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Russian army under equipped?


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Re: gas turbines 

They perform worse at altitudes, but as already pointed out, so do all air breathing engines. Gas turbines get attention because gas turbines are sometimes attached to machines that fly. Tanks will not attain the kind of altitudes to cause major performance drop offs, and I don't know of any low power gripes from tankers at high altitude stations like Ft Carson. 

 

Re Saudi M1A2s

 

They're much closer to M1A1s than the current US batch. While they do have the CITV they lack the last almost 20 years of armor upgrades (basically everything from the M1A1HA forward), and lack a lot of refinements that came with the SEP or various minor fleetwide upgrades made to US tanks. 

 

The best export Abrams would be the Australian models in my assessments. No CITV but newer vehicles with some post Iraq refinements. 

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52 minutes ago, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:

 

The best export Abrams would be the Australian models in my assessments. No CITV but newer vehicles with some post Iraq refinements. 

...And a hell of a lot of work getting them to function reliably in our conditions, btw. From a few chats I had at the air show a few weeks back, it seems Aussie dust is very different to the dust you folks considered it for... 

Ours probably come with eskis too (cannot confirm however), and if so the beer inside is remarkably superior to anything you lot stash in them... @Ithikial_AU  

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4 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

Ha! Let me tell you I've had Aussie beer and I wouldn't give it to a dog.

:P

Michael

As I've mentioned a few times in the community, beer consumption per capita has actually been falling here for decades plus the usual array of imports and craft beers have hit the local mainstream producers quite hard. Never been a beer drinker myself... not strong enough. ;)

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8 hours ago, Artemis258 said:

...And a hell of a lot of work getting them to function reliably in our conditions, btw. From a few chats I had at the air show a few weeks back, it seems Aussie dust is very different to the dust you folks considered it for... 

Ours probably come with eskis too (cannot confirm however), and if so the beer inside is remarkably superior to anything you lot stash in them... @Ithikial_AU  

I'm not discounting what you're saying, but I'm looking at the places the Abrams is stationed (29 Palms, NTC, Forts Hood, Bliss, YTC, the USMC tanks that are in Australia), deployed (hello middle east, Afghanistan), and I haven't seen anything that indicated a higher rate of failure relative to other equipment.  It's possible Australian dust is a unique breed that conquers all filters unless said filters are guarded by Marines, but I have to wonder if there's not other factors at work.

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1 hour ago, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:

I'm not discounting what you're saying, but I'm looking at the places the Abrams is stationed (29 Palms, NTC, Forts Hood, Bliss, YTC, the USMC tanks that are in Australia), deployed (hello middle east, Afghanistan), and I haven't seen anything that indicated a higher rate of failure relative to other equipment.  It's possible Australian dust is a unique breed that conquers all filters unless said filters are guarded by Marines, but I have to wonder if there's not other factors at work.

Army Head of Modernisation and Strategic Planning Major General Gus McLachlan recently hosted personnel from the US Army’s Tank and Automotive Command (TACOM) in Michigan to investigate what he describes as ‘very significant and reliability issues’ with the Abrams fleet in Australia.

“At the end of it the Americans back-briefed me, saying we are using our tanks at 10 times the rate of a similar American unit and also, we use them on terrain that our soldiers would never contemplate crossing,” he told delegates at the SimTecT 2016 conference in Melbourne recently.  A further difference between the two Abrams operators is that the Australian Army runs the AGT1500 engine on diesel, where US forces use Aviation Turbine (AVTUR) fuel.

 
 source - 

http://www.australiandefence.com.au/news/tae-cuts-abrams-engine-overhaul-times 

*shrug* we like to push ours a little hard p'raps? 

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3 hours ago, Artemis258 said:

Army Head of Modernisation and Strategic Planning Major General Gus McLachlan recently hosted personnel from the US Army’s Tank and Automotive Command (TACOM) in Michigan to investigate what he describes as ‘very significant and reliability issues’ with the Abrams fleet in Australia.

“At the end of it the Americans back-briefed me, saying we are using our tanks at 10 times the rate of a similar American unit and also, we use them on terrain that our soldiers would never contemplate crossing,” he told delegates at the SimTecT 2016 conference in Melbourne recently.  A further difference between the two Abrams operators is that the Australian Army runs the AGT1500 engine on diesel, where US forces use Aviation Turbine (AVTUR) fuel.

 
 source - 

http://www.australiandefence.com.au/news/tae-cuts-abrams-engine-overhaul-times 

*shrug* we like to push ours a little hard p'raps? 

Hahaha.

 

No. Having seen the optempo from Iraq and the literally howling sandstorm the Abrams handled there, I'm going to vote putting the literally dirtiest, least efficient fuel short of converting the tank to wood burning as a likely cause. 

 

It's a jet engine in a tank. It'll burn most anything but the cleaner the burn the less you'll have to fix the engine. 

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So like additional follow up because I'm at Fort Couch right now instead of my phone:

The "Pushing ours a little hard" thing is silly, just looking at how many miles, and under some really insane conditions (hello Shamal!) we put our Abrams through while deployed, and the NTC fleet likely wins some sort of record for least loved, most used Abrams in the world (as they're driven hard by the OPFOR, and then both those OPFOR crews and their mechanics also pull double duty as insurgents/civilians on the battlefield depending on the day meaning a pretty big impact in maintenance hours, and this all happens in the howling open desert or rocky mountain passes*), and then 29 Stumps is pretty brutal on Abrams too.

I'm also just curious about the "10 times as much" simply because looking at how often we rolled our tanks, you'd be hard pressed to do ten times as much without training on weekends or simply driving the Abrams in circles for some hours daily.  

Finally, when I took over my company, I found we actually had a much lower operational readiness rate than advertised because the previous commander wasn't as aggressive about OR rates and there was some shifty paperwork in that stack too.  

You know what my solution was?

Put even more mileage on the tanks.  Armored vehicles are a lot like the human body, in that they are healthier the more often they are exercised (it keeps things from settling, building up, makes faults obvious when they're small things instead of going wrong over two weeks of sitting in the motorpool).  Our OR rates as a Battalion actually went up when we where in the field simply because of this exercise effect.

If you were just driving the tanks raw and stupid, without good before, during, and after operations maintenance, then maybe more miles would be a problem, and more mileage does put you closer to periodic services (ours were twice annual, but it was generally a inspection followed with swapping out high wear, shorter life parts like seals and hoses), and if you ignored those, you'd be in a world of suck anyway (as with any piece of equipment), but on a whole, more mileage and dust just doesn't seem to wash because those are both things the US M1A1SA, M1A1FC, and the various marks of M1A2 all have extensive exposure to.  



*Least loved, most used by people who aren't idiots and getting their tanks killed in Yemen that is

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*shrug* Not something I have direct experience with, so I can't comment from experience, simply the experience of those I talked with. The diesel is almost certainly a factor, and makes me wonder why we didn't upgrade our old Leopards... I do know a lot of the equipment we purchase is 'refurbished' and there are often changes that have to be made to fit with Australian requirements, though what exactly that entails I'm not sure. 

Thanks for the thoughts PzSkW!

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1 hour ago, Artemis258 said:

The diesel is almost certainly a factor, and makes me wonder why we didn't upgrade our old Leopards

I can't speak directly about the Australian choice, but one factor behind Canada's decision to buy refurbished Leopard 2s instead of continuing to upgrade their Leopard 1s was that spare parts were becoming prohibitively difficult to procure.

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9 hours ago, Artemis258 said:

*shrug* Not something I have direct experience with, so I can't comment from experience, simply the experience of those I talked with. The diesel is almost certainly a factor, and makes me wonder why we didn't upgrade our old Leopards... I do know a lot of the equipment we purchase is 'refurbished' and there are often changes that have to be made to fit with Australian requirements, though what exactly that entails I'm not sure. 

Thanks for the thoughts PzSkW!

It's just thoughts really, I could be totally wrong.  Another possibility is if they're refurbed M1A1s (as in US tanks from the late 80's) it could just be bad overhauls in the first place, or profoundly high mileage engines (we did have more problems with our ABV's automotive systems because they were based on some of the oldest surplus Abrams hulls in the fleet, but also they were working against being maintained by engineers and the mechanics that support engineers who were not at all Abrams people).

Who knows.

As to upgrading the Leo 1s, Vanir is pretty spot on, they're older tanks using spare parts that are increasingly uncommon.  Also while a Leo 1 upgrade would have to at best, be underwritten by the Australians, at worse, fully funded and developed in house ("worst" speaking strictly in terms of cost, not technical ability), there's going to be surplus US parts, and families of upgrades available likely for decades to come (the same could have been said for the Leo 2 of course).  

 

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On 4/8/2017 at 11:19 PM, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:


As to upgrading the Leo 1s, Vanir is pretty spot on, they're older tanks using spare parts that are increasingly uncommon.  Also while a Leo 1 upgrade would have to at best, be underwritten by the Australians, at worse, fully funded and developed in house ("worst" speaking strictly in terms of cost, not technical ability), there's going to be surplus US parts, and families of upgrades available likely for decades to come (the same could have been said for the Leo 2 of course).  

 

Oh, yeah the Leos were getting older but we could have gone for the Leo 2s imho.... Or a larger group of IFVs of some kind... We have a succession of governments that insist on buying american surplus, even of equipment we don't really need. 

Mind you, we're wondering way off the garden path at this point! 

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I'm curious as to what the military's take on tanks is these days. A few years ago they were saying they didn't need or want anymore and it seemed that interest in armored warfare was on the wane. 

Now with segments in the West itching for a confrontation with Putin and Russia it seems like interest in tanks and armored warfare may be re-ignited?

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20 hours ago, Artemis258 said:

Oh, yeah the Leos were getting older but we could have gone for the Leo 2s imho.... Or a larger group of IFVs of some kind... We have a succession of governments that insist on buying american surplus, even of equipment we don't really need. 

Mind you, we're wondering way off the garden path at this point! 

I think if you guys had been shopping in the 1990's it'd have been a Leo 2 for sure because you couldn't beat the post West German fire sale of AFVs.  If you were looking for a Western style MBT after that all settled down though, M1 wasn't the worst deal, newer model Leo 2s are about as expensive if not more so, Leclerc/K2/Type 10 are all out for their own weirdo reasons (expense/expense/political).  I think US ties were the kind that cemented the deal, but I don't think the Leo 2s would have exactly been much better performers, and in the event of a Pacific contingency, it does share a common parts pool with the most likely regional ally.

Of course if the Diesel Abrams ever comes out, I imagine Australia will be a launch customer for that all.  

As to if Australia needed a tank, I'm biased, but I think if an IFV or something like the MGS had been selected, it'd have been a few years down the road before the same conclusions the Canadians had would kick in as far as tanks being a generally good idea.

 

 

7 hours ago, db_zero said:

I'm curious as to what the military's take on tanks is these days. A few years ago they were saying they didn't need or want anymore and it seemed that interest in armored warfare was on the wane. 

Now with segments in the West itching for a confrontation with Putin and Russia it seems like interest in tanks and armored warfare may be re-ignited?

There was a lack of serious belligerent state actor threats, we were in an era that 1991-2000ish seemed defined by small brushfire wars, best handled by light rapid response forces, then the 2003 interlude followed by COIN fought most ably by light fighters.  What made not just tanks, but armored formations in general strong did not manifest itself in this dynamic.  Now that we've got a Russia doing silly stuff, it's something not dissimilar to the sort of wake up the Korean War brought about, that the light forces of the savage wars of peace, nor the nuclear curtain dropper adequately answer the mail for defense purposes.

Looking at NATO there appears to be some serious rumblings about more tanks, and looking at the yankee side of the pond, you bet your bottom dollar there's a sea change back to armor/mechanized forces being both relevant and essential.

 

3 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Britain is cutting it's armour force to (IIRC) 176 Challenger II total.  :mellow:

There's vague talks of upgrades, but nothing concrete that I've read yet.

Since time immemorial British politicians have looked to the military as a piggy bank for their pet projects, only to stare in horror when they let the malnourished thing finally out if it's cage to be beat upon by Germans, the French, Colonists, etc, etc,etc, and respond with shock how the military could let itself become so poorly prepared before appointing themselves to investigations and committees to decide what part of the military to blame, and how to tell it to do its job.  

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5 hours ago, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:


As to if Australia needed a tank, I'm biased, but I think if an IFV or something like the MGS had been selected, it'd have been a few years down the road before the same conclusions the Canadians had would kick in as far as tanks being a generally good idea.

 

There was a lack of serious belligerent state actor threats, we were in an era that 1991-2000ish seemed defined by small brushfire wars, best handled by light rapid response forces, then the 2003 interlude followed by COIN fought most ably by light fighters.  What made not just tanks, but armored formations in general strong did not manifest itself in this dynamic.  Now that we've got a Russia doing silly stuff, it's something not dissimilar to the sort of wake up the Korean War brought about, that the light forces of the savage wars of peace, nor the nuclear curtain dropper adequately answer the mail for defense purposes.

No serious state threats to Australia mate, hasn't been for a long time (though we do have a fetish for being invaded - we really want to matter. Makes us feel important on some cultural level). Last time we deployed tanks at all was Vietnam, and these days we certainly don't have enough for it to really matter. 

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