Secondary Armament on MBTs

[kato]

The Swedish UDES-XX-20 prototype tank destroyer was what he described in the last post. Except for the 6-man crew of course, as it had a rather complex autoloader (for 10 rpm firing) and a 3-man crew.

 

[OPSSG]

well it wasnt for a command vehicle but they made somthing similar to what i was talking about
the new warthog that the british have is true a transport vehicle but at the same time if you take some of the inside out and lengthen both the tracks and the body of the vehicle and put command tactical gear in it then it is almost but not quite what i was talking about

Huh?
A Warthog is not even remotely comparable to what you described.

You talked about an enlarged MBT chassis with a 6 men crew and direct fire weapons as well as artillery capabilities.

A warthog on the other hand is a lightly armed and armored, tracked vehicle for heavy and difficult terrain.

That's as far away from each other as it gets...

Joe, are you talking at cross purposes?

Waylander is very, very seldom wrong. I agree with him that compared to a MBT, the Warthog is a lightly armed and armored. BTW, the Warthog has a Gross Vehicle Weight of 19 tonnes. Singapore calls our version of the Warthog, 'Bronco' and we have quite a few variants in service.

Click here for the relevant DT pix thread (see post #11) for latest Warthog pix (The official ST Kinetics press release on the Warthog is here and a UK News report here). This vehicle was also discussed in the thread 'Made in Singapore Equipment' (see posts #20 & #31) and in an older thread here.

The Warthog in British service will come in four variants - Troop Carrier, Ambulance, Command, and Repair & Recovery. The Command variant of the Warthog (has more communications gear and computers) is usually used by a lower level command. For example, I would expect that the battalion command level, the CO (usually a LTC) and his principal staff officers would use Warthog Command variants.

As Marc 1 said, a British Brigadier would not be usually be in the 'front' fighting and his HQ support staff will be much larger than at battalion level.

 

[bulan]

I like the idea of a light cannon, particularly the M230LF lw30mm, as secondary tank armament. Probably not as a coax but as remote weapon station atop the turret.

The M230LF has enough advantages compared to the .50cal (HE vs solid projectiles) and the AGL (>3X the muzzle velocity) to make it worthwhile. Recent RWS using the M230LF show it’s not too big that it would require much more than what's needed to mount a .50cal or AGL.

While it won’t be so easy reload the thing, the M230LF’s ammo box does carry 180 rounds. Compared to an AGL typically with 32-round belts, that would still be a lot less reloading. Something to add would probably be its own coax 7.62 MG (like Nexter’s ARX-20 RWS with both 20mm and 7.62) – which could be another reason to just keep the 7.62 coax to the main gun.

Light vehicles or APCs with an HMG or AGL RWS could probably also be up-gunned with such an M230LF + 7.62 RWS.