That's correct, they use mild steel for a number of reasons such as it's easier to work with than hardened or armour-quality steel and it's easier to obtain. Also, if you need to make alterations or you mess up something, it's easier to change because of those first two reasons. It also means you don't have as much weight to worry about when submitting the vehicle for testing/trials or moving it around for display or demonstration purposes.
Vehicles made from mild steel are typically "proof of concept" vehicles and while they may have all the weapons, systems and other equipment of a production vehicle, they are not meant to see combat. They are purely for testing of the systems and the overall package and for demonstrations of the concept.
Once they have gone past "proof of concept" the next set of vehicles made will typically be "pre-production" vehicles. These will normally have hardened steel but quite likely whatever armour is expected to be fitted to "production" vehicles. They'll also be as near as possible to the projected empty & combat weights of the production vehicle. They are used to iron out any last problems and do final integration before proper production is started.
They are often just a few upgrades away from being as fully capable as a standard combat vehicle (and often pre-production vehicles are put onto the assembly lines to be rebuilt as production vehicles as a way to speed up delivery of the finished product as well as re-use an otherwise unused but still capable vehicle).
During WW1 when the British were replacing some of their tank losses in Europe, they sent some of their test vehicles into combat. These were mild steel "proof of concept" tanks and offered next to no protection from rifle & machinegun fire let alone artillery or other tanks. It was quickly learnt that mild steel versions are not worth the loss of life unless you're really desperate. When I was at the Bovington Tank Museum at Dorset in the UK a number of years ago, they had a few mild steel WW1 tanks, one of which was used in combat and quickly withdrawn. It has a number of German bullet holes in the rear section - the projectiles drilled right through the outer steel and if they didn't kill or injure the crew outright, they probably rattled around inside scaring the hell out of them.
In a T2k setting, if the owner/user/enemy has no idea that it's not a properly armoured vehicle they might throw it into combat. But keep in mind that the projectile from the M1/M2 Carbine series will happily pierce mild steel at 50 metres or more so the higher velocity steel cored SS109 round used in modern 5.56mm weapons will pop right on through and 7.62mm NATO will chew it up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer
There's a restoration effort planned for the Chrysler/GDLS XM1 prototype, and I have seen it (and the XMBT-70) referred to as "mild steel", so that's...what, like the stuff a dumpster or car is made out of?
The reason I ask is, IMC I may have a few one-off prototype show up in the hands of CivGov troops either in Europe or back in the 'States...probably Europe since I think per canon there was one last reinforcement push in '98 by CivGov and I can imagine them cobbling together everything they could, including raiding FMC's facilities and Ft. Knox for the XM800 ARSVs, getting the engines running and guns in working condition and sending them on, but not if they were just mock-ups.
(ps yes I know but it's a game...)
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