Feasible? MBT + SPA Hybrid Vehicle

LostWraith said:

Well for a sniper assault rifle, many armies around the world allow the use low powered scopes on their assault rifles. This gives assault rifles the ability to fire accurately at long ranges without affecting its power in conventional fire shootouts. A dedicated sniper rifle/artillery will be better than the hybrid at the specific task, but the hybrid assault rifle/MBT will also have many advantages in the field.

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Well, I know that the discussion about the MBT/SPA is over but i just want to add something about the rifle sing that you said. What you said is right and wrong at the same time. But before, you must know that there's 4 major kind of scope and aiming system.

1st, there's the iron sight, it's the aiming device that every firearm come with, it's the basic sighting system. There's 2 exemple of iron sight for M16/C7 rifle



The telescopic sight or scope, the most common magnifying sight with a 4x to 10x magnification and mounted on sniper rifle, it's also very commonly use by hunter (to hunt deer for exemple)



Laser sight, the easiest way to aim, it's the laser red dot that you can see in many movie. It's a device that you attach under your gun and you simple have to put the laser dot on your target.



And there is the reflex sight (also called the red dot sight), somehow the most complicated to understand, but one of easiest to use. This kind of sighting compensated for parralax effect and it use a LED as aimpoint.Most reflex sight are not magnify but they can be use with both eye open, because the image of the sight is superpose by your brain to the view of the other, so it give the shooter a full view. This is a US Army M68 Close Combat Sight mounted on a M4/M203 rifle. There's also a kind of open reflex sight.


So, yes many army use scope on rifles, but they're not telescopic scope intented for long range shooting, because those kind of scope are expensive, and hard to maintain. You really need to adjust constatly and the use of such scope will render the rifle useless for close range combat because it's slow to aim. Most army will use a reflex sight because, yes, it increase accuracy on short range (since most infrantry fight nowaday are between 50 and 200m) and can slightly help increase the firepower (by being more accurate) up to 350-400m.

But, never scopes are mounted on rifle to be use like long-range weapon, it's to be used to extend the accurate firerange. I'll give you a concrete exemple. The Remington 700 9 or M40A1 for it's military version it's said to be able to hit a dime at 800m. With a good shooter and a good scope, its faiable, because this rifle is made for long-range accurate shooting. But if you take a M16, that will be harder, it's still faisable, but the barrel of the M16 is not the same grade as the barrel of the M40A1, both didn't use same kind of ammunition also, the M40A1 use match-grade ammo, so your shot will be less acurrate at long range. The Dragunov SVD is this kind of of hybrid rifle, dosen't have the accuracy of a true sniper rifle at long-range (it still got a prety decent performance) because this weapon is not design to take out pinpoint target. It was design to extend to the firepower of a infrantry squad up to 600m.

With tank fire you are talking about 'direct' fire. A target directly in your line of sight could be a 0 elevation.
Artillery is 'plunging' fire and a target could be fired at 40 degree elevation with the shell hitting the target from above.
The fire techniques are two entirely different worlds.
The nearest thing to combining the two worlds are some of the 120mm gun/mortar combinations.

LostWraith said:

The answer is no I don't. I've never served in the army. But, I don't think it's impossible to do. Please do not attack me personally and call all this just derivative or some video game screen. Calm down please.

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The only possibility of it being possible without completely killing it's weight and profile it's to use semi active guided rounds. Even with guided rounds the possibility of it outranging the actual systems is slim.

Well, as I recall the Paladin operates independently of any outside guidance systems, relying solely on its own guidance systems. As GPS and related guidance systems and processing power improve, it becomes far more likely that artillery can operate completely independent of any proffessional experts, relying largely on computers. That would make it possible for a artillery/tank vehicle.

As for other issues, I believe that is possible to resolve. Ways to improve the barrel life and make ammunition compatible with both and effective.

My only real question would be of cost. Such a system would be quite costly. Integrating all the capabilities of an advanced SPA and MBT into one effective combat vehicle would be rather expensive.

The SPH & MBT are meant to operate in two different environments.
The SPH operates primarily behind the front line and is provided with limited armor.
The MBT operates at the very front line and has substantial armor and self-protection capabilities.
Ammunition size makes different demands on internal space for storage (and in the physical arrangement)
Trying to merge the two design characteristics into a single platform would be counter-productive and probably would result in a vehicle that is less efficient.
The nearest thing to the combination is the situation (such as in France) where a 155mm howitizer turret is installed on a MBT hull.

Dear Sirs:

While it is possible for both tanks (armour) and SPA (self-propelled artillery) to share some common components - like the chassis, tracks and suspension systems, engine, driver's equipment, etc., their role in battle in entirely different.

Tanks are meant to engage the enemy directly and have their guns designed for this kind of combat. They fire on a flat trajectory, using specially developed ammunition and always are in sight of their target. Both the tanks' armor and the guns are designed with this kind of close quarters combat (5 kilometers and below) in mind.

The main battle tank (MBT) is designed to engage and defeat it's potentially greatest enemy - another tank. Thus it has very heavy armor (particularly in the frontal arc), and a special type of main gun, whose velocity is maximised (often of smooth bore - that is, with no rifling) in order to provide the neccesary kinetic energy to penetrate the opponent's armour.

The tank gun's propellant charge is fixed and not variable, and is designed for quick loading and maximum energy, often at the expense of barrel life. Unitary (one-piece) rounds are common, to ease handling and speed the rate of fire. Target acquisition is by direct observation, and laser range finding is the norm.

Artillery on the other hand, mostly engages the enemy with indirect fire (unless of course in an emergency) that takes place out of the range of direct sight - from 15 to 50 km away from the target - using (as Goll explicitly makes clear) high arcing trajectories.

We do not strictly need to have the guns self-propelled (although it's nice if you have it) nor have heavy armour (or any armour for that matter) on the piece. If we do get it, it is usually only thick enough for protection against shell and bomb splinters and small arms fire.

The gun is designed to fire at long ranges both accurately and repeatedly - that is it is capable of sustained rates of fire. Artillery pieces are always rifled and typically have muzzle brakes on the ends of the tube. Modern tank guns don't have them because they interfere with the discarding sabot.

Basically indirect fire requires knowledge of several things - 1) the target's location, 2) the gun's location 3) gun and ammunition data 4) meterological data. To accomplish this, we need specialized training.

Our typical ammunition is not APFSDS or HEAT it's high explosive (HE). The propellant is a variable charge - we can change the amount we use when shooting. The round and the propellant are usually loaded separately.

To be effective across the full depth and breadth of the battlefield, the gun battery is usually placed some distance back - way back. You want to be able to use the gun's long range to support as many people along the length of your frontage. And you don't want to lose the guns due to some minor enemy raid at the front. Also, being farther behind the lines means that you're closer to your ammunition supply lines - important to be able to sustain your fire.

Modern developements have added greatly to the deadlyness and effectiveness of artillery. The family of Extended Range Full Bore rounds (ERFB) - developed by Gerald Bull and company - ERFB, ERFB-HB (hollow base), ERFB-BB (base bleed) have enabled ranges exceeding 50 km - without a proportional loss in accuracy!

New propellants and autoamated loading systems have enabled rates of fire as high as 18 rounds per minute. Just imagine a battery of 8 x 155 mm SPAs firing 50 kgm rounds at 18 per minute! That works out to 7200 kilograms per minute falling on the enemy, up to 52 km away - almost airstrike capability - plus we don't have to fly back and forth to be able to fire a second time!

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Dusky Lim

Thanks alot, that was a very complex analysis.

In response to that, you stated the SPA are not deployed along side with the MBT because they are vulnerable to enemy fire, wouldn't it be good to change that and have heavily armored artillery. As battlefield survellance technology improves, such in the case with the Paladin, each artillery unit becomes more autonomous in its tasks. There it will undoubted be possible for SPA to become independent AFV without the complicated need for a mobile firing HQ, forward advanced observers, etc. If this is possible, then adding additional armor and protection is just another matter of technology and efficiency, no longer a theoretical obstacle.

Even if you can somehow overlook all the technical factors conserning the vehicles themselves, you still have the fundamental difference between the fire support units and the manuvrable units...

The artillery guns have a certain length due to the purpose they are designed for. And as I know, on every common SPA vehicle the gun has to be fixed while moving, due to that length. Now it would not be all that practical to stop every time you see an enemy, unfix the gun, aim, shoot, fix it again and move on ...