Japan Self Defense Forces - Pictures & Videos

Damian

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11 million USD beast...

Damn, 11 million USD?! This thing is overexpensive for such a small tank, that is not better protected than modern NATO or Russian/Ukrainian equivalents that are also sufficent enough in electronics.

Or Japanese made just a mobile box with a gun for a super computer so price is so high, or reason is that not many of them will be made.

AFAIK Germans calculated that to counterbalance money spent on R&D, around 1,000-2,000 tanks need to be purchased by own armed forces.
 

asianobserve

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It's a government doll out to its defense contractors to keep their know-hows and technological expertise alive (or improve them), for employment and of course national prestige.

Regarding the armor protection of the tank, historically defense has never been the forte of the Japanese military. Their's is offence centered and their soldiers are supposed to win or if they can't then die trying. That's why firepower, targeting systems and speed are favored over armor. They're suppose to hit hard and fast. I think, at least in their MBTs, this is still true now.
 

Damian

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It's a government doll out to its defense contractors to keep their know-hows and technological expertise alive (or improve them), for employment and of course national prestige.
Thesy should allow for exports, I suspect that at least in that region, there would be possible to sell their weapon systems.

Regarding the armor protection of the tank, historically defense has never been the forte of the Japanese military. Their's is offence centered and their soldiers are supposed to win or if they can't then die trying. That's why firepower, targeting systems and speed are favored over armor. They're suppose to hit hard and fast. I think, at least in their MBTs, this is still true now.
As for the armor protection I did not have in mind quality of armor itself. This tank definetly have high tech armor. Problematic is it's placement. What I mean by this is that front armor might be very weight and space efficent, thus with less weight allows at least to achieve protection similiar to that of heavier vehicles. Another weight reduction comes with use of nano technology in materials manufacturing.

However problematic is side protection, neither hull sides, neighter turret are protected by composite armor, only light weight non ballistic skirts, and storage boxes. In theory both can be replaced by armor modules but, at least for now I didn't seen anything like that.

Other than that it is very advanced and interesting vehicle. I really like it's powerpack design, something worth to integrate in other MBT's, especially transmission.

The most interesting is that crew both TC and gunner do not have traditional sights oculars, but everything is displayed on flat screens, it gives some interesting possibilities, however I wonder how robust this solution is when it comes to situation when vehicle is hit by kinetic energy round and there is no armor perforation.

Oh and suspension, I'am a big enthusiast of hydrogas suspension systems, be it these with or without variable height control. This is future, and gives many, many profits in vehicle design compared to heavier and taking more space torsion bars, or very heavy and bulky suspension systems like Horstmann or it's more modern incarnations seen on Merkava series.
 
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W.G.Ewald

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No offence mate but the Sheridan is not a true MBT... It's an air dropable light tank.
You are correct, the last light tank in service with the US Army, replaced by the M60A1 and eventually the M3 Bradley for the Recon role.
 

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