wartime production AFVs

Lets say you were to design a set of armored vehicles for a protracted ww3 scenario. These would to need to minimize using strategic materials, and be possible to build quickly.
What would your tank, IFV, and APC look like?

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

LifeStraw Water Filter for Hiking and Preparedness

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Bob
    >Semple
    >Tank
    For all purposes

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Didn't the tractor the semple was based on go out of production decades ago?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        It was based on a cat D8 dozer, they still exist although obviously they've changed a lot

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >protracted ww3
    >What would your tank, IFV, and APC look like?
    Bradley a la Flintstones

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Nukes wouldn't destroy all industry, just most of it. I figure you could still manage steel hull vehicles with piston diesel engines instead of turbines.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Sure some factories might survive but it's supporting infrastructure won't. Power plants would be destroyed. Fuel production, storage, and transportation would be destroyed. The plants/factories making the raw materials would be destroyed. It's all connected and taking out one part of that chain either means the entire system doesn't work or it's severely weakened in capability.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          > It's all connected and taking out one part of that chain either means the entire system doesn't work or it's severely weakened in capability
          Thats the idea. Everything's fricked, so whats the best thing you can cobble together out of what's left?

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >protracted ww3 scenario
    Assuming computer chip factories are destroyed/captured/unreliable, advanced optics, fire control and ballistics computers, laser rangefinders, night vision, ERA sensors, and a million other things may be off the table. With that in mind:
    >tank
    Mechanically it would be about as close to a Sherman Easy 8 as you could get with modern production and materials. If DU armor is available, great. If not, we are going steel all the way around. I would unironically put some cope-cages on top and around it (and the other vehicles). It would have a 90mm smooth bore that could be domestically produced instead of relying on Reinmetal Black folk, and I would prioritize both high velocity sabots and HE shell production for it. It would have a 7.62x51 coax MG, and an M2 .50 cal on top the hull.
    >ifv
    Something along the lines of a Stryker/LAVIII's 8x8, with a 20 or 30mm autocannon, and 7.62 coax MG
    >apc
    Something like an M113

    For the sake of simplified logistics and production, all of these vehicles should have the same engine and run off the same fuel (like the allied aircraft of WW2 using the Merlin engines).
    Speaking of aircraft, let's throw those in as well! Again, assuming no advanced avionics due to chip shortage.
    >multi-role fighter
    Something like an F4 Phantom, as it's electronics are probably what we could reasonably manufacture in large quantities under duress of modern warfare. Basic sidewinder missiles, dumb bombs, and 30mm miniguns.
    >ground attack/CAS
    Something like an A10, of course
    >Air superiority
    F22 Raptors are where we spend our money in this situation. What little production capability for chips we have in this hypothetical would be most efficiently spent here.
    >inb4 Pierre Sprey accusations

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Unironically, seriously I'm not joking, tactical nukes would be a good approach too. Once you have the enrichment process set up you can basically pump out pits and tactical nukes do atrocious shit to infantry.

      I recall reading an armored operations manual that said something like
      >in the event of an atomic strike being expected all soldiers should avoid looking near the target (lmao as if)
      >infantry should get into foxholes and vehicles should drive over the foxholes to provide cover
      >spacing between units begins only at battalion level and up (aka if you're an infantryman have FUN)
      >all exposed soldiers should cover up as much clothing as possible to avoid flash burns (expecting privates to do this in summer???)
      >btw you're a tanker so you have the best protection from nukes! (ignoring that a. you're a primary target and b. that means literally everyone else has less protection and c. if they're near you they're also a fricking target)

      So yeah. Nukes.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Protracted ww3 scenario
    In this case Ive seen it theorised that the war would swing to mass produced cheap tanks as the loss of chip plants or the need for them in other areas would force design. In which case something like a sherman with more modern armour or a stug. They were both pretty reliable, easy to make and had good crew survivability.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Didn't the US make like 90% of their Abrams hulls in less than 20 years? That seems like the potential is there, its just a lack of initiative

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The problem with the Abrams is that it requires a lot of advanced, complex, parts sourced from all over the world. In a long ww3, a large chunk of those supply lines will have evaporated (quite literally in this case).

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        This is gonna be a controversial take but I kinda doubt that would happen to the extent you're describing. One of the things the strategic bombing campaigns in Europe and Japan taught us was simple overpressure/fire will kill exposed personnel and damage buildings, but won't destroy the industrial equipment inside.

        As crazy as this sounds I seriously believe that a large amount of the equipment in, say, an automobile factory in Germany will be salvageable after a nuclear attack. Some of the workers may be dead and the environment may be radioactive but with a month or two of work most of the machines could be made operable in another location.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Yeah, but things like chip factories or the factories that build the incredibly precise and difficult to build turbines that power the Abrams are fricked.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Eh, the power units are made in the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama, so they're not an ocean away on a continent that might be in the middle of an ethnic cleansing, but yes it's feasible they might a target. I'd say it really depends on whether its targeted in a way meant to erase the entire facility (ground burst, probably 150kt+, multiple needed) or if its just meant to rattle the place and kill some of the workers (potentially including the town nearby, so maybe 150kt+ but only one or two, air burst). If it's the latter its feasible that HAZMAT crews could go in and begin removing any intact equipment.

            As for the chip factories, ehhhhh. The ones in Taiwan will be useless but depending on when this happens you might have some new builds in the US that are completely untouched. But yes even slight overpressure is likely to frick up a fab since they're so heavily automated. Some of the equipment may be salvageable though.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    IS tier mad max shit made in pitiful numbers unless it's actually an exercise in creating a production and support infrastructure that doesn't exist right now (in western countries, but even countries that supposedly retained their production capacity like Russia aren't exactly making WW2 production numbers)

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    By far the biggest constraining factor in making new military units is training time. It takes roughly 9-10 months to train a new tank crewman to an adequate standard, and the problem is far more pronounced in training jet pilots with it taking 2 years for the bare minimum. This is why the safety of the crew must always be a top priority, and why quantity will always be inferior to quality.

    One thing you've gotta remember is that a tank thats 15-20% worse will not lose 15-20% more engagements, it will probably lose anywhere from 50-80% of its engagements. A good example for this would be the difference between Russian and American equipment. Russian equipment has the same pure fundamentals in its design to American equipment, and Russian doctrine believed that 10 alright tanks is a far more effective fighting force than 2 amazing tanks, same deal with the reformers too. However this philosophy proved to be moronic because it failed to acknowledge the fact that all fights are won and lost on incredibly tight margins, and that if an Abrams can see and engage you 2km before you can engage him, then your 10 $2,000,000 turn into the worlds most expensive piece of molten steel, and the enemies 2 $10,000,000 tanks live to fight another day

    There is also the huge issue of logistics. An armoured vehicle does not exist in a vacuum, and the cost of fuel, equipment, training, spare parts, skilled personnel and repair often turn out to be far more expensive than the tank itself. Pulling the Russia card again, but the Russians realized the problem of quantity over quality in regards to logistics with their T-34s. The T-34 on its own was an alright tank, and actually advanced for its time, but after it was raped by the Communist party it turned out to be a huge piece of shit. While they cut time to produce in half, with it only taking 10,000 man hours to produce compared to the Sherman's 48,000 hours, they ended up spending far more in the run on costs of operation.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      comment was too long to finish off with this but TL;DR is that you should essentially do what Ukraine is doing, and conduct a slow but steady fighting retreat, bleeding the enemy of equipment and giving them a bunch of territory with no real operation utility, then when you've gathered enough top of the line equipment that can vastly outperform your adversary, conduct sweeping mechanized offensives on their weak spots and reclaim the land lost with the enemy being far weaker than they were at the start.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This is all good advice, but you fail to take in the extraniating circumstances of the situation.
      Most, if not all, of the key infrastructure needed to build the top of line MBTs would be thoroughly destroyed in the opening months of the conflict by missile strikes. There would be no western allies to import from, since you are the western allies and you've lost the ability to build nice tanks.
      Any of the infrastructure required to build new, modern, top of the line equipment would take the greater part of a decade to rebuild. In the mean time, you'd be stuck with stuff pulled from reserve. These reserves may not, and likely will not be able to meet demand, even for a mostly defensive strategy.
      Having a tank you're still able to produce will allow you to fill less important roles so the limited supply of good tanks can do the real fighting.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Do what the soviets did, but properly, have shit IFVs that dont have anything digital, IFV thermals and night scopes based on pure analog shit that even a bunch of college educated and irradiated eggheads could repair or cook up in what remains of a factory. Large ammo caches and motor pools because your industry is going to be non existent
    >oh you have established a factory
    >here a sub delivered nuke just for you
    conscript armies that can fight with no mechanization once the stocks of armor run very low.
    Or just get an arsenal of proper armor and equipment and hope to out atrit the enemy when both of you cant produce anything more than a tire because guess what fricker, producing even a cast iron engine block requires a significant logistic chain that wont exist when nukes fly day in and day out. In fact I have my doubts if most armies wont just collapse to independent armed bandit gangs that only look for food and pussy because everything just collapsed and famine is now the name of the game

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    is russia that desperate for ideas?
    do they have to ask here of all places?

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *