there’s a dust shroud over the top of the base plate yes. The middle section is thicker, with Aft and Forward sections of the plate being half thickness.
Seen here, you can see the aft baseplate is half of the thickness of the middle section which juts out. On the vertical cutaway we can see that’s one solid block there.
On this image however, we see it’s got a dust shroud and is half the thickness at the front.
Here we can see the base plate is divided into 4 segments -
We know the aft section is recessed. The middle section becomes thicker and the front section is half thickness, flush with the middle’s outside facing wall.
ASPRO-HMT has to be flush on its backing plate, which the Dust Shroud theory doesn’t support.
Looking at Warrior’s installation, we see the bricks are flush on the plate:
Therefore, it makes sense that the 2 middle plates are thicker as they are load bearing, provide additional protection to the fighting compartment and ASPRO sits flush on them, meaning they must be solid.
Fair points you make, but this photo shows the shoud taking up the full width with the plate facing outwards:
We see the bolt goes through the shroud which extend down, while the plate is ontop of the shroud. So effectively, the airgap + half width baseplate = 1 full width middle section.
There’s no space issues here, because the shroud is already acting as filler for where real full metal would be.
here’s a top down
Ok so here i go and throw mysel into this pit of fun.
We know the engine plate, and we know the first part of the plate has to be thinner due to front fender
How thicc is 2nd and 3rd part is a mystery
and cover just exist
In other words @Gunjob, the shroud fills in the missing space and reduces weight, but is effectively the same thickness as a full width middile sections.
In red we can see the airgap of the shroud being roughly the same width as the actual plate.
The steel plates thickness we can see in Orange.
Combining the orange and red thicknesses, you get what we see in blue, which is the width of the middle sections.
Can we start marking pictures as spoilers now, im going to see challenger skirts in my nightmares with the amount of times ive seen the same pictures over and over.
From front to back -
The first section is half thickness plate, with the shroud filling the airgap between it and the hull. A bolt passes through both, securing them in place.
The second and third section (Middle plate No.1 and No.2) is a full thickness metal plate. We know this has to be the case because ASPRO-HMT cannot be mounted onto a shroud (As seen by Warrior IFV’s install) and we have photos like this that show the side of the middle plates are solid double thickness.
This would also make sense as the blocks as several tons heavy, and additional thickness would be required to support them while also adding protection to the fighting compartment.
The final piece of the plate is the aft section, which is noticably thinner and bares no weight on it.
