Commanders!
The Design a Legendary Vehicle contest is in full swing with less than a week left to submit your proposals for a future machine to be introduced to Armored Warfare. Over 300 entries were made already and it’s going to take some time to sift through them. In the meanwhile, we’d like to highlight several of the entries that are definitely making it into the voting phase, starting with the FMBT entry by Spyder.
History:
This is a real-life vehicle project developed in the early 1990s. In the summer of 1992, the ARMOR magazine (the official magazine of the U.S. Army Armor Center from Fort Knox) started a contest to design a next generation Main Battle Tank and by January 15, 1993 (the official deadline), it would receive more than 70 submissions from both the USA and 4 other countries. The submission of Maj. Quinn, a developer from Western Design (which specialized in automatic gun loading mechanism development) from California, was declared the winner.
Assisting in the proposal were Larry Bacon (who helped develop the automatic loading mechanism for the TTB and the AH-64 Apache) and Dr. Asher Sharoni (veteran of the IDF who would also later come one of the authors of the Abrams AGDS proposal). With such names behind the design, it wasn’t surprising that Future Main Battle Tank (or FMBT) proposal was very well developed indeed, even though it was quite a bit ahead of its time and its elements would only be used in much later designs.
The core idea behind the FMBT was survivability. The tank would weigh around 50 tons and would have a crew of 3 men placed in its hull in an armored capsule. The engine was placed in the front to provide extra protection for the crew. Additional protective elements included soft-kill APS, an advanced blow-out panel system, and advanced armor distribution.
The vehicle would be powered by a hybrid engine consisting of a 1750-2000hp LV100 gas turbine and two electric engines. It would be armed by 120mm XM291 ATACS gun fed by a carousel-type autoloader. Additional weapons included 30mm M230 autocannon, a 40mm grenade launcher and a machinegun as well as 7 vertical launchers for anti-aircraft missiles. The tank was supposed to be equipped with a 360 degree camera coverage with images projected directly into crew helmet displays, much like the current Israeli Iron Vision system.
Author’s Gameplay Vision:
The vehicle would be a very fast and stealthy with a powerful armament (120mm ATACS gun with a high-capacity autoloader – furthermore, the gun can be upgraded to 140mm). It would also have excellent spotting range but also thin armor, especially its sides. The tank would receive very low module damage with the ammo racks immune from explosions. The downside, aside from the armor, would be poor gun depression (-5 degrees). Overall the vehicle would be akin to XK3 or Object 640 – only with more firepower and mobility but less camouflage than the XK3.
Interested in more designs? Stay tuned for more articles or submit your own.
See you on the battlefield!
