Yeah, like I said, it’s just some rough ideas on what the replacement of the Abrams might look like.
I’d be surprised if the M1E3 didn’t borrow some of the same design ideas and concepts, both these programs center around massive weight reductions relative to current M1A2’s if I understand them correctly.
There’s recently also been some rumours that NGAD might not be feasible with current funding, but I have to wonder: Does the US have any other choice?
They have to replace these aging platforms, especially for the aircraft side of things where the age of the airframes is leading to spiralling maintenance costs. They also make it clear that the M1A2 SEP v3’s weight is unacceptable and this issue must be addressed.
I personally expect the M1E3 to be a lot more conservative; if they take anything from NGCV it’d probably be the Cummins ACE engine for the fuel efficiency. Since that would translate to them being able to shave weight dedicated to fuel storage on the tank itself without actually affecting the range, as well as lighten up the logistical burden that’s been the Army’s big concern. That’s a pretty big if though, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they start looking back at the old LV100-5 Turbine instead since it’s both lighter and more fuel efficient than the rather ancient AGT1500 (hell IIRC, like 60% of the Abrams operation costs is maintaining and replacing the AGT1500)
Otherwise I’d expect probably incremental things like gutting copper cabling out for fiber-optic, XM360 gun configured for manual loading as a lighter weight replacement to the M256 (with better future proofing since it’s also able to sustain higher pressure rounds and that seems to be the Army’s go-to method of increasing ammo performance…), more extensive Titanium usage (which would shave around 716lbs just going with the Phase 1 Titanium components that weren’t implemented, since IIRC only Phase 2 in the form of the Gunnery Sight Housing & Blowout Panels got implemented), etc etc.
That is not the point, later American army evaluated M60 updates as totally worthless, as they are not only inferior to Russian counterparts of the same period, but also cost more than its counterparts. US army is in a state where they need to evaluate whether it is worth going for new updates, as seen by stopping Sep V4 which was almost ready. Just from a cost point of view, each ABRAMS upgraded from M1A1 to SEPV3 standard will cost as much as 10 T72B-B3M upgrades.
It is the other way round, I am trying to imply it is able to compete so it doesn’t need to get massive updates, look at the context.
Not ditching your old ones does not mean they should spend millions of dollars each receiving pointless upgrades which does not even improve the capability.
wdym pointless upgrade. per Necrons31467 source. heavyweight is one of their main concerns about sepv3 . So “if” they able to create lighter armor package to replace current heavyweight one.(that could offer the same or better protection) they would surely go for it.
Not to mention it would still take a long while to field new tank which didn’t even came out yet unless they choose Abrams X which they would still take some time to produce them enough to replace M1A2s fleet. In the mean time i am sure Abrams would have some upgrades program coming up. Will they replace armor package ? we do not know “yet”.
Yes but the evaluation should be made on the ground of: does it improve the combat capability of M1s? The current evaluation is no, it reduces weight by marginal degree, and would be very expensive to proceed, as seen from the stopping of SEP V4 since it was going over the budget.
This is simply not true the reason why they canceled Sepv4 was in favor of the development of new abrams (m1e3/a3) in response to what is happening in Ukraine.
Only because the current tranche of systems tend to be derived from off the shelf components, as such do not have any real resistance or effective response to jamming soon as a basic or cheap Contrast, Correlation or Anti-Radiation seeker appears, a fallback terminal attack mode is effectively guaranteed to propagate.
Which will of course undermine Soft-kill methods, since for the most part making blast or fragmentation resistant antenna is not realistically possible, which further makes swarming / successive waves more effective.
Though on the other hand the Walleye Stingray (Program to develop a Wireguided Walleye variant to allow for post release control like the ER,DL subvariant in ECM heavy environments at extended ranges) managed to develop a functional 30 Nmi spool of optical fibers, and that was in the mid '80s.
It be almost certainly a good idea to have some sort of hard-kill backup since bypassing Noise / barrage jamming isn’t that hard (Theoretically) and since Jamming is bi-static system it provides extended warning of its presence before becoming effective, unless pulsed; which degrades its impact and adversely impact penetration depth should it fail.
I could certainty see a 40mm canister shell for the Mk 19 being developed as a stopgap while HE-VT / AHEAD was refined or the M230LF (reduced RoF 30mm Chaingun off the AH-64), and an Electro Optical Search system was integrated into CROWS (provides commonality with the existing Sgt. Stout system) or something similar.
No, we still deal with jamming affecting flight performance with gps and manually guided drones that cost 5-7 digits. Drones which are supposed to be gps hardened and jamming resistant. It is not hard to shut down a lot of drones, and would make these cheap throw away ideas quickly turn into US style projects which need to add this and that and get expensive fast.
Even tethered drones run into their issues, these cables aren’t invisible when using EO type devices looking at different wavelengths.
There’s prob not going to be a cheap contrast, correlations and Anti-rad seeker as you put it, anytime soon. If it has to rely on this, and it is so cheap, it’s prone to decoys. Unless you’re gonna start using AI and as I said in the original post. You can choose 2 from cost effective, power and sophistication.
Drones being a panacea is a pipe dream for people watching nations which are the US or most NATO countries and thinking they’d fall victim to the same fates as Ukraine. There is many lessons and data to be concerned with and things to improve and doctrine and tech to tighten up to new demands. But it hasn’t fundamentally changed the battlefield, and people who actually work in this industry know it because we see how even expensive drones get blocked out. And the cheaper it is, the more it gets off course quickly with IMU’s controlling the flight path.
In the future these things will play a very pivotal role, but I assure you drone tech isn’t nearly as advanced or undefended against as people have been lead to believe in Ukraine. As opposed to when a superpower or near peer is the one at the helm of their own defenses.
That’s like 2 tonnes off max, I meant more significant weight loss, like 5 or 10 which would be more obvious as it would suit combat in Ukraine a lot better since it is mainly mud.
Abrams has a design that clearly did not account for combat in Ukraine (probably more thinking of Russians charging and not themselves.) so I am not surprised it is not doing well there. US army apparently said that weight is a major issue and I doubt they just ignored all the stuff you said if they are super effective. (corruption and price could be the other thing)
