To be fair the viewport is recessed, so you’ll only have the angle to hit it if you’re more or less directly in front of the tank, otherwise the hull armour starts to obscure it. Even if the turret is pointed elsewhere the driver will have his own thermal camera/overlay, and the loader hatch still has an MG mount.
If you’re firing from an elevated position then it’ll be obscured by the mantlet, and you’ll probably have a much easier time hitting the much larger turret roof
probably a LWS or somthing, the APS is probably going to be part of external armour kits (like the TES or OES kits) akin to trophy intergration on the Abrams, put on and taken off as needed
I wonder how the crew feels about loosing so much stowage space, I guess the logic is that low obserablity to radar doesn’t matter much anymore so they can go back to external racks?
I like how they throw shade at CR2 to hype up CR3
“Challenger 3 is going to be a world-class battle tank, unlike Challenger 2”
“Going from CR2 to CR3 is like going from Conkers to having an Xbox”
I really wish they’d make a new hull to go with the new turret.
The turret though I don’t like the way it looks is really good, but they need to get rid of the hull, its not the powerpack, its the slow evolution of what is a modernised 60 year old design.
Honestly if they find the Chally 3 turret to be any good it really wouldn’t surprise me if they built some modernised Chally 2 hulls. or maybe new Chally 3 hulls.
If and when people in the Government stop losing money and start putting my taxes to actual use.
I wonder. was it the old-guard in the British Army forcing Vickers to use the Challenger 1 hulls to become CR2 hulls, or was it the budget cuts…?
The Vickers mk.7 was the way to go for the company, the concept was so good that KMW retracted their consent to use Leo 2 hulls for it, so as not to bring more competition upon themselves.
I’m sure Vickers were competent to create great, modern designs (not that the CR2 is bad, I think it just relies too much on modernising everything that had it’s roots in the Chieftain and CR1).
There was also a posibillity that the UK Army would choose the licenced Abrams produced in Britain.
It already has a ~100mm add-on plate, and the internal composition is new, too.
All in all, CR3’s hull may very easily reach 800mm KE, also significantly reducing the LFP weakspot to strictly the part where there’s no UFP overlapping, so actually smaller than T-72/80/90s.
No I know. What I’m wondering is if MoD realises it has too few tanks to be meaningful, would it build completely new tanks or just build new hulls, or Chally 2 hulls, and slap a CR3 turret on?