Not without the turret of course. If we could find any evidence that both the T53 engine and turret were mounted at the same time period, we would essentially be dealing with an M4A3 with a higher power-to-weight ratio than a BT-7, which should at least result in better acceleration at the cost of a more exposed engine module.
underside canard goes crazy. if only it was able to be armed </3
Yeah, the Type 11 (15+km AESA) missiles in game would probably be rather close in performamce to the Type 81(C) ARH missiles (14km PESA), so the Type 11 launcher vehicle alone would probably only be a sidegrade. The missiles are better, but it only carries half the amount.
But…
There’s a trailer mounted version of the launcher that seems to have been used during testing. With the IRIS-T SLS teased as potentially the first trailer mounted missile launcher, the mechanics for such a system are confirmed to already be in the works, if not even finished by now.
While I’ve never personally seen this trailer mounted to any vehicle, it does seem to have a fully self contained launcher setup equal to that mounted on the JGSDF’s Type 11 launchers, meaning as long as a vehicle has the necessary towing capacity and of course a tow hitch it can in theory be used.
There’s two main ways I’d like to see personally:
One is to simply make it a direct upgrade to the Type 81, with the launcher vehicle towing a second launcher. This gives the Type 11 the same missile load as the Type 81, except with no reload necessary and all missiles immediately ready to fire across two separate weapons that can operate even if one is destroyed. Though there is the one disadvantage of it likely being a pain to maneuver around in.
This should be possible, since the mass of this trailer mounted system likely* doesn’t exceed the 6t towing capacity of the SKW 475 chassis the JGSDF’s launcher is based on, though since I don’t have any exact figures for its weight this might not be true.
*
I just estimated the weight of the trailer here to be 5.5t by taking the estimated weight of the Type 11 launcher system of 3t (14.2t Type 11 launcher vehicle weight - 11.2t SKW 475 combat weight) and adding the 2.5t figure given by a local farmer I asked who had a similarly sized flatbed trailer.
It’s not a perfect estimate, but better than nothing.
The other is much more interesting, and finally a solution to the radar problem. Instead of making the vehicle the self contained Type 11 launcher platform, instead it could be the Type 11 FCS radar vehicle, complete with AESA search and track radar, and enabling full datalink and lock on after launch capabilities to the Type 11 missile. While this one would be stuck at half the Type 81’s missile load again, that’s probably a small price to pay for this level of performance.
Once again it’s based on the SKW 475 chassis, so towing it shouldn’t be an issue either.
So in theory it can be a great SPAA with radar, but for that to happen we’d need a bit of an experimental/theoretical configuration.
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