Re: Tanks

On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Los wrote:

> Re: All these  Nato vs WP tanker(with autoloader) battles occurred? If
you're
> talking about the Gulf war, where's the correlation about autoloaders
being
> inferior to anything? There were a lot of factors involved in the
defeat.
> That was more an issue of operational  and tactical excellence, and
crew
> quality than anything else. We would have won those tank fights if
both sides
> had got out an swapped tanks. Having worked very closely with mideast
forces
> for many year, I've yet to be impressed by very many of them. Sure
they can
> generate violence but when it comes to successfully conducting modern
> warfare, tank or otherwise, Nah.

I don't know how happy our boys would have been trundling around in a 
T55. There were engagements that were not one sided, had our boys not
had 
the better tanks with the faster rate of fire, I think things would have

been worse. Realize that a faster rate of fire means you can kill your 
opponent faster. 

> The fact is, (And Tom already made this point)  that if auto loaders
and three
> man crews are already to day present in potentially 40-50% of the
world's
> tanks, then it's hardly a stretch of the imagination that 200 years
from now,

Just because the russians are doing it in their MBT's (Kurassier's and 
AMX-13's don't count as the Bustle mounted autolaoder (with the 
occilating turret to keep the autoloader inline with the breech) doesn't

mean everyone else will too. All of the Western MBTs (Leopard, 
Challenger/Cheiftans, Abrams, and Merkava don't use autolaoders). The 
Leclerc has an auto loader and I don't think the french have won a tank 
battle in 50' years (the french also have a rotating crew concept for 
this tank, I don't see this being the best thing in a sustained 
operation and the write ups I've seen indicate this). 

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- Ryan Montieth Gill	  NRA / DoD# 0780 (Smug #1) / AMA / SOHC -
- ryan.gill@turner.com	    I speak not for CNN, nor they for me -
- rmgill@mindspring.com 	     www.mindspring.com/~rmgill/ -
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