US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Sunday at 10:59 AM
now what Military.com had to say:
Army Wants Bradley Replacement to Vastly Outgun the Enemy
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Okay. 3 schemes I see that would do this.
  1. BAE/Nexter 40mm CTA The French and British have been integrating these in there new vehicles. The 40mm has lots of ammo and punch the shell is a 40x255mm in a 65x220mm cartridge . Coupled with an anti tank missile launcher like the javelin. A 7.62x51mm coax and possibly a 12.7mm in remote station.
  2. Northrop Grumman Bushmaster IV 40x365mm this is the same ammo as the Naval Bufors L70 sometimes called the Mk4 40mm it's also the same as used in the CV9040 And K21. It's a big older round that still packs a punch. 7.62x51mm coax, anti tank missile launcher and possible secondary remote weapon in the .50 BMG
  3. Northrop Grumman Bushmaster III 50mm conversion. A variation was shown at AUSA 2018. The Bushmaster III is normally a 35x228mm gun this round is in common with a number of naval 35mm cannons and the German Rheinmetall Lynx that have been displayed. however back in the 1980s and early 1990s developers realized that the cartridge case is actually 50mm not 35mm and they could neck out the round to this wider diameter and load a semi telescoped 50mm shell. This became the 50x330mm Supershot. The round was roughly the same size as the 35mm packed the propellant capacity of a 40mm Bufors and a lot of punch but it fell out of favor and no one adopted it. Years later the U.S.Army started looking at it again for potential anti artillery use in the form of the 50mm EAPS Extended Area Protection System which seems to lead us to the GDLS Griffin III. It's still a big round limiting potential magazine capacity but it would do a number on enemy armor. Early concepts for the MPF infact had 50mm weapons instead of 105mm tank guns. Partner with ATGMs 7.62 coax and .50 RWS and it would do nasty things to BMPs.
  4. There is a 4th option which has a back story like the 50mm. The Northrop Grumman Bushmaster II 40mm. Again back in the 1980s developers were looking to squeeze big rounds in little packages the 30x173mm casing is actually 40mm in diameter so they necked that out and created the 40x180mm Supershot with a powder load equal to a 35mm round. Again more punch smaller package. The Bushmaster II its based on is the is the same as already on the Stryker Dragoon Ghost rider gunship and Zimwalt class destroyers.
Personally I would go for #1 as the best with #3 as second choice.
In #2 the U.S. DOD never really adopted the 40mm L70 Bofors round and I don't see a reason to now. In the case of number 4, the advantage is there of being able to convert from existing guns but 40mm Supershot never went anywhere and even if you wanted to why bother, other than to use existing guns there is no advantage vs Bufors or 40CTAI.
I like the 50mm Cannon I do and if this were a USAF gunship like the Ghost rider or a upgrade to the Zimwalt class I would say go for it. The problem I have for a IFV is ammo. You need a nice easy to store package the 40ctai does that for an IFV not so much the 50mm.
 

anzha

Senior Member
Registered Member
Wasn't there a Cavalry fighting vehicle that was being developing the the US Army in the late 90s that had a 45mm? I don't mean the M-8: that was a light tank with a 105mm. There was another tracked vehicle that was supposed to carry 4 dismounts and have a bigger bite to replace the M3 Bradley CFVs. It, too, was canned, iirc.

What happened to that cannon? Or am I just misremembering things?
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
What happened to that cannon? Or am I just misremembering things
There was. But early 90s late 80s and the cannon became the 40mm CTA.
The 45mm CTA was part of the the Combat Vehicle Armament Technology or ComVAT program which wanted to up gun the M3 Bradley with a gun between 30-50mms this was to use Cases telescoped ammo in the form of the ATK/ARES XM295 45mm cannon. The program. As the program started work the UK Royal Ordinance comp and French GIAT took an interest and cloned the program as a replacement for there vehicles 30mm cannons.
The British for there Tactical Reconnaissance Armoured Combat Equipment Requirement or TRACER. In about 94 Royal Ordinance and GIAT formed the Cased Telescoped Ammunition International company. In 96 ComVAT spun from rearmament into replacement for the Bradley as the Future Scout Cavalry Vehicle or FSCV... {Keep that acronym in mind. } at the same time a less than glowing report came out from DOD inspector General.
A lot of things happened in 97 when
The CTA changed the caliber to 40mm and renamed the gun to CT2000
France and Germany took observer status in TRACER.
In late 97 And 98 the U.S. Army and U.K. MOD merged there programs into the Armored Scout and Reconnaissance Vehicle or ASRV. In 99 The U.S. rearms a Bradley with a 40mm CTA prototype.
Royal Ordinance became part of BAE systems.
But then came Eric Shinseki. General Eric Shinseki was the man behind a major push for the U.S.Army modernization program that would form the Stryker and FCS.
Funding the massive reorganization and new development needed money and the FCSV was on the cutting board in 2001 and TRACER was closed in 2002. With data from FSCV and TRACER forming part of the basis of The U.S. FCS & British FRES.

FCS is killed. FRES moved on and the Europeans keep working on the 40CTA as part of the British and French Objective Future Cannon Programme
From 2003 through 2006 The British test 40mm guns in turrets on the Warrior IFV. Even against 30 and 35mm guns.
GIAT became Nexter systems.
By 09 And 10 they decided to finalize the FRES with the Ajaxs vehicle with the 40mm gun.

And last year full circle when the 40mm CTA gun was brought by BAE to the U.S. for evaluation in Stryker and Bradley.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Pretty much.
It favored the Cavalry role with a smaller number of dismounts vs Lynx or Stryker.
There seems a drive for the biggest possible gun and Griffin III favors that with a turret packing a 50mm and up to 85* of elevation.
 

anzha

Senior Member
Registered Member
Thank you for all the info. It was something that bugged me for years.


For those getting caught up:

Future Scout and Cavalry System (FSCS)
Tactical Reconnaissance Armoured Combat Equipment Requirement (TRACER)
Armored Scout and Reconnaissance Vehicle (ASRV)

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now noticed something about the Saudis, which I preferred not to read before breakfast (saw "fresh coat of paint" in the first sentence)

the whole point here is the Saudi Arabia has been the US Bonanza, as in Oct 9, 2016
...
Obama administration arms sales offers to Saudi top $115 billion: report
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anyway
Read more:
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, now (didn't read yet either)
Saudi Arabia is losing Lindsey Graham, a key ally of US arms sales
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I'll go eat that breakfast first
 
yeah Mar 21, 2018
Sunday at 10:08 PM... so now I've checked this picture isn't a fake:
http%3A%2F%2Fcom.ft.imagepublish.upp-prod-eu.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fea5daade-2c63-11e8-97ec-4bd3494d5f14

it's inside of for example Trump praises arms sales as he meets Saudi crown prince
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5312645_original.jpg
inside (I'm a little bit late here, it's dated October 12)
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:

Asked about reports that Saudi agents murdered Khashoggi, Trump said Thursday, “we don’t like it even a little bit,” but “as to whether or not we should stop $110 billion from being spent in this country, knowing they have four or five alternatives, two of them very good alternatives, that would not be acceptable to me.”
 
Geez Jura perhaps... I know this is a shocker he was being snide? I mean what if what he meant was they don't have a sold idea yet but was willing to hear any idea that is feasible? May that means a MBT or a IFV hull with a tank gun or if rail gun tech suddenly becomes viable.
guess you'll like
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The Army is
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more and more money in lasers to defeat incoming rockets and enemy drones.

Across the Air & Missile Defense (AMD) portfolio, “we put over 50 percent of our S&T (Science and Technology) money going towards directed energy projects,” up from about a third previously, said the AMD modernization director,
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.

To meet an
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for initial deployment in 2020, the
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(IMSHORAD) system now going on 8×8 Strykers had to use existing, off-the-shelf technologies. That means the first two battalions of air defense Strykers, to be fielded by 2022, will mount a combination of missile launchers and machineguns.

But the full-up MSHORAD will be “less about missile technology” and have “more of a directed-energy focus,’ McIntire told reporters at last week’s at the Association of the US Army conference. MSHORAD will also probably have
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to jam the transmissions directing enemy drones, although that’s not yet final. (I heard no discussion of another promising technology,
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to burn out electronics at a distance).

MSHORAD will be the next step from the Army’s ongoing Multi-Mission High-Energy Laser (MMHEL) experiments with Stryker-mounted lasers, which aim to field-test a
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in 2021. (That would qualify the laser for
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. The Army aims to field the 50 kw weapon by
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.

Tests have shown 2kW and
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weapons can burn out incoming drones, providing valuable lessons for future training and tactics. “One of the things we need to do is start to build a bench of directed energy experts,” McIntire said, before the Army is ready to field laser weapons.

But McIntire’s Cross Functional Team (CFT) sees 50kW as the crucial threshold to make a laser useful in actual combat. Why? Doubling a laser’s power level halves the time it takes to burn out a given target at a given range, and McIntire wants the system to kill low-end drones in “less than a second” so it can wipe out incoming swarms before they get through. Higher power can also give longer range or take on harder targets.

In parallel to the 50 kW Stryker laser, the Army is developing
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mounted on a larger but less mobile vehicle, the
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. (The latest model, the A2, just
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at AUSA). This heavier weapon would follow behind the MSHORAD Strykers as part of the Army’s second line of defense, the
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.

Truck-mounted IFPC lasers and missiles would protect command posts, helicopter rearming points, supply dumps, and other support sites against cruise missiles, air attack, and long-range rockets. MSHORAD accompanies frontline combat units to defend against shorter-range threats. A future “multi-mission air and missile defense” battalion would have elements of both, McIntire said. Ultimately, he said, the same unit might mix both offensive and defensive capabilities, able to both
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and destroy any missiles that are launched.

McIntire & co. are also recommending some kind of air defense laser go on the future Next Generation Combat Vehicle. The first member of the NGCV family, an Optionally Manned Fighting vehicle to
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, is supposed to enter service in 2026, with completely
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to follow.

Lasers & Jammers: Potential & Limits

Why switch from missiles and bullets to photons and electrons? It’s about cost and ammunition capacity. Guns are relatively cheap, but they’re also fairly short-ranged, McIntire explained. Missiles have the range, but they’re “becoming extraordinarily expensive,” often costing more than the targets they shoot down. That means the Army can’t afford enough to counter the massed barrages favored by Russian and Chinese doctrine. Even if money were no object, there’s only so many missiles you can fit on a vehicle at once, and when you’ve shot them all, the rest of the incoming salvo has a free pass until you can resupply.

Lasers and jammers, by contrast, can keep zapping targets as long as they have electrical power. The marginal cost per shot is just the cost of diesel fuel to generate electricity, and the number of shots is limited only by the size of your gas tank or battery. They’re also less likely to do collateral damage, since laser beams are inherently highly accurate — they’re photons moving at the speed of light in a straight line — and jamming beams disrupt radio-frequency transmissions without causing physical damage at all.

But beams also have real limits

Electronic warfare can’t jam the enemy’s transmissions until your
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figures out what frequencies they’re on. Further, the more autonomous the drone, the longer it can function without communication with its human operator. A cheap quadcopter may crash as soon as you jam it, but a true Artificial Intelligence could conduct the entire mission on its own, jamming be damned.

Lasers will heat up and destroy whatever they focus on, given time — but bad weather, even rainfall, will weaken the beam. On a rainy day, laser defenses may be useless, inviting attack, just as the Nazis saved their final offensive in the Battle of the Bulge for a spell of bad weather that grounded US airpower.

The nature of the target also matters. While a laser-reflecting mirrored surface is difficult to keep up in combat conditions, heatabsorbing material is already common on ballistic missile warheads, which must survive the intense heat of reentering the atmosphere.

That’s why the Army continues to invest, albeit less urgently, in upgrading physical weapons. Upgrades to the Patriot system, including the new
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,
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, and the ability to
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, reinforce the Army’s defense against ballistic missiles. On the tactical level, a new air-bursting round for the Army’s
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and a new proximity fuse for the venerable Stinger missile will help them take out lightweight targets, like drones, even if they don’t score a direct hit

Lasers are a big part of future air and missile defense, McIntire said, but alongside guns and missiles: “You’re always going to need this mixture.”
it's
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my favorite lasers-related question, first asked Jan 2, 2016
:
does it work around the Arctic Circle in winter?
arctic-convoy.jpg
 
...
I like the 50mm Cannon I do and if this were a USAF gunship like the Ghost rider or a upgrade to the Zimwalt class I would say go for it. ...
before putting it on your balsa-wood game-changer (very stealthy since the time she was able to limp to San Diego almost two years ago), you'd need to 'navalize' to handle pitch, roll:
Dprxa62XgAAubA6.jpg

while shooting and so on
 
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