The Best That Never Was 2 (Prototypes)

[Raellus]

10 Weirdest Top Secret Soviet Military Vehicles That We Know About

https://www.hotcars.com/weirdest-top-secret-soviet-military-vehicles-that-we-know-about/#t-55-progrev-t

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[Raellus]

Project Lantan

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/project-lantan-poland-designs-a-modular-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]

The Krinks That Never Were, AKSU Trial Rifles

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 Simonovs AG-043 saw service with the KGB.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016/04/27/krinks-never-aksu-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]

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]

BTR-90

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/davidaxe/2023/10/13/the-russian-army-dragged-old-experimental-btr-90-vehicles-from-a-test-site-and-sent-them-to-ukraine/sh=6df0134a1560

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

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[Vespers War]

It feels like the ideal would have been for mechanized infantry to be mounted in the BMP-3 and motorized infantry in the BTR-90 in the ready divisions, with cadre divisions having units with older equipment until the ready divisions are fully equipped with the new vehicles and additional production can flow down to the cadre. Mobilisation units would get the cadre's cast-offs (old BMP-1 and BMP-2 for mechanized, BTR-70 and BTR-80 for motorized) as cadre got new vehicles (and production might not ever be high enough to reach mobilisation units until their replacements start entering service).

There likely wouldn't be enough time for production to even reach all the ready divisions in any of the existing Twilight timelines, but maybe Naval Infantry or other elite units might be equipped with them.

[Ursus Maior]

It feels like the ideal would have been for mechanized infantry to be mounted in the BMP-3 and motorized infantry in the BTR-90 in the ready divisions, with cadre divisions having units with older equipment until the ready divisions are fully equipped with the new vehicles and additional production can flow down to the cadre. Mobilisation units would get the cadre's cast-offs (old BMP-1 and BMP-2 for mechanized, BTR-70 and BTR-80 for motorized) as cadre got new vehicles (and production might not ever be high enough to reach mobilisation units until their replacements start entering service).

There likely wouldn't be enough time for production to even reach all the ready divisions in any of the existing Twilight timelines, but maybe Naval Infantry or other elite units might be equipped with them.

That would be a theoretic model at best, but the most propable. Production of BMP-3 was low with BMP-2 production being only phased out during the 1990s. Simultaneously there would be pressure to upgrade the thousands of BTR-60s and BMP-1Ps in service. Soviet equipment would be at least as diverse, colorful and improvised in the Twilight War as Russian equipment is now.

Which is fine, it adds flavor.

[Vespers War]

After looking at some of the Aggressor documents, I got curious what was being worked on around the end of World War 2, and one of the more interesting vehicles is the T30 heavy tank. According to R. P. Hunnicutt's Firepower it was actually slightly heavier than the T28 superheavy tank, despite only having around half the armor. It was that heavy because instead of the T28's 105mm gun, the T30 mounted a 155mm L/41 monster. It was intended to take on a King Tiger or Jagdtiger (or IS-2) with odds in its favor. Muzzle velocity was somewhat lethargic at only 700 meters/second, but 155mm of HEAT was found to have an impressive effect on pretty much anything it hit.

Fire Control: 0
Armament: 155mm L/41 T7 (34 rds), 2x 12.7mm M2HB (coax & pintle, 1500 rds), 2x 7.62mm M1919 (coax & bow, 2500 rds)
Fuel Type: G, A
Veh Wt: 86.5 tonnes
Crew: 6 (commander, driver, gunner, radio operator/assistant driver/bow gunner, 2 loaders)
Mnt: 29
Night Vision: None
Tr Mov: 112/56
Com Mov: 19/9
Fuel Cap: 1300
Fuel Cons: 650
Config: Veh
Susp: T: 4
HF: 53
HS: 23
HR: 15
TF: 61
TS: 48
TR: 31


T7 155mm L/41
Rng: 380 Rld: 4
HE: C: 30 B: 38 Pen: 16
KE: Dam: 34 Pen: 69/60/51/33
HEAT: C: 20 B: 31 Pen: 86

The gun has an extremely low rate of fire because its two-part ammunition is still heavy and difficult to handle, with the shell being almost 100 pounds without the powder charge. The T30E1 added loader assist systems (a power rammer and systems to align the gun with the rammer and return it to battery), but not a full autoloader, which would improve Rld to 2.

[Raellus]

Super Tomcat

Like many Gen-X'ers, when I saw that footage of F-14 Tomcats taking off and landing at dawn in the opening credits of Top Gun, it was love at first sight. I was sad to see the Tomcat replaced by the multirole Super Hornet in the early 1990s, and quite surprised that a few D versions held on long enough to drop bombs (!!) during the early days of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Apparently, a multirole Super Tomcat was proposed to continue the F-14's USN legacy, in lieu of the Super Hornet that eventually won the job IRL. Anyway, the Super Tomcat sounds pretty flippin' awesome.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29653/this-is-what-grummans-proposed-f-14-super-tomcat-21-would-have-actually-looked-like

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[Homer]

It might have made Goose turn in his grave, but the F-14 was a much better CAS/Strike platform than the legacy F-18. It had the same podded sensor capabilities as the hornet, can carry more practical weight further/stay on station longer, and most importantly came with two sets of eyes/ears/brains. That let the F-14 function as an airborne FAC for other strikes in addition to being a strike aircraft- having a FAC overhead takes some work off the guys in the ground in terms of airspace management and deconfliction.

[Vespers War]

It might have made Goose turn in his grave, but the F-14 was a much better CAS/Strike platform than the legacy F-18. It had the same podded sensor capabilities as the hornet, can carry more practical weight further/stay on station longer, and most importantly came with two sets of eyes/ears/brains. That let the F-14 function as an airborne FAC for other strikes in addition to being a strike aircraft- having a FAC overhead takes some work off the guys in the ground in terms of airspace management and deconfliction.

Yeah, but its logistical tail was much, much worse. The F-14 required 40 to 60 hours of maintenance for each flight hour, where the F-18 only needed 20 (and the F-18E only 10 to 15). Between that and operational costs (where the Super Hornet was 45-50% as expensive as the Tomcat), you could pretty much literally operate 2 F-18Es for the cost of 1 F-14. It can't do the FAC role as effectively, but now you've got more weight, two sets of sensors looking at things, two sets of eyes/ears/brains, and the ability to split that payload if it needs to go in multiple directions, for a lower per-hour cost and half the work for your ground crews.

[Vespers War]

Tying in to the prototypes theme that this thread originally had, has anyone done any work creating stats for the modern batch of light tanks that in some cases are starting to enter service I'm thinking of things like the Sabrah, Kaplan/Harimau, Type 15/VT-5, arguably the Sprut-SD, the K21-105, the CV90105 and CV90120-T, and M10 Booker. Regardless of whether they end up being genius or boondoggle in real life, I think they could be interesting in the game as vehicles with firepower roughly on par with an MBT, but with a lighter logistical footprint (less fuel and maintenance) and less protection.