Re: Nailing Dirtside/Stargrunt Chamber Pots (was Re: [GZG] More re: [OFFICIAL] Salute releases....!)

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxxx>]

John Atkinson wrote:

> > The problem is the sheer quantity of designs needed; there are at
> > least 12 SG "nations" we'd need to do the vehicles for (otherwise
> > we'd be forever getting the "why don't you do them for MY favourite
> > nation" stuff, as I mentioned in another post) - if you just say that
> > each would need an MBT, a light tank, and APC/MICV and a fire support
> > vehicle, that's already 48 distinct designs, before you even start to
> > go down the route of support and specialist vehicle variants....
> > sure, we could do this eventually, but it would take us a long time
> > to get these all done....
>
> Not everyone needs a light tank,

Just everyone who can't afford enough heavy tanks ;-)

> Seriously, There probably aren't a dozen different main battle tanks
> in full-scale production today.  US, UK, FRG, FRA, Russia, Israel and
> a dozen folks producing knock-offs of obsolete Russian designs.  Who
> else has a no-kidding tank industry that produces tanks in quantities
> sufficient to arm their own nation, much less someone else's?

Some further examples:

Italy, Japan and South Korea all build their own unique tank designs and 
have equipped their armies with them, though AFAIK none of them have 
exported any.

Ukraine is still mostly working from the T-80 and T-90 baseline, but have 
produced some rather interesting-looking updated variants.

South Africa and Jordan (!) don't build entirely new vehicles AFAIK, but 
both of them produce some *very* radical rebuilds of older tanks - in some 
cases so radical that only the number and positioning of the roadwheels 
hint at what vehicle they started out with. (So does Israel, but you 
already listed them above.)

That's a dozen different countries with their own distinct-looking tanks - 
and that's is just for *MBTs*. There are several other countries today that 
build their own light tanks/heavy IFVs and SPGs (eg. Sweden and Singapore) 
but don't build their own MBTs, and more still that build their own APCs. 
And as for wheeled vehicles - well, just about everyone and their 
grandmother builds those...

> > Well, if you look from any distance with a bit of a squint, there
> > isn't REALLY that much difference between the overall shape of an
> > Abrams, a Challenger, a Leclerc or one of the newer Leopards.....  ;-)
>
> Armor design does tend to force a handful of shapes which don't
> provide too many shot traps--although the Israelis do something wierd
> with their newest Merkavas.

I strongly suspect that the Merk4 has the same kind of armour arrangement 
as the front turret armour of the Leo2 A5 and later - looks like a shot 
trap, but isn't.

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxxx

"Life is like a sewer.
 What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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