Re: Supertank?

On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Thomas Barclay wrote:
> Los spake thusly upon matters weighty: 

> But, I think the question was more related to do infantry actually 
> fight from a mounted posture and is this useful? The bradley (IIRC) 
> was fitted with ports for the M231 port firing rifle thingy and the 
> idea was (at one time) that you could fight the squad mounted. I 
> don't believe this is done to any significant degree, but someone 
> please correct me if they know differently.

the british vehicle design wallahs were convinced that infantry firing
from a transport achieved (a) waste ammo (b) er ... (c) that's it. the
warrior thus has no small arms fire ports (or so i am led to believe).
not
only is pointless firing prevented, but it makes the hull that little
bit
more resistant to gunfire, shrapnel, gas etc.

> > telephone pole. Amazing gun stabilization!
> 
> That is one technology that the US has a lot of. I think the only 
> power that might have better weapons stabilization is the Germans on 
> the Leopard II generation. But it is scary to see an MBT do a belly 
> flop at high speed over a ridge and the gun not even come off target. 

there is info on some of this sort of thing at www.army-technology.com;
have a look at the Leclerc - it has a computerised mapping thingie which
displays the positions of all the targets as little coloured icons. the
commander's station looks like a games arcade ...

Tom