Happy Freedom Day! Now with Tanks!

I pray that this Independence Day, you are enjoying some precious time with loved ones while hopefully doing something that is pissing off some government somewhere, like shooting guns, blowing stuff up, tearing up the road with some powerful car, telling horrifically politically incorrect jokes, or breaking some unenforceable unconstitutional regulation, or just telling politicians to piss off.. 

Not sure if I'll have the money for it this year, but I'll be wanting to plant some freedom seeds of my own. Still want a darn G36, though. 

In other patriotic news, I have to give a hat tip to Scott over at the Unwanted Blog again, for letting me know about the new light tank that was adopted by the US Army, the General Dynamics Griffin III. I had heard years ago about the program to develop and field one, but had completely lost track of the progress on it, so this news completely came out of left field for me.  This would also be the first time the Army has had a light tank in decades, even longer if you think the last one was a flop. 

Thankfully, this one seems to be pretty formidable, both it's turret and fire control systems being mini version of what is used on the M1A2 Abrams, and with a 105mm cannon instead of a 120mm. It's 38 tons, which despite being heavy, is still 2 tons lighter than a Bradley IFV, offers more firepower than an IFV, has better protection than the up-armored humvees and JLTVs we are currently using, and will be getting a formal designation by the Army in a few months. 

The General Dynamics Griffon III that won. 

I remember that the big contender that was suspected to be the front runner back when I heard about it was BAe Systems with their model based on the old M8 AGS light tank from back in the day. But it seems BAe botched it by showing some serious issues in delivering prototypes on time to the program, which really hurt them in the long run, so they lost out to the GD team. From a purely technical standpoint I don't think the Army made the wrong choice, but it's a shame BAe couldn't get it together, because their machine was pretty good too.

 

The updated BAE M8 that lost. 

Now some may criticize the army for adopting a new light tank when we are seeing so many pieces of armor being defeated by missiles in the current Ukrainian war, but that's for people not drawing the correct conclusions from the right examples. Light tanks were never meant to defeat any major anti-tank weapons (even back in the day), but they are really there to be lighter, more mobile firepower platforms for more mobile infantry such as Airborne and amphibious forces, that would be unable to be supported by main battle tanks due to their weight. .  

Take for example, the Russian airborne raid on the Hostomel air base near Kiev, Ukraine in the beginning of the war, the Russians did have a small element of surprise, and were initially successful in taking the airport, but were quickly defeated shortly afterwards and nearly annihilated for two big reasons: 

1. They had no armor/artillery to back them up against the Ukrainian armor and light vehicles

2. They were not employed in a fashion in which they would get relieved/backed up from advancing friendly forces. 

The need for the light tank is specifically for these reasons why the Army is adopting them, to avoid these these types of mistakes. They aren't meant for going toe to toe with ATGMS and Tanks, but rather it's there to provide tank like firepower for airborne or amphibious forces to attack fortified positions, provide limited long range fire support, and defend against attacks from enemy mortars, artillery, light infantry, and be light enough to be airdropped in with the forces they are supporting in enough numbers that they can overwhelm the enemy and provide that firepower until other supporting forces can arrive. 

TMy only complaint with the new light tank order is that it appears the Army is only ordering a little more than 500 of them, which seems on the ridiculously low side to me. 

The Army hasn't had a light tank in decades since the ol' M551 Sheridan, which was plagued with problems from the start.