RE: [OT]Wither Canada? And Australias Abrahms

Actually Beth, I think it's the same gun. The Abrams AFAIK uses the same
120MM smoothbore that the Germans use. Difference is in the firecontrol
system, and the depleted uranium sabot ammunition.

BTW, before the Berlin Wall came down, there used to be an annual NATO
Tank
Gunnery Competition. The Canadians of 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade
were
frequent winners.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
[mailto:owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU] On Behalf Of
Beth.Fulton@csiro.au
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 7:41 PM
To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: RE: [OT]Wither Canada? And Australias Abrahms

G'day,

> Buying the Abrams makes a lot of sense if you're planning on operating
with
> the US.

That's the argument the Aussie government used (or put across in the
general media at least) for Australia getting Abrams now too, especially
the claim Aussies could just jump into US pre-positioned tanks on the
ground and save on logistics and have interoperabillity etc. What
puzzles me is that they then said we weren't buying exactly the same
tank as the US uses and we weren't ever going to be using tanks with
depleted uranium armour or rounds (a very entrenched political policy on
both sides, same as our airforce weren't allowed to use cluster
munitions in Iraq and operated on stricter rules of engagement). So how
can we have interoperability if we can't use the same rounds and are
we're used to different systems etc, do the US have a stock of older
models somewhere they could have pre-posiitoned for us? I'm also
guessing older marks aren't as good as isn't it the uranium that makes
the Abrams so tough? I must admit to being thoroughly confused by the
whole thing. Am I missing some simple logistics connect here or was it a
typical politican's statement? 

Mind you I'm still wondering if the German military tech guys will ever
bother with Australian markets again, first the perferred sub tender was
German but a political jaunt sees us go with what ended up as the
Collins design instead and then we hold a competition for tanks the
Leopard II wins in all critera* and we go for the Abrahms ;)

* Leopards came out with better range, speed and fuel efficiency (all
important for Aussies as we don't have the US logistics capability);
they've got a better gun; and on the interoperability front they're the
NATO workhorse (so lots of nations use them) and as they're NATO
standard one would assume the US would have to be ok with working with
them; and as we're already Leopard users it'd be less of a doctrinal
leap to go to a Leopard II than to an Abrams.

I must admit to knowing little about tanks in general after WWI so I may
be missing something subtle here. 

On a side note, as to RPGs haven't tankers been dealing with them for
decades? Or is it an arms race thing between RPGs and tanks so its
become a big thing again?

Cheers

Beth