Quote:
Originally Posted by Dog 6
the LAV- 75 was the US Army's " High Survivability Test Vehicle Light " it was armed with the Ares corps hyper velocity automatic cannon XM274. it had a 12.5 mile range, armor penetration is listed as 350mm at 2000m with APFSDS. It can fire a three round burst. Excessive heat transfer and barrel erosion was a major drawback.
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Now the Armor Journal articles I'm looking over state that the APFSDS rounds failed to penetrate the armor on the target vehicle, citing "the shattering of the penetrator on impact as well as the complete failure of other test rounds to penetrate more than 2cm. Failure of the auto-loader in sustained fire, excessive heat damage to the components as well as several breech explosions, again due to the heat. The Ares gun never achieved its designers expectations.
As for the High Survivability Test Vehicle Light, there were 18 designs submitted for that, none of which entered US service. You have to remember that defense contractors come up with multiple designs and try to sell to the military, it is possible to see the same mock-up turret design on multiple hulls, it really depends on what can be cheaply modified by the contractor.
Just one example is a Bradley that was modified to mount a 30m high, boom in place of the troop compartment, you simply opened the over head hatch, raised the boom and activated its sensor package. The "eyeball" mounted CCTV, thermal sights, laser rangefinder and a laser designator. The theory is that the Brad would set up in back in the woods, out of sight, raise the eyeball to scan for targets and designate for Hellfire and Copperhead then retract the boom and move back before the Soviets could figure out were it was. Five were actually built and displayed at various arms shows and around several military bases. There are plenty of pics of the vehicle and at least one book that identifed it as Bradley variant that was entering service. It never entered service, and in point of fact, was never purchased or requested by the US Army. The "LAV-75" falls into this category of vehicle. It was a design concept that failed the early testing process.