I do love vehicles that, to put it bluntly, were no good.
If it was that they lost their raison d'être due to technological advances, if they were good ideas that were ahead of their time or in case of the vehicle coming up, they were simply a crap boondoggle, I do love my failures.
The M247 Sergeant York SPAAG could have been awesome. It's one of those vehicles that simply "looks right". It was an utter failure, but the failure was mainly due to its design criteria as much as dodgy corporate swindling and corruption.
What the US Army wanted: A ZSU-23-4 with bigger guns and a fast engine.
What the US Army asked for: an SPAAG using two heavy guns and a heavy radar on an out of date chassis that still had to keep up with the M1 Abrams, one of the world's fastest tanks.
They specified the M48A5 chassis because they had lots and they were very reliable. They also stated that it had to use off-the-shelf equipment so the radar was a repurposed air-to-air radar, not even a ground attack radar. Now, Ford Aerospace seemed to have been thinking if they got the contract the could simply deal with the issues later. Issues like making it work.
Really, the whole sorry tale is too long to go into here. I do recommend you look it up now that 35 years have passed.
What I want to do is suggest that the M247 didn't ignominiously end its days being blown to pieces on live-fire ranges but that the 50 that were made in our alternate universe languished in a boneyard simply because everyone was too embarrassed to talk about them. There they sat, essentially useless and incapable of even defending themselves until the final phase of resupply for the European campaign. By this time the Mil-24 Hinds were all gone and the USA is desperate to send its troops ground fighting vehicles. They looked at the M247s sitting there and gave them the ZSU-23-4M2 "Afghan" treatment.
The hypothetical M247A2 is purely a ground support vehicle. It has had its radar stripped out and the AN/PPS-15A(V)1 ground search radar (1,500m for personnel, 3,000m for vehicles) placed in the forward radar nacelle.
The ammunition is increased from 580 to 650 rounds.
The turret armour is given applique panels that bring it up from STANAG 4569 level 3 to level 4 armour protection, capable of resisting the KPV 14.5mm. A sliding mantlet is provided to protect the crew from direct fire of the same level. The rear of the turret is kept the same and the hull is of course the basic robust M48A5. In the European theatre ERA blocks and wire/bar armour were occasionally used by some units. This extra armour drops the road speed to a slow 40kmh, a speed demon it is not.
The turret had a large bustle rack at the rear and is still roomy after the removal of the large radar even when the extra ammunition is fitted.
The commander's cupola from the LAV-25 was fitted and has a NATO heavy mount capable of accepting the M240E1 GPMG (spade grip version), the M2HB HMG or the Mk19 AGL. Many were equipped with gunshields at various times.
The sights are upgraded. The optical sights are retained and light intensification added. The commander has no override for the gun. At least one of these vehicles was fitted with thermal sights during its war service.
Note that the 40mm twin autocannon are belt-fed, a huge improvement over the crew-intensive five round clips normally used. Its crew remains three with commander, gunner and driver, making it something of a bear for maintenance and an endurance test when keeping watch.
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