfighter tanks have been left as is, 22 being a reasonable number in that case. The 12 at 65 tonnes is indeed odd. Given that the balance of CR 2s have had their add on armour removed, or perhaps those given the add on armour packages were among those "retired", the only explanation I can think of for the extra 3 tonnes is being fitted with dozers or mine ploughs, but they could easily be removed!

Frankly I think the way the Army/MOD are managing the whole AFV fleet is a shambles

[RetroSicotte]

I have a distinct feeling the "lesser tonnage increase" is referring to the Stage 1 up-armouring.

You've basically got two versions of the up-armour. You've got the basic CR2 with no modules, the "old uparmour" that we saw commonly at one point and then the Streetfighter kit we all recognise. I've placed all three in here:



I have a distinct feeling that is what is being referred to by those 12 at 65. The weight of the old packs would match up very accurately to the growth noted above.

I mentioned to Gabe in a PM lately, but I suspect a lot of the "upgrade" is going to be reannouncing stuff we've had for years to make it seem bigger than it is.

[ArmChairCivvy]

Retro is right of course, my first thought for an interim version with such low numbers was that we would finally come to our senses and give Ajax recce (at least in the AI bdes) an overwatch w/o an additional version of Ajax being designed.

When reading this, Tamuz v.5 is Spike NLOS:
http://www.janes.com/article/53506/anal ... e-launcher

Of course, with the dummy gun and w/o the need to carry the rounds for it the overall weight would be likely to go down, not up.

There's been a photo of the same on a Merkava; that's probably the export effort alluded at the end of the article.

[ArmChairCivvy]

Came to think of it (over breakie) that may be the driving experience between the Streetfighter and the std weight is so different that it is worthwhile to keep those in BATUS at " middleweight"?

[WhiteWhale]

Getting some more power out of the engines should be quite simple providing the crankshaft can take it, technology has moved on a long way since the late 70's when the CV12 was developed. Modern variable vane turbos are upto 50% more efficient then those generation units although a vacuum or solenoid controller will need to be fitted and adapted to a load sensor but that's fairly trivial. Fuel management will be tricky, the best I can tell it's entirely mechanical so little can be done there without a complete system replacement.

An engine of about 25l built with current *commercial* technologies should be able to produce 1400bhp with about 25% better economy using head maths but my experience is more marine and commercial orientated. That engine was built with technology which is now several engine generations out of date, it's hard to state just how much advancement there has been in that time, just for the sake of whatever deity you choose don't fit a damn EGR or DPF to it!

Also a case of who should build it, Perkins no longer do anything that big, Scania and Volvo have the know-how but again their units are half the size, Scania's 16l has been took upto 2500bhp in racing spec but I wouldn't trust that much of a stressed lump for a long jog in a 70t tank!

[ArmChairCivvy]

Wasn't there an export model (tested, too?) that had a 1500 bhp plant on it. But the upgrade was not chosen for the BA tanks (yet, I should say).

But I didn't mean that the engine could not move the tank, rather, that when you drive it for real, the behaviour could be too different between the normal one and the Streetfighter, so getting used to the happy medium might not give too big surprises (misjudgements) either way

PS checked the export spec (2E ):
"The powerpack has been replaced with a new 1,500hp Europack with transversely mounted MTU 883 diesel engine coupled to Renk HSWL 295TM automatic transmission. The smaller but more powerful engine allows more space for fuel storage, increasing the vehicle's range to 550km."

[arfah]

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[WhiteWhale]

I don't think Wartsila do an engine small enough to fit in a tank! But they are exactly the people to ask a about a future tender for an upgrade/CR3?next gen tank or whatever. We have a main battle tank making do (albeit, quite well... for now) with an engine that's barely removed from the industrial revolution while commercial technology has long since surged ahead.

[arfah]

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[arfah]

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[mr.fred]

The engine provides a road speed over 70km/h and cross-country speed up to 50km/h.

That's odd. The Challenger 2 will do 50kph cross-country with a less powerful engine and a heavier vehicle.
If that's all that's necessary, why change?

I've read somewhere that the army upped the power on the existing powerplant (it's de-rated to provide greater reliability) to recover mobility lost with the addition of appliqué armour, but the rest of the drive train wasn't up to it. No idea if it's true, but it's been repeated in a few places. That said, how did the 2E cope with the more powerful Europack? The Europack had the advantage of being smaller though, even if you had to de-rate it. Anyone know how the torques compare between the two?

[WhiteWhale]

You also can't go to over board in the pursuit of speed otherwise you will just incur more expense upgrading the drive gear, the suspension, the track and roller assemblies...

A bit more power to cope with weight growth, a more fuel efficient engine to improve range and with an improvement in thermal efficiency comes less wasted heat> reducing IR signature and easier to control interior conditions. A more even combustion through high pressure common rail and piezo laser cut injectors* should also reduce noise considerably as well, although trying to make a tank harder to detect on the ground seems a bit of a pointless task!

I have been trying to look for more data on the various engines but asides from rated bhp, which in itself doesn't mean a great deal there's not a lot out there.

Hell at this point we should be looking at hybrid diesel/electric, a much smaller diesel generator powering a battery pack feeding electric motors, this will allow less drivetrain, so less drivetrain losses and complications and electric motors are absolutely ideally for transmitting mountains of torque. Again this technology has been on the road and track for years... Although I expect that 230mph is probably out of the question.



*Sounds fancy but this has been on road cars for years now.

[ArmChairCivvy]

The smaller but more powerful engine allows more space for fuel storage, increasing the vehicle's range to 550km

@ mr. fred, why change
A. for the above reason, and
B. to make them run to 2035/40