Whatever small arms we adopt for the British Army, I think it would be important to have the ability to produce the ammunition locally and vital to have more than one source for it.

A 120mm Mortar is far lighter then the Light Gun and far quicker to bring into and out of action, especially if you use a "Cradle" for transport if towing it. Depends which one you're looking at. If you take the MO 120 RT, that's 1.4t vs 1.8t for the light gun, so hardly vastly different ...

If anything, the 120mm mortar is more vulnerable to counter battery on account of its somewhat shorter range. The solution to this of just having more seems both callous and financially questionable. Having dumb, bespoke ammunition is a problem if you intend to import your materiel. If you aim at ma...

tomuk wrote: ↑04 May 2022, 20:45 With Curtiss Wright being an American company does the proposed system have any ancestry in UK i.e. Challenger 2 or German i.e. Leopard systems?

The particular arm that deals with turret control is Swiss.

Whether you choose the Light Gun or a 120mm Mortar you are still going to be outranged by an opponent using Russian designed 122mm Gun/Howitzers, Only if they are using uncommon rocket-assist shells. With normal shells the L118 outranges the D-30, while the 120mm mortar is considerably outranged by...

But you ask how else can you provide mobility, protection and firepower. 1 and 3 of those are provided far more effectively by UAVs I don't know about that. UAVs get kind of expensive kind of quickly - the high end ones are as costly to buy and run as a modern fighter jet. The cheaper ones need a w...

Jdam wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 20:09 would it be better to get 60 Chinook's or 30 Osprey's

It would depend on what you are trying to do with them.

Didn’t suggest they had walked there. Simply saying the classic idea of major tank battles don’t appear to have happened, might well of done but I suspect we may have seen something by now had it happened but it doesn’t seems to be the style Ukraine is using large massed confrontational engagements...

That has been the trend for decades. Another thing that has been a trend for about the last century is people claiming the death of the tank. Once we'd got a couple of decades and iterations in, we started to get "this time it's different" being added. There are a couple of good videos on...

Well if you want to be strictly true we haven’t seen any major tank battles in Europe or Ukraine. Seen plenty of tanks being ambushed in city’s and built up areas, stuck in the mud or picked off in the open with precision drones or artillery but haven’t seen any massed charges of scores of tanks at...

Ok yes but was the design work complete i.e did the prototype work As of February it was “more than 80%” https://www.overtdefense.com/2021/03/23/warrior-capability-sustainment-program-axed-in-favor-of-boxer/ so it’s likely that there was some left to do but fundamentally the Prototypes worked. http...

Stepping back a bit if Dannaatt was right and we did revisit the Warrior upgrade how close was it to going ahead i.e was it a case of signing it off and starting the upgrade of 250 vehicles or was there a number of things that still needed to be done Regardless of where it was, there would be a num...

It also seems to ignore the facts that Boxer has equal the protection as a Warrior and very nearly matched it when both fit their add on armour packs. I don't think that's true. Boxer is bigger than Warrior and of similar weight so it can't be as well protected The fact that the platform could only...

I remain to be convinced as to the utility of the Boxer module concept, so forcing a tracked vehicle to use it sounds even more expensive.

RunningStrong wrote: ↑15 Apr 2022, 12:00 We're not replacing tracked IFV with wheeled one.

Indeed, we’re replacing some tracked IFVs with a wheeled APC

The remaining tracked IFVs aren’t being replaced.

Starstreak/LMM would not be a good replacement for Phalanx without significant upgrades to its targeting and guidance systems. The former are currently laser guided, and illuminating an incoming Mach 3+ missile with a laser designator that isn't linked in with the ships radar and CMS is basically i...

Timmymagic wrote: ↑11 Apr 2022, 21:40 Lots of small g bumbs are ultimately just as bad as a few large g manoeuvres.

Also the kind of bumps associated with ground manoeuvre can be higher g, if shorter duration, compared to what you’d get on an aircraft.

From what I remember of seeing the video released of that trial it did seem that firing Martlet from one of those mounts resulted in fairly significant backblast which could potentially damage the ship, not to mention injuring or worse any personnel stood in the wrong place. It may be that this was...

Lord Jim wrote: ↑10 Apr 2022, 02:59 We also have to upgraded Trojans available as another option I suppose.

I’m sure the Ukranians wouldn’t say no, but I didn’t think we were getting rid of our latests AVREs.

The other thing you achieve by shooting down a drone is you stop it reporting anything it hasn’t seen yet. If it spots the counter recce screen first that’s one thing, spotting the main force, logistics lines, HQ, artillery etc.? that’s worse.

Without a doubt the ability to shoot down drones should be a priority, and also some with a 30mm cannon equipped turret. Trouble is, by the time you've spotted the little buggers, its too late, your co-ordinates are already in the enemy's targeting computer. Worth a go, at the very least you'll sto...

bobp wrote: ↑08 Apr 2022, 16:47 No word as to what types, or the cost of the extra vehicles.

Indeed. Specifically:

The cost of the additional vehicles will not be published for commercially sensitive reasons.

Yes but the Missiles are transported and stored in Protected Transportation Containers, Sure once on the Hawkei they are exposed but if designed correctly, the Hawkei Chassis should protect the Missiles form the majority of knocks and scrapes, otherwise I am sure they would have chosen a different ...

Well if they are designed to be floen around the skies in all weather and at great speed they must be pretty resilient and the vehicles won't always have missile loaded. I wonder if Meteor could be developed for such a system? Handling loads and aerodynamic/inertial loads are quite different. On a ...

2030? Talk about a setting a low bar.