A new Pentagon budget realignment file dropped (with $3.8 billions of new orders). Again it has a lot of interesting info about what weapons have been sent to Ukraine... even though every time more and more of the orders are classified (but I have a good idea what they are).
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First I want to thank @osmnactej - he keeps looking on the Pentagon website for these files every day and has found more than a dozen so far.
For an earlier thread about these Pentagon files - check out the link below: 2/n
This is the first time the Pentagon spends almost as much on Excalibur as on standard 155mm rounds. It's also more than double all of the previous Excalibur orders combined, which were $184,2m 4/n
M142 HIMARS: $489.5m
Interestingly the Pentagon splits this order in two: 18 HIMARS to replace the M119A2 105mm howitzers of one US Army artillery battalion and then 100+ HIMARS for... ??? it doesn't say for whom. 5/n
So far the Pentagon ordered an extra $480.5m in GMLRS rockets, which is around 3,200 rockets.
This time the Pentagon ordered $1,143,382,000 (!) in GMLRS rockets. But now the type of GMLRS is classified... which makes me think they ordered 7,600+ of the 150km ER-GMLRS. 6/n
Also ordered were:
JLTV: $125,7m to replace armored Humvees
FMTV trucks: $87,7m
AMPV: $800,6m to replace the 100s of M113 donated to Ukraine. 7/n
Also $53.5m for mine clearing charges.... which is interesting because until now the Pentagon had ordered only $1,4m of this item.
This makes it very obvious Ukraine is going to blast through a lot of minefields soon. 8/n
The Pentagon also ordered five additional M-SHORAD Stryker Air Defense Vehicles as replacement for AN/TWQ-1 Avengers sent to Ukraine... this order is on top of the 144 M-SHORAD Strykers the Pentagon already ordered. 9/n
Now onto the US Air Force, which is ordering three new missiles.
Interesting part is that Pentagon says Ukraine received AIM-120B AMRAAM air-to-air missiles - likely for the NASAMS 2 air defense system. 10/n
The AGM-158C LRASM (Long Range Anti-Ship Missile) replaces AGM-84 Harpoonmissiles given to Ukraine... which is interesting, as this is the air-launched variant of the Harpoon... so... maybe Ukraine has now integrated Harpoon anti-ship missiles on their fighters. 11/n
The AGM-88G AARGM-ER (Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile Extended Range - to the rear) is a Ramjet upgrade of the AGM-88E HARM (to the front) introduced in 2010.
AGM-88G is the world's most advanced and fastest anti-radiation missile with a 400 km range. 12/n
In short: the US Air Force is giving Ukraine excellent older missiles that are great at defeating russia, and replaces them with missles that are meant to defeat China.
And this concludes our little trip into the Pentagon budget.
13/end
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A few hours ago I did a thread about tank ammo.
There were some questions and suggestions in the comments. Therefore I will do now a shortish "PS" thread to my earlier tank thread 🧵:
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If you have not yet read my earlier thread - I suggest you do so now, before continuing with this thread.
Older Western tanks (i.e. Leopard 1, M60 Patton, K1, Merkava I/II) use rifled 105mm cannons, as do current Western fire support vehicles (Centauro, M1128 MGS, Type 16, Griffin II). 2/n
The only outliers to this rule (older tanks use 105mm rifled - modern tanks use 120mm smoothbore) are the British Army's Chieftain (left), Challenger 1, and Challenger 2 (right) tanks, which use 120mm rifled guns.
Rifled guns spin-stabilize projectiles, while smoothbore guns 3/n
The problem with artillery ammo production is that you have to manufacture perfectly identical shells to ensure firing them is safe.
If the shell is too thick it will get stuck in the barrel, if it is too thin the gases will blow by it and the shell will fall short, if the 1/6
shell's wand is uneven it will tumble and crash. And once you have perfect shells, you need to pour in the molten TNT (or Composite B or IMX-101)... and the shell must be perfectly and evenly filled or it will wobble in flight and crash.
And before you can pour the explosive 2/n
another factory needs to produce it. Usually the explosive factory also produces the charges, which you need to actually fire the shell... and these too need to be perfectly precise. If the charges are not all identical the shell will overshoot the target or fall short. 3/n
I wanted to do a thread about operating mortars and a thread about tank ammunition... but can't, because before those two I have to do a thread 🧵about rifled and smoothbore barrels.
All NATO mortars (except for one) and all NATO 120mm tank guns (except for one) use
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smoothbore barrels. This one mortar and this one tank use a rifled barrel, just like all NATO assault rifles, machine guns, auto cannons, recoilless rifles (photo: Carl Gustaf barrel), gatling guns, 105mm tank guns, howitzers, etc.
(Note: Shotguns use smoothbore barrels). 2/n
Why rifling? Well, you want the bullets, rounds, and projectiles to hit the intended target, therefore you have to stabilize them during flight. There are two ways to do that:
A thread about the best infantry fighting vehicle: the Swedish CV90.
Nine European countries (🇸🇪🇳🇴🇩🇰🇫🇮🇳🇱🇪🇪🇨🇭🇨🇿🇸🇰) have bought the CV90 and others are now eyeing it as their future IFV (🇺🇸🇬🇧🇫🇷🇮🇹).
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The reason NATO's big four military powers are eyeing/assessing/trialing the CV90 is that it is a mature design with every imaginable variant already existing.
The CV90 isn't the best armored IFV - the best armored is the German KF41 Lynx in this photo. And the CV90 isn't 2/n
the cheapest IFV - that would be the South Korean Redback in this photo.
The CV90 is, due to its many users, the most versatile armored vehicle in production now. Similar to the Leopard 2 tank and the F-16 fighter many users means that there is constant development and 3/n