Approved: sci-military-moderated@retro.com Return-Path: news@lana.pathlink.com Delivery-Date: Wed Jul 17 14:32:34 2002 Delivery-Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:32:34 -0700 for ; Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:32:33 -0700 (PDT) (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NO) for ; Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:12:22 -0700 (PDT) for ; Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:12:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from news@lana.pathlink.com) Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:12:20 -0700 (PDT) To: sci-military-moderated@moderators.isc.org From: TTK Ciar Newsgroups: sci.military.moderated Subject: Re: Stryker/LAV Date: 17 Jul 2002 21:12:20 GMT Organization: Subtle, but there Message-ID: References: <3D28C6D3.CD416C98@yahoo.com> <3D32272F.7E938A5D@yahoo.com> <0oh8juk132v5p7u8ba2gn10epoumrt99eq@4ax.com> <3D34BD8D.B314A90D@yahoo.com> X-NNTP-Posting-Host: news.newsdawg.com X-MailScanner: Passed Content-Length: 1594 Lines: 33 NNTP-Posting-Host: d2c123c7.newsreader.tycho.net X-Trace: 1026954248 gemini.tycho.net 36736 205.179.181.194 X-Complaints-To: abuse@tycho.net Once upon a time, Abrigon Gusiq said: > Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 16:42:53 -0800 > >Catch up if we have to do another WW2 or like war. >Even desert storm was not much of a war like WW2, more like one battle in WW2. Actually, what I was referring to was our need to catch up on techniques for increasing vehicle protection while decreasing vehicle mass, so we can make good, air-transportable LAV's. Lowered vehicle profiles, reactive armor, interception systems (like ARENA and Drozd), and China's laser defense system all make vehicles harder to kill while keeping them relatively light (the Chinese, Russian, and Ukranian MBT's are all at or under 50 metric tons). The Germans managed to make their Leopard-II MBT's lighter than the M1 while carrying more armor than the M1, by making the entire vehicle more compact (smaller armor envelope). I am not trying to say that these vehicles are "better" than the M1 Abrams, only that we need to use similar techniques for our light armored vehicles if we want to make them transportable by air while still providing adequate levels of protection. The techniques used to make the M1 one of the hardiest MBT's in the world (ie, piling lavish tonnage of armor atop a frame strong enough to carry it) will not yield a useful air-transportable AFV. Without a more intelligent design, an AFV that fits within the weight constraints of air-transportability will not afford adequate protection. (The LAV-3 is a case in point. I'm amazed the army is willing to adopt such a marginal vehicle.) -- TTK