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Old 04-04-2017, 07:31 AM
cosmicfish cosmicfish is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Project_Sardonicus View Post
One of the other issues is that recon will generally be scouting with one or two vehicles up close. And literally everytime a military has tried to do that with heavy armour it's failed.
I think the mission and parameters of Recon is going to be a bit different than conventional military reconnaissance. I always envisioned most of the Recon mission being performed dismounted or at least unbuttoned, with the vehicles serving primarily as (a) mobile bases of operations and (b) escape vehicles. It is on the latter that I look for decent armor - TMP expects to largely face irregular forces willing to sacrifice some portion of their force in order to capture/destroy the team, and those forces are likely to be highly mobile, lightly armored, and moderately armed. Put simply, the team isn't going to outrun an enemy using jeeps and F-150's, and they aren't going to survive if they can't handle a ton of people shooting at them with deer rifles and AR-15's.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Project_Sardonicus View Post
So something like a Peacekeeper or even an unarmoured Humvee would enable a team to drive away fast over most surfaces and with plain old windows that everyone can look out of, would have far superior situational awareness.
I think the situational awareness problems can be substantially mitigated while still protecting the crew, and "drive away fast" isn't a realistic option unless the operational plan for the Project involves waiting until vehicles aren't running any more, and that will likely take more than 5 years. A Peacekeeper tops out at 70mph, more than enough to outrun a person but not really enough to keep anyone with cars away. And an unarmored Humvee is going to have a problem running away when the fist definitive indication of a need to run is the incoming gunfire that can easily immobilize an unarmored vehicle.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Project_Sardonicus View Post
If the project is considering a heavy APC for MARS etc. A popular solution is to get an obsolete tank; rip the turret out and ammo storage and put some seats in there.

Voila instant heavy APC. In fact with the weight saved from losing the turret you can give it better all around armour then it would have had as a tank.

Ok so you've got an APC that weighs 40 tonnes+ with all the inherent problems but it'll do the job without getting wiped out like a lighter dedicated APC.
What you now have is a vehicle never designed to haul people that is hard to get into and out of and that can no longer fight effectively. If I was concerned about creating a heavy APC that doesn't exist, I would probably go back to plan 1 from the original post and see if I could design one from scratch.
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