The Best That Never Was 2 (Prototypes)

[Raellus]

Just when I think that I've discovered every exotic Cold War-era Polish weapon system, I stumble upon something new.

Apparently, the Poles were working on a modular rifle system. It would have been able to fire multiple calibers (but mainly a proprietary 7x41mm round) with a few parts swaps, and could be configured as an assault rifle, mag-fed SAW, carbine, and battle rifle. The Soviets put the kabash on it, as they wanted the Poles to pay for the AK-74 license. Those clever Poles still figured out a way to do their own thing, developing, adopting, and producing the just-different-enough wz. 88 Tantal instead.

https://www.forgottenweapons.com/pro...-ak-in-7x41mm/

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[Ursus Maior]

Many envision the Warsaw Pact to be to monolithic entity the Soviets always wanted and claimed it to be. In fact, the Poles and Czechoslovakians used their increasing strength in domestic industry to develop as much as they could for themselves, the Romanians did so too and had essentially left the Pact during the 1970s. Meanwhile, the Hungarians and Bulgarians barely fielded effective armies, the former were even more an occupied country then the rest and didn't move without order and consent of their Kremlin masters. Bulgaria had active T-34 regiments (as did Romania) in its hardly mechanized army.

The Polish had really amazing projects during the late days of the Cold War. No wonder the Soviets were relatively sure that, come push to shove, the Polish were likely not to follow orders to attack the West.

[Vespers War]

In 1961, Japan began replacing their Chaffee light tanks with Walker Bulldogs, and were curious if they could find a continued use for the old Chaffees. With a 75mm main gun and less than 40mm of armor at its thickest, they weren't exactly a threat to newer tanks rolling off the assembly lines. Their solution was to fit a quartet of Type 64 MAT (Paul lists it as Type 65) in individual box launchers on the turret. Each rear corner of the turret had a box, while the other two were attached to the sides of the turret.

The thinking was that even as the M24 was being replaced as a combat tank, its gun was still useful against soft or light-armored vehicles (APCs), and the ATGMs would give it a punch if it ran across something the gun couldn't handle.

At least one prototype was built and tested, but it was felt that given the relatively slow and underpowered nature of the missile, mounting it on something that couldn't hide wasn't a good use of resources. It would also be expensive to maintain compared to a jeep or APC-mounted launcher, since there wasn't parts commonality with any other vehicles.

[Raellus]

Most of these never made it past the trial stage. One never made it past the non-firing prototype state. According to the article, a small number of Sergey Simonov’s AG-043 saw service with the KGB.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/...-trial-rifles/

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[Vespers War]

Based on last week's announcement regarding Abrams tank development, we can add the M1A2 SEPv4 to the Best That Never Was...

[.45cultist]

Originally Posted by Vespers War

Based on last week's announcement regarding Abrams tank development, we can add the M1A2 SEPv4 to the Best That Never Was...

As long as they drop the EV tank garbage.

[Raellus]

The BTR-90 was first displayed publicly in 1994, and several early production models found their way into the hands of internal security units in the early 2000s. Based on that IRL info, it's quite possible that additional units would have been produced and deployed in the T2k timelines.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidax...h=6df0134a1560

https://tank-afv.com/modern/Russia/BTR-90.php

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