Jon Hawkes

Moog showing off the production representative version of its RiWP turret at #IAV25 this week fitted an HMT Armoured Closed Cab and a Dingo 3

Both with Thales HVM/LMM missiles, one also with 30x113mm Bushmaster and 7.62mm machine gun. We saw it on a Ridgeback at #DVD24 last year

A Boxer for every occasion

3/3 My consolidation into slides, was sent by a nice DM, but traced back to the very useful MoD Imagery site (www.defenceimagery.mod.uk) so if you share onwards be aware of copyright. All seem to be standard MOD Crown Copyright News / Editorial Licence - GOV.UK

2/3 Page 2 is the combat support gang - Argus, Atlas and Apollo. No sign of Ares in all this but Athena or Atlas minus the extra bits pretty much covers it for silhouette purposes.

@thinkdefence.bsky.social

1/3 Some nice line drawings of how the Ajax family will look in the MCO and PSO fits. Page 1 - Ajax and Athena.

MCO is the conventional warfare fit (think TES for TELIC, sort of thing) and PSO is peace support (think TES for HERRICK)

Not one you see every day - Challenger 2 with Track Width Mine Plough (TWMP) from Pearson Engineering, this one in Estonia being used for training on the TWMP capability with members of the AFV Schools Regiment from the RE group of the Combat Support Wing.

An old animation of the BR90 systems, including AVLB (Titan) launched (No.10, 11 and 12) and the bigger CSB capabilities.

Both being replaced under Project TYRO.

The ESARCO Vehicles - Think Defence The unusual ESARCO vehicles were developed by Major Michael Somerton-Rayner as a private initiative in response to lessons identified by the British Army in the 1982 Falklands Conflict, namely, the ne...

NEW BLOG POST

Not strictly new, this is one from the archives, given a refresh and republished

The Esarco 6×6 and 8×8 vehicles

www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2024/11/the-...

Atlas version of Ajax demonstrating towed recovery of other Ajax variants.

A nice British Army slide from a few years ago on what reliability growth trials are there to do. Figures quoted at the bottom relate to the acquisition of Warthog as a representative example.

Planning a longer primer on testing and trials, but still collecting info.

⚡️The 🇪🇺EU proposes to allocate 1 billion euros from frozen 🇷🇺Russian assets to the 🇺🇦Ukrainian defense industry for the production of Ukrainian weapons

Quo vadis Wiesel-Nachfolge? Beschaffungsvorhaben Luftbeweglicher Waffenträger wird abgebrochen Mit dem Luftbeweglichen Waffenträger (LuWa) beabsichtigt die Bundeswehr, die Waffenträger Wiesel Maschinenkanone und Wiesel MELLS der Luftlandetruppe zu ersetzen.

Report from @hartpunkt that German LuWa programme to replace Wiesel weapons carriers is to be cancelled, owing to the proposed solution from Rheinmetall being radically out of budget. Here's hoping requirement can come back in some form soon.
www.hartpunkt.de/quo-vadis-wi...

More #AjaxUpdate from recent weeks - vehicle level static and mobile ballistic qualification trials of modular armour system, and Collective Protection (COLPRO) trials. Signing off that everything stops what it should and protects as it should, all part of the acceptance signoffs

Home | The Institute of Tanknology The Institute of Tanknology provides analysis, commentary and discussions on land warfare technology and capabilities, with a side line in educational technology primers.

New to this Bluesky malarky, but not new to social media on AFVs. 10 year backlog of threads and discussions on X: x.com/JonHawkes275. My blog with primers and explainer posts: jonhawkes.wixsite.com/tanknologyin....

Slowly increasing content on this site, grateful for likes and follows.

P.S. I have a longstanding X account (x.com/JonHawkes275) from which I'll be posting some of my favourite threads here. First am catching up on these bridging threads so I can continue with Part 3 onwards, which is long overdue.

That’s part two on the need for bridges, stay tuned for part three – whats the problem with Titan?
For new joiners, the series started here: bsky.app/profile/jonh...

An end note that I am no combat engineering or logs expert, so the many learned people in that domain on twitter can fill in blanks and do some interesting threads on this stuff in more details. But hopefully this sets the broad scene with as few glaring errors as possible.

What those models look like in the post-Ukraine UAS saturated landscape is unclear but will certainly only strengthen the case for having a good quantity of fast operating systems and a coherent doctrine for their use, or we have seen the consequences.

The result is that planners should allocate between 3 and 5 AVLB for each opposed crossing seeking a reasonable likelihood of success (essentially a full AVLB company/squadron in most militaries).

…suggests that around 30% of opposed crossings fail, and that you need at least 2 concurrent crossing sites for a battle group formation to maintain useful momentum and successfully pass an obstacle.

Where the crossing is actively opposed, you also need equipment redundancy and multiple backups. There are lots of ways to model opposed crossings, but historic evidence (though few countries have conducted an opposed crossing since WW2)…

You need to work out how to present as broad a presence as you can in the area, to conceal the crossing point and prevent issues stemming from the massing of forces at the assembly areas and crossing itself and ensure rapid dispersal on the exit bank.

RISK OF GAP CROSSING
The big risk with gaps is that crossing them is an inherently slow process that can be predicted to varying degrees. To successfully cross your recce forces need to validate the crossing site (they will have been pre-selected, but reality must be confirmed)

So, you will encounter gaps a lot, and you cant rely on local infrastructure if it is still standing. The result is that to avoid being very predictable in your manoeuvres and/or be readily canalised into an opponents planning, you need integral organic gap crossing capabilities.

As long as there have been bridges there have been tanks collapsing them. In Baltics & Eastern Europe infrastructure is notoriously low MLC capacity. Many reports from Ukraine of bridges collapsing when crossed by T-72/T-80, which it is worth noting are <60% of what CR3 weighs.

Add that as you go farther from Western Europe & North America the quality and capacity of infrastructure rapidly declines and the % of existing bridges and roads that can support MLC80 to MLC120 vehicles is very low, assuming the enemy hasn’t blown them up.

Other global operating environments are similar, or worse. The Middle East is relatively good at around 2km average intervals, and more exotic locales like East Asia with lots of mountainous and tropical river basins can be between 500m and 1km.

GAP DENSITY
There are loads of analyses out there on gap density in notional operating environments but suffice to say you encounter gaps way more often than you might think. In central Europe a gap can be expected every 2km. In the Baltics it increases to around every 1.25km.

Sometimes the 'gap' is not overt at first look. There may be a bridge, but it isn't of a suitable capacity to allow your equipment to cross. These need to be bypassed, bridged over, or replaced.

There are also inadvertent gaps caused by damage, such as destroyed or collapsed bridges, or collapsed substructures creating unforeseen ditches (collapsing car parks and basements are a pervasive peril for heavy AFV in urban areas, for discussion another time)