Answering your concerns regarding spall liners, MBTs and Aircraft

[Count_Trackula]

Never proven guilty, despite the guy who was tied up in the KMW corruption charges served jail time lol. Yeah, and OJ was acquitted…and KMW got to skate on another charge because of statute of limitations.

RDE still got thumped for the issue, and KMW was proven to be involved in corrupt activities on other occasions with Greek authorities.

…and the armor packages provided to the Greek and Turkish trials were indeed improved since the Swedish trial. Even the US revised its own heavy armor package in 1996 for M1A1 HA and M1A2 layouts.

[Mytho-GR1]

So it was missing composites which is what armour
It was less armoured to meet the weight requirement

[scavenjer]

Lindström mentions that they tested “the best armour” of the M1A2 in America through live fire testing on his site.
There are also some correspondences which mention it at some point, but I’d have to find them again.
Most likely will have to search them here:
https://arena.usahec.org/
But it’s down for the moment.

They also received the OK for buying DU ammo, but they stated they preferred to get WHA ammo.
So that begs the question, why would DU ammo be OK but armor not?

[scavenjer]

The KMW involvement had to do with the Leopard 1A5s in the deal.
KMW charged over double for the second lot of Leopard 1A5s.
You can find that in the Greek article:

This was the main “scandal” involving KMW.

[Count_Trackula]

Wrong.:
" Kantas also alleged that a KMW representative, Dimitris Papachristos, paid him 0.5% of the value of the PzH-2000 deal (approximately EUR 820,000), while a third representative, Thomas Liakounakos, left EUR 600,000 on his couch to smooth over his concerns about the Leopard 2 program. Kantas claimed he originally believed the tank program was unnecessary, but Defence Minister Yiannos Papantoniou felt obliged to continue the program because the army demanded parity in re-capitalization spending with the other services."

" The second track consists of the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office investigations into KMW, which has centered on the firm’s involvement in the EUR 164 million PzH-2000 self-propelled howitzer deal. After Kantas’ revelations, KMW hired Pricewaterhouse Coopers to conduct an internal audit of its Greek sales. In May 2014, a leaked copy of the audit report revealed that two former German Social Democratic Party (SPD) parliamentarians, Dagmar Luuk and Heinz Alfred Steiner, had inexplicably received EUR 5.6 million in payments from KMW during the early 2000s through their consulting firm, called the Büro für Südosteuropaberatung (Bureau for Southeast Europe Consulting). Both Luuk and Steiner had retired from politics by the time the suspicions payments were made. The two are now facing trial for tax offenses on the theory that they collaborated with Akis Tsochatzopoulos, the Greek minister of defense during the late 1990s, to divert funds from the PzH-2000 deal for the co-conspirators’ private benefit."

[scavenjer]

It was never “missing” composites.
IDK where you get that from, the ballistic hull and turret had the composites intended for the trials.

There was never any composites missing, apart from perhaps the heavy ballistic skirts which apparently were not included in the ballistic rigs (but later adopted).
However that seems to have been intentional.

[Victor_eu]

I saw these tests. So this is probably just cope and excuses, the challenger 2 will usually be worse in shooting than the M1 or Leo 2.

[Daniel8599]

Inspired by the chosen protection solution in the American tank M1A1 DU where the Chobham armor was upgraded with layers of depleted uranium, test firings were also made in Sweden against this type of material. The results showed the possibility of achieving better protection performance if the volume and not the weight was the limiting factor.

Source here: Projekt "Stridsvagn 2000"
Note I was relaying on a machine translation as I don’t speak Swedish, so there’s a chance of mistranslation. This was about the only thing I could find in reference to Sweden testing DU protection.

Here’s a screenshot from inside the pentagon Vol. 9 No. 47 (November 25, 1993) backing up claims Sweden initially wanted the DU Armored M1.

[Daniel8599]

iirc, it was a mix of the PT-19 prototype sent didn’t have the composites installed whilst the ballistic hull & turret, which were sent with PT-19, did have the composite installed.

How the story goes from what I remember was they took the composite from the Ballistic hull & turret and tried adding it to the PT-19 pilot and it came out to actually around 63ish tons, which raised a couple eyebrows since the Germans claimed that it should be around 59.6 tons with the special armor installed.

Mind you I’m going off of memory, so I could be misremembering…

[A_Cute_Chihuahua]

You literally called it leaked yourself, I didn’t even come up with that claim. Now you say “not leaked” … why did you change your story? Regardless, I will refrain from committing even ambiguous felonies for a video game, sorry, not looking. Submit it to Gaijin if you are convinced it’s legal, they get paid for that shit, not me.

[Fireball_2020]

On a prototype vehicle still under development lel

[ayeflyingcowboy]

Rickard Lindström (project lead for the Swedish tank trials) states that while the armour given to Sweden was the export version, the firing trials were conducted against “the best available” armour.

Yes it was the best export armour GDLS had at the time i.e. it was meant to be better armour then the original FMS armour package, however it was not equivalent to the US’s DU armour as GDLS did not have a DU armour equivalent until after the Swedish trials, i.e. what was used in Greece and Turkey was comparable to the US’s M1A2 DU armour and it was called the Improved FMS armour package:

https://img-forum-wt-com.cdn.gaijin.net/original/3X/b/d/bd9ae9d76a1c825aa2aa2dd04bc7f2a6d01666fa.jpeg
https://img-forum-wt-com.cdn.gaijin.net/original/3X/a/a/aab2ae7f4b83dad10841f2162d002b403d240e16.jpeg

FYI that “news article” was directly quoting the vice president of international business of GDLS i.e. Peter Mcvey:

Also in regards to what Lindstrom said about DU, that was not in regards to the US’s DU armour, that was in regards to them testing DU in general as potential armour, however as I have already stated above, the Swedes wanted the US’s DU armour.

Everything indicates that the armour protection offered by DU M1A2 is the same or equivalent as that found on the proposed non-DU M1A2 (the weight of the tested M1A2 was 62.5t while quite a few sources put the weight of the DU M1A2 at 61.4t).

Except it does not, as stated above, a non-DU armour package that was comparable to the US’s DU armour didn’t exist in 1993. The weights are also irrelevant, 62.5 tons is most likely the full combat weight, either that or that was the weight with the Swedish add on armour, because not even the Australian M1A1 AIM weighs 62.5 tons, and the Australian AIM received the Advanced Non-DU armour:

https://img-forum-wt-com.cdn.gaijin.net/original/3X/f/6/f639036ea670c14d7bace637721235b2389da7df.jpeg
https://img-forum-wt-com.cdn.gaijin.net/original/3X/d/1/d1c2aaa82fd39d227f299a44e38fb8c13464f942.png
So, all up there are 4 known FMS armour packages, the original FMS armour, the Swedish one, the Improved FMS (HAP-1/HAP-2 equiv.) and the Advanced FMS non-DU armour (HAP-3 equiv.).

They were even contemplating sending DU armour to Greece.
I think the “armour issues” slide says enough.

Yes when all sources are given, they point to the fact that what was tested in Sweden was not comparable to the US’s DU armour.

[quartas121]

Don’t give the us a reason to increase their defense budget again! Also f-111, f-15e, f16c, b-52, a-10 would disagree with your claim. the fact is no one can compete with the USA in raw ordnance weight, in game and irl. Sorry for ranting that was actually a funny post

[eqS729gYidXuT2BN]

In game this isn’t really true, the F-111 turns into a turtle if you use more than 50% of the pylons, the A-10 just is a turtle, and I don’t think anyone is realistically taking a F-15 or F-16 with bombs. The ones who would actually realistically carry bombs and missiles are the missile trucks like the F-4

[quartas121]

Fair point about f111, and ig the f16c is more liked for its guided air to ground weaponry than just raw weight, but the f-15e specifically is very good at carrying lots of bombs. Can’t wait for them to add as capstone of attack line, after av8b. Wait actually I’d love the see the f-15e as a squadron vehicle. Too bad it’s at least gonna be a year before they add it.

[Victor_eu]

@ayeflyingcowboy

So, all up there are 4 known FMS armour packages, the original FMS armour, the Swedish one, the Improved FMS (HAP-1/HAP-2 equiv.) and the Advanced FMS non-DU armour (HAP-3 equiv.).

also armor for Australian SEPv3, NGAP equivalent most likely

[Victor_eu]

it is also possible that there are two Advanced non-DU armor, as the Australian M1A1s had custom-made armor and it may be different than the one mentioned in the documents about Greece and Turkey, but both will provide HAP-3 level of protection, but I could be wrong.

[ayeflyingcowboy]

Yea I just don’t know what the non-DU NGAP armour is called, unless it will just be called NGAP?

it is also possible that there are two Advanced non-DU armor, as the Australian M1A1s had custom-made armor and it may be different than the one mentioned in the documents about Greece and Turkey, but both will provide HAP-3 level of protection, but I could be wrong.

I don’t believe this is the case. This would mean that the Army and GDLS designed, created and tested a Non-DU HAP-3 armour before the US had even began designing their actual HAP-3 armour, i.e. the US army hadn’t ballistically tested the improved armour until Q4 2000 and it didn’t enter service until 2001:

https://img-forum-wt-com.cdn.gaijin.net/original/3X/2/5/251f5714ddfeb5e0a05ec6565c2baf6ada7ba8e3.png
which just for clarification, the SEPs and M1A1 SA were also noted as having the improved frontal and improved side armour:

The Advanced non-DU armour was most likely the HAP-3 equivalent and the Improved FMS armour was the HAP-1/2 equivalent armour, this I believe makes sense as the Improved FMS armour began being created after the 1993 trials.

That aside there could very well be two different Advanced non-DU armour packages as both Morocco and Australia received HAP-3 M1A1 AIMv2/SAs with non-DU armour.

[MarkoNotPolo]

I know it’s a YT video and such (Of course this information might simply not be true)
but it is nonetheless very intriguing for bringing up what material was used as a spall liner in the M1 -

• First ones used lead and since 1988… DU was used!
  This is very different from what I’ve heard previously and what documents presented since they mentioned Kevlar and rubber (unless I’ve missed them)

Too bad he doesn’t list the sources used

~11:40

The Insane Engineering of the M1 Abrams

[botchii]

Eagerly awaiting a reply to the state of the Challenger 2 series. It would also be nice if Gaijin addressed concerns regarding the Type 10, Ariete, and Leclerc.