M1 Abrams Developments and News

Sferrin said:
It will make self-defense much more important, that's for sure. But I'd think if you could shoot down ATGMs and KE penetrators, a drone would be a piece of cake.
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Shooting drones down isn't the issue. Shooting them down for less than the cost of making the drones is the trick.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
Lmk who the USArmy is apparently agreeing with more. How’s the M10 doing?
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And yet they commit to the M1E3 and XM30, both heavy armored vehicles. The M10 always faced scrutiny since it's inception. The M1 is the poster child of the US Army and has generally speaking a decent combat record (ignoring the inability of Ukraine to operate them properly) and provides a sturdy foundation for future adaptations that improve it's performance in the modern battlefield. Abrams X was a decent "concept car" that previewed many such performance enhancements.
 
Blast from the past - "120mm Compact Autoloder, Western Design Howden" January 1999 (Force XXI era)

34 rounds in the bustle with 12 rounds a minute and retains the Loader to "assist the Tank Commander in the processing of Data and Communications...Freeing the Commander to command" Demonstration was built and tested - a missed opportunity!


Force XXI autoloader.png
 
bobbymike said:
I want a quad mini with under turret cover with driver and gunner infra red search and track called the “air sweeper” (or street sweeper depending) keeps the battlefield clear of drones.
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I feel a 30mm low velocity RWS with time fused ammunition would be far, far superior in that roll for a fraction of the weight.
 
TWZ's ability to turn about 3-4 paragraphs worth of content into a long article is almost impressive.

I'll never fault any tank crew looking for more firepower, but I do wonder why the US Army is officially testing this now. While it does allow the loader to send a lot of rounds downrange it's still a manually operated weapon that requires him to expose himself to fire and it doesn't have the sort of fire control or stabilization you'd need if to effectively pick off small drones.

As far as the origins of the idea go, I think the winner is that one M48 Patton crew back in Vietnam that salvaged a minigun from a written-off helicopter, acquired a spare coaxial ammo bin, and devised some mount for it all on the turret roof. Unfortunately, some pain-in-the-ass officer got it stripped from the tank after what must have been an impressive display helping to defend an overnight position from the usual probing attacks.
 
Josh_TN said:
I feel a 30mm low velocity RWS with time fused ammunition would be far, far superior in that roll for a fraction of the weight.
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They'll get that funded and fielded sometime around 2057.

The M134 is available right now, for basically zero cost, and it's effective against a Lancet.
 
Kat Tsun said:
They'll get that funded and fielded sometime around 2057.

The M134 is available right now, for basically zero cost, and it's effective against a Lancet.
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How is it zero cost? Are there hundreds of them lying around after being stripped from SOF aircraft?
 
Josh_TN said:
How is it zero cost? Are there hundreds of them lying around after being stripped from SOF aircraft?
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I think that's literally where they're getting them from yeah lol. That or National Guard. The actual cost is mostly integrating the thermal camera and eventually it'll probably be an automatically directed gun. Return of the Marconi TAMS because APS is still too primitive to engage drones at distance, SWaP too constrained for HPM, and a 30mm airburst is too expensive to procure.

Colonial-Marine said:
While it does allow the loader to send a lot of rounds downrange it's still a manually operated weapon that requires him to expose himself to fire and it doesn't have the sort of fire control or stabilization you'd need if to effectively pick off small drones.
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It probably won't go to the loader. A SCOWS mount would make sense it's stabilized and the loader gunnery tables have been eliminated.
 
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Even if these mini guns are off the shelf, I doubt this is something we see as a common installation. IMO anything time or proxy fused, up to a 40mm grenades station, is superior to a spray and pray solution, and the U.S. is not currently engaged in conflicts where this hack is immediately necessary. In fact I think the U.S. is almost unique in having already adopted a mounted, armored anti UAV vehicle and having already equipped a couple battalions.
 
Kat Tsun said:
I think that's literally where they're getting them from yeah lol. That or National Guard.
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The SOF helo force are the only large scale users I can think of, specifically 160th. What guard unit would utilize these?!
 
Kat Tsun said:
Return of the Marconi TAMS because APS is still too primitive to engage drones at distance
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No, its dedicated shooter is. But if you can have an RCWS and slave it to the APS, you'll have an APS that can shoot down more stuff at longer ranges and at very low cost.
You don't need a 30mm or a minigun for that. Probably also nothing beyond a 5.56mm (for C-UAS).
 
Josh_TN said:
In fact I think the U.S. is almost unique in having already adopted a mounted, armored anti UAV vehicle and having already equipped a couple battalions.
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Huh? Which vehicle are you referring to?
 
EmoBirb said:
What I always find weird is how people imply that drones make tanks obsolete when drones are just genuinely worse ATGMs in practice. Cheaper for sure, but also less effective.
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It isn't the idea of drones that changed. People came up with the kettering bug more than century ago, and given a detailed description of modern tech base, even 19th century scifi authors can come up with a good number of modern concepts.

The change is that the technological base have changed. What drones reflect is electronic development have made guidance packages costs cheap enough to use against infantry and everything more expensive than that.

"The tank made the horse obsolete" not because people came up with war wagons, leonardo da vinci drew one up and there are things like hussite war wagons. The tank is the result of internal combustion engine and is hundreds of horse power on tap for cheap in compact form.

Whatever happens to individual drone designs, the fact that powerful sensors are cheap and guidance packages are also cheap this is irreversible barring civilizational collapse. Just because you can shoot down a drone doesn't mean you can move a 50ton vehicle into line of sight without alerting the opponent, and just because you have active defenses does not change that everyone can afford to drop concentrated networked guided fires on everything else within a few kilometers of the front.

The MBT is defined by the mobility, protection and firepower. Tracked ICE propulsion is still sound, the armor scheme is obsolete (but tanks had many different schemes anyways) yet armor is still useful, but the weapon.... the weapon is optimized to throw sabots.

And sabots is a crappy weapon, being limited to line of sight and specialized for armor penetration while guided munitions have far more freedom, range and can target armor weak points for a much more effective solution in practice. The main advantage for the gun is cheap and compact ammo, but that is rarely important when munitions are already cheap and effective, otherwise we'd be using axes instead of artillery since the former costs no ammo.

EmoBirb said:
Currently that's makeshift stuff like roof installations or jammers, eventually it will be genuine close in weapons systems which will actively and autonomously engage incoming drones and most likely rounds as well. So slowly but surely you expand the existing layers of survivability. From layout to composite armor to ERA to APS to electronic countermeasures and CIWS.
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The fire control problem of detecting and hitting the sensor window to land vehicles is far easier than the one of hitting an artillery directing drone or ground hugging missile that can pop up anywhere at almost any speed.

So we go back to the problem where navies recognized long ago. You can put inches of belt and deck armor on ships, but the sensors that really drives costs and effectiveness can not be armored, so an over armored ship would still get mission killed if active defenses are overcome, and dispatched eventually.

The Tank with big main gun together powerful active defenses idea is one similar to battleship aircraft carriers. The "weaker" weapon, that being the aircraft, is more than sufficient in neutralizing the enemy leaving the "bigger, exciting but far harder to employ" weapon practically useless and the anti-synergy of fitting contradictory systems just makes it uneconomic. The idea of packing everything inside one vehicle instead of a formation approach suggests religious thinking involving the invulnerable singleton and not exchange ratios.

EmoBirb said:
So the US army would be wise to not neuter their tank force, even though it would be less relevant against an adversary as China, it would be naive to think that's the only possibility for any future war the US will engage in.

Tanks are rather resilient pieces of kit, even these days.
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Battleships is not the only kind of ship. Tanks is not the only kind of armored combat vehicle.

Just because battleships are out, doesn't mean surface navies get phased out. There are lots of other armored vehicles that is shown to be highly useful but no one cares about them probably because gun is too small, or even ROCKETRY! (known to be for people with wrong sexualities)
 
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EmoBirb said:
Huh? Which vehicle are you referring to?
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MSHORADS. Forgot the name; not sure of the ‘M’ designation either, but two battalions are in service with two more planned, I think the third by end of year.

ETA: specifically MSORADS incr 1, since named Sgt Stout, still cannot find a number designation. Third battalion about to stand up with a forth being worked on for next year, plus four more guard battalions intended to be formed. 360 radar coverage in a hemisphere with EW, passive detection, 30mm, 7.62, stinger, and HellFire, though hellfire was found to be too fragile and is to be replaced with more stingers. A variant with APKWS has been proposed/demo’d, and a directed energy variant was deemed insufficiently capable/reliable - this was called DE-MSORADS or something like that. That idea seems at least temporarily shelved.
 
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Josh_TN said:
MSHORADS. Forgot the name; not sure of the ‘M’ designation either, but two battalions are in service with two more planned, I think the third by end of year.

ETA: specifically MSORADS incr 1, since named Sgt Stout, still cannot find a number designation. Third battalion about to stand up with a forth being worked on for next year, plus four more guard battalions intended to be formed. 360 radar coverage in a hemisphere with EW, passive detection, 30mm, 7.62, stinger, and HellFire, though hellfire was found to be too fragile and is to be replaced with more stingers. A variant with APKWS has been proposed/demo’d, and a directed energy variant was deemed insufficiently capable/reliable - this was called DE-MSORADS or something like that. That idea seems at least temporarily shelved.
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So a mini Pantsir?
 
EmoBirb said:
So a mini Pantsir?
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Different focus. Pantsir is more capable short range AD system in most ways (vastly superior SAMs in range, acceleration, and numbers), but Stout is a system specifically designed with UAVs as the primary target…and I think one notable difference is that hemispherical radar coverage. That is not something a single Pantsir vehicle can achieve.
 
The updated Pantsir-SMD comes with 360 degree radar coverage and the 48-missile version got delivered to the Russian army yesterday to deal with drones. Does that minigun even spin around 360?
Isn't a hardkill APS design like the Trophy easier to use against drones where you can just adjust the velocity gate on the radar to allow you to hit slow hovering FPV drones instead of high speed ATGMs with projectiles?
How many hellfire or stinger missiles will one tank be equipped with to deal with drones?
 
Null said:
Isn't a hardkill APS design like the Trophy easier to use against drones where you can just adjust the velocity gate on the radar to allow you to hit slow hovering FPV drones instead of high speed ATGMs with projectiles?
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Note what you've said yourself: instead of.
Fortunately we have enough processing power now to have "both" and only needs a stamp to actualize.

Sgt Stout yields a rather dimunitive return in investment, having neither the appropriate magazine depths considering how high in the echelon it is embedded and the proper sensor coverage. It is essentially 80s ADA fishing their pockets for a CUAS solution... but still stuck in 80s mindset and vision. The mobile laser is the real deal.
 
bobbymike said:
https://nationalsecurityjournal.org...-abramsx/?mc_cid=ef2b3dcbdf&mc_eid=307947a252
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Survivability in the long range precision strike regime is about interceptions per minute across various munition types.

The idea that throwing an APS on a tank is the end of drones is not dissimilar to the idea that throwing a dozen 1.1" machinegun on a battleship is the end of the air threat.

The opponent, can and will adapt, at far faster response loop than long lead items like tanks (under modern MIC) and only extremely robust plans can survive for long.

There are already EFP drones built that can standoff top attack that can defeat short ranged APS. One thing that also hits me while looking at shotgun equipped interceptor drones is that it looks like exactly the type of thing to strafe APS radars (not unlike how fighters suppressed battleship AA). APS radar jammers are a known thing in the CAPS program upgrade for likes of hellfires.

Now, not every vehicle needs to have top of line air defense capability like how iowas can be escorted for a fire mission. That said, the relative importance needs to be identified, and those that enables formation survival is far more important than one with the big gun.
 
Russian citizenship. Little guy thought he can flex dollars there with the absurd currency exchange ratio.
 
Hi all, just something interesting I've found while browsing USAHEC. M-1 Abrams was once planned to get an internally mounted mortar. Included in the correspondence was a proponent evaluation and a final report. However, they only show the cover for the final report.

From: https://emuweb.usahec.org/alma/multimedia/146370/20184474MN11870.pdf [MESSAGE TRAFFIC FROM DONN A. STARRY TO VARIOUS REGARDING TRAINING AND DOCTRINE COMMAND POSITION ON INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY MOUNTED 60MM MORTARS FOR TANKS AND FVS WITH ATTACHMENTS] its only 9 pages.

Edit: Additionally, from a quick google search, Infantry magazine 1980 November-December has a photo of AVMS (mounted on a M60?) with some info.
 

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