How would you feel about a Machbet (Isaeli M163 VADS with secondary armament of 4 Stingers) but instead of that a secondary Spike ATGM launcher?

How would you feel about a Machbet (Isaeli M163 VADS with secondary armament of 4 Stingers) but instead of that a secondary Spike ATGM launcher?

Tank done, working on crew

Idiot Tiger [+]

Name: K2 Black Panther "Idiot Tiger"
Type/Role: Main Battle Tank/Mobile Raiding Platform-A great deal of time and effort was spent making the Idiot Tiger capable of functioning almost independently for long periods of time (if only as a machine gun platform), modified and repaired to the point that it's almost a different tank entirely.
Reference Link: Wikipedia Link
Modifications/Upgrades:

• Added docking station/surveillance drone that interfaces with native Automatic Target Detection and Tracking System and battlefield management systems
• Attached HOT guided missile launcher
• Original gun replaced with XM291 Advanced Tank Cannon, typically in 140mm although it can be swapped to 120 if required.
• Original .50 cal was damaged and replaced with Type 85 12.7 mm machine gun, augmented with Mk 47 Striker automatic grenade launcher
• KAPS APS installed
• BV installed
• Slat armor added to engine compartment
• Powerplant upgraded to hybrid electric drive, can run off hydrogen fuel cells or traditional diesel.
• Smoke grenade launchers added to exterior
• Expanded storage baskets containing variety of personal weapons and ammo as well as spare rations, medical supplies, communications equipment, one Saiga 12 and one Benelli M4 shotgun for foraging and anti-drone purposes, and a Starstreak MANPADS with additional missiles.
• Speaker system modified to connect to standard phones and other electronics, for the purpose of playing music.

Colour Scheme: Decked out in Berlin Brigade camo in honor of the Berlin Infantry Brigade. Has image of namesake Idiot Tiger painted on turret.

My Hider [+]

Crew Position: Commander
Name: Tigran Kalpakian, aka Tiger (Idiot Tiger, to his daughter)
Age: 44
Gender/Sex: Male
Appearance: Middle-aged and weather-beaten, his skin toughened by years spent in the sun or boiling inside cramped cabins. His haggard features bely his physical strength, his body lean and almost fox-like in its ranginess. Despite his long service, he lacks military bearing, often slouching with his hands in his pockets. Still wears his old Afghanka jacket, although it's tattered and patched. Instead of the standard issue trousers he wears blue jeans and his hair is slicked back with pomade as opposed to being policed into a crew cut.
Nationality: Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
Personal Outlook: Once upon a time Tigran had been a stickler for rules and regulations, but having spent the last ten years among outfits ranging from the informal to the outright anarchic, he's gone native in a sense. While uniform standards and protocol for saluting have a purpose in training, none of it matters in the field. He's good enough, and more importantly experienced enough, to relax. Always somewhat fascinated by Western culture he's adopted both music and clothing from the years he spent staring down NATO forces in Berlin. He developed a grim sense of humor during his time as a wandering cannon-for-hire, and he ultimately sees his work for Shattered as a job he has fun at as opposed any sort of higher calling,
History:

• Joined the Red Army because his father and grandfather had been soldiers before him; had basically no thought of being anything else.
• Served through the last couple of decades of the Cold War, stationed primarily in East Berlin but was deployed against NATO forces in Gulf War and late alongside them during Yugoslavian peacekeeping efforts.
• Happened to be deployed to the Republic of Korea as part of cross-training exercises when Heavenfall hit, was left stranded with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A soldier without an army, he essentially fought his way across Asia for one outfit or another, sometimes working with official PMCs and others ad hoc mercenaries or simple bandits to provide for his crew and their hanger-on.
• Made it back to Armenia but had nothing waiting for him there, so he joined Shattered Steel

Personal Weapons: AKS-74U carbine with bayonet and PMM pistol, issued during his time with the Red Army.

Crew Position: Gunner
Name: Park Mi-jeong, aka Agi Horangi (Little Tiger)
Age: 21
Gender/Sex: Female
Appearance: Mi-jeong is somewhat on the shorter side, standing at only five feet tall, and is notably underweight due to a poor diet in childhood and periods of hunger post-Heavenfall. She's missing a tooth and a chunk of her upper lip from an incident where she was attacked by an older boy in line for supplies, which gives her face something of a crooked appearance. Her smile is equally lopsided and off-kilter, almost predatory. As a girl, she haphazardly chopped her hair short so as not to need to worry about lice or other parasites, a habit she's continued to this day. In place of an official uniform she usually wears cold-weather gear in the Korean Granite pattern camo, regardless of temperature. She tends to wear a vintage M1 helmet over a M1938 tanker headset.
Nationality: Republic of Korea
Personal Outlook: Tigran did the best with the hand he was dealt, but Mi-jeong is fundamentally traumatized. Growing up neglected before losing a chunk of her family and then being pawned off to a stranger, only to then spend her adolescence trundling around conflict zones and taking part in fighting has done a number to her. This manifests itself as an almost gleeful aggressiveness, a strike-first mentality that serves her well in combat. She gets a near-manic sense of enjoyment out of fighting and works hard to be good at it, and she's loyal to fault to her adoptive father. When she (lovingly) named him after the Idiot Tiger of Korean folk art he retialited by describing her as a half-rabid dog; she's taken it as a badge of honor.
History:

• Born to a relatively well-off family, but didn't see parents very often due to them being extremely career-driven. Raised by grandparents and older siblings, had a very strained relationship with the former.
• Much of her family died in the Heavenfall, and her surviving relatives simply could not afford to care for her. Given up to soldiers passing through in hopes she'd be taken somewhere better.
• Traveled with Tigran and his commandeered K2, watching as crew came and went. Managed to receive a solid education despite the circumstances of her life, and grew attached to her adoptive father. As she got older and the Idiot Tiger got into scrapes she became accustomed to the battlefield. First manned the coaxial gun at 15, sometimes stood in as main gunner by 16.
• Tigran had hoped to settle her somewhere with a functioning education system so she could make something of her life, but having been exposed to such loss and war so early, she was set on being a tanker like him.

Personal Weapons: CAR-15 carbine with flash suppressor and K14-VN pistol, M9 bayonet. All looted from rival mercenaries operating along the Vietnamese-Cambodian border.

Crew Position: Driver
Name: Dîlan Jahani, aka
Age: 34
Gender/Sex: Female
Appearance: Dark-skinned and dark-countenanced, with black hair she keeps pulled into an easy-to-manage bun. She's on the taller side, having an inch or two in height on the 5'9 Tigran, and still wears the Gulf War-era "chocolate chip" BDU she had been given after joining the Peshmerga. As serious as she is, she allows herself some ornamentation in the form of an Omega watch and a pair of platinum rings she found in the aftermath of a raid.
Nationality: Islamic Republic of Iran/Kurdistan
Personal Outlook: Dîlan is, above all, a professional soldier. She takes her work seriously, devoting herself to whichever cause has hired her for the time being, and has little space for considerations outside the current mission. That said, her time with the rather relaxed crew of the Idiot Tiger has rubbed off on her, giving her a dry sense of humor and a willingness to tolerate eccentricity. She considers Tigran and Mi-jeong her family, her uncle and little sister respectively, and this familial bond gives them a level of cohesion she did not have with previous crews.
History:

• Part of Iran's Kurdish community, the family consistently allied itself with the Islamic Republic against Ba'athist Iraq. Father was a junior officer in Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps martyred himself collapsing a tunnel on an armored column, uncle later fought as in the Peshmerga during the Gulf War.
• Despite exemption from conscription, she joined the military due to the example set by her relatives. Originally was going to serve as military police investigating moral crimes, but her aptitude for mechanics and Iran's rebuilding from the previous decades of conflict meant that she was made a tank driver.
• When the Heavenfall struck she initially fought for Iran against internal dissidents and foreign forces struggling for power, but she quickly found herself deserting with her tank to help liberate her people. Was involved in heavy fighting in what would become independent Kurdistan, serving with distinction.
• This second career was brief however. During a battle with ISL dissidents operating on the border between Kurdistan and Iraq, a misidentified artillery strike killed dozens of civilians. While not her fault, she was made a scapegoat and threatened with punishment. Instead she left and became a pilot for hire.
• Was picked up by Tigran after his original driver was killed by spalling, and has been part of the Idiot Tiger's crew ever since.

Personal Weapons: Knights Armaments Light Assault Machine Gun and PC-9 Zoaf pistol, jambiya knife. The machine gun was requisitioned after an encounter with Western commandos operating in Dagestan, while the pistol and dagger were issued to her by the Iranian Army.

So what environments will we be primarily operating in

<Snipped quote by Massasauga>

Well, we have a whole world to play with! So I intend to keep things varied as we move from adventure to adventure. Also that way, everyone gets a chance to excel at something or do something different as we move along. But you'll be starting off in Central Asia; mountainous with a lot of valleys and flood plains.

<Snipped quote by Rhona W>

Sounds good. :)

<Snipped quote by PrinceAlexus>

What do you mean “sounds good”? You ever seen a tank disappear in a rice paddy?

<Snipped quote by PrinceAlexus>

What do you mean “sounds good”? You ever seen a tank disappear in a rice paddy?

<Snipped quote by Massasauga>

That's SE Asia, thankfully.

No, this means we're going to Stan-land.

*Norkie T-62MV goes into a cold sweat*

<Snipped quote by Foster>

Least your missing the auto loader.

A few T-64 tanks were tested in Afghanistan during January 1980, but were quickly withdrawn without seeing combat because their engines did not perform well in the high altitude necessary for Afghan operations

@Rhona W Probably a coincidence, but... Canada be doing a war-movie featuring a ex-Belgian Leopard 1A5 acting as a ex-Belgian Leopard 1A5.

firing in the rain [without a thermal sleeve] has resulted in errors of up to 7 mils from barrel distortion, and by contrast, the maximum barrel distortion from solar heating occurs at 10 a.m in the morning and 4 p.m in the afternoon and the errors from heating and other external factors cumulatively induce an error of up to 1 mil. The installation of a thermal sleeve over the gun barrel will reduce the error when firing in the rain down to only 0.25 mils.

Also, the barrel-life on the T-62AG is... not great... so it could probably swap guns between missions.

In this case a crude reversion to 115mm to better use local ammunition supplies. This however will mean it'll only be able to carry 35 115mm tank-rounds instead of the factory-default of 40, or the modified load of 35+5 120mm tank rounds. The 115mm would also be useful for low-threat environments and would have a 'cheap' 4-piece platics/fiberglass thermal-sleeve from the 1983 pattern of upgrades.

<Snipped quote>

-tempted also to run methanol/gasoline in the external fuel-tanks and diesel or biodiesel in the internal fuel. As the post-fossil-fuel energy-system seems to favor methanol/ethanol. And the MM-1 mobile nuclear refinery was basically pulling Carbon-Monoxide from the atmosphere, then adding water and electricity/heat to get methanol to run tanks and jeeps and jets and stuff.
--Things get really fun when you syngas the syngas into a 1:1 biodiesel substitute

According to the Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger the barrels of the PzH 2000 had an expected lifetime of around 4,500 shots, but to the surprise of the manufacturer they have achieved up to 20,000

The KBA-3 gun - which corresponds to the 2A46M-1 - lacked a chrome lining and as such, had a barrel life of just 200 rounds when firing standard APFSDS ammunition (3BM42). The barrel life of the 2A46M is greatly inferior to that of the M256 and Rh120, as the former has a useful life of 600 M829A1 rounds and the latter has a useful life of 700 DM13 rounds, or 400-600 DM33 rounds. It is advertised that with a chrome lining, the barrel lifespan of the 2A46M is 1,200 EFC and the number of standard APFSDS ammunition (3BM42) that could be fired is 450 rounds.

Based on the limited information available, the U-5TS appears to have had an acceptable level of durability. It has an average barrel life of 450 shots or 400-450 shots, depending on the source

I hope Rhona's not expecting that level of detail from me lmfao

Meanwhile the 115mm U-5TS is an L/52 (6 meter) barrel and the 120mm KBM-2 is a non-standard L/50 of also roughly 6 meters length.

"Standard" 120s tended to be L/44 (5.3m) and L/55 (6.6m), and the M68 being used by the M60A3 is L/52 (5.3m).
-So far nobody has decided to use the french L/52 120mm, yet.

Just in case anyone was having difficulty visualizing the tree-trunks of angry boom-booms.

-Anyways, I'm not as bad as Lauralix, who apparently recently took a DTC-10-125 tank round home with him for further studies.

<Snipped quote>
The 40 km standard-range is also pretty promising (a 6 km boost if using a special propelling charge). And can do 60-90 km with special ammunition.

But yeah, the barrel life on my tank... not great
<Snipped quote>

<Snipped quote>

Basically ~100 rds of APFSDS for the 115mm.