Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!att!cbnews!military From: gwh%volcano.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Superheavy tanks Message-ID: <9880@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 3 Oct 89 13:07:38 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 32 Approved: military@att.att.com From: gwh%volcano.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert) Bill posted a good and long article giving some new insights into really big tanks. There are a few things i'd like to add... First, a correction: Bill stated that today's MBT's are in the 35-45 ton range. This is not the fact: they are in the 45-55 ton range, and likely to grow in the immediate future, if mobility (bridges giving way beneath) problems can be overcome. This is mostly due to new cannon developments. Okay, now on with the new stuff: All fiction aside, hovertanks are a good idea, with certain limitations. They do take an enormous amount of power (gas turbines can supply it, but an armoured hovercraft is a hole that you pour fuel into). They have difficulties with broken ground and slopes. And forests. They are best used in flat terrain, or where there is enough flat open terrain to give them a mobility advantage in one way or another. And a final point about Real Big Tanks: Like all other warfare, there is a point where concentrating firepower suddenly becomes a very bad idea. Given a unstopable tank, for instance, the logical countermeasure is a nuclear bomb. The fine line to be walked is designing and using these such that there is no inscentive to escalate combat in that manner... **************************************** George William Herbert UCB Naval Architecture Dpt. (my god, even on schedule!) maniac@garnet.berkeley.edu gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu ----------------------------------------