RE: Engineers Was Re: TOE

Ryan Gill wrote:

>>A blade is easy to "tack on" but the hydraulics needed
>>to dig properly with them is no joke.  A bladed Abrams
>>might be good for pushing spoil.
>
>I dunno. If it's designed in as a feature and the hydraulic pump is
large 
>enough, adding an extra hydraulic component isn't so hard. Look at the 
>Swedish S tank. They have a fully retractable blade for digging their
own 
>scrapes sans engineer support.

If you want an example showing that "adding an extra hydraulic component

isn't so hard", you'll have to look somewhere else than the S-tank.
While 
it shows you is that you *can* design extra hydraulics into a tank if 
you're really really determined to do so, it is also an excellent
example 
of just how !#!¤&/# difficult it can be.

According to those Swedish ex-S-tank crew members I've talked to, the 
S-tank's hydraulics were very nice on the occasions when they actually 
worked as they were supposed to... but unfortunately that wasn't too
often 
even in garrison, and of course field conditions made it a lot worse :-(

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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