The U.S. Army Wants to Put Big Guns on Small Tanks
The Pentagon hopes to get a new lightweight armored combat vehicle.
Charlie Gao
Recently, the U.S. Army has been putting forth a requirement for a new lightweight armored combat vehicle [3], under the project name of Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF). The role of this [4]vehicle would be to destroy enemy hard targets such as bunkers, engage enemy infantry in buildings and fight enemy armor. The vehicle needs to be light as well, able to be airlifted in a C-17 or even C-130. Most articles speculate that this vehicle will use the 105-millimeter cannon currently in use on the Stryker Mobile Gun System. This cannon is inferior in performance to the 120-millimeter cannon found on the M1A2 SEP v2 main battle tank, America’s foremost armored fighting vehicle. However there is a technology that exists that could allow light vehicles to wield cannons that pack the full punch of those mounted on main battle tanks. It is even mentioned in the U.S. Army’s Combat Vehicle Modernization Strategy [5] as a way to bring large caliber cannon technology to lightweight vehicles. This technology is called RAVEN, which stands for Rarefaction Wave Gun.
Source URL (retrieved on November 5, 2017):
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-us-army-wants-put-big-guns-small-tanks-23041
