Weapons Timelines for the Twilight War

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

The Challenger also fits the British concept of combat in Eruope a lot better than any other tank. Heavily armed and armoured, it might not be the fastest on the battlefield, but it can take the punishment others can't.

Is it really all that better armored than the M1A1? The gun's more or less the same.

Anyway, I think political considerations (national pride & keeping manufacturing jobs in country, especially) would push the UK to opt for a locally designed and manufactured MBT as opposed to licence-building an American or German design.

The most recent precedent would be the L85. The first run was, by all accounts, pretty terrible. Instead of calling it quits and opting for the M-16 or G-36 or some other foreign designed and/or manufactured AR, they made some significant design and manufacturing changes and produced what is, by most accounts, a pretty decent AR. In the T2K timeline, there might not be enough time for this, but IRL, the UK chose to stick to its own guns rather than go abroad for them.

If the problems with the Challenger I were identified in '87 (and the '91 Gulf War?), there would be time to make quite a few IIs by mid-'97. The Challenger II has a place in my v1.0-based T2KU.