CV90 would fit this role perfectly in my opinion. Why do we even need hybrid?

The. Weight. Isn't.That. Big. Of. A. Deal. Holy fucknards...

Dude, were you Armor, or something? Because you sure as hell weren't one of the idiots like me who had to worry about getting those overweight monstrosities like the M1A2 from point A to point B. We can (barely) manage to keep things going with the tanks weighing in at that weight, and now you blithely want to add in all the damn Infantry carriers and other support vehicles?

There's a price to be paid for this heavyweight BS, and that price is that you won't be able to afford to buy all the support systems required to make it work, nor will you be able to deploy it, and that's going to leave PFC Schnuffy up on the DMZ with a rifle and a radio, wondering why the hell it's taking so long to move the armored vehicles up from Pusan.

I'm going to go out on a limb, here, and state that if they buy this crap, they'll never buy the necessary support stuff to make it work. That's what they do. How long was it from "Buy M1" to "Buy M104 Wolverine"? Twenty f-ing years, or so? And, oh by the way, when they identified a requirement for 476 or so of the damn things, they bought a whopping 44? Gee, that's heartening, ain't it?

Good grief--We're already sucking ass when it comes to bridging assets, with just the tanks being Class 70. Who the hell is going to pay for buying the stuff we need to move the entire force, when it weighs that much? Who's going to pay for the worn-out bridges on the various armored bridge launchers, when the number of CL 70 crossings go up exponentially?

The idiots in charge of this program had better pull their heads out, in oh-so-many ways, or it's going to leave us with a broken force. Ya think the days when the support vehicles were off the M113 chassis, the tankers were in the Abrams, and the grunts were in the Brads were bad, wait until the idiots try to pull this one off. 'Cos, ya know damn good and well that they're only going to buy the damn IFV variant in sufficient numbers to make a difference.

I would seriously love to have a writ to go beat some sense into these people. One of my old bosses worked the Boeing end of the FCS program, and the stories I heard from him... Jeezus. Reality-challenged? Those fucking idiots were living in some alternate universe, spent billions, left us with nothing to show for it, and I'll bet money most of the same lot of contractors and other DOD civilians are sopping up the gravy with this new program as well. I swear to God, some of those jackasses needed to be sterilized and put into a home for the chronically useless. The really bad part about that deal was watching my old boss, who was a very down-to-earth and common-sense type, get gradually taken over by the culture. By the last time I saw him, it was like I'd been watching him take part in a real-life Invasion of the Body-Snatchers...

I believe 70 tons is the weight with all the added armor.  It's base armor package is much lighter, in the 50-something ton range IIRC.  This makes it easier to get in theater and the armor can be added once there.  Even in the base armor, it would be very well armored compared to it's peers such as the Bradley, Warrior, CV-90, BMP-3, etc.



Consider also, that a significant portions of a tank's armor is in the turret.  I wouldn't expect an IFV to have such a massively armored turret as a tank, which would translate to a greater proportion of hull armor protecting the crew.
-K





 

I would agree.  Even empty air pockets can be very effective in stopping incoming projectiles in conjunction with additional plates of armor.
-K



 

A year ago I coined the term Cavster to describe them... And apparently it has taken off in certain communities.

Cavtactular, Cavtastic, and Cavbobulated were the winners back in 1996.

Fun trivia: Does anyone know why the DoD went full retard and had shut down for a crazy period, all USB ports? Because 1st Cav came to NTC, got paired with 699th Maint. Co. as both were training up to deploy, and used 699th's Orderly Room's computers, with a thumb drive that was privately purchased, and was infested with almost every computer disease out there. CSSAMO was so mad, that they could have kicked kittens and puppies through a metal fan. The guy's that ran the post network's came in faster than ninja's and took every computer the 1st Cav and 699th had, to unfuck everything.

That wasn't the worst..they found kiddie porn, incest porn, and animal porn in several of 1st CAV's laptops.

The right size gun for an IFV is an interesting topic.  I don't know if there really are wrong answers so much as different people having honest disagreements and choosing different solutions.





I don't see much more service life for 25mm in armored combat as we see it today.  It has a huge advantage in that you can carry a shit ton of ammo for it, but the price for that is less effect per round.  It's mitigated in the AP role because we use DU in our rounds, but in the HE role it doesn't pack nearly the punch of larger cannon rounds.  I have heard criticism of it in Iraq because it had a hard time punching through thick dirt or clay walls that were common there, but praise because it had the ability to stay in the fight for such a long time due to less down time in re-arming.  Double edged sword.





In the AP arena, I have read that the 25mm DU round is roughly equivalent to other countries 30mm rounds.  Which is great, except the new generation of IFV's and other armored vehicles are having 30mm protection as standard.





IIRC, our new vehicles, right/wrong/indifferent, are looking at up-gunning to 30mm.  The USMC EFV (which 0bama/Gates killed) was to have a 30mm for example.
To give an idea of the different ammo capacity, the CV90 with the 40mm has a rather low ammo capacity -  230 rounds seems to stick in my mind, while the 30mm version can carry something like 400 rounds.  The 35mm version can carry something in between.  Compare to the Bradley carrying (according to Wiki) 300 rounds ready with another 600 in storage.  
-K




 
 

3P rounds are very cool.  They are, however, very expensive.  They are also available in 35mm and I believe even 30mm, though the real cost is in the fuzing, so the larger round may be more economical as you get a bigger bang - just fewer of them to shoot.
-K
 

I would think an electric drive would have many fewer parts that would more more easily changed out in the field, but I really don't know.  I would hate to see something short out because some insulation went bad and got wet in the rain or something, but with no differentials, less maintenance, POL requirements, etc...



But what is the durability of today's batteries?  They might work fine when new, but how will they work after 15 or 25 or more years?  How willing will they be to provide replacement or upgraded batteries?  How many issues would that alone be creating?





-K



 

Those same walls they had finally resorted to using TOW's, and still the walls stood. If a HEAT warhead can't do it either, you think an upgraded weapon system will too? I've seen walls collapse, tree's fall, and targets behind cover totally destroyed.

I think a good compromise is the 30mm that was supposed to be in the new Marine amphib before it got canned, and the ammo and guns/ plus parts are already in the system as the Navy uses them to a limited degree.

I have heard stories of M1 exhaust cooking the paint off of German cars behind them in traffic.  I have also heard of them starting brush fires.  Makes it a bit more difficult for troops to use tanks as cover while advancing too.  





But I have seen the same question asked on other boards and a lot of answers seem to say it's not much more than other vehicles.  One of the theories presented was that the exhaust, while hot, is very clean.  The cooler but dirtier/sootier exhaust from diesels seem to carry the heat better so they show up as much or more on thermals.  I have no personal experience to back that up though.
-K



 

Lol thanks for bringing back the memories!
-K



 

What do you mean?



Assuming the engine is big enough, would a 70 ton IFV have less mobility than a 70 ton tank?  The Israelis are using the Namer, which is an APC in the same weight class.  I haven't heard of it having a problem keeping up with the Merks - it's actually based on the Merk, though that kind of modification wouldn't really work with the M1 series.
-K



 

I think I agree with most of that you said.  The current state of our SP artillery is an atrocity.  Both because of Rummy/Bush killing the Crusader and Gates/0bama killing the NLOS-C.  



And the Army's ADA capabilities are a sad joke right now too - again I blame Gates/0bama for that, killing the SLAMRAAM and then MEADS a few weeks later.



The Bradley is getting long in the tooth though and I think it is a good idea to be looking for a replacement.  I'm not sure how much more they can be upgraded in the future.
-K





 

I really don't know how other rounds would have performed, but I wouldn't expect a heat round to do much really - they basically excel in punching a very deep but narrow hole in steel.  Whereas an HE round with a delay programmed into it so it goes off while inside the wall itself may well perform much better.  Kind of like the 120mm M908 obstacle reduction round works by penetrating inside the obstacle before actually going bang.  It works much better even though it uses a much smaller explosive charge than the older HESH type rounds.





I would agree that the 30mm is a good compromise, but I wonder if it will continue to be sufficient in the future.  Anything we procure now will likely serve another 30 or 40 years.  Today's vehicles are coming with 30mm protection as a standard and will only be upgraded as time goes on.  I wonder if a 35mm would be a better compromise.  Better potential for growth and more insurance for the future, but still have more ammo capacity than the 40mm.  The 40mm CTA systems are also very promising.
-K



 

Interesting points, especially bridging assets.  I remember the bridge layers were all quite old and based on M-48 hulls when I was in during the 90's.  





I wonder though, are the problems you speak of inherent in the weight of the vehicle?  Or are they inherent in Congress/a given administration/the Army/etc not planning and adjusting accordingly in how they support the vehicles?  Please keep in mind, I am not discounting what you are pointing out in any way, just wondering who is to blame so to speak.
-K



 

Interesting points.





Regarding terrain supporting a heavy IFV (and again 70 tons is the max, it's base armor is much lighter) wouldn't that also pose the same problem for the Abrams?  Do you see heavy infantry - either in Brads or it's heavier replacement - deploying without also having tanks with them?  Seems to me that it would be a situation where they would deploy both together or neither.  If the terrain/local bridges can't support such weight, would that be more a situation where light infantry would be deployed instead?  If the local infrastructure can't support heavy armor, would the enemy have much of it themselves?  Granted, Eastern Bloc tanks do tend to be considerably lighter than ours.



I don't suspect a wheeled Stryker type unit would fare better in soft terrain, but could they mitigate the limitations of local bridges etc.?  





To go even more off topic though, how would you feel about lighter armored units then?  Something like the CV90/120 or something where that kind of firepower is desired, but weight is critical?  Even something like the M-551 concept?  Or would it even be worth it at all and only have somewhat of a niche role?



Not trying to pick an argument, just very curious.
-K



 

What we need is an unmanned turret with a 30 to 35mm autocannon, a 7.62 coax and another 7.62 on the TC's cupola so he can engage dismounts that the gunner can't see or engage because the main gun cannot depress low enough to reach. No .50, you already have the main weapon for the punching power, and a third ammunition add's more to the logistic's nightmare when 7.62 is already on hand for the coax. Why an unmanned turret? It will lower the profile and add space to store ammunition that a bigger system will need the additional space for. Use steel armor, but let's not go full retard. If you're going to worry about IED's, then we have the MRAP's that obviously work, and work well indeed.

IED's are a COIN matter, and we have MRAP's for that. Stick to battlefield force on force threats, that is the issue.

Never been done befo'.
Will said turret have the automatic ejection feature?



 

I'm not in armor, but .mil aviation and the same systemic problems that you deal with we also deal with.

I won't go so far to say that weight isn't a big deal, but over time creating add on's that are going to drive up the weight eventually, on a chassis that wasn't designed to carry that much weight, under powered by an engine not designed to move that much weight, requiring more support equipment not originally designed for it in the first place... All that over time ends up costing us billions more than taking the huge pain up front and hoping to mitigate extended costs over the long run.

The basic premise is like you said.  "They don't do that."  Everything we use now on the Abrams chassis was conceived as an after thought, with extended developement and delays.  Instead of being made up front as part of a package system.  The detriment to our fighting force is getting less of what we need because it costs more.

Until someone puts their foot down and makes the decision to bite the bullet up front, and make that leap both on behalf of the .gov, contractors and the war fighters.  We are going to be stuck with stop gap measures that don't completely fulfill our needs.

I think it all boils down to fixing the acquitions and contracting process, but no one in power wants to fix the broken cash cow that keeps shitting out money.

Ask ATK. They have engineers for that.

You don't think that explosives are a threat in MCO?

Land mines and EFPs are cheaper than ever.  You will see them again.

Explosives will always be a threat.

Hey, I am with you boys on this, just not the full retard version. I can remeber thinking to myself back in 99 in Hawaii and seing the crap our support had, had no armor or kits for them and was wondering about what if the two dimensional battlefield becomes a three dimensional, meaning no lines, and strictly COIN? My platoon daddy and the CO laughed at me, and I was held hostage having to listen to WW1 and 2 tales, plus Korea. Vietnam was left out as an obtuse black eye, and the other interventions was a speed bump to them. Four years and a few rank's higher and a SSG/E-6 paygrade, I wanted to bitchslap those two for being inside the matrix fools.

What I'm saying is that you're wanting it all, and this will be a mess. Focus on what you actually need, and an IFV can wait. WE need SPG's and an actual SPAAG. Without those two to suppress a modern foe that cannot be so easily pushed over like a third world country can, your new IFV will be a shit magnet.

Have you ever considered that a IFV is an easier sale to congress and will give a chassis that can be used to on a new SPG. The Bradley and -113 were both used on a myriad of support vehicles. A SPG is going to get a fight from a certain sister service. They will tell congress that they can do the job better with the money. Look the last 2 SPG programs were killed, thats the reality of the situation.

It's obvious that there may be some spin offs, but considering that they never pushed for the M-1's chassis or the Bradley's chassis for either or, I don't have my hopes up for such a thing.

I absolutely understand that weight adds great expense and limits tactical options, like everything its a trade off. I understand that it taxes engineering and support systems.

I also understand that the Army is shrinking the number of HBCT that it will maintain. Thus increasing the importance that those that remain are equipped in a manner to make them most effective in the breaching and exploitation phase.  This will also translate to less ware on the support systems because of less total systems to support, though there will be cutbacks in those areas also, but the fixed assets like bridging materials will remain. HBCT are ridiculously expensive, its the nature of the beast.   The Army can take the lessons of the last 10 years, that heavier chassis is needed or we can continue the falicy that IFV will somehow be treated differently on the battlefield.  The most important lesson of the last ten years is that public at large will not tolerate casualties. Right now a hard kill on IFV is more detrimental to the American war effort than the insurgents wiping out a battalion of Afgan's.   If the big Army wants missions they are going to be competing against socom/AF, which to a politician appear to be politically safer alternatives.


You are also looking at 70 ton number and not the fact that the base vehicle will be 53 tons, with the ability to armor package to 70 tones. Given the fact that American public wants to limit casualties, how would you go about designing the vehicle with that in mind? Would it be closer to the bradley or namer?

spot on

SPHs are incredibly important.  We decided we could replace three M109s with one Crusader.  Then we cut the amount of artillery that we had and cancelled Crusader and the much less ambitions NLOS-C program.

We need to buy the damn PzH 2000.

Damn right we do.

That new M109 is a joke, just Bradley enhancements and more commonality of parts to ease the logistic burden's. Not even one upgrade for the gun itself, or a replacement.

I know for a fact they killed the Crusader wasn't because of it's weight, but because the nervous short bus gun bunny brass at the top were scared about having too many parts break. That's why they won't go near the XM1203 either, citing that it will have major teething issues. Then why not PzH 2000? It's already got the bugs fixed if there were any, but again, they won't accept the fact that auto-loading is the way to go with SPH's.

Argh.

LOL, oh man. Haven't even heard "banana suit" in over 20 years.

With how precision strikes are becoming more and more available to potential enemies. I would think you would try to design for a SMALLER profile armored vehicle....

As a brand new E-Nothing back in '91, I was highly entertained with these stories by the old breed on their way out with retirement. They were gods to me, until I was suckered into my first and ONLY pig party. I hated them for initiating me into the family that way. Fuckers, lol.

Seems like just the lower headcount in a PzH 2000 unit's TO&E would make it a no-brainer.

Someone please photoshop a turret on a Prius roof...

I remember the brief, glorious time when you could do morning PT in a Rocky & Bullwinkle t-shirt.

It causes problems.  Trust me.  You've got a SSG, SGT and SPC running the weapon, which means all your knuckleheads are in ammo with one SGT too mother them, and he's usually worse than they are.

That whole "idle hands" thing with your E2s and E3s?

Pics or it never happened.

As opposed to the rest of the Army as a whole having that same dilemma in other branch's?

My honest opinion? 70 tons is too damn big. Period. The issue isn't just the vehicle itself, but the effects it has on the terrain and the infrastructure. It's bad enough that you have a dozen 70-ton tanks with every task force, now you're going to have that plus every squad carrier and support vehicle? Kiss good-bye to your roads, your bridges, and everything else in the area. Doing realistic training is just not going to be affordable, and the unintentional damage the vehicles do during combat operations is going to be truly epic.

Something has to give, and my belief is that the current trend of where they're taking this GCV thing is flatly insane. A vehicle cannot be all things to all missions, and still be affordable in terms of costs and damages done during use. Not to mention, why the hell are we putting all our tactical eggs in one basket, in the first fucking place. The IFV concept has always been fundamentally flawed, in my opinion, and the trendlines are now making that obvious even to a blind man.

Here's the issue: In operational use, you don't want your firepower (the "fighting vehicle" part of the Bradley) in the same place as the grunts. They never should have tried to combine the two, ever. Why? Ever notice that the best support-by-fire positions were usually way the hell and gone away from where the grunts should be disembarked from the vehicles? Ever contemplated the epic stupidity inherent in taking your firepower up with you, to where the Infantry needs to be dropped? You're usually left with Hobson's choice: Either you keep your vehicles in the ideal support-by-fire position, and make your infantry run the gauntlet of fire to get to the place they need to be in order to do their thing, or you go be-bopping up with your primary firepower asset to drop them off, risking losing it. Add in, it's kinda hard to do suppressive fires while doing that, and you start to realize that the whole IFV concept has some flaws--If you're paying attention and ignoring the propaganda.

Plainly put, the infantry carrier needs to be separated from the firepower. That's the first thing I'd fix, which would reduce the weight of these vehicles drastically. After that, I'd make the Bradley replacement modular beyond the imagination of anyone currently in the business. We are probably on the cusp of a sea-change in warfare, right now, and we need to maintain the ability to flex what we're doing to respond. A rigidly conceived and designed vehicle like the Bradley is going to cost us a lot, in terms of adaptability. With today's modern industrial and transportation systems, there's no real need for us to plan for a fixed configuration vehicle. Bradleys are so damn useless in terrain like Afghanistan that we didn't even try to take them there. What would have been useful would have been a vehicle that we could reconfigure on the fly, so to speak, and transform from a heavy tracked vehicle configured for operations in a war with the Soviet Union to one that's optimized for the kind of operations we were doing in Afghanistan. Consider the way we designed the Bradley: Everything was unified, chassis, powerplant, armor, weapons, and crew compartment. Not very flexible, at all--And, the fixed configuration was optimized for a mech warfare scenario in Western Europe that never happened. Instead, we found ourselves in a counter-insurgency fight in primitive mountainous terrain. The Brads never even got sent there, they were so useless.

Now, imagine a different way of doing business: The vehicle is modular, and can be reconfigured relatively easily. Since we were planning for a mech warfare scenario, we of course purchased and operated them in a configuration meant to handle that scenario. But, unexpectedly, we got Afghanistan instead. So, how does the modular concept help us? First, since the vehicle is modular, you can strip off all the crap meant to help out in a mech warfare scenario--Things like the crew compartment being optimized for direct-fire encounters between tanks and IFVs. Keep the engine and track system, and swap in a crew compartment optimized for IED/mine resistance. Pull the weapons systems meant for mech warfare, and replace them with weapons more appropriate for the operation, add in better comms and surveillance gear, and away you go. Same basic hardware, just better designed for adaptability and ease of modification.

Obviously, you wouldn't want to have this whole Lego kit built and kept in a warehouse somewhere, but the basic designs should be ready to go, tested, and the only thing needing to be done is to turn on the contracts for manufacture. With modern industrial practice, you could probably take the new Bradley fleet in a division from mech warfare optimized to counter-insurgency optimized in about six months, at most. I'd have everything designed so that all you'd have to do is pull the vehicles into a maintenance center, pull the power packs and track systems (if you want to go with the same type), plug them into a differently configured hull, swap some internal systems, and away you go.With modern production technology, and a set of pre-planned configurations for different circumstances we're likely to encounter, something like this should be relatively easy to do. I'd also institutionalize a feedback loop so that the guys out in the field are constantly giving feedback to the design process, and making continual modifications.

Left up to me, we'd be talking about how we're designing the next-generation power pack, the next-generation hull/crew compartment designs, and so forth. Do everything modular, and buy what we need for what we think we're most likely to encounter during the lifespan of the equipment. We need to quit thinking of our vehicles as being one-time, be-all and end-all of all things vehicular for that role. You can forecast how long engines are likely going to last, buy what we need, and then pre-plan their next-generation design and replacements, which would get slipstreamed into the vehicle fleet as time goes on. A hull might last for two generations of power packs and weapons, or it might not, given how technology changes things. We might need a hull with more overhead armor, for example.

The other thing is that the nature of war is probably going to change massively in the near- and medium-term future. If the things that are happening with remotely operated vehicles and weapons systems continue, it may well be that the IFV of the future is going to be a heavily armored crew capsule that controls a small fleet of remote weapons, acting as an armored forward command post for them. Why have the turret on the vehicle, when you can mount it on its very own set of tracks, and send it off to go looking for insurgents by itself? Why put the tank main gun on the vehicle with the crew compartment, when you can have two or three direct-fire weapons systems controlled and supervised by one guy with a split video screen, drinking coffee in a comfortable chair? With some of the software and gear that's coming along, about all he may need to do is approve targets the systems have found for him.

This, and a hydraulic hybrid system could make a lot of sense.  Something like a Prius, not so much.

Kirk, what is your opinion of the Swedish CV90 series? And how would you feel about the 120mm armed light tank variant?

never mind

Mine had an M2.

Wow, a 70 ton APC.  Maybe they should consult with Boeing about battery ruggedness.

Although, if you could get a decent (wheeled) armored vehicle that had any kind of range on batteries alone that would be one quiet sumbitch.

Great for heating up t-rations and I have seen the exhaust from a M1 set grass on fire.  

Everything I've heard and read about the CV90 looks good. In the end, however, it's still very much a 20th-Century vehicle. I think the entire concept of how we do business with regards to these vehicles needs to change drastically, however.

The 120mm light tank is an interesting idea. Conceptually, it's kind of an odd duck--Why on God's green earth would you put a direct-fire AT system like that on a vehicle that can't survive a direct hit from the equivalent systems on the other side? The idea is a little nuts, from that perspective, especially given the way that commanders often fail to use things like this properly. As far as the idea of a vehicle with ammo commonality with the tanks being available for supporting things like bunker assaults and so forth? Good idea, but... The crew and commanders need to have the words "THIS IS NOT A FUCKING TANK" tattooed on the inside of their eyelids.

Otherwise, a bunch of these things are just going to get wasted trying to tackle enemy tanks one-on-one. You know it's going to happen, going in. Which is why I wouldn't buy them, myself. The words "attractive tactical nuisance" come to mind...

The way I think things ought to work? The vehicles ought to be able to be easily reconfigured. Iraq is a good case in point--The initial part of the conflict, the Bradley as it was designed worked pretty well. But, after that first six months, or so? Not so much. We should have been able to tell the replacement units coming in to relieve us things like "Hey, you really need something bigger than a 25mm to deal with these mud walls" and "Hey, you need metric butt-tons more surveillance gear on your vehicles", along with "Hey, it would be really good if these things were better able to handle IEDs and mines...".

Say we did that at the six-month mark. That gives the incoming brigades six months to get their shit changed out for the (hopefully...) pre-planned configuration changes. Take the heavier weapon's turret design off the shelf, get it built, swap it into the new hulls we had already designed for optimal IED/mine resistance, and fill them with all the surveillance and counter-IED electronics gear we turned out to need. If all those optional designs are sitting ready on a shelf, pre-tested and only needing minor tweaks, building them in the time available should be relatively easy.

So, the next set of brigades going into Iraq go over with an almost totally different vehicle--Maybe only the power packs are the same, along with the track systems. While they're over there, they identify that the power packs need to be able to sit idle, and generate more electricity for the on-board systems--So, the word goes back, and they start looking at pulling the next-generation power pack off the shelf and into production, having realized that more power is likely to be needed in the future. The next set of units going over falls in on vehicles with new power packs, and some changes to the modular electronics in the hull...

And, then the process continues. Active evolution to adapt the vehicles to the conditions met in combat.

Six-seven years down the line, we have a vehicle in place that looks nothing like the ones we went into Iraq with, but the damn things are perfectly suited to our needs and missions. Come back from Iraq, and then just fall back in on the original hulls, which are still optimized for a European mech warfare scenario, but with all the updated other components like the new powerpacks and sensor suites, much more capable. Put the IED/mine optimized hulls into cold storage, and keep them updated for as long as it makes sense to do so. When they're totally obsolete, scrap 'em.

If this model had been followed for WWII, there would have been a modular up-gunned turret and weapon designed for the Sherman, just in case. Once we found that the Sherman had issues coping with Panthers and Tigers, all that would have been required was getting the turrets into production, shipped, and then plugged into the tanks in theater as soon as was possible. Back then, production and transportation issues would have made that idea a non-starter, but the point is, that's no longer the case. We're still thinking very much like the old-timers did, and there's no earthly need to do so. There is a better way, and we should be moving in that direction. Instead, we're looking at another monolithic and entirely inflexible replacement vehicle, when we really should be thinking about a whole new system.

Not on an IFV.  

The Brads and 113's tended to be less likely throw track.  Having the drive sprocket up front seem to help in this area.

I was hoping for something like this when i read thread title...