Jane’s armoured fighting vehicles has gone to print with some huge changes in its 40th year. It’s now two books; wheeled and tracked and each of the 3,000 vehicles covered has a new structure. #landwarfare#armouredvehicles
It’s taken myself and the Jane’s land team just under two years and 4,000 hours of research to rewrite the book! #research#published
In all, the books cover 440 vehicle families in 1.4 million words! #IHSMarkit
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A few notes from a @RUSI_org report by Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, I've mentioned a lot of this before, but they've added some good stats:
"Tactical UAVs have significant limitations. Between 60 and 80% of Ukrainian FPVs fail to reach their target, depending on the part of the front and the skill of the operators. Of those that do strike their targets, a majority fail to destroy the target system when striking armoured vehicles."
"The success rate in wounding infantry is high. Furthermore, there are long periods where either EW or the weather significantly degrades UAV operations. With FPVs that are remotely piloted by radio frequency, it is also difficult to concentrate multiple drones in time and space because they can interfere with one another’s guidance systems"
"Despite these limitations, tactical UAVs currently account for 60–70% of damaged and destroyed Russian systems. The above figure must be read in the appropriate context." The next bit is important:
Hello! Good morning. If your timeline is like mine, you might be seeing the Telegram post from the image below today.
Why? Well, in short, the poster claims to have seen intercepted Russian FPV footage that shows the drone using AI for terminal guidance.
He states that the operator flies the drone to the area and selects the target with AI assistance. It then flies into the target. This isn't the first use of AI in this application, there is good evidence that Lancet can do it too. The new Iz-53 variant is more autonomous.
The original poster (OP), later said he had watched two more videos.
The Russians have been talking about this for a while. The Gadfly reportedly carried this capability in August 23: #AI vk.com/wall-35660695_…
Hello! How are you? I'm good, thanks for asking. It's nearly Christmas and if you're winding down like me, you might enjoy a little technical thread on the T-90M.
Images are from @RecoMonkey, those guys do good work! The source? My book (JAFV21), and some desk research.
T-90M is the most technically capable tank in Russian service. It started life in 1999 as a way to improve on the T-90. It had entered trials by 2017 (rapid) and in 2018 there was talk of orders and deliveries. Vedomosti reported 160 T-90Ms under contract in 2020.
10 rebuilds, 50 T-90A conversions, and the rest presumably new builds. First deliveries followed later that year to the Taman Guards Div, part of the 1st Guards Tank Army. This image shows that fateful day.
Hello again, it’s Friday, how has your week been? Would you like to know more about the Trophy active protection system (APS)? Awesome, have a glance at the following. It's used by the IDF and others to protect armoured vehicles from anti-tank weapons like RPGs and ATGMs.
If you’re not keen on reading, the BLUF is that Trophy is a good system and well-proven, but it is not and never was perfect. Any losses we see are also half the picture and should not lead to knee jerk reactions or analysis on Trophy’s suitability.
Development:
The IDF started looking at Trophy in 1987, it was a team effort led by the Israeli MoD, its Directorate of Research and Development, Rafael, and Elta. They weren’t the first, the Soviets had developed the Drozd APS in the late 70s, and even sent some to Afghanistan.
Hello! How are you? Hope you’re doing ok.
I’ve built a thread to look at Namer, a heavy armoured personnel carrier (APC) that is in service with the IDF. You might have heard of it recently as 11 IDF personnel were reportedly killed in one when an ATGM hit their vehicle.
I have some thoughts on this at the end. If you don’t want to read that far; these things can happen to even the best-protected vehicles, a lot depends on the munition that hit it, and what was inside the vehicle.
Development: Maj Gen Tal, who oversaw development of the Merkava, decided that a heavy APC was needed in the 1980s, he had observed during Israel’s wars that infantry needed more protection than tanks. Interesting, right?
These are some images of Ukrainian BTR-4s from back in March. I came across them doing some research on wheeled mobility and thought I would use them to illustrate some elements of terramechanics.
In 2000 Ogorkiewicz wrote about the Vehicle Cone Limiting Index, a measure developed in the UK at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) to determine the go/no-go strength of a soil for wheeled AFVs of certain weights.
The VCLI is used with the cone index of the soil type in question to indicate whether a vehicle can pass it. Different soils have different CIs, wet soils like clay are weaker than hard soils low in moisture and will allow heavier vehicles to pass.