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What AFV offers the current best combination of firepower and mobility / transportability? Is the secret in lower weight at the expense of armor and tracks; or is it in the use of missiles with limited reloads over a high velocity gun?

Hi Mum! Hi Folks!

- mumfordlibrarian

What AFV offers the current best combination of firepower and mobility / transportability? Is the secret in lower weight at the expense of armor and tracks; or is it in the use of missiles with limited reloads over a high velocity gun?

That is a group of questions that very few AFV developers have the answers to.

I think that before any of those questions can be answered, one needs to defind:
the mission the vehicle will be used for,
the enemy it will be used against,
how far does it need to move to get to the location of mission and enemy,
how fast it needs to get to said location,
cost to build,
cost to train and operate,
cost to maintain,
cost of the support to keep it operating,

As for picking the CURRENT best vehicle, I would say the M1A2 Sep with CROWS and the Leo II.

My 2 cents,
Sgt, Scouts Out!

Once upon a time when masses of Soviet tanks were destined to pour across the German plains and push NATO out of Europe and into the sea, NATO tanks needed to be heavily armored and carry a large amount of ammo. They also had to be very mobile to redeploy from German kassernes to battle positions along the East/West border.

The philosophy behind these characteristics was that the average Bundeswehr, British or American tank needed to destroy as many enemy tanks as they could before they died. This lead to heavy armor and large (50+) rounds of ammo carried. There also had to be superior target detection and fire control systems to engage all inbound tanks before being seen themselves. The vast majority of ammo carried was anti-tank/anti-armor rounds.

Mobility was unencumbered by fuel efficiency since the plan was to fill up at local gas stations on the way to the battle positions. Weight wasn't an issue since the fight was to be on home turf.

These are the legacy Cold War MBTs that survive today. We've got to make do with the tanks we have on hand.

Today, tank on tank battles are rare and will be supported by many combat multipliers like artillery, aircraft and guided missiles. The main problem is how to get a limited number of tanks to the fight quickly. The fight is no longer going to be on home soil, but in some area of the world without a western presence.

This will push tanks to become smaller, thus mounting less armor, better fuel efficiency, smaller gun and less anti-armor rounds but more anti-personnel or anti-structure rounds.

The newer MBTs of the future will be lesser MBTs than those on the battlefield today, but will be able to go more places in less time using a shorter logisitics tail.