M1 Abrams family of vehicles

[MAD]

Mav
I am a firm believer in history repeats itself!
I hate to harp on it, but I think the Soviet's lived by this analogy.
I must admit though, I am very very surprised the British Army has forgotten the hard learned lessons of it being on the receiving end of aerial firepower, when it for so many years faced the might and skill of the Luftwaffe. Regardless of that stupid political idea and decision that the missile would replace everything and anything in the military.
Even the British experience in the Falklands War which emphasized the importance and value of light/medium AAA (and to a lesser extent SAM's), for the British lost more of its aircraft in combat too AAA, than any other cause.
So impressed was the British with the performance of the Argentinean Swiss made 35mm AAA's, that they commandeered some of them for their own air defence after the war.
But where are these 35mm cannons now?
To my knowledge the British still have no dedicated and or purpose designed and build AAA in its inventory
It's a worry!!
But then again as an Australian, the ADF has zip/zero proper AD assets in any quantity
It's even a bigger worry!!!!!

Hay Mav
Maybe we should start a new 'thread/post' on how you would design a SPAAG/SPSAM or combination?
But then again I think this has been successfully done in the form of the Soviet/Russian Tunguska-M1 system!!



M.A.D 

[Maverick]

MAD,

The Brits did talk about Tracked Rapier, although I don't think it progressed beyond a mockup (but don't quote me on that one).  I think you're quite right though.  It boils down to the West's arrogance regarding air-superiority. 

As for Tunguska, well methinks Uncle Ivan got that right in a rather big way and heaven help any pilot who has to go up against that thing.

The ADF's lack of credible anti-air assets goes back to, I believe, this idea of 'threat management'.  They simply don't believe that our forces will ever be placed in a situation where we will face a credible threat from enemy airpower.  No doubt the planners & strategists assume we will have US support wherever we go and that will lead it allied air superiority.

Here's hoping we don't find out the hard way.

Regards,

Mav

[Weaver]

We DID develop tracked Rapier for Iran and then bought it ourselves when that fell thoruogh in '79. It was a dog: the missiles worked well enough, but the armoured chassis conversion of the M548 was badly thought out and made maintainance a nightmare. They're all gone now.  Rapier Field Standard C (trailer version, much improved missile and guidance) is still in service and still winning orders.

What we have now is Stormer: 8 x Starstreaks on a Stormer (stretched Spartan) chassis, with passive IR early warning, the latter meaning that the vehicle has NO RF emissions for enemy SEAD to get a grip of. 

[GTX]

Is it possible to get a model of a Rapier system?

Regards,

Greg

[modelmanjohn]

My idea for an Abrams whif is to follow the pattern of the US T-28 superheavy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-28_Super_Heavy_Tank

I read somewhere that the tracks of this tank were basically from an M4 - that is, several of them (ie lengthed and more numerous since the T28 is a dual tread system). So my idea was to take the M4 stats and the T28 stats and roughly translate them to Abrams vs my idea. For example, the 75mm gun of the M4 vs the 105mm of the T28 is a 30% increase, # bo bogeys, etc.

So, I got some drawings, and counted the number of bogeys and road wheels on the T29, and translated that into the Abrams, and figured it would take the tracks/wheels of 3 Abrams to make my new destroyer tank (dual tracks/side by side). For a cannon, I wanted something in the 150mm+ range. So I was thinking of the cannon from the Paladin, or maybe the M107 (is that right? I think thats a 175mm). I could get this all in 1/35 or 1/72 easily enough so I wouldn't have to scratch build the tracks/wheels/cannon. I still wanted to keep the low-slung no-turret design.

My history/reasoning for the design: In the first gulf war, the US army was worried about the invasion of Iraq and facing possibly many dug-in Soviet design tanks, plus bunkers, plus tank traps. So they wanted a new tank that could destroy all these targets. So, it had to have a big gun, and heavy front armor. Turret was not deemed necessary.


Unfortunately ideas do not translate into action, and I have 3 1/72 Abrams and a Paladin in fresh boxes still sitting on my table for the past 3 years.

[Weaver]

Is it possible to get a model of a Rapier system?

Regards,

Greg

A company called Firing Line are making a hideously expensive resin model of the original system: http://home.clara.net/djparkins/fline/fl_15vehicles.htm

[Jeffry Fontaine]

I spent some time this morning doing up a rough draft of an M1 Abrams CEV WHIF by cutting and pasting the M728 features onto an M1 Abrams image.  The end result is a bit crude but you get the idea. 

[General Zod]

Jeff

Great drawing I think it looks very doable 

How about an MLRS rocket system based on the M1?

[Jeffry Fontaine]

I found a pair of 3D models today that allowed me to explore the M1 Abrams Combat Engineer Vehicle concept a little further.  The bulldozer blade was from a 3D model of a Caterpillar D8 that was rather large but scaled down easily enough to fit the width of the 3D model of the Abrams. 
I did not even consider trying to model the "A-Frame" crane that was mounted on the original M728 CEV and it certainly looks better without that feature. 

The gun tube was shortened up to just forward of the bore evacuator and a new barrel was created inside of the thermal shroud of the original 120mm tube which worked out well.  The muzzle is recessed inside of the outer tube to just ahead of the bore evacuator with a 10 cm extension of the tube forward of the muzzle.  It is still long enough to not as great a noise hazard to the driver if fired.  The original M728 CEV had a very short tube that was directly over the driver if the turret was positioned to the front.  I am sure the muzzle blast was unpleasant even in such a low velocity weapon so any lengthening of the tube would be most welcome for anyone that is driving such a vehicle. 

The bulldozer blade and the shortened gun tube were the only modifications I made to the original M1 Abrams model and I am certainly grateful to the original authors of these two files for sharing their work on the 3D Warehouse.  After matching up of the bulldozer blade parts to the hull some additional details were added to make the attachment points look like they were supposed to be part of the hull.  It all looks good now with a coat of paint to hide the imperfections.

[ChernayaAkula]

So much win!

Got to look for a 1/72 kit with a dozer blade. The Revell M60 with the newly-tooled M9 dozer blade comes to mind.

[John1964]

With regard to Rapier, it has always amazed me; given the success of "Towed" Rapier in its various forms that a properly package SP version was never produced. 

Tracked Rapier was as Weaver said a lash up resembling the US Chaparral system, there was a slightly more elegant proposal from Germany, which involved the launcher popping up from the rear compartment of a Marder MICV, their was a proposal to fit the system to the chassis of the Warrior MCV, however this appeared to be no better than the earlier Tracked Rapier (possibly it may not have been as bad a maintenance headache due to more room available in the larger chassis).

In more recent time there was a proposal for the use of Rapier on the US Liberty AD System:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,696.0.html

It is unfortunate that we never took the time and money to develop an SP all weather system that was a elegant as the Franco/German Roland 2 system or the Swiss/Italian/Canadian ADATS.

To go back toward the topic of the M1 family I started this thread on Secret Projects on the AGDS/M1 earlier this year:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,7639.0.html

Regards.

[Cybermax]

That Abrams w/165mm gun is a beast

[Sauragnmon]

That Superheavy Abrams concept is pretty damn beefy - You should be able to find a 1/35 gun barrel you can scale-o-rama down to 1/72 for a massive enough gun for breaching... Anything.  Take a 1/35 Patton 105mm, then you've got a 1/72 210mm or so, which can fire saboted 8" gun rounds or what have you to cause all manner of heavy damage to... well.. Anything land based.