US Army AAA in T2K

[madmikechoi]

Originally Posted by Louied

Found this in my archives..........

While I enjoyed that article Armor it does miss several points. One Armor is the professional magazine of the Armor branch although over the years does cover the infuence/aspects of mech infantry (given that heavy brigades and battalion TFs are combined arms affairs).

Numero dos- the 35mm Bushmaster III was never designed for as AA weapon. For that there's the Oerlikon GD series. Chain guns are great for accuracy and reliability but they sacrifice rate of fire for that. To hunt ducks you want to put lead in the air and that's why you want Captain Insane-o cyclic rates of fire and proximity fuzed projectiles for a reason. IOW a high cyclic RoF will mean a denser cone of fire, a denser cone of fire will most likely equal a target being hit more than once. There's also intersecting cones of fire which is why 35mm AA guns on the Gepard were spaced far apart.

Also that many ADATS rounds on a pop up launcher will mean even a more complex hydraulic systems to lift the launch tubes out of the turret meaning sacrificing armor on what is a turret that will be marginally protected at best (but probably not much worse than standard since the turreted systems on ADA platforms are basically unarmored)

Finally given Tw2k verse- there would be no peace dividend so the US would likely keep tank production until the Big Turkey Day Nukeout. And as such using tank hulls would be at premium- either for AVLBs or combat engineering vehicles/assault breaching platforms possibly adopting a M1 based armored recovery platform as opposed the 88A2 (most likely due to using a boom crane to lift out a powerpack or concrete barriers/HESCOs is easier that pivot steering an entire vehicle to use an A frame crane).


Mad Mikec