European Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Germany’s impending Puma Panzer problem
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  1 hour ago

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in the Bundestag. The findings eventually will be made public, the agency said, but only once budget negotiations are complete.

Integrating all required features into the Puma, made by a consortium of Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, will take until 2029 if similar efforts of the past are any guide, according to the report.

Preparations for sustaining the Marder beyond its envisioned end of life in 2025 should include ensuring that enough spare parts are available. That has been a notorious problem for the German armed forces, wreaking havoc on readiness rates across the board in recent years.

Analysts report deployment-readiness rates of 48 percent in 2016 and 43 percent in 2017 for Puma vehicles, though they acknowledge that the weapon is brand new and only now in the initial delivery phase.

At the same time, the Defence Ministry set the bar low when vehicles as usable for deployment. Simply being useful in certain training tasks means vehicles are included in the lowest availability category of “conditionally deployable.”

Additionally, the Army has reported a lack of “system stability” of the Pumas, according to auditors. The weapon is known to often malfunction during training, and the failure source remains elusive.

Meanwhile, auditors note with “grave concern” that the Marder fleet’s availability rate also is trending downward.

Rheinmetall announced this week the delivery of the 200th Puma to the Bundeswehr. In a statement, the company praised the weapon’s “massive fire power and excellent network-enabled operations capabilities.”

The Defence Ministry already has several programs underway to improve the Puma and retrofit vehicles already delivered. But critical gaps remain, including a system offering improved situational awareness for vehicle operators and a camouflage feature that would reduce the vehicle’s radar signature, the ministry told lawmakers in a confidential report in April.

The price tag for the outstanding capabilities is expected to lie in the hundreds of millions of euros.

Defense officials announced in April that 35 Marder tanks are in line to get the anti-tank weapon MELLS, though a fleetwide program for all of the 1970s-era tanks also is under consideration. A portion of the legacy vehicles are slated to be part of Germany’s contribution to a NATO Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, the ministry said.

The entire Puma fleet will also get the MELLS tank-killing weapon, eventually. In their confidential report, however, officials predicted a yearlong delay, from March 2019 to the second quarter of 2020. Following integration testing in early summer, the government expects to request money for the retrofitting from the Bundestag later this year.

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

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French and German armor makers test the waters with a ‘Euro-tank’
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  8 hours ago

PARIS ― France’s Nexter and Germany’s Krauss-Maffei Wegmann pitched a cross between a Leopard 2 chassis and a Leclerc turret at the Eurosatory trade show in Paris on Monday.

Officially dubbed the European Main Battle Tank, or EMBT, the vehicle is meant to showcase that the German and French companies can work together on the path toward an envisioned Main Ground Combat System pursued by both nations. That weapon is slated to see the light of day in the mid-2030s.

Additionally, the developers believe the “Frankentank” meets a real-life demand, and they hope a paying customer might take the idea and run with it. For now, the tank is a demonstrator project funded by the two companies’ joint venture, KNDS.

“The interest of this program is using the current technology to provide an interesting operational tank to the market and at the same time continue to have an industry activity during the 15-20 years,” Francois Groshany, Nexter’s head of tracked and armor programs, told Defense News in an interview.

“We will see at this exhibition if there are some countries interested in it so that we will be able to launch a full development,” he said.

Groshany said the benefit of the hybrid machine lies in the Leopard 2′s “very-high capability” chassis, which can carry up to 68 tons, and merging it with the lightness of the Leclerc’s turret, which needs only a crew of two to operate.

As a result, potential customers get 10 percent of the weight, or 6 tons, to install additional kit on the tanks as they see fit, he explained.

The weapon is “proof that KMW and Nexter have established a first significant joint KNDS product in record time,” company officials wrote in a statement. “The EMBT drives and fires ― in short, it works!”

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1. TerraN_EmpirE said:

   Rheinmetall lifts curtain on new next-gen combat vehicle with hopes to spark US Army interest
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   PARIS, France —

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   lifted a curtain, literally, complete with smoke and 80s rock, on its new Lynx KF41 infantry fighting vehicle at Eurosatory June 12, setting its sights on meeting requirements for both European and

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   “Do current fighting vehicles meet the needs of future forces? This was the question that started Rheinmetall on a journey to develop a Lynx family of vehicles,” Ben Hudson, the head of the company’s vehicle systems division, said at Eurosatory just ahead of the unveiling.
   Hudson said militaries around the world are rethinking requirements and it is clear that in order to meet all the demands of future operations and potential peer-on-peer conflict that a vehicle needs “to provide utility across the spectrum of conflict” and have “the ability to conduct peer-on-peer warfare against emerging battlefield threats.”
   The U.S. Army has set developing a Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) as one of its top six modernization priorities.
   
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   The impact of these new requirements on vehicle design is extreme, Hudson said, and in order to protect against and defeat all threats at once means either having a vehicle that weighs well above 50,000 kilos or one that is “rapidly and affordably reconfigured” to ensure survivability and capability for peacekeeping support, counterinsurgency or conventional warfighting operations when appropriate, Hudson said.
   Because adversaries have spent recent years strengthening their capabilities in denying access to the enemy, electronic warfare systems, indirect fires and their own advanced combat vehicles, a new vehicle to go up against that is necessary, Hudson said.
   
   The Lynx KF41 with Lance 2.0 turret “rebalances the key requirements in the areas of survivability, mobility, lethality, capacity, adaptability and transportability,” Hudson said and is reconfigurable using open architecture systems and a modular and open mechanical architecture.
   The modularity allows the vehicle to be reconfigurable. Configurations might include armored personnel carriers suitable for peacekeeping and conventional mounted combat operations.
   
   Rheinmetall demonstrated it could change from the current configuration to a hybrid command variant in a matter of hours at the show.
   The vehicle design is also “highly scalable,” Hudson said, with more than 18,000 kilos of reconfigurable payload and an internal volume that allows for the turret and up to nine troop seats in the back.
   
   The new vehicle is fitted with an 850 kilowatt powerpack that uses the Liebherr engine and Renk transmission.
   Additionally, in order to power the digital backbone and all the other weapons systems, more than 20 kilowatts of electrical power is stored on board to allow the crew to conduct missions.
   The Lance turret has enhanced 360 degree protection against kinetic and fragmentation threats and sports the new Wotan 35 electrically driven cannon that fires 35x228mm ammunition.
   The turret also has two flexible mission pods on either side of the turret that allow customizable sub-systems such as anti-tank guided missiles, non-line of sight loitering munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles or even an electronic warfare package.
   And Rheinmetall wants the world to know this is a real vehicle. The company has publicly avaialbe footage of the vehicle’s rigorous test campaigns, Hudson noted.
   And because it’s real, Hudson said he hoped it would give the company an edge with the U.S. Army’s

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   “We are highly interested in it and we have been below the radar for a little for the last couple of years while we’ve delivered this,” Hudson told Defense News following the unveiling. “We don’t want to deliver a powerpoint, we want to deliver a real vehicle and we have shown this to some people in the U.S. Army and I think it is fair to say there is some genuine interest for the U.S. to look at this vehicle as a serious competitor for the next-generation combat vehicle.”
   The path the Army is currently heading down is a rapid prototyping effort to help inform requirements for an NGCV. The plan is to assess emerging technologies.
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   When asked how Rheinmetall might become involved in that collaboration, Hudson said said there have been a lot of changes over the past several months as Army’s new cross-functional team under its new Futures Command moves forward with efforts to bring an NGCV capability online.
   “All I can say is the next six months for that program are going to be very interesting and we look forward to things that may occur early next year. That’s all I can really say about that for now,” he said.

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   I have gotten into some heated arguments online because some people are convinced this is nothing more than a Mardar upgrade. I suspect that there is Mardar DNA, but Rhinmetall seems to be banking on modular nature and this may have more in common with the Boxer then the Mardar. Of course alot of people only see the Puma.
   

• Rafael is selling Iron Dome and a new all in one I-Dome. Iron Dome normally like most modern Air defence systems comes in three parts the Launcher with missiles. The Radar and the control shack with the buttons and computers and the guy drinking a coffee. I-Dome is those three parts in one vehicle.
• Video of the Lynx 41. This is a modular IFV/APC family fitted with the 35mm Lancer 2 Turret with 2 spike Missiles Note that the Coax of the Lancer is NOT a Gatling gun it looks like one but that is not what is happening. A Gatling gun fires a shot from a single barrel and then the next barrel and the next this system will fire a burst from one barrel until it gets hot then will rotate to the next to let it cool off. In IFV configuration it can pack in 9 troops + a crew of 3 which is sure to have the US Army looking there way. Note the Shroud around the barrel and Faceting of the design. When the video of the command version posts I will be posting that. Exact same hull but different mission module. Rhinemetall has already shown the Lynx 31 which is the smaller sibling of this with a more conventional sized 3+6 capacity.
• Georgian STC Delta company "Noise less" Commando Mortar 60mm.
• REX AKB 15 Modernized AK design been in the Works since 2015. An American version was shown at Shot Show 2017. looks like a 12.5 inch barrel AKB comes in 7.62x39mm although they might do a 5.45 and 5.56 down the line. Rail looks Mlok. M4 style stock. note they removed the traditional AK front sight in favor of a rail mounted sight. This is not an AK15 clone as that has a front sight and different Short stroke gas system nor a IWI Ace Clone as those have far more changes.
• Sima Maker of Armored weapon hatches.
• MC2 Anti drone Jammer gun.
• Jingjan "Blow fish" Helicopter drone.

• Streit group MRAPS and armored trucks
• Same maker Amphibious 4x4 All Terrain vehicle. Its a weird little vehicle.
• Triton Armored boat.