Back in cold war era, a well trained loader was faster than an autoloader. And you've got one less person in case you need to work on the tracks or do other cumbersome work.

>>65444521
There's a fair few prototypes for upgrades that include autoloader systems, but nobody seems to be willing to shell out for something that drastic yet.
If anyone wants to upgun to, say, 140mm, autoloaders will become mandatory.

>>65444551
The cold war ended nearly 30 years ago now and any serious maintenance or repair task isn't going to be significantly easier with four people versus three.
Really you'll want the dedicated support section that should be following you anyway to help.

>>65444568
True, cold war ended 30 years ago, but since then nobody really spent any money into tank development. Some minor adaptations to improve surviavability in urban scenarios or against IEDs maybe, but other than that nothing until the wake up call in 2022. And since then we know that tanks have lost their importance against armed drones.

Losing a crew member who handles daily routine tasks is a problem that cannot be ignored.
The autoloader's reloading process is not automated.

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>>65444521
I think we all know why?

>>65444521
the main gun is arguably useless now anyway so why even bother?

the mbt concept as a whole needs a total overhaul. make it taller, being flat as a pancake is no longer useful, give it a big escape hatch in the rear so crew can actually escape, store ammunition in a safer way, large standoff armour cage, ideally 2 additional layers, more armour on top and back, more ground clearance and a v shaped bottom for better mine survivability, mandatory extra heavy mine plows in the front plus line charges. radar to spot incoming drones and an air defense gun and/or interceptor drones to deal with drones. for the future: remote driving and firing capabilities to turn it into a ground drone.

>>65444594
What does unprotected hull ammunition storage have to do with autoloaders?

>>65444625
Put it together, big guy.

>>65444656
Autoloaders do not necessitate unprotected hull ammunition storage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePHUcWsxZDg

>>65444568
>The cold war ended
mhm

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>>65444597

>>65444697
the soviet union collapsed and the russian federation is not a feasible threat to NATO by any means
cold war 2 has different protagonist power blocs

>>65444568
>The cold war ended nearly 30 years ago
it didn't though.

>>65444716
>russian federation is not a feasible threat to NATO by any means
nato with usa, youd be right, nato without the usa, youd be wrong.

>>65444568
>The cold war ended nearly 30 years ago
You just answered yourself. The cold war ended and so did any significant investments into defense tech.

Also, there's nothing wrong with manual loading, just like there's nothing wrong about a manual gearbox. Has tech improved far enough for an automatic to be the better option? Sure. But manual will work just fine.

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>>65444521
Do they have mixed crews in their tanks, like 2 males and 2 females or something?

If so, do they have stinky sweaty creampie sex inside the tank? Haha just asking for a friend.
I mean it must get pretty boring during those week long field exercise, alone in the woods and you cant even leave your stinky tank for days.
Haha I wonder where they shit ;)

>>65444737
the russian federation cannot defeat one(1) minor non-NATO state in years of conventional warfare

>>65444753
An autoloader being better at loading than a human loader is what's wrong with manual loading.

>>65444780
they could just nuke germany again and again and there is absolutely nothing the germans could do to prevent it. the main problem not even being germany not having nukes, but the german society so anti nuclear and pacifist that nuclear retaliation would be politically impossible for the german society. and small shit like estonia, hungary or slovakia would just get overrun and turn traitor eventually.

>>65444794
yeah but they wouldn't nuke germany, they don't nuke ukraine

>>65444806
for now. i cant see trump going into full ww3 nuclear exchange with russia and sacrificing millions of americans for europe, a continent he hates the fuck out of.

>>65444794
nukes are great to have and not use. no one really knows what would happen with a modern day nuclear attack... but most likely, if one nation were to try and use a nuke to achieve it's political/military goals, the international community will likely turn them into a true pariah or just return the favor and wipe them out

so yeah, keep on with the nuclear saber rattling

>>65444794
>just nuke [insert country here]
they haven't done shit in Ukraine after threatening two dozen times
but now that they'd be throwing nukes with a decent chance of the fuck around and find out Frech nuclear doctrine right next door. now they are 110% totally serial going to do it guys
just go and remove yourself from the genepool

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Because having one more crew member is better than having marginally faster reloading and only during extended operations.

>>65444847
>i cant see trump going into full ww3 nuclear exchange with russia
So? Trump isn't the only person and America isn't the only country with a voice here.

Nukes won't happen, cope, seethe, and dilate. Or at least stop talking about it.

>>65444869
>the international community will likely turn them into a true pariah
lel, look at what russia has done over the last 20 years and europe is still trading with them like nothing has happened. russian lng goes straight from ust luga to rotterdam, russian aluminum goes straight from petersburg to dublin. greek ships load russian oil, italy buys "turkish" pipeline gas that is just rebranded russian gas, hungary and slovakia receive oil straight from a pipeline from russia through ukraine to them and threaten ukraine with downfall if the ukies cut that pipeline. european resistance against russia is a joke. they make one sanctions package after the other but each and every one of those has 28 holes with all sorts of exceptions in it.

>>65444873
>Frech nuclear doctrine
macron is an air blower with 30-40% support in france. when lepen wins the next election the french may turn full zigger and they dont necessariyl have much love for the germans either way.

>>65444895
>Because having one more crew member is better
Better for what? What are you doing with four members that you can't do with three?
>marginally faster reloading and only during extended operations
Autoloaders have been faster than the best manual loaders even under ideal conditions for the manual loaders for years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Meua1-_u3M0

>>65444956
Americans conducted extensive research with many possible options. 5 crew, 4 crew, 3 crew with and without autoloader, even 2 crew with autoloader.
Can't give you any quotes because dtic has been dead for a while, but the concluded four crew war most optimal.

>>65444910

>lepen wins
today 1 april ? Without lepen , National Rally party did have chance for good results . With her National Rally have 0 chance .

If russia nukes Germany , France and Britain will use it nukes against Russia .
Also french nuclear doctrine is insane .

>>65444910
>and europe is still trading with them like nothing has happened
So are you just plain retarded and ignorant or a zigger reciting a script?

>when lepen wins the next election
Yes ,yes, just as she was goinmg to win the last three. Get a new joke, this one's older than my cousin.

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>>65444768
Not possible for every crew due to underepresentation of women. This isn't a significant issue, all good tankers expect their creampie with a little chocolate...

>>65444956
Three things. Since there is no meaningful difference between autoloader speed and manual loader speed, the first is redundancy. If an autoloader mechanism gets damaged, the tank’s main gun is down. If the human loader gets injured or killed, another crew member can still theoretically load the gun in his stead. The second advantage is in-field repairs. A 4 person crew can get a tank back in action faster, especially if it’s reconnecting or repairing tracks, which is a very common thing to fix. The third is crew morale. Humans work best in teams of 4-12, anything less or more and cohesion breaks down. There is a body of literature supporting this.

Western tanks are slowly starting to move to a 4-(wo)man autoloader crew with a dedicated drone operator. Which is actually better than the classic 3-man autoloader tank crew, because you have one extra warm body.

The Ukrainians are upgrading their old Leo 1s to assault guns with +40° elevation, because the old direct fire tanks aren't as useful.

>>65444737
I'm American and I don't believe that at all. Russia can be a threat but it would get curb stomped by just Poland and Finland. Germany has gotten its shell game going and France is a very under rated as a military power. The UK along with some of the Baltic nations are the Euros weakest links. I'd also note there bleeding hearts will also be a problem but that is a long term problem the whole western world is having to deal with.

>>65444568
The cold war never ended. We just were gaslit into thinking it had.

>>65444551
>the tank crew works on their tank alone
>they don't have tanker buddies
>they don't have a mobile engineering shop
>they don't have the rest of the army behind them

And that's why western tanks are chronically overweight and keep busting tracks and transmissions into the 21st century.

Win a war before talking shit about autoloaders, faggots. The French use them too, and they are the 2nd most successful army in the modern day after Russian mercenaries. Get fucked, fatmutts. Literally, by Persian cousinfuckers

>>65444910
>if
>if
>if
how about the russians not having the balls to use their nukes in Ukraine where there isn't a nuclear armed state right next to them.
or do you think that the French nationalist won't mind a little nuclear fall out.

Autoloaders are only for countries who only have lanklets, first worlders have tons of access to protein hence they will have guys who can lift and carry heavy shells over extremely short distances.

an excuse to have another person in the tank, which is helpful for maintenance and troubleshooting.

>>65445334
>The French use them too, and they are the 2nd most successful army in the modern day after Russian mercenaries.
>after Russian mercenaries
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahshahshahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

>>65444521
because they don't matter and a bad autoloader is detrimental to the tank design, as seen with the T-64/72 series.

>>65445334
Meanwhile in Russian tanks every failure is a catastrophic failure.

5 years of slavboo humiliation and they are still at it.

>>65445334
This is some powerful bait

>>65445360
This. Malnourished manlets just cant lift.

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>>65444521
The concept of the main battle tank is obsolete anyway, they were used as a breakthrough vehicle to gap the artillery/trench stalemate and give armor protection to soldier.
The best protection a soldier can have now is to be away from the frontline.
The future of breakthrough vehicles are modular, unmanned swarms of ground vehicles with light to medium direct fire options while aerial drones and precision artillery do the rest.

But that's just for frontline combat, which is not as important anymore in this century, it's all about nuclear deterrence and hybrid and asymmetric warfare: refugee columns, political destabilization etc.

>>65444521
As others have stated, a lot of it comes down to autoloaders not being reliable enough in the '60s and '70s (yes, Soviet designs excluded, and note the compromises they made and the results that those have had). After the Wall came down, armor R&D cratered, and almost everything has been an incremental upgrade since then.
The US tried to go to a 2-man crew with FCS in order to build a rapidly-deployable force (a brigade from CONUS to anywhere in 96 hours, the rest of the entire division 24 hours after that), but it made a ton of compromises to accomplish that, and the only thing holding it together was the advanced software and networking, which took the whole program down with it when it failed. After that, a combination of factors (GWOT spending, uncontrolled non-defense spending, a lack of strategic planning for peer conflicts, etc.) led every US effort to replace or upgrade tanks and IFVs to failure, until *maybe* the M1A3/M30. The same thing happened to the Paladin replacement, the AAV replacement, etc.

>>65444768
As far as know, no CO-ED.
But I did had wank inside my tank back in the day and finished inside the case sack

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>>65444668
>untested chinkshit

>>65445611
retard-kun...

>>65445112
This is an interesting adaptation. I could see tanks being rather lethal if they evolved to exchange the traditional main gun for like a direct/indirect firing autoloading mortar. With all the weight savings, you could really throw on the armor in an effort to proof it against drone deployable or man portable anti tank weaponry.

>>65444521
They don't hate it. When they're honest deep down they admit it makes sense, and they understand they use the old way out of valid operational concerns for their time like sleep rotations. The issue is what happens next?

If you're super conservative, autoloaders are a waste, because you need 4 men for good optempo. If you aren't, you think drones are the important new thing.

There's simply no big reason for modest improvements to legacy platforms. This is not an era for incremental improvements to land battleships. Either they're relegated to tactical support, or they're gonna do 1991 again because of muh F35s, or nah. Auloloaders DO NOT MATTER. It's like a pump shotgun versus an semiauto shotgun. Who cares? Either you got the drop on the robber and don't need a rapid ROF, or he sees you first and his buddies blap you with three AR's and Glock switches. There's no scenario where autoloaders save the day are are even relevant.

>>65445693
>I could see tanks being rather lethal if they evolved to exchange the traditional main gun for like a direct/indirect firing autoloading mortar.
now I'm just a layman retard on the internet, but if they transition to more focus on indirect fire, then wouldn't they just become self-propelled artillery?

>>65445709
Yes, that's the joke. Imagine a super-tank narrative from the distant past for a moment. Jumbo tanks. Tanks with 155mm 52 calibre cannons lobbing IR/GPS/INS seeker rounds with 100lb top-attack HEAT shells. Autoloaded of course, shooting 50km+. That's...just a howitzer. Maybe add in a drone. Build the super-tank, and the tank is obsolete.

A HIMARS and a quadcopter launched from a Hilux are a superior supertank.

>>65445698
>>65445709
>>65445709
>>65445726
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one

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>>65445739

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>>65445334

Hahhahaha, oh boy. I needed a good laugh between sets of RDLs, thanks friend.

>>65444597
>make it taller, being flat as a pancake is no longer useful
>large standoff armour cage, ideally 2 additional layers
>more armour on top and back, more ground clearance and a v shaped bottom for better mine survivability
>mandatory extra heavy mine plows in the front

lol
lmao even
RIP to that thing’s centre of gravity
that’s a pavement princess just asking to topple over

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>>65444566
140mm can in fact be loaded manually, but at that point you need multiple loaders which would make a tank crew either quite cramped or require an increase in the size of the crew compartment.

>>65444521
>>65444566
France has an autoloader for their tank. Also do you know how much MAINTENANCE a tank needs? A 4th guy can help with that.

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>>65446860
Autoloader and three crew.

Ambush Predator.

>>65446860
Make the fourth guy a weapons support specialist. Drones especially seem pretty mandatory nowadays.

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>>65444521
The french Leclercs have autoloaders

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>>65446337
>>65444702
i imagine it somewhat like pic related. you may not like it but this is how the future mbt will most likely look.

It's still an arena where the human touch still can't be beat. Plus it's good to have a 4th guy around for maintenance and general chores

>>65446897
And not used anymore by the only country that deigned and used it. What a legacy

With the way things are developing, even if the loader gets replaced with machinery, the actual crewmember will still be present and handling other duties. Stuff like operating a drone linked to the tank or operating anti-drone systems.
What I'm not entirely sure of is if the direction something like the T-14 was trying to go is correct. Putting the entire crew across sitting like a bench. Seems cramped and makes escape difficult.

>>65444591
Why don’t they build an autoloader autoloader?

>>65448291
>Seems cramped
it's a tank
everything is cramped

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>>65444521
I have a better question, why don't we have an R2-D2 that can climb out of it's socket and assist in repairs like bring the tracking tools or some shit?

>>65444732
The Cold War is simply the endgame of Humanity's war against Russians, it didn't stop but it was going on since about the Crimean War.

>>65444521
Human loader is just more reliable and adaptable.

>>65444521
>Human loader is roughly same speed, if not slightly faster in some cases.
>Human loader more flexible in loading different shells.
>Human loader doesn't need maintenance to avoid breaking down and stopping functioning completely in combat.
>Human loader can help out with the rest of the maintenance of the tank.

Last one is the big kicker. As awesome as a tank controlled by one man would be, that tank has to be maintained, and typically that's done by its crew, for sheer logistical and situational convenience.
It's not realistic for a tank to always have access to a motor repair pool and dedicated engineers at the end of every day.

Remove the loader, and overall you've got to spend more time in maintenance because you've got slightly more work being done by slightly less people. That cuts down on flexibility, operational time, crew readiness and the like.

>>65452932
The Type 10's autoloader has a shell ready in three seconds flat and won't get tired under sustained fire.

>>65445709
>>65445726
Look up FCS LOS/BLOS.

>>65449552
>it's a tank
>everything is cramped
well then good luck finding people to man these inescapable death traps.

>>65452932
>>Human loader is roughly same speed, if not slightly faster in some cases.
and? fire rate of the main gun of a tank is hardly a deciding factor for tanks nowadays

>>65452932
>>Human loader doesn't need maintenance to avoid breaking down and stopping functioning completely in combat.
LOOOOL most tank losses are from the crew abandoning the vehicle, an autoloader will not panic and disappear into the woods. an autoloader also doesnt need water and food like a human and an losing an autoloader is also less of a tragedy than losing a human.

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>>65452932
That last one is the real deal.
A lot of the times it's not just loading shells. It's about restocking munitions, food packs, random crates, water tanks, scrubbing tracks clean of mud, cleaning optics lenses of dirt and dust, and just... standing on guard while others catch some sleep...

Having an extra pair of hands that also works OUTSIDE the tank is literally 25% more labor force for the tank crew. Autoloader can't do that, but the guy can do also the autoloader's job.

>>65445576
Tankfags can't accept this as their giant death coffin is just going to magically get something that makes drones obsolete or whatever.

>>65453157
thats pretty much irrelevant in an age where the main problem of a tank right now is how to survive drones, atgms and mines. the entire mbt concept is on the verge of becoming obsolete and you talk about stuff that mattered in ww2 tank warfare.

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>>65445334
Top zozzle

>>65452932
>Human loader is roughly same speed, if not slightly faster in some cases.
Autoloaders have been noticeably faster than even fresh loaders under optimal conditions for years.
>Human loader more flexible in loading different shells
This is pretty easily negated by proper autoloader and ammunition rack design.
>Human loader doesn't need maintenance to avoid breaking down and stopping functioning completely in combat
Humans actually need a lot of maintenance, they just do a lot of it on themselves.
>Human loader can help out with the rest of the maintenance of the tank
If four crewmen is such an absolute requirement that you absolutely must have because three just won't cut it for anything for some reason then just keep the loader as an extra guy.
>It's not realistic for a tank to always have access to a motor repair pool and dedicated engineers at the end of every day
And a lot of the things that can break in a tank the crew simply won't be equipped to repair, keeping modern armor running long term requires dedicated engineers and maintenance crews following and ready to assist.

>>65453166
Don't tanks need to be hauled anyway? Like if a tank breaks down on some battlefied, you can't rapair it even with 10 men. You need to drag it to a base with all the tools and machinery, spare parts.

>>65453496
That depends on what breaks and how badly.
Some things the tank's crew can take care of, most things a recovery vehicle and maintenance section can fix.
It's usually just battle damage that will require something more than what can be done in the field.

>>65445334
https://youtu.be/HO2HoWW-ULc?si=ItHZR67ByLFAKw7m
Actually, let me try to embed it.<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HO2HoWW-ULc?si=ItHZR67ByLFAKw7m" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

>>65445334
Top lel

>>65444521
Because it'S cheaper :^)

I am memeing of course, an aditional crew member is more expensive over time, but also way the fuck more useful.