Can you Identify this tank?
There are three variants of the same vehicle. Because it’s a tough one, I’m showing all three. Martin, don’t let me down. Yes, they are production vehicles of this nation and have seen combat.
Bonus points and bragging rights if you can also identify the captioned tank (header).
Hmmmm. I’ll leave that to the experts! But hey, any post with tanks is good by me. So.
Homemade Kurdish tanks? What the heck? They look like something made from combining a WWII French tank with a WWII Italian tank, but they were made in the 21st century. Weird.
That’s all I’m going to say other than it looks like something Hollyweird would make.
As to the boondoggle of a modern gun system by BAE for the US Army to replace Sheridans and the Stryker MGS with the 105mm, yeah, right, we’ve been down this alley before with, let’s see, 4-5 major programs that got all the way to the point of making prototypes and then said program gets shut down. Yeah… pull the other one.
The Turks fear them!
Tanks. I don’t like them. We float bridge Combat Engineers would spend hours with crow bars and hammers working on our decking after the +(&^% tankers locked their treads on the bridge. Our pre-exercise briefing with them mentioned this, We would see them grin. Then we pointed out we 1) had long memories, and 2) provided the safety boats when they were practicing fording.
We had very few problems with the Artillery troops and their tracked vehicles. Higher level of professionalism?
The cannon cockers always had a higher opinion of themselves.
Higher opinion? Why not, when the Army is built around you? The wealthier the county, the more artillery centric the army.
Congratulations to Beans; he beat me to it…. and my highest respects to you, Sir. Now you are really turning on the thumbscrews!
The three tanks are some middle-Eastern homemade war chariots, cobbled together in a backyard or a warehouse.
They could be of Kurdish provenance; Syrian rebels; ISIS, any militia or home-guard ‘structure’.
No matter how stupid and weird they look: if it works, it isn’t stupid.
As long as you have this tank and the opposition has nothing you will be the winner.
However, with some strong nerves and even a WWII Panzerfaust you can turn any of these mobile pillboxes into a flaming deathtrap; to say nothing of using a RPG or an ATGM . In extremis a big bottle of Molotov cocktail should suffice.
The tank in the header is a prototype of the Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) Tank, designed and built by the notorious BAE Systems. Given the past performance of BAE Systems it is doubtful whether the MPF Tank will ever reach serial production.
As of yet, the exact function of this vehicle on the battlefield is unclear to me as it appears to be not founded upon any existing armor doctrine: as a fire support vehicle for the mechanized infantry it is quite heavy and as a new main-line MBT it seems a bit light. Who opted for the 105mm gun while everybody else is progressing from 120mm to 140mm? This seems to be another victory of the procurement genii.
Armored mobility is always useful so long as it’s not a quick transition to an iron coffin as you and Beans pointed out.
Some of these new tanks and AFV prototypes that we see being rolled out make very little sense to me. Yes, they build them and somebody might buy them, but I ask myself why this or that because it’s either somewhat regressive or is founded on a failed design.
PS – The Kurdish homemade tank on the agricultural vehicle chassis has a BMP turret. There are a lot of them around, they’re easier to salvage than to fabricate and it’s not a BMP, which has to be uncomfortable.
It’s not for the Mech or Armor formations, it’s for the Airborne and Light Infantry. It’s a direct fire support vehicle. Two competing models are undergoing testing now.
Thank you, Herb.
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