Britain’s Challenger 3 is Legitimately Insane
The British Army’s newest Challenger 3 main battle tank prototypes, just rolled off the factory floor and straight into live fire tests. I want to analyze what new weapons, armor and technology the tank brings to the table? How does it plan to breathe new life into the UK’s defense manufacturing? And can it still brew tea while slaying the enemy?
The first thing we should focus on is the turret where the majority of the upgrades can be found. We’re swapping out the old rifled cannon for a new Rheinmetall produced Leopard 2’s L55A1 smoothbore cannon that came out in 2019. The Challenger 3 will now be able to handle higher pressure ammunition. Which is huge because that lets you fire next generation tank munitions like the German DM 11 multi purpose programmable tank round. The DM 11 allows you to choose between 3 different firing modes on one single shell. Perfect For the tanker who hates commitment. After your gunner loads it up, an electronic module then programs the time delay fuse on the round so that it detonates at a specific point in the projectile’s flight path. You can actually choose the exact coordinates that you want to send hate to. Gunners can quickly set the high explosive round to explode either above, in front or inside the target after penetrating a wall.
The old version of the Challenger 2’s gun had a funky need for two piece ammo. It consisted of a charge and then a warhead stored separately inside the hull of the tank that needed to be combined. But now that they’ve switched to NATO standard ammo it’s a single piece. What this means is you get extra room for the rounds to be stored in a separate protected compartment safely away from the crew. There is now the inclusion of a blast door to protect crew from ammunition cook off.
#BRITIAN #TANK #engineering
Credit to : Task & Purpose