Thread: Twilight 2020
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Old 05-24-2020, 05:00 PM
CDAT CDAT is offline
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Originally Posted by RN7 View Post
So the Abrams fully loaded without DU armour weighs no more than 66 US tons. The Australian listing for the Abrams is 68.2 US tonnes, but as you have said and I have seen there is a figure out there for 69.5 US tons for the Australian tank. I'm staring to go with that figure. So the difference in DU-armour versus the export armour is now 3.5 tonnes.

This figure dates from 2008 and include SEP and before most of your additional items were added.

At that time a Lt Col Hayward stated that "Australianisation" of the Abrams AIM would include stowage mounts for F88 Steyr rifle in the crew compartment, chilled drinking water and a camouflage system, the addition of an infantry telephone at the rear of the tank, the integration of the infantry personal role radio and, as a nicety, a 20cm red kangaroo stencil on each side of the turret.

This is not exactly a major upgrade. But if you add these items with the list of items that you said were added, and they weight 2 US tons then the weight of the Australian Abrams must be well over 70 US tons and as heavy as even the very latest versions of the US Army Abrams with DU armour.

Also Australian Abrams use diesel fuel since the use of JP-8 is less common in the Australian Army, but they have the same AGT-1500 Gas turbine engines as US versions. The Barracuda Mobile Camouflage Systems (MCS) is lightweight, and according to SAAB who make it weighs no more than 250 g/mē. Also according to SAAB it minimizes the effects of solar loading passively, radically lowering the vehicle inner temperature, creating better conditions for personnel and electronic equipment and preventing the ballistic effects from temperature changes and shortens time for cooling down to operational temperature and lowering fuel consumption by minimizing the fuel used for cooling. It is supposed to lower total fuel consumption up to 25 % by minimizing the fuel used for cooling. Also other countries tanks use extra fuel, extra water, extra spares, extra stowage points for all of that gear, and its not included in the basic weight of their tanks. If you want to add all that up along with TUSK armour and the US Marine wading kits to the weight of the tank that is fine, but the basic weight of the tank before all that gear is fitted is still going to be 69.5 US tons.
What I am seeing is that no matter what anyone says you are convinced that they have DU armor, so what is the point of further discussion? As I see it the main reason that we can say that they do not have DU armor is two fold, one the Australian government did not want it, and two the US government has never sold it before. If you are trying to find places where the governments may (likely did) say something that they did not mean to say that way, or said something that really was not cleared you can follow that rabbit for a long way. It may come as a shock to you (not likely, but who knows) that the government does not always tell the truth, for example the M1/IPM1 has a listed top speed on road of 45/30mph off road, and the M1A1 and later is 42/25mph. I can tell you from personal experience that is not true, I have gone much faster in my tank back in the day, but that is what the government says it is. The F-15 has a listed top speed of Mach 2.5, but there are press releases out there where it was said to have gone Mach 3.5, was that an oops we released something we should not have, or a typo? Also the SR-71 is listed as top speed of Mach 3.32, however it has been said that it can our run the Soviet missiles shoot at it (they can go up to Mac 4.5). So from my experience weights and speeds are very subjective and so should be taken with a large dose of Skepticism.
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