Re: [MV] new Merkava

From: Ryan Gill (rmgill@mindspring.com)
Date: Wed Oct 20 2004 - 12:01:11 PDT


At 10:19 AM -0700 10/20/04, Rick v100 wrote:
>Thin roof armor was used in armored vehicles as a
>weight saving since prior to the mid-80's there were
>no roof attack specific muntions available.

There are now. They look like they have around 6+ inches of armor up there now.

>What is the range and what is the power pack on the
>new Merkava? With all the extra weight the engine will
>need to have some extra power. Of course this means
>beefed up suspension to handle the extra weight as
>well.

They beefed up the suspension in the Merkava 3 Baz. They can run over
rocks and pretty big bumps in the golan quite nicely it seems. The
crew has a very smooth ride according to that video. Looks pretty
good too. The Merk 3 Baz had a rather large armor upgrade that
increased it's weight. The Merkava 4 has more bells and whistles and
is setup so the crew spends more time under armor with lots of
cameras and LCD panels arranged for great all around visibility. That
appears to allow them to move through built up areas, see what's
around and still have good situational awareness.

>Also means the IDF will need to buy more fuel trucks
>to feed these thirtsy things as the range will
>obviously decrease as well.

Powerpacks seem to get better and better for a given fuel ratio. But
then tanks aren't really meant to be all that great at fuel
efficiency.

-- 
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
-                 Data Center Operations Group                -
-               http://web.turner.com/data_center/             -
----------------------------------------------------------------
- Ryan Montieth Gill                   One CNN Center SE0813 E -
- Internet Technologies   --   Data Center Operations Manager  -
- Hours 11am - 7pm Mon - Fri        (8Sdc, 10Sdc IT@3Ndc)      -
- Cellular: 404-545-6205             e-mail: Ryan.Gill@cnn.com -
- Office: 404-588-6191                                         -
----------------------------------------------------------------
-             Emergency Power-off != Door release!             -
----------------------------------------------------------------


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat May 07 2005 - 20:36:51 PDT