China North Industries Corporation (NORINCO) has expanded its armoured vehicle portfolio with the development of the ST2 tracked 105 mm Tank Destroying Vehicle (TDV), which is understood to have been developed specifically for the export market rather than the People's Liberation Army (PLA).Unimpressive. Fire support vehicle would be a better description and slapping a 105mm cannon on an underperforming, damn near obsolete vehicle is not the way to gain sales in any region except maybe Africa...and even there you would probably have to give them away.
The hull is similar to that used on the earlier generation NORINCO YW534 (Type 89) armoured personnel carrier (APC) - which has not been manufactured for some years - but with six road wheel stations either side rather than five.
While new platforms could be built, it is possible that the ST2 could use refurbished and upgraded vehicles.
The forward part of the hull sides slope inwards but at the rear they are more vertical to enable the turret, with its larger ring, to be installed. The driver is seated front left with the diesel powerpack to the right.
The ST2 TDV consists of a fully tracked platform fitted with a welded steel three-person turret mounted in the middle. The 105 mm rifled gun has a muzzle brake, fume extractor, and thermal sleeve, but does not currently appear to be fitted with a muzzle reference system (MRS), which would enable the weapon to be bore sighted without the crew leaving the vehicle.
A total of 32 rounds of 105 mm ammunition are carried with the mix depending on the role the ST2 TDV is expected to undertake.
As well as firing the standard natures of 105 mm ammunition including armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot - tracer (APFSDS-T), high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT), high explosive (HE), and a recently developed bunker busting round, it can also fire a gun-launched guided projectile (GLGP), which NORINCO is marketing as the GP2.
The GLGP has a maximum range of up to 5,000 m and is fitted with a tandem HEAT warhead that is claimed to penetrate 650 mm of rolled homogeneous armour (RHA) protected by explosive reactive armour (ERA).
 |
The Armstrong Whitworth AW.681, also designated the Whitworth Gloster 681 or Hawker Siddeley HS.681 - due to industry mergers - was a pretty unique transport design from Britain’s 1960s aviation industry. Fulfilling a similar short takeoff and landing specification as Lockheed’s C-130, Armstrong Whitworth produced a solid contender in the AW.681, featuring vectored thrust nozzles, boundary layer control, blown flaps, leading edges and ailerons.
Then they took things a little further, trading the four Rolls-Royce RB.142 Medway engines for four Bristol Siddeley Pegasus turbofans, to obtain VTOL capability. These were the engines which went on to power the Harrier. It would have been an interesting sight. Thanks to the swept shoulder-mounted wings and high T-tail, it would have also resembled today’s C-17 and A400M.
The entire project was scrapped in 1964 when the moment’s Labour Government announced a defence spending review, opting instead to buy the American Lockheed C-130. As a result the company closed it’s Coventry factory, making 5000 redundant.
|
 |
| 2000 YARD STARE - TOM LEA “Down from Bloody Ridge Too Late. He’s Finished - Washed Up - Gone” “As we passed sick bay, still in the shell hole, it was crowded with wounded, and somehow hushed in the evening light. I noticed a tattered Marine standing quietly by a corpsman, staring stiffly at nothing. His mind had crumbled in battle, his jaw hung, and his eyes were like two black empty holes in his head. Down by the beach again, we walked silently as we passed the long line of dead Marines under the tarpaulins.” |
“We are excellent at counterinsurgency,” Lt. Gen. Michael Williamson, Military Deputy, Assistant Secretary of the Army – Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, told Scout Warrior in an exclusive interview. “We’re developing systems to be prepared for the full range of potential conflict.”Here.
As a high-level leader for the Army’s weapons, vehicle and platform developmental efforts, Williamson explained that some technologies are specifically being engineered with a mind toward positioning the service for the prospect of massive great-power conflict; this would include combat with mechanized forces, armored vehicles, long-range precision weapons, helicopter air support and what’s called a Combined Arms Maneuver approach.
Combined Arms Maneuver tactics use a variety of combat assets, such as artillery, infantry and armored vehicles such as tanks, in a synchronized, integrated fashion to overwhelm, confuse and destroy enemies.
Side Note. What many people don't realize is that body armor won't "dissipate" the energy from a round. It will prevent it from penetrating but you're still gonna suffer the blow. That's why fitness and muscle mass are 
Our incoming president’s willingness to boldly challenge the status quo is arguably the main reason he was elected. And no defense project is more representative of a disastrous status quo than the 20-year-old Joint Strike Fighter program — the F-35. The F-35 program showcases all that is wrong about our military’s vendor-dominated, crony-capitalist procurement system. Unless dealt with decisively, its massive cost and its lack of capability will have a dramatically negative impact on our military’s effectiveness for decades to come.And then most especially this.
Just as Donald Trump turned out to be 100 percent correct about the bloated, $4 billion Air Force One program, he would be justified in calling foul on Marine Corps and Air Force claims that their F-35s have achieved Initial Operating Capability (IOC). Contrary to recent statements made by the executive officer of the F-35 program, Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan, the F-35 is not back on track. It’s time to face the facts: Because of fatal mistakes made during the conceptual design process well over 20 years ago, the F-35 will forever be crippled by intractable weight and heat issues that ensure that the program will never deliver a reliable, cost-effective fighter. Further evidence of this was revealed on Wednesday, when Inside Defense exposed the fact that the Navy’s F-35C model has design defects that can cause pilots to suffer disorientation and severe pain when undergoing carrier catapult launches. As it stands, Navy pilots have determined the F-35C is not “operationally suitable” for carrier launches. New design changes to the F-35C will be required that could take years — and even our carriers may need to be modified to fix the problem. This issue has been known about for years, but until now it has been concealed from the public. So, instead of an on-track program, what we have is a pattern of deceptive statements and actions designed to create the illusion that the F-35 program is on track. The goal of this deception is to provide the political cover necessary to allow the F-35’s supporters in Congress to continue to fund the purchase of hundreds of incomplete, combat-incapable planes — each of which will require many years and many tens of millions of dollars of structural repairs, structural rework, systems-stability and functionality fixes, engine modifications and retrofits, and more. And that is just to get the planes to where they should have been when we took initial delivery. Never before have we seen a warplane granted so many waivers and reductions in key performance standards. Never before have we taken delivery of so many planes so far from being complete and so far from being ready for combat.HERE!
“The initial feedback from this is it was not an engine fire; [investigators] are calling it a tailpipe fire,” said Brig. Gen. Scott Pleus, a former F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot who directs the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program’s integration office for the Air Force.Story here.
“A tailpipe fire is a result of some form of fuel getting ignited in the back-end of the airplane that is not necessarily in the engine, so this was not an engine problem. There was some excess fuel that pooled in the back of the airplane and then ignited” before takeoff, he said in an interview with Military.com on Wednesday.
