It gives a vibe of a good place for a sensor, but what it will be we will have to learn in the future
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
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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”
nah its more like playing conkers with an xbox since we kept the same hull…
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I wonder what it will look like with its addon armour?
Good to see new roof armour (with simillar layout after all). It seems to be a lot thicker tho. Wonder if it’s spaced steel or some composite…?
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.
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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.
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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.
This topic is really interesting to think about.
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Well… same hull, but new armor package.
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.
knowing what the Treasury and MoD are like, I’d wager it was this.
Then again, I don’t actually know.
There is no new hulls
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?
Well is that the same thing though
If we are gonna make hulls we should make a new one
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TL;DR: brand new vehicles are not only very expensive but also very time consuming.
Challenger 3 comes from the LEP, which in turn came from the CSP, which I think started in 2005?
Assessment contracts were awarded for LEP in 2016, we have the 2018 and 2019 demonstrators, 2021 confirmation, and FOC intended for 2030. That’s almost a decade from contract to delivery for vehicles that still use the challenger hull and have a very similar turret (so far at least) to CR2.
A brand new vehicle designed from scratch would take (much) longer to develop and build, while also costing money the entire time.
There’s been a couple privately developed demonstrators, but to my knowledge (which is very limited) even the US and it’s hundreds of billions in annual military funding hasn’t pursued a brand new main battle tank.
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I mean it wouldn’t be a “new” tank per say, because you’d be using the existing turret design
Unless MoD just loses their sanity overnight.
Exactly my point. So would they just hope the turret keeps doing its job well and bung a new powerpack in or just build/design a new type of hull and same type of turrets if they wanted to build more tanks?
I mean I’m no procurement expert but if they’re in a rush they could reacquire some Jordanian CR1s and use those, rather than making them from scratch?
I imagine they’d also want logistics as simple as possible so depending on the number required they probably would make new CR hulls rather than changing the design.
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Mfw Vickers acquires toothless Leopard 2 hulls and suggests them to the British Army with their own homemade turret to spice up the offer. However, since Chally 1 is a thing by then, the Army declines… so Vickers offers it to troublesome regions & nations (Egypt & UAE + the rest of ME) that Germany had sanctioned. KMW complies with the Goverment’s demands and forces Vickers to withdraw its offers since per the German Export Law, they were now illegal.
“Afraid of competition”, lol.
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