You can’t just take off the armor to reduce weight. The drivetrain is heavy because it was meant to carry the armor. The track is massive because it was meant to carry the armor. The fuel tanks are massive to fuel the engine that was sized to carry the armor. Now you have a ton of weight dedicated to providing the volume for the systems that carry the armor. And if you take the armor off, everything else is oversized. AbramsX took off the armor and used a lighter gun and it’s around 50 tonnes at best. There is no way something the size of an Abrams is going to get down to the weight you’re discussing. You have to start from a clean sheet.

No.

It will be interesting to see what the gunnery manual requires for crew and section qualification tables.

The SBCT analogue to the M10 is the ICV Dragoon with a 30mm. It would not be unreasonable for the Army to pick something that has more stowed kills/higher ROF. It all comes down to how they weight different variables and how they’ll use what they get.

In terms of 'Mobile Firepower' to support infantry, I had thought something like this would be a lot more versatile.

14x 70mm guided rockets, vehicle not that much bigger then a golf cart. Could probably be deployed to remote areas via some helicopters or Ospreys.

I wonder what the Army spent on developing a 105mm AMP round instead of just mounting the XM360 and sharing ammunition with the Abrams.

Maybe bring the M50 back.  Six rounds of 105mm recoilless can ruin anyone's day.


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Ground launched 70mm rockets are interesting and useful, but not the same thing. You can't selectively level a building or fortification with one.

Sure you can: https://www.baesystems.com/en/product/apkws

They killed a bunch of t 72's with TOW missiles.   IIRC the 25mm only rang the doorbell.   Which makes me wonder how much better the new 50mm on the brad replacement can do.    But killing tanks is not it's job either.

The 40mm bofors on the cv 90 supposedly can penetrate a t72 from the side no problem; dunno if it can do it when ERA or add on armor is installed.    Any armored vehicle that isn't an MBT would be insane to go anywhere on a front line without having at least a javelin handy.

If you are there with your not-tank and an enemy tank comes along, if you can't get someone else to kill it for you, you will have to try to kill it or you will have to run away.

The 50mm reportedly penetrates 2.5d as much armor as the 25 or roughly twice what 30mm does. Given the life cycle expected of the new vehicle it’s likely that threat IFVs will have armor that stops 30mm well before the OMFV leaves service.

From the side on a T-72 the 2 is potentially, the 30mm probably, the 40mm is an emphatic yes and the 50mm has room to spare. If the public numbers for Abrams hull side armor are true it’ll do an Abrams from the side too.

To be fair side armor is never really intended to stop much.   It's funny how there seems to be a slow motion escalation of firepower in non-tank armored vehicles.  They started at 20mm and it's crept up from there, kind of like tank guns went from 37mm to 47, 57, 75, 88, 90, up to what, 120mm in ww2?

Another thing about the booker,  what if it's meant to be the f-35 of ground vehicles, meant to control the battle via the use of integrated advanced sensor fusion?   Something that can see everything and potentially control everything?

Having set up fixed wing LZs for MC-130s & gotten things on and off them on those same LZs without any USAF help, I disagree (as did my Dad, who spent a bit more time at the game than I did).

LAPES is a high risk delivery method, for the cargo and the aircraft.

But thats

Micro stress cracks in the torsion bars and road wheels of the M551 from air drops and LAPES were a thing. It also screwed up the 1960s era electronics.  782nd Maintenance Battalion just pulled boxes and ordered more.  The 12th Support Brigade built a turret test stand that would pin point the bad circuit board when DISCOM got the "just order a new box" bill.

If the Booker was meant for that I would expect it to be turretless or at least trade the loader for a drone operator.

Videos out of Ukraine have shown that Russian 30mm rounds have no problem taking out T72s with hits to the side of the hull

Doesn’t matter, drone swarm will take out the driver, gunner, and commander when they stop to take a crap.

You think the United States is going to give up on war because of drones?

Tat shouldn’t have been possible with the ammunition they are expected to be using so the long bursts must have chewed through. That’s hard to scale.

I wonder how much ammo Uncle S. could have bought with the same amount of money?  How much of an increase in salary our war fighters could have gotten? How many Abrams they could have taken out of mothballs?  All of which seem to be in short supply.

We may be arguing over details, but something like this has been needed for a while.

Im a little late, but here goes:

There is a niche role for an assault gun that could be parachuted in as part of an airborne operation, land with the troops, and knock out machine gun nests and strongpoints as the troops advance to expand a lodgment.  That has to be done, clearing out SAM range, before you can land aircraft.  You don't need LAPEs, you can heavy drop it, and the plan for Haiti was to heavy drop 3/73 and all their Sheridans. The M8 IIRC was a 20 ton base model and 40 ton with add on armor packs afterword.   I think that modular armor would be better; I don't think you could parachute this, which reduces flexibility.

There would also be an advantage in a tank that was fuel efficient, if you were very early in a deployment and a small force would be hampered by the fuel to resupply an Abrams, or the trafficability issues with a HEMMT.  A HEMMT is not a really great vehicle for driving around crosscountry, but you cant go anywhere with an M1 that a HEMMT cant go.  

There is a big advantage in terms of mobility when you have a light battalion that doesn't have the ability to resupply a platoon of Abrams, and you draw line on the map to go from point A to point B and if the grunts can walk it and the M1 can drive it but the HEMMT cant make it, you cant go there.  We are along long way from Vietnam where a troop of Sheridans and M113s could have slung in a pallet of 5 gallons and keep themselves mobile.  When we are in situations where an M1 cant function that way, we just don't send tanks and the loss of effect is lost on people.

There are scenarios where a bunch of light guys face off against emma gees and an assault gun is of great help, and if there are no enemy MBTs in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.  There are also times on the front end of the deployment you don't have the log for an M1, but the need for something.

I'm not an environmental green energy guy but I can say there were times when I have seen guys draw big arrows on maps and if the road and line of communications gets cut, an MBT heavy tank formation that gets cut off from their gas for a little while will run out of gas very very fast.  We don't train that way or allow scenarios that way.

So call this an assault gun, tank, support vehicle. Its value added.  I would say a company or two with less armor, down to 25 tons, would provide more deployment options and save more lives then you lose. But we have been a one tank army since 1997 or so and that's been the wrong answer.  I think more then a few people got killedbecause we had no M551 like vehicle

Nothing is “useful” against modern ATGM’s. Crew survivability is all that matters at that point. Tactics are how you mitigate that threat.

Totally agree with you. I just think a 30 ton "tracked, armored vehicle with a big gun" with something like a 40mm (or thereabouts) and maybe a launcher or two for throwing at heavies would provide more value than this 40+ ton "tracked, armored vehicle" with a 105mm. The 105 is sooo close to the Abrams' 120mm, but not really close enough, and if it's that close to the 120 but still not close enough, why bother with it? A lighter vehicle has less to worry about from a logistics point of view and less to worry about from an infrastructure perspective. Virtually every bridge would be crossable (whereas 42 tons still has a large percentage of bridges that it cannot cross).

But either way, a new, lighter *ahem* "tracked, armored vehicle with a big gun" is definitely needed.