I agreed with everything the MP said in there other than his assertion that Ajax would stay because it had to. Absolutely no it doesn’t as me and @l2ulan discussed in a discord, the army with their exceptionalist fantastical ideas could have a perfectly good vehicle that nearly every other NATO nation uses without trouble off the shelf. (I also disagreed when he said its best in class, my friend, its the worst new AFV/IFV in NATO, similar situation to CR2 where its heavily over-stated)
He claimed it would take a decade to get a new vehicle, we could have 200 CV-90’s or KF-41s by the end of the year with another 800 orders for domestic production by the end of 2 years if the urgency was there and they made the decision.
If they pivoted to CV-90/KF-41 it would work because its a good vehicle being forced into the UK’s oddly specific doctrine, which frankly, can be adapted.
If the Army was forced to adopt an alternative, whether that’s CV-90 (my preferred choice), PUMA or KF-41 they could absolutely make it work.
Only area of contention is which option to pick, and what turret to go with, from an urgency PoV an off the shelf turret is optimal, from a strategic and export PoV as well as ROI and manufacture rights, I still believe a CTA 40 turret by LMUK should be selected. I’d personally rather they order the hulls and work out the turret into low-rate production as we go, because LMUK have proven 8 times by @Sebbo_the_Plebbo 's count that they can do this, over and over again.
KF 41 is highly personalised/modular as well.
Look at the italians. They are getting a few dtandard KF41s. And after that personalised ones to their measure.
Rheinmetal definitly would have had no problem implementing the 40mm cannon as well.
Neither does the bae with the cv i think.
But yeah, not like we could change anything.
We csn only lool towards the future if they are able to resolve it
I’m wondering if anyone has any details on the RENK HSWL-256 transmission, trying to get a Torque Converter report passed on Ajax,
but they won’t accept it without ratios (they made some up for the game it seems, why can’t they just apply it to that?), as far as i know, the ratios of the gearbox are not publicly known, but I’m hoping to be wrong by asking.
I’d also be able to report ratios on Puma and KF41 as they share the same Gearbox
Ehhhh… came out the 3 years after the 2A5 and 3 before the 2A6, 7 years after the M1A2 and a year after the M1A2 SEP V1. Without discussing HP/T, weight, armament and armour layout, they also all have CITV’s off the shelf. There’s really no comparison between the CR2 and well, any of those. I don’t see the use in blowing smoke up the arse of a sub-par (for NATO) tank, rather than just acknowledging we cheaped out, it was good enough and funds were (supposedly) better used elsewhere.
Other than the hull being… yeah. It’s good to have a new gun, FCS and turret. Its a shame we gutted out the armoured industry so much that the only way to cost-effectively do it was contract another, more intelligently invested company to go ahead and do a significant portion of that work.
But until the thing gets a new hull, its still going to be sub-par. I have no doubt in my mind that the new composite has the highest effective thickness per mm though of any MBT, which is positive.
The hull isn’t ideal, but it has seen quite a lot of good upgrades. It’s significantly better armoured and has had basically all the automotive components improved, so it’s still a big improvement.
RBSL did an excellent job with what they had to work with, and I think the Challenger 3 will hold its own as one of the best tanks in NATO when it does fully enter service, even if it isn’t the outright best.
I do think the future of the Challenger 3 is to seek a new hull, which up untill the foundation of RBSL was pretty farfetched. However, with proper investment RBSL (which has proven to be a very competant company) could likely develop and produce something new.
The issue is, proper investment, something we aren’t always good at.
In 10 years time we will get the Challenger 4 announcement and it will be the CH3 turret on whatever is the latest Leopard hull. But with the same Cv12 because Britain and comic effect.
CV-12 is actually more fuel efficient and SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than the MTU833 (what’s in the EuroPowerPack such as the CR 2E) (according to Fireball, this is with the 1500hp rated CV-12, of which it can produce easily)
but yeah, the Challenger Hull is outdated, it should be replaced at some point soon
