Commanders!
By now, the name Griffin should be more than familiar to you with the Griffin 50mm being one of the most popular American Dream season vehicles – and for a good reason. High accuracy combined with its excellent mobility and stealth makes it an extremely effective vehicle in any mode. But, like we mentioned in the history background article, there was a good chance more than one Griffin would make an appearance in Armored Warfare. Today, we are happy to present you with Griffin 50mm’s older cousin – the Griffin 120mm Light Tank.
Griffin
In Armored Warfare, the Griffin 120mm will be a Tier 8 Premium Light Tank and a reward for the upcoming Patriot Battle Path. However, to avoid any confusion, here’s a little explanation first about the appearance of the model.
The entire Griffin series of vehicles started with a technology demonstrator by General Dynamics in 2016, based on the Ajax platform. It wasn’t a real Light Tank – it was likely functional (to a degree expected of a technology demonstrator, anyway) but it was not expected to be accepted in service or anything. It was simply an example of “here’s what we can do, check it out and let’s start a conversation about what the U.S. Army wants.”
What the U.S. Army wanted were all sorts of things – in this case, a Light Tank for its Mobile Protected Firepower program for its airborne units to replace the Stryker. In the years that followed, another Griffin prototype was unveiled, this time as a heavy IFV for a different program (that’s what our Griffin 50mm is based on) and, very recently (a month or two back, in fact), another version of the 120mm Griffin appeared with a modified Abrams turret. This new Griffin LT looks significantly different from the 2016 version.
Our Griffin 120mm model is based on the 2016 demonstrator and will offer you the opportunity to see what it would have looked like on a battlefield. But, before we get into any more details:
The numbers below are very preliminary as the vehicle has not been properly tested. They are sure to change and should only be discussed as an indicator of how we’d like to set the vehicle up.
With that being said:
As Light Tanks go, the Griffin 120mm will not have all that high damage per minute values. Nor will it feature extremely thick armor, but that’s to be expected when it comes to this vehicle class. It will be able to withstand light autocannon rounds (up to roughly 30mm) but that’s about it, even though an Iron Fist APS, when unlocked, will provide some measure of extra protection.
Its real strength will lie in very high-tech ammunition for its 120mm XM360 smoothbore gun. The basic ammunition will consist of a standard APFSDS round (M829A1) and a standard HEAT-MP round (M830A1), but the following special rounds will be unlockable through the additional vehicle progression system:
- XM1111 MRM-CE – effectively a HEAT round with some limited guidance, 800mm of penetration and 600 damage
- XM1111 MRM-KE – effectively a kinetic round with some limited guidance and kinetic ATGM mechanics, which allow it to gain more damage and penetration at longer distances (from 550 damage and 670mm penetration at 50m to 605 damage and 737mm at 200m)
The gun will also feature excellent accuracy and depression/elevation values for its type (-10/+20 degrees). Combined with solid mobility (816hp MTU engine at 41 tons, 72 km/h maximum speed and the ability to reach 32 km/h in 4 seconds), the Griffin 120mm will be a tactical sniper with a wide variety of tools at its disposal.
Unlike with the other LTs, aggressiveness won’t be the key to success for this vehicle – instead, careful, methodical approach should be applied whenever driving it, making it closer to the concept of a Tank Destroyer rather than a true Light Tank.
We hope you will enjoy it and, as always:
See you on the battlefield!
