Originally learned of this tank from Ronkainen on Twitter. He runs a great account that talks a lot about US armor. twitter.com/ronkainen7k15?t=J9H1MnF8v_7ssyeGXkp1Sw&s=09
at 7:58 Do you think the commander's 50 cal could potentially be intended with a CROWS system? or would the dating let alone the weight not be something they would have considered?
While yes, ALVT would have been de facto new vehicle that would have complicated production and made it more expensive, it still had parts commonality that would have made it easier and cheaper to do. Just not with M1😅 You yourself make it clear in the video that ALVT and CATTB are a combo deal like M48/Centurion and M103/Conqueror. The first one is air transportable lighter tank that is easy to transport over Atlantic for reinforcements while the latter is that famous "we can't ship them fast in case of reinforcements, so let's make sure to have the best and most powerful ones already in place" kind of deal that M1 itself was designed to fill. So CATTBs would serve as MBTs and "tank destroyers" while ALVTs would serve as medium tanks and "assault guns" to support the troops. Same MTU pack, same suspension, same gun(design is the same, it's a bicaliber one so while barrels don't match, some parts do), same electronics and tracks. ALVT would have been "worldwide" and reinforcement tank while CATTB would have been NATO's "wall". And while some believed that Russia wasn't a threat anymore and was a future ally back in the 90's, even then some guy could have just bought T-80U with IR dazzlers, full coverage of Kontakt-5 and with Drozd APS(no such version with all those at the same time existed irl, but it's a plausible thing) and NATO or US could have ended up facing those.
@@TheArklytean you please stop copy-pasting the same comment? No, I did not make it clear that the CATTB and ALVT were a combo deal, as the CATTB program had already been cancelled for almost a decade by the time the ALVT concept came into being. You are speculating far too much.
Folks often conflate "declassification" with "delimitation" because those two designations often happen together within the scope of either a FOIA or Mandatory Declass review, but a large volume of information that is/has been subject to Automatic Declass will remain unreleased because of various laws, exclusions, or exemptions that may preclude public disclosure. It may be that he's quoting from a document that has undergone all the proper reviews but erroneously bears "Limited Distribution" markings (which gave him a moment of pause before he added it to his video anyway); he could be quoting from an unclassified technical document that is still subject to an Export Control regime (that'd be an oopsie); or, he could be quoting an actual classified document that he merely presumes is declassified simply because "well, it's older than me, so it's probably okay."
What guy above said. Not really classified as much as not clear for being shared on internet for free. Think of it like all the medical research papers that aren't classified, but you need to get archive permission and pay the fee to view and aren't allowed to copy or take pictures of.
Its actually a really easy file to find. It talks about turret protection, hull and the numbers to different threats, tandem heat, sabot etc aswell as protection degrees.
My drill sergeant for 19K OSUT was in the invasion of Iraq. He showed us some pictures where his tank had been hit by an Iraqi sabot round that was drilled into the turret.
@God Does Not Exist they didn't, but it wouldn't have mattered. Ffs, people, do you really think that DoD never shot at M1 with M829 to see what will happen?😂 The impressive part is that iraqi crews were hitting them. Without proper FCS(since soviets didn't export it), with engagement distances chosen by americans, with being ambushed and on the move. Iraqi crews were still able to hit them. Besides it wouldn't have mattered that they didn't had the newest APFSDS rounds IF they were hit in, let me quote, "massive weak spot that Abrams has on the front" as tankies say. There were M1's that were hit on turret 5 times in a row and yet nobody hit said "weak spot" even once. Maybe because the way M1 positions itself in ambush in a certain way that it was designed to specifically exploit, uhm? /wink, wink, nudge, nudge/ Anyway, it's still a testament to skill of iraqi crews, who were let down by their soviet ie russian equipment. Meanwhile Russia claimed the opposite for decades and always blamed customers for using their weapons wrong😂
A 140mm gun? That Rheinmetall 130 is already "too big" in the eyes of a lot of a tankers (or that is my understanding), so that's really interesting. That would be one sturdy as hell autoloader. It would have to be. The shells would be enormous.
Autoloader been handling 15cm class for years easily. Tanker don't care if it is 120 130 or 140. They care whatever flying when shit goes boom can kill whatever the other side.
The reason some view the 130 as oversized at the moment is mostly due to the move away from MORE ARMOR for every problem and towards active protection. A 130 does not have really any advantage against such measures while also not having infrastructure and logistics in place that 120 does. In essence why use the bigger round if it wouldn't really change much expect for making your ammo supply less stable.
@spartanonxy I can see 130 and 140 having an advantage but also 120 could also have this with development of new rounds of basically shotgun rounds having Stoney projectiles alongside the actual main projectile
I remember my PLT SGT telling me a story when they were in Iraq. His tank ran over a soviet 155 shell that was retrofitted into an IED. The explosion was big enough to lift the turret up a little bit and shift it which trashed everything inside. He said it looked like the fist of posiedon smacked into the bottom of the tank. The hull was bent to the point that the driver couldn't get out of his hatch. They had to cut a path for him to get out. Crazy shit and his crew all survived.
“The hull ammo stowage was generally not used” Well that depends on what you define as “being used”. I’ve heard some interesting stories of people storing “souvenirs” in the hull ammo stowage when rotating out of country to avoid scrutiny on things they probably shouldn’t have to begin with.
Depends when that "was" is. They fell out of grace during Iraq 2.0, because they had nasty habit of turning lucky but relaitvely harmless pen into often severe leg burns, by causing propellant fire to burst out of its armored canister into crew compartment. Of course it's COIN thinking, where playing it safe is priority.
We had six sabots in the hull storage and carried a full rack of heat and mpat in 2004 Iraq, never fired the sabots but we did keep the protective styrofoam covers for the DU in our sponson next to the MREs
It's nuts to me as to how much potential that ALVT design had: Longer gun, transverse engine, new crew positioning, autoloader. Save for the amount of titanium needed in it's production (which is excessive), this would have been amazing! Imagine this thing with an RWS, ARAT ERA, gen 3 optics, APS and all the works nowadays... It sounds so cool! :D
Sorry, but I'll just copypaste my comment rather then writing new one. And sorry for wall of text: While yes, ALVT would have been de facto new vehicle that would have complicated production and made it more expensive, it still had parts commonality that would have made it easier and cheaper to do. Just not with M1😅 You yourself make it clear in the video that ALVT and CATTB are a combo deal like M48/Centurion and M103/Conqueror. The first one is air transportable lighter tank that is easy to transport over Atlantic for reinforcements while the latter is that famous "we can't ship them fast in case of reinforcements, so let's make sure to have the best and most powerful ones already in place" kind of deal that M1 itself was designed to fill. So CATTBs would serve as MBTs and "tank destroyers" while ALVTs would serve as medium tanks and "assault guns" to support the troops. Same MTU pack, same suspension, same gun(design is the same, it's a bicaliber one so while barrels don't match, some parts do), same electronics and tracks. ALVT would have been "worldwide" and reinforcement tank while CATTB would have been NATO's "wall". And while some believed that Russia wasn't a threat anymore and was a future ally back in the 90's, even then some guy could have just bought T-80U with IR dazzlers, full coverage of Kontakt-5 and with Drozd APS(no such version with all those at the same time existed irl, but it's a plausible thing) and NATO or US could have ended up facing those.
@@ryeo9907 They're not inflating numbers ffs, it's not a giant conspiracy. It's just Reddit is a small selection of players. I'd wager most people are just casual people not active in the subreddit or any other social media. It's just people a) not actually boycotting and b) just simply not enough people know about it or care.
@@marcusking3833 I've checked once or twice. The numbers shown are always very delayed. So either i'm looking in the wrong places, my connection is garbage or it's that delayed on my end.
I love hearing about these weird could-be vehicles, and even some concepts that non-service members have thought up that /aren't/ basically just "add more." Keep it up, looking forward to the next one!
Great video as always Spooks. I have been requesting for a while that you look at some Asian vehicles like the K2 or Type10. You mentioned a bit about Japanese autoloaders. Would love to hear more!
trying to reduce Abrams weight to 35 tons is basically trying to make Abrams almost as light as a T-34-85 with all the modern components. What a spectacular goal
>New upload >Tank >Abbreviated with four letters Yup, thats a Spookston video alright haha, thanks for covering this! Very interesting stuff as always!
Just felt the need to praise how good the editing of these historical videos have gotten since the last one. Much more unique, visually engaging, and appropriate for the specific point being spoken. As cool as War Thunder is, I'm sure chunks of gameplay footage can come off as lazy. Not to mention the parallels with current Shorts/TikTok formats, lol. So thanks for continuing to grow your video skills!
@Spookston @7:21: that's not the CATTB. That's the M1 Thumper driving around Aberdeen Proving Ground - note the rings on the turret sides, not found on the CATTB testbeds. The Thumper predates CATTB Phase I by at least five years (Thumper was built in 1988, P1 in 1993 and P2 in 1994) and was the first to trial both the XM291 (in three different barrel lengths - one "short tube" that measured 5.3m/44 calibers like the M256, one "long tube" of 6.75m/265in and an intermediary one that was somewhere between the two others) and the XM91 autoloader. As for the XM291, work on the 140mm was stopped in the mid-nineties due to political reasons. It's since been completely supplanted by the EX36, which became the XM36 and finally the XM360. BAE and ARDEC's 2004 (M8-based) Thunderbolt with its ETIPPS 2 ETC ignition system only used the 120mm variant of the XM291, IIRC, with no 140mm barrel change.
Hey i would love to see you design the ultimate abrams tank by taking the cattb, this and the abrams x's technologies and combining them together. Then you could also compare them to other modern day tanks and how this "super" abrams would perform in war thunder against the current vehicles.
You forgot TTB. Well for starters, it would have been a weird tank with space for 5 crewmembers, but needing only 3. It would also make majority of land vehicles in sci-fi look hopelessly obsolete 😂
I've talked with some veterans of the Stryker units and I remembered something that Task and Purpose Chriss Chappy said and they both the same thing: The US Army may have a requirement for Air Droppable, but it rarely ever actually deploys its Armored Units by Parachute. Instead, it's more Air Mobility where the plane lands and unloads. And even that is uncommon compared to shipping the vehicles by Rail or Ship. The only time one of my buddies who was in the Army for 10 years and was a, admittedly helicopter, mechanic, he said most of their stuff was moved by Rail or Ship or by Truck. And he was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan and he doesn't recall seeing very many planes unloading AFVs and his work area was close to any point they would be doing so nor did he hear about it very often. Except for getting things into Afghanistan, nothing was really Air Mobile that would be Air Droppable.
"I'm not sure what Iraq was using" Mostly whatever was shipped with tanks. Good ammunition is expensive, and not really needed when your opponents use mostly M48s and M60s. T-72M would come with BM-9, T-72M1 with BM-15. These rounds were considered surplus by Soviets by their respective time of sale. I'm not sure Iraqi tankers even had HEAT rounds, all their recorded scores on American armor were with kinetics, and cumulatives were almost always either Saggers or vintage SPG-9.
Man the knowledge Spooky has is the best parts of his channel. It really is! I would love to see his knowledge spontaneously self-destruct upon witnessing Cursed Tanmk Simulator lmao
4:39 to 5:04 I am fascinated with the ALVT's four-man crew plus autoloader configuration. This predated Rheinmetall's Panther KF51 which is designed to be operated by a three-man crew with an autoloader, but has an extra seat next to the driver for an optional fourth crew member as a dedicated systems operator. It is possible that the ALVT's fourth crew member would have performed a similar role as a dedicated systems operator to help reduce the commander's workload along with assisting with maintenance and crew rotations.
Very interesting video, but I see a huge drawback with the unmanned turret. That being situational awareness. It is a huge advantage for the TC and/or loader to be able to pop their heads up out of the hatch, and actually be able to put eyes on the environment. There is also the issue of close defense against dismounts. No amount of TV cameras and periscopes will ever be as good. There is also the issue of close defense against dismounts. How are they going to defend against bad guys mounting the tank, if infantry are not right there with them? It happens.
А зачем это нужно, когда есть М1128? Из за брони? Так ее нет. "Учитывая ситуацию со снарядами в России" он скорее всего нарвется на 3БМ42, при встрече с Т-90М - на 3БМ60, о броне против этих нарядов речи не идет. Но при этом М1128 легче, универсальнее, дешевле, быстрее и несет не менее мощное вооружение, а главное - он уже в армии. Выглядит как поедание бюджета... p.s. лучше бы просто продолжили производить М1А2, танк себя хорошо показал и транспортировать его научились.
About Abrams X, it is worth noting, that the reduction in mass comes mainly from the fact, that turret is lightly armoured. I kind of doubt, that army would accept such compromise, even if turret is unmanned.
"if you don't know what that is" it's what the challi 2 uses, and the type 10, and K2 is just that on steroids. and for anyone curious, it's a dampener with a free-float piston in a nitrogen filled cylinder. the oil filled dampener offers very little or no spring rebound, the nitrogen free-float is the "spring". another thing is the pressure in the free-float chamber can be altered to adapt to the environment, attach a pressure pipe system in the tank, and you can make it a pimped out tank like the Type 10 and K2. this is obviously just a very reduced explanation and function.
its great to see another informative video! i love your deep dives on american armor. seems like america really started to take tank design a lot more seriously past the 80's, lots of wild concepts
I enjoyed the video and it was cool to learn about but all those acronyms were confusing me lol. I got them all mixed up heh. Its cool you know so much about this though and im glad you have a platform where you can express your interest's with a community who has the same interest's.
Iraq's 125mm ammunition was terrible. The USSR refused to export any advanced APFSDS to anyone. Iraq's most advanced shells would have been 3BM9 and 3BM15
what is the weapon being deployed at 1:00 ?? I initially thought it might be some sort of mine clearing utility, but then it looked like a massive, tank-launched breaching cord
Russia using older ammo is actually the norm in any country. Abrams crews don't always use the newest super high tech APFSDS round. Normally bc it's unesscessary for a T55. Same goes for Russia against T64's w Kontact 1 ERA. now they're Fielding the svinets round for the leopard 2's
That's not true. M1 for example has only 1 fcs ballistics setting for ap. The older stuff are either being processed to extract useful material or shoot away in practice. Russia in contrast retain fcs setting for older ammo even in their newest tank, and whatever is not in the computer, they manufacture range table to be used.
@@jintsuubest9331 Just because the optics are used wo the setting. That doesn't mean the ammo won't shoot out of the gun. I guarantee you there is no Abrams shooting super expensive APFSDS at a T55. DoD would think it's a waste. In Russian case they just happen yo have the older setting because it's still a very common round, and the newer stuff is unesscesary for most of this conflict
4:40 I could be wrong, but was the autoloader in this variant not one of the variants that was manually-serviceable in the event of a malfunction or failure? I thought that most of the big-bore autoloaders that were being seriously considered by the US Army from the ~80s onwards were capable of being manually reloaded by a backup gunner. I think an episode of something on the Discovery channel back in the day showcased a NATO tank with an autoloader that was an offshoot of one of these projects, and long story short, it was designed to be about 80% as fast to manually load as an Abrams if you had to manually reload the gun. This could be yet another reason to keep the loader as part of the crew. They could still be primarily trained on manually reloading the gun, developing those Loader muscles/calluses in the process, allowing the crew to feel more comfortable relying on them in an emergency, while allowing the loader to not tire themselves out during combat operations. I don't know if they wanted to potentially train the crew to ambush enemies with the engine off, but if they did, having a well-drilled loader on-hand would also allow the vehicle to fire and load the gun with the electronics off. This is all speculative though, I wasn't able to find any info on whether or not this autoloader has an easily-accessed "manual mode" available with a quick search online. The inherently small blueprint of the design leads me to say "yes", but there aren't details on how the crew gets to ammo stored in the bustle while this contraption is installed.
It actually wouldn't surprise me at all that a next-gen MBT would be lighter. Titanium has gotten cheap enough to produce that it is becoming more common. Processes like metal 3D printing and injection molding enable complex components to be made out of titanium, when previously, they were impossible to produce. Additionally, carbon fiber printing has advanced to the point that materials made from aluminum could realistically be replaced with printed carbon fiber. These developments, combined with smaller and lighter electronics, mean a future MBT could weigh LESS than an Abrams and have thinner armor, but be MORE effective and better protected. Also, 60° of elevation on an MBT is insane.
While yes, ALVT would have been de facto new vehicle that would have complicated production and made it more expensive, it still had parts commonality that would have made it easier and cheaper to do. Just not with M1😅 You yourself make it clear in the video that ALVT and CATTB are a combo deal like M48/Centurion and M103/Conqueror. The first one is air transportable lighter tank that is easy to transport over Atlantic for reinforcements while the latter is that famous "we can't ship them fast in case of reinforcements, so let's make sure to have the best and most powerful ones already in place" kind of deal that M1 itself was designed to fill. So CATTBs would serve as MBTs and "tank destroyers" while ALVTs would serve as medium tanks and "assault guns" to support the troops. Same MTU pack, same suspension, same gun(design is the same, it's a bicaliber one so while barrels don't match, some parts do), same electronics and tracks. ALVT would have been "worldwide" and reinforcement tank while CATTB would have been NATO's "wall". And while some believed that Russia wasn't a threat anymore and was a future ally back in the 90's, even then some guy could have just bought T-80U with IR dazzlers, full coverage of Kontakt-5 and with Drozd APS(no such version with all those at the same time existed irl, but it's a plausible thing) and NATO or US could have ended up facing those.
Originally learned of this tank from Ronkainen on Twitter. He runs a great account that talks a lot about US armor. twitter.com/ronkainen7k15?t=J9H1MnF8v_7ssyeGXkp1Sw&s=09
PvKv II
at 7:58
Do you think the commander's 50 cal could potentially be intended with a CROWS system? or would the dating let alone the weight not be something they would have considered?
While yes, ALVT would have been de facto new vehicle that would have complicated production and made it more expensive, it still had parts commonality that would have made it easier and cheaper to do. Just not with M1😅
You yourself make it clear in the video that ALVT and CATTB are a combo deal like M48/Centurion and M103/Conqueror. The first one is air transportable lighter tank that is easy to transport over Atlantic for reinforcements while the latter is that famous "we can't ship them fast in case of reinforcements, so let's make sure to have the best and most powerful ones already in place" kind of deal that M1 itself was designed to fill.
So CATTBs would serve as MBTs and "tank destroyers" while ALVTs would serve as medium tanks and "assault guns" to support the troops.
Same MTU pack, same suspension, same gun(design is the same, it's a bicaliber one so while barrels don't match, some parts do), same electronics and tracks.
ALVT would have been "worldwide" and reinforcement tank while CATTB would have been NATO's "wall".
And while some believed that Russia wasn't a threat anymore and was a future ally back in the 90's, even then some guy could have just bought T-80U with IR dazzlers, full coverage of Kontakt-5 and with Drozd APS(no such version with all those at the same time existed irl, but it's a plausible thing) and NATO or US could have ended up facing those.
@@TheArklytean you please stop copy-pasting the same comment? No, I did not make it clear that the CATTB and ALVT were a combo deal, as the CATTB program had already been cancelled for almost a decade by the time the ALVT concept came into being. You are speculating far too much.
@@TheArklytedimwit the paragraphs.
This is why Spookston is my favorite war thunder youtuber. He actually knows what he's talking about, in game and vehicle history/reality
shame too, because it makes being a war thunder fun probably more frustrating for him. Gaijin hates America
spooky boy has a lot of sense and intelligence. excluding playing war thunder here.
@@softbutter9467 They really, really don't. I'd like to point out that over in the east Gaijin is called "Nato Shills" where as we call Russian Bias.
last videos intro was disappointing
@@panda1345 funny, never would have guessed that lol
"this should be declassified by now"
...so is Spookston indirectly saying he has access to classified documents?
exactly what I thought
Folks often conflate "declassification" with "delimitation" because those two designations often happen together within the scope of either a FOIA or Mandatory Declass review, but a large volume of information that is/has been subject to Automatic Declass will remain unreleased because of various laws, exclusions, or exemptions that may preclude public disclosure. It may be that he's quoting from a document that has undergone all the proper reviews but erroneously bears "Limited Distribution" markings (which gave him a moment of pause before he added it to his video anyway); he could be quoting from an unclassified technical document that is still subject to an Export Control regime (that'd be an oopsie); or, he could be quoting an actual classified document that he merely presumes is declassified simply because "well, it's older than me, so it's probably okay."
He’s a war thunder player we all have some on standby
What guy above said. Not really classified as much as not clear for being shared on internet for free. Think of it like all the medical research papers that aren't classified, but you need to get archive permission and pay the fee to view and aren't allowed to copy or take pictures of.
Its actually a really easy file to find. It talks about turret protection, hull and the numbers to different threats, tandem heat, sabot etc aswell as protection degrees.
My drill sergeant for 19K OSUT was in the invasion of Iraq. He showed us some pictures where his tank had been hit by an Iraqi sabot round that was drilled into the turret.
Dang! I'd give good money to see photos like those
@God Does Not Exist they didn't, but it wouldn't have mattered. Ffs, people, do you really think that DoD never shot at M1 with M829 to see what will happen?😂
The impressive part is that iraqi crews were hitting them. Without proper FCS(since soviets didn't export it), with engagement distances chosen by americans, with being ambushed and on the move. Iraqi crews were still able to hit them. Besides it wouldn't have mattered that they didn't had the newest APFSDS rounds IF they were hit in, let me quote, "massive weak spot that Abrams has on the front" as tankies say. There were M1's that were hit on turret 5 times in a row and yet nobody hit said "weak spot" even once. Maybe because the way M1 positions itself in ambush in a certain way that it was designed to specifically exploit, uhm? /wink, wink, nudge, nudge/ Anyway, it's still a testament to skill of iraqi crews, who were let down by their soviet ie russian equipment. Meanwhile Russia claimed the opposite for decades and always blamed customers for using their weapons wrong😂
@@TheArklyte Russian and Chinese blaming combloc allies ?
@@TheArklyte damn, those Iraqis really put up a good fight
@@TheArklyte looks like some one got the old mans blood pressure up
A 140mm gun? That Rheinmetall 130 is already "too big" in the eyes of a lot of a tankers (or that is my understanding), so that's really interesting. That would be one sturdy as hell autoloader. It would have to be. The shells would be enormous.
Autoloader been handling 15cm class for years easily.
Tanker don't care if it is 120 130 or 140. They care whatever flying when shit goes boom can kill whatever the other side.
The reason some view the 130 as oversized at the moment is mostly due to the move away from MORE ARMOR for every problem and towards active protection. A 130 does not have really any advantage against such measures while also not having infrastructure and logistics in place that 120 does. In essence why use the bigger round if it wouldn't really change much expect for making your ammo supply less stable.
Yeah there would be no strong 18 year old with a strong arm that's gonna load that thing without "non Service related" live long back proplems.
@@erikkusters378
Imagine having to manually load a shell in 2023
@spartanonxy I can see 130 and 140 having an advantage but also 120 could also have this with development of new rounds of basically shotgun rounds having Stoney projectiles alongside the actual main projectile
I remember my PLT SGT telling me a story when they were in Iraq. His tank ran over a soviet 155 shell that was retrofitted into an IED. The explosion was big enough to lift the turret up a little bit and shift it which trashed everything inside. He said it looked like the fist of posiedon smacked into the bottom of the tank. The hull was bent to the point that the driver couldn't get out of his hatch. They had to cut a path for him to get out. Crazy shit and his crew all survived.
Those Iraqis got very crafty
@@user-op8fg3ny3j Very
Small correction: the USSR didn't use 155 mm artillery, they had 152 mm. ;)
@@Gerle71 were you there? doubtful. and maybe he misremembered. leave him be
@@theonlylechuga I was not there, but facts are facts, regardless of what you want. Leave the truth be.
“The hull ammo stowage was generally not used”
Well that depends on what you define as “being used”. I’ve heard some interesting stories of people storing “souvenirs” in the hull ammo stowage when rotating out of country to avoid scrutiny on things they probably shouldn’t have to begin with.
Depends when that "was" is. They fell out of grace during Iraq 2.0, because they had nasty habit of turning lucky but relaitvely harmless pen into often severe leg burns, by causing propellant fire to burst out of its armored canister into crew compartment. Of course it's COIN thinking, where playing it safe is priority.
That's where you hide all your pogey bait.
We had six sabots in the hull storage and carried a full rack of heat and mpat in 2004 Iraq, never fired the sabots but we did keep the protective styrofoam covers for the DU in our sponson next to the MREs
It's nuts to me as to how much potential that ALVT design had: Longer gun, transverse engine, new crew positioning, autoloader. Save for the amount of titanium needed in it's production (which is excessive), this would have been amazing! Imagine this thing with an RWS, ARAT ERA, gen 3 optics, APS and all the works nowadays... It sounds so cool! :D
Sorry, but I'll just copypaste my comment rather then writing new one. And sorry for wall of text:
While yes, ALVT would have been de facto new vehicle that would have complicated production and made it more expensive, it still had parts commonality that would have made it easier and cheaper to do. Just not with M1😅
You yourself make it clear in the video that ALVT and CATTB are a combo deal like M48/Centurion and M103/Conqueror. The first one is air transportable lighter tank that is easy to transport over Atlantic for reinforcements while the latter is that famous "we can't ship them fast in case of reinforcements, so let's make sure to have the best and most powerful ones already in place" kind of deal that M1 itself was designed to fill.
So CATTBs would serve as MBTs and "tank destroyers" while ALVTs would serve as medium tanks and "assault guns" to support the troops.
Same MTU pack, same suspension, same gun(design is the same, it's a bicaliber one so while barrels don't match, some parts do), same electronics and tracks.
ALVT would have been "worldwide" and reinforcement tank while CATTB would have been NATO's "wall".
And while some believed that Russia wasn't a threat anymore and was a future ally back in the 90's, even then some guy could have just bought T-80U with IR dazzlers, full coverage of Kontakt-5 and with Drozd APS(no such version with all those at the same time existed irl, but it's a plausible thing) and NATO or US could have ended up facing those.
Haven't seen one of these in ages! The gameplay is fun but with the 2 week boycot this is great to see again. Can you do one on the NM-116 somewhere?
Wait it’s a two week boycott
@@bryanfitzharris2468 Yeah I didn't know that either. I've heard that it was only for the 26th, which in that case it would be pointless.
@@megakirbo4250 It sadly appears to be failing, but the numbers might be inflated artificially by Gaijin
@@ryeo9907 They're not inflating numbers ffs, it's not a giant conspiracy. It's just Reddit is a small selection of players. I'd wager most people are just casual people not active in the subreddit or any other social media. It's just people a) not actually boycotting and b) just simply not enough people know about it or care.
@@marcusking3833 I've checked once or twice. The numbers shown are always very delayed. So either i'm looking in the wrong places, my connection is garbage or it's that delayed on my end.
I love hearing about these weird could-be vehicles, and even some concepts that non-service members have thought up that /aren't/ basically just "add more."
Keep it up, looking forward to the next one!
Spookston trying not to talk about the hstvl for 5 seconds challenge:
Great video as always Spooks. I have been requesting for a while that you look at some Asian vehicles like the K2 or Type10. You mentioned a bit about Japanese autoloaders. Would love to hear more!
I can only imagine how much the per/unit cost would be when you replace that much with titanium
trying to reduce Abrams weight to 35 tons is basically trying to make Abrams almost as light as a T-34-85 with all the modern components. What a spectacular goal
Dude, the older style video with the modern comedy and energy makes it so much better. Appreciate the content man, keep it up.
The XM8 seems like something you'd enjoy playing in War Thunder. Please consider
He played the XM8 in his video on the CCVL
@@Cardinal8427 I see. I must've missed that video.
A bass swam right up to me after I turned on the video. You're popular with fish.
Yay pellets :)
Thank you for the pellets 🥹
Update, there's two bass four sunfish at the bank now
>New upload
>Tank
>Abbreviated with four letters
Yup, thats a Spookston video alright haha, thanks for covering this! Very interesting stuff as always!
"This should be declassified by this point" Great, now im scared spookston is going to get arrested
The only TH-camr I regularly watch. I’m here for any type of content you release man.
‘This SHOULD be declassified at this point’ typical war thunder player quote
LETS GO! I love these videos exploring tank prototype/concepts design and history. Keep up the great work!❤
Might as well also mention that titanium's properties vary wildly depending on alloy, with one of its major flaws being that's brittle.
5:41 "This should be declassified by this point" famous last words
Just felt the need to praise how good the editing of these historical videos have gotten since the last one. Much more unique, visually engaging, and appropriate for the specific point being spoken.
As cool as War Thunder is, I'm sure chunks of gameplay footage can come off as lazy. Not to mention the parallels with current Shorts/TikTok formats, lol. So thanks for continuing to grow your video skills!
Abrams ALVT: I AM SPEED
Abrams CATTB: T H I C C
"should be declassified at this point" - average war thunder player
3:00 sounds like they were trying to launch the RTX Abrams Ti
How about the M60-2000/120S? Basically an offered retrofit to M60 tanks by slapping on a new engine and a M1 export turret with 120mm gun.
If you want to read up on an odd ball Abrams variant look up the AGDS, never built but still an interesting read
“I’m pretty sure this is declassified” -Spookston before being arrested by the FBI
5:38 "But this should be declassified by this point"
And he was never heard from again.
"This should be declassified by now"
BIG risk lol
@Spookston
@7:21: that's not the CATTB. That's the M1 Thumper driving around Aberdeen Proving Ground - note the rings on the turret sides, not found on the CATTB testbeds. The Thumper predates CATTB Phase I by at least five years (Thumper was built in 1988, P1 in 1993 and P2 in 1994) and was the first to trial both the XM291 (in three different barrel lengths - one "short tube" that measured 5.3m/44 calibers like the M256, one "long tube" of 6.75m/265in and an intermediary one that was somewhere between the two others) and the XM91 autoloader.
As for the XM291, work on the 140mm was stopped in the mid-nineties due to political reasons. It's since been completely supplanted by the EX36, which became the XM36 and finally the XM360. BAE and ARDEC's 2004 (M8-based) Thunderbolt with its ETIPPS 2 ETC ignition system only used the 120mm variant of the XM291, IIRC, with no 140mm barrel change.
I didn't say that was the CATTB
@@Spookston sorry but why War thunder put abrams 10.3 :(
Enjoy to have the history videos back
That "This should be declassified by now" moment may come to bite later.
KV-2, Please/
Another history vid! Thank you Spooks!
Hey i would love to see you design the ultimate abrams tank by taking the cattb, this and the abrams x's technologies and combining them together. Then you could also compare them to other modern day tanks and how this "super" abrams would perform in war thunder against the current vehicles.
You forgot TTB.
Well for starters, it would have been a weird tank with space for 5 crewmembers, but needing only 3. It would also make majority of land vehicles in sci-fi look hopelessly obsolete 😂
ah havent heard about that one but it looks odd... anyhow yea the "Super" M1 would be a lil too good
Day 26 of asking for the SU100Y, my birthday has came and went I can now buy lotto tickets instead of SL crates
Not today buddy it's boycotting day
Shoulda bought the su100y and played it yourself then
@@Marder_IFV still like almost a 100k players so it’s obviously not working lol
@@thatoneguy1741 well that could be the players that don't care or don't know
Boy I've been requesting the Heavy Tank number 6 for months get the hell outta here
I love your content. You're one of the few youtubers I watch every single episode asap on release. Keep it up!
"this should be declassified" oh no
i love how this infers too that spookston, has classified military documents lying around
Is it just me or is there a subtle electric or like, fuzzy warble in the undercurrent of Spookstons microphone?
I've talked with some veterans of the Stryker units and I remembered something that Task and Purpose Chriss Chappy said and they both the same thing:
The US Army may have a requirement for Air Droppable, but it rarely ever actually deploys its Armored Units by Parachute. Instead, it's more Air Mobility where the plane lands and unloads. And even that is uncommon compared to shipping the vehicles by Rail or Ship.
The only time one of my buddies who was in the Army for 10 years and was a, admittedly helicopter, mechanic, he said most of their stuff was moved by Rail or Ship or by Truck. And he was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan and he doesn't recall seeing very many planes unloading AFVs and his work area was close to any point they would be doing so nor did he hear about it very often.
Except for getting things into Afghanistan, nothing was really Air Mobile that would be Air Droppable.
“Should be declassified” average war thunder player
Seeing an abrams in any other colour other than tan is just weird.
With all these "declassified" and declassified documents you have of tanks, it is a wonder you haven't found a team to make War Thunder 2
20th video of asking spookston to play the Churchill NA75
"I'm not sure what Iraq was using"
Mostly whatever was shipped with tanks. Good ammunition is expensive, and not really needed when your opponents use mostly M48s and M60s. T-72M would come with BM-9, T-72M1 with BM-15. These rounds were considered surplus by Soviets by their respective time of sale.
I'm not sure Iraqi tankers even had HEAT rounds, all their recorded scores on American armor were with kinetics, and cumulatives were almost always either Saggers or vintage SPG-9.
Man the knowledge Spooky has is the best parts of his channel. It really is!
I would love to see his knowledge spontaneously self-destruct upon witnessing Cursed Tanmk Simulator lmao
Much of the training footage looks like it's from 29 palms.
You should suffer the amd 35 from the repair factory
Thanks for these vids bro. So smart man
4:39 to 5:04 I am fascinated with the ALVT's four-man crew plus autoloader configuration. This predated Rheinmetall's Panther KF51 which is designed to be operated by a three-man crew with an autoloader, but has an extra seat next to the driver for an optional fourth crew member as a dedicated systems operator. It is possible that the ALVT's fourth crew member would have performed a similar role as a dedicated systems operator to help reduce the commander's workload along with assisting with maintenance and crew rotations.
I love these informational videos! Amazing job!
"This *should* be declassified at this po-"
*FBI, OPEN UP!*
Love these educational videos you make. Always interesting.
to bw able to understand spookston all the way in these types of videos while your baked is an achievement
LETS GOOOO. Waited a long time for another one of these.
The gun *could* be a modified M256E1, which was an L/55 version of the M256. The timeframes just barely line-up so it isn't impossible.
Idea: abrams with Christie suspension
Very interesting video, but I see a huge drawback with the unmanned turret. That being situational awareness. It is a huge advantage for the TC and/or loader to be able to pop their heads up out of the hatch, and actually be able to put eyes on the environment. There is also the issue of close defense against dismounts. No amount of TV cameras and periscopes will ever be as good.
There is also the issue of close defense against dismounts. How are they going to defend against bad guys mounting the tank, if infantry are not right there with them? It happens.
you cant spell Abrams X without making it sound lewd 😳
Spookston what about the M1 Tank Test Bed (TTB)? The ALVT is rather strange Abrams but I'd say the TTB is a close runner up.
А зачем это нужно, когда есть М1128? Из за брони? Так ее нет. "Учитывая ситуацию со снарядами в России" он скорее всего нарвется на 3БМ42, при встрече с Т-90М - на 3БМ60, о броне против этих нарядов речи не идет. Но при этом М1128 легче, универсальнее, дешевле, быстрее и несет не менее мощное вооружение, а главное - он уже в армии.
Выглядит как поедание бюджета...
p.s. лучше бы просто продолжили производить М1А2, танк себя хорошо показал и транспортировать его научились.
10 mins of spookston is crazy
About Abrams X, it is worth noting, that the reduction in mass comes mainly from the fact, that turret is lightly armoured. I kind of doubt, that army would accept such compromise, even if turret is unmanned.
love the C&C generals music very fitting
Very fun and informational video thanks i did not know plans for this existed.
Tqm spookston
"if you don't know what that is" it's what the challi 2 uses, and the type 10, and K2 is just that on steroids.
and for anyone curious, it's a dampener with a free-float piston in a nitrogen filled cylinder. the oil filled dampener offers very little or no spring rebound, the nitrogen free-float is the "spring".
another thing is the pressure in the free-float chamber can be altered to adapt to the environment, attach a pressure pipe system in the tank, and you can make it a pimped out tank like the Type 10 and K2.
this is obviously just a very reduced explanation and function.
Gaijin about to add this prototype before adding french real Leclerc azur kit or the F2 ammo once again...
its great to see another informative video! i love your deep dives on american armor. seems like america really started to take tank design a lot more seriously past the 80's, lots of wild concepts
What’s even more strange is why the swing fire is not the most played vehicle
The ATGM carrier?
appreciate another video spook, thanks.
"Transversal" also known as sideways. I- I can't even this is way too good.
I enjoyed the video and it was cool to learn about but all those acronyms were confusing me lol. I got them all mixed up heh. Its cool you know so much about this though and im glad you have a platform where you can express your interest's with a community who has the same interest's.
Missed those so much, thank you.
These type of videos is why I subscribed in the first place.
Oh! I want to know more about stingray tank and why only thailand is now only one using it
The irony of Spookston uploading a video that isn't about WT on strike day
Iraqi best ammo was 3BM15 for the 125mm and 3BM9 Steel Darts was mostly available to them
Iraq's 125mm ammunition was terrible. The USSR refused to export any advanced APFSDS to anyone. Iraq's most advanced shells would have been 3BM9 and 3BM15
1:17 turtle cloud
what is the weapon being deployed at 1:00 ??
I initially thought it might be some sort of mine clearing utility, but then it looked like a massive, tank-launched breaching cord
I swear half the stuff I learn about tanks comes from Spookston
Russia using older ammo is actually the norm in any country. Abrams crews don't always use the newest super high tech APFSDS round. Normally bc it's unesscessary for a T55. Same goes for Russia against T64's w Kontact 1 ERA. now they're Fielding the svinets round for the leopard 2's
Thanks for that. People love hopping on the bash train without bothering with facts.
That's not true. M1 for example has only 1 fcs ballistics setting for ap.
The older stuff are either being processed to extract useful material or shoot away in practice.
Russia in contrast retain fcs setting for older ammo even in their newest tank, and whatever is not in the computer, they manufacture range table to be used.
Thats false tho lmao.
@@mr.abrams8112 you got experience using modern fire controls?
@@jintsuubest9331 Just because the optics are used wo the setting. That doesn't mean the ammo won't shoot out of the gun. I guarantee you there is no Abrams shooting super expensive APFSDS at a T55. DoD would think it's a waste. In Russian case they just happen yo have the older setting because it's still a very common round, and the newer stuff is unesscesary for most of this conflict
I am still curious what Spookston would think of the Obj 685 to use in a Video as Nobody made a video on it yet.
As a former combat engineer and AVB driver/commander, cool AVB footage. That vehicle doesn’t get much recognition
Day 5 of asking spookston to play the ratel 90
Cost would also be horrendous with that much component is using titanium as material too, so that might also be a consideration.
Could you ever do a video on the Stingray tank?
Honestly one of my favorite types of videos
"I think this should be declassified" 🤣
i like these kinds of videos, non war thunder videos from you are a very welcome addition.
I guess spookston is also participating in the no play war thunder event?
4:40 I could be wrong, but was the autoloader in this variant not one of the variants that was manually-serviceable in the event of a malfunction or failure? I thought that most of the big-bore autoloaders that were being seriously considered by the US Army from the ~80s onwards were capable of being manually reloaded by a backup gunner. I think an episode of something on the Discovery channel back in the day showcased a NATO tank with an autoloader that was an offshoot of one of these projects, and long story short, it was designed to be about 80% as fast to manually load as an Abrams if you had to manually reload the gun.
This could be yet another reason to keep the loader as part of the crew. They could still be primarily trained on manually reloading the gun, developing those Loader muscles/calluses in the process, allowing the crew to feel more comfortable relying on them in an emergency, while allowing the loader to not tire themselves out during combat operations. I don't know if they wanted to potentially train the crew to ambush enemies with the engine off, but if they did, having a well-drilled loader on-hand would also allow the vehicle to fire and load the gun with the electronics off.
This is all speculative though, I wasn't able to find any info on whether or not this autoloader has an easily-accessed "manual mode" available with a quick search online. The inherently small blueprint of the design leads me to say "yes", but there aren't details on how the crew gets to ammo stored in the bustle while this contraption is installed.
It was nice to see Spookston's last vid before being imprisoned for sharing classified docs
Spookston making a video about the abrams without mentioning the HSTV-L challenge, impossible
It actually wouldn't surprise me at all that a next-gen MBT would be lighter. Titanium has gotten cheap enough to produce that it is becoming more common. Processes like metal 3D printing and injection molding enable complex components to be made out of titanium, when previously, they were impossible to produce. Additionally, carbon fiber printing has advanced to the point that materials made from aluminum could realistically be replaced with printed carbon fiber. These developments, combined with smaller and lighter electronics, mean a future MBT could weigh LESS than an Abrams and have thinner armor, but be MORE effective and better protected.
Also, 60° of elevation on an MBT is insane.
While yes, ALVT would have been de facto new vehicle that would have complicated production and made it more expensive, it still had parts commonality that would have made it easier and cheaper to do. Just not with M1😅
You yourself make it clear in the video that ALVT and CATTB are a combo deal like M48/Centurion and M103/Conqueror. The first one is air transportable lighter tank that is easy to transport over Atlantic for reinforcements while the latter is that famous "we can't ship them fast in case of reinforcements, so let's make sure to have the best and most powerful ones already in place" kind of deal that M1 itself was designed to fill.
So CATTBs would serve as MBTs and "tank destroyers" while ALVTs would serve as medium tanks and "assault guns" to support the troops.
Same MTU pack, same suspension, same gun(design is the same, it's a bicaliber one so while barrels don't match, some parts do), same electronics and tracks.
ALVT would have been "worldwide" and reinforcement tank while CATTB would have been NATO's "wall".
And while some believed that Russia wasn't a threat anymore and was a future ally back in the 90's, even then some guy could have just bought T-80U with IR dazzlers, full coverage of Kontakt-5 and with Drozd APS(no such version with all those at the same time existed irl, but it's a plausible thing) and NATO or US could have ended up facing those.