Though I’d chime in here, but we do have primary values for the XM-1 / baseline M1 and inferred / prospective values for the M1A1 & M1IP so a case could be built if we have any documentation that uses said configurations as a reference.
Documents have to come before production in order for produced units to have that equipment…
So of course the document is before SEPV3’s production, it has to be for SEPV3 to get DU hulls. Otherwise SEPV3 wouldn’t be able to get them.
But keep claiming the documents are wrong.
So can we get the KVT to have the 120mm it should have?
KVT is not a tank.
KVT is a universal cosmetic kit designed to fit on all M1 variants [at the time M1 Abrams as that was the one in reserve when it was first designed], and by the time it was used M1s were rotated into storage out of reserve, and M1A1s were pushed in reserve.
You are treating these like design proposals or future requirements. They aren’t. They are compliance and audit records for things that had already physically happened.
Look at the verb tense in the 1998 Federal Register. It doesn’t say we plan to add this. It explicitly says that in 1996, a design change was made and cut-in to production effective with Job 1 M1A2 Phase II. Cut-in to production means it happened on the assembly line in 1996. It refers to a physical manufacturing event that took place 20 years before the SEPv3 even existed.
The 2006 CBO Report is a Budget Audit. The CBO audits what the military is currently buying to tell Congress where the money went. When they listed heavy armor added to hull and turret in 2006, they were auditing the M1A1 AIM and M1A2 SEP contracts that were active and paid for at that time. They do not audit budget for a tank like the SEPv3 that wouldn’t be funded for another decade.
As for the license, you don’t get a nuclear possession license 10 years before you build the item. You get it when you need to handle the material. The amendment to As Needed or unlimited quantity in 2016 was required because the existing fleet of M1A1 SAs and SEPv2s circulating through depots required it.
You are suggesting the Army installed DU hulls in 1996 per the Register, paid for them in 2006 per the CBO, but somehow they didn’t actually exist until the SEPv3 in 2020. That is chronologically impossible.
So go cut up a 2010 Abrams and prove your conjecture.
Cause the documents don’t prove your statements correct.
The documents aren’t saying what you want them to say, and the forum has already discussed the 2006 document last year and the year prior and the conclusion hasn’t changed.
The hull array of SEPv1 is changed over M1A1, we don’t know how, but we know it’s not depleted uranium.
Even if this is the case and a fair point, it sadly isn’t stated explicitly in the source so i doubt Gaijin is going to accept it in the way you are intending. You’re still making your own assumptions and coming to your own conclusions about the sources meaning and resulting consequence which isn’t something Gaijin generally accepts as far as i know.
They specify in the same document that the DU tested is only in the turret:
There is nowhere i have seen that specifies explicitly that the Heavy Armor Package contains DU for the hull.
Edit:
As a general guideline tip for doing research in this way, try to at the same time disprove your own theory, read through your sources first once to see if they support your theory and then once to see if they disprove it. This often eliminates selective reading and confirmation bias by making you look for the parts that you don’t want to find.
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And the NERA Arrays are designed to be modular, permitting them to freely be refit between hulls as needed.
Also, as no further hulls have been produced since the end of M1A1 production everything since then has be remanufactured to produce a new configuration. So nothing would stop from Gaijin deciding to provide DU Hulls to any particular M1A1 configuration.
We know there were plans to refit better (DU) amour for the M1A2,
These were partially integrated, as to at what point it was completed I don’t know.
I have a question. There’s talk about whether the M1A2 has DU armor on the hull or not, but I’m wondering, could it have conventional NERA armor, but better? I say this because I find it strange that the latest Abrams has the same hull armor as the Abrams from the 80s. Could it be that subsequent Abrams models simply have better NERA?
The issue isn’t that we don’t know if it was improved. It’s more so in what way does the DoD Consider things to be an improvement.
For all we know the “improved” configuration is similar in performance to prior Array configurations for less Mass.
And gaijin won’t just provide an arbitrary flat 20% bonus. So we know that the Swedish trials that it’s currently based off is wrong, we just can’t establish in what way it’s wrong.
On the PNNL report: You are correct that they manually installed DU in the turret for that specific test. However, you are overlooking Section 3.1.1 , which explicitly states: “The hull front armor and side armor skirts were not necessary for the Capstone tests so they were removed.”
Since they physically stripped the hull armor off the test rig, the absence of DU in the hull during that specific test proves nothing about the operational fleet. It just proves they weren’t testing the hull that day.
You stated: “There is nowhere I have seen that specifies explicitly that the Heavy Armor Package contains DU for the hull.”
The explicit confirmation is in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission License (SUB-1536) .
The license authorizes the Army to possess “Tank Turrets AND Hulls” as “depleted uranium armor components.”
If the “Heavy Armor” in the hull was just steel or composite (non-radioactive), the Army would not need a nuclear license to possess it. The fact that the NRC regulates the hull as a radioactive component is the explicit confirmation that the material inside is DU.
So the CBO confirms the Hull has “Heavy Armor,” and the NRC confirms the Hull requires a “Depleted Uranium” license.
Do you have that full document available? :)
Nope, these excerpts came from elsewhere these forums. I’d normally link back to the document if it was online but I don’t particularly know for these ones.
Feels like an older GAO report though.
And what do you know. I guess I do now.
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You still have the massive turret ring that the tanks as low down as 2.0 can reliably penetrate and kill the abrams in one shot.
So it doesn’t prove the presence of DU in the hull in any way then. So no point in using it as a source. They even use the terminology that you have previously stated means the presence of DU in the hull; to mean just DU in the turret.
“Is allowed to have” is not the same as “currently has”. It proves nothing more than that they aren’t stopped from doing it if they wanted to.
You’re using Conjecture here and no, there is nothing explicit here that i have been able to find, and i’ve personally spent hours looking.
Again, “Heavy armor” has not been explicitly described to mean DU armor in hull, and that last part isn’t true though, you’re forming conclusions based on your own assumptions and incomplete information.
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Why do you care about speculation and arguing what vehicles got what, if many of the vehicles, especially for top-tier are speculated in performance anyway?
Weird to apply standards of “we have to have definitive proof that these specific vehicles got these pieces of armor.”
When at the same time, you’ll happily hand off armaments to vehicles that never carried them or allowed them to carry it because in theory they could use it,
It’s weird to posture historical rigor for some vehicles when at the same time you’ll laxen, and just go “Eh, close enough, let’em have it” for others
I want to clarify that i have nothing to do with development, no contact with the developers and no insight into development.
All i’m doing here is pointing out what standard Gaijin usually have for sources and how many players tend to assume a lot of things about the source they have because those assumptions line up with their wants. Many tend to read very lose statements as facts for a thing. For example many take “more armor” in a source and say “see! fix it!” when “more” is so undefined that 0.0001mm extra armor would satisfy that statement.
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Insert t80B with “some” units receiving thermals for experimental reasons.