Infantry pack

[ysi_maniac]

In order to substitute the old soviet fashion of Tank Riders, which is quite dangerous, there is the Merkava approach. But what if an Infantry Pack to be attached to hull's back, in the way fuel drums are attached today, or perhaps as an Armoured Trailer ?

This way it would be used depending on mission.

thinking in a model 

[GTX]

Like this perhaps?



Regards,

Greg

[deathjester]

Great idea!!
How about a mission specific pack that slots into the hull of a next-gen tank, infantry with Bradley style ball socket guns for FIBUA, or an ATGW pack for anti tank work, or even a small air defense system!  The possibilities are endless!

[dy031101]

Might want to keep the infantry trailer lower-profile though...... maybe low enough so as not to totally block the tank turret's rear firing arc.

[Weaver]

I see two problems:

1. The resultant vehicle is very long, quite unwieldy and unable to turn on the spot, which is one of the advantages of tracked vehicles. You can't shoot backwards, so if you need to engage a target to the rear, you need to do a relatively wide-radius turn to bring the gun to bear on it, and even then, you're still presenting it with an extended opportunity to shoot at your thin rear armour. There may simply not be room for this turn in a built-up area.

2. The maneuver requirements of infantry and tanks, i.e. where they need to be on the battlefield, are not the same,  even when the former are supporting the latter. For instance, mech infantry are sometimes needed to clear and hold a built-up area preceisly so that the tanks can keep moving past it: forcing them to stop and/or come back for the infantry kinda defeats the object of the exercise.

Having said that, I could see it being useful for certain specialised missions. I'm reminded of the very heavily armoured engineer transport vehicles that the Israelis use. The pod could be towed by a support tractor most of the time and used ans an engineer trasport, but when a high-risk mission came up, it could be attached to a tank in order to move a small group of mechanics or engineers forward for recovery/demolition work. You could also see Batallion HQ having a couple of dedicated Rescue Tanks with empty trailers which can go and recover crews from knocked out vehicles.