Foster

Shattered Steel - Armoured Fist. An RP about modern armoured vehicles in an alternate world- ON HIATUS

<Snipped quote by Foster>

I considered it, but I purposefully didn't take it, so I had something to upgrade to later down the line

@Rhona W

Cool, I always thought the MEXAS kit with the custom thermal netting always looked a little neat, plus it's an obscure tank that regrettably no longer exists in real life. Had either this timeline or the one in the story been a little different by a matter of months, there could have been quite a lot of potential behind those tanks.



Plus it gives @Massasauga OF-40 grind flashbacks.

Shattered Steel - Armoured Fist. An RP about modern armoured vehicles in an alternate world- ON HIATUS

<Snipped quote by Foster>

That takes me back.

But you can't beat the pure early 2000s alt-rock vibes of the main trailer



Man, I miss this game.

@AvaP

T-62 chan thinks she can fly


Also, reading through the after-action reports of Koh-Tang... very much an assault on Ellis Island vibe as it was the USMC just spamming Jolly-Greens into a hot LZ and even had an AC-130 show up and drop a daisy-cutter.

Eastern LZ at Koh Tang with 2 downed CH-53s visible, at left is Knife 23 at right is Knife 31. which was hit by an RPG round fired from the tree line at middle right. Cambodian Swift boat, upper right, was knocked out by Air Force A-7s.

Knife 31 was hit by two RPGs, which ignited its left fuel tank and ripped away the nose of the helicopter. It crashed in a fireball fifty meters offshore. The copilot, five Marines, and two Navy corpsmen were killed in the crash, another Marine drowned swimming from the wreck and three Marines were killed by gunfire trying to reach the beach. A tenth Marine died of his wounds while clinging to the burning wreckage. The surviving ten Marines and three Air Force crewmen were forced to swim for two hours before being picked up by the gig of the arriving Henry B. Wilson.

Among the Marine survivors was the battalion's Forward Air Controller, who used an Air Force survival radio while swimming to direct A-7 air strikes against the island until the battery failed. The second CH-53, Knife 23, was hit by an RPG which blew off the tail section and crash-landed on the East Beach but it offloaded its 20 Marines and crew of five. They set up a defensive perimeter and the Knife 23 co-pilot used his survival radio to call in airstrikes but they were cut off from reinforcements and rescue for twelve hours

Knife 21, landed safely, but while offloading its Marines came under heavy automatic weapons fire, destroying an engine. It managed to take off, protected by suppressive fire from the second CH-53, Knife 22, and ditched 1.6 km offshore. Knife 22 was damaged so severely that it turned back with its Marines (including the G Company commander) still aboard escorted by Jolly Green 11 and Jolly Green 12, and crash-landed in Trat Province on the Thai coast, where its passengers were picked up by Jolly Green 12 and returned to U-Tapao.

Knife 32 was inbound to the East Beach when it was hit by an RPG and aborted its landing, instead heading out over the West Beach to the Knife 21 crash site where it dumped fuel and proceeded to rescue the three Knife 21 crewmen

Of the eight helicopters assaulting Koh Tang, three had been destroyed (Knife 21, Knife 23 and Knife 31) and four others were damaged too severely to continue operations (Knife 22, Knife 32, Jolly Green 41 and Jolly Green 42). Of the helicopters used in the recapture of Mayaguez, Jolly Green 13 had been severely damaged in the East Beach rescue attempt. This left only three helicopters (all HH-53s – Jolly Greens 11, 12 and 43) of the original eleven available to bring in the follow-up forces of BLT 2/9, so the 2 CH-53s (Knife 51 and 52) whose mission had been search and rescue – the last available helicopters – were reassigned to carry troops

For perspective, a CH-53 is a big plane, it'd be like Russia spamming Mil Mi-26s in combat operations.

Shattered Steel - Armoured Fist. An RP about modern armoured vehicles in an alternate world- ON HIATUS

Fair enough, although Canada was still actively replacing their tanks as the hulls were originally Leo 1A3s purchased in 1978. They slapped a new turret on them in the 90's to extend their life another 20 years.

But yeah, it was a limited-run so they're kinda the battelfield-unicorn.

World in Conflict: Soviet Assault

Shattered Steel - Armoured Fist. An RP about modern armoured vehicles in an alternate world- ON HIATUS

<Snipped quote by Foster>

Enduring Freedom didn’t even start in Heavenfall, Afghanistan was Soviet-run until the catastrophe. Makes sense to me that a German tanker would thus have a German-origin tank as opposed to a Canadian one, as the state of the world in an ongoing Cold War means Canada probably wasn’t going to scrap its old tanks en masse.

@Smike

They were in the process of phasing them out in favor of the Leopard 2A6 since the early 2000s. OEF started in 2001 in response to the attack on the world trade center, also I'm not entirely sure if extending the Soviet-Union's cold-war dominion over Afghanistan would've done more than buy a few more years before something similar would've occurred anyways.

OTOH, Canada only had like... 50 working tanks by 2006, compared to the massive stockpile Belgium was apparently sitting on until 2023.

Shattered Steel - Armoured Fist. An RP about modern armoured vehicles in an alternate world- ON HIATUS

<Snipped quote by Smike>

I'm not expecting that level of detail from myself

@Rhona W

Speaking of which, I'm surprised you didn't choose the Canadian C2 Leopard (A Leopard 1A5 with MEXAS), as Canada was in the middle of divesting themselves of their Leopard 1 fleet after OEF/GWOT was winding down.

The older Leopard C2 tanks were considered completely obsolete by 2015, but specific plans for them have not yet been announced. Until deployment with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan, the Leopard 1 C2 had never seen active combat.

In February 2018, Canada attempted to sell the surplus Leopard 1 C2 tanks to the Jordanian Armed Forces. In July, it was announced that the sale fell through and the Canadian Department of National Defence has yet to decide what to do with the surplus vehicles. Daniel Le Bouthillier, a spokesperson for the Canadian Department of National Defense, said "the last option would be to destroy the tanks."

As of November, 2021, no buyer was found for the Canadian Army's Leopard 1 C2 tanks, "About 45 retired Canadian Army tanks will soon be used for target practice at the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range." A Vegreville Alberta company, Quest Disposal & Recycling Inc., was contracted to repurpose them to be used for target practice at Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, and the tanks were at the company's site being processed in December 2021.

They completed scrapping them before Feb 2022 started.
Canada had 114 tanks. Of which only 27 survived the scrapyard in private collections.

Shattered Steel - Armoured Fist. An RP about modern armoured vehicles in an alternate world- ON HIATUS

Precision guided DPICM out to 30 km should be plenty.

iirc the longest tank kill from another tank was from a T-80BV callsigned "Bunny" shooting HEAT-FS at a T-80UM2 8 km away a T-64BV shooting a T-90 with unguided HE-frag from 10.6 km (20 rounds to hit).

About me

Oh how the world turns.

Shattered Steel - Armoured Fist. An RP about modern armoured vehicles in an alternate world- ON HIATUS

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.

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 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

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

Basically ~100 rds of APFSDS for the 115mm.

Shattered Steel - Armoured Fist. An RP about modern armoured vehicles in an alternate world- ON HIATUS

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.

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.

-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

Shattered Steel - Armoured Fist. An RP about modern armoured vehicles in an alternate world- ON HIATUS

@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.