Marine Corps specific Abrams MEP3 build with A.I. plus Cannon Smoke + BB Firing + Barrel Recoil + 360 Degree Rotation

[tankme]

The Marines always get the crap the Army and the Navy don't want. They are first in and last out, but get the worst equipment and budget.

[Aurelius]

Some of you may be wondering what the MEP3 in this thread stands for. There are so many great modders here that lovingly recreate Abrams from the past (say, the Gulf War), and there is no way we could come up to their standard, so my small son and I began playing with ideas. We both write short stories on the side and decided that rather than focusing on an Abrams of the past, we were going to do an Abrams of the future. After bouncing ideas back and forth, we decided to come up with a fictional timeline that goes like this:

2026 - Unhappy with decisions by Lai Ching-Te to further separate Taiwan's economy from China, China begins to maintain one carrier battle group near Taiwan throughout most of the year to harass the island and overfly its skies.
2027 - China begin's massed drills of 520,000 men in Hainan and Fujian provinces, widely seen as amphibious preparations for an invasion of Taiwan as Lai seeks his second term and further separation of Taiwan from China's influence. America moves one carrier battle group into the Taiwan Strait while holding another a hundred miles north. The UK sails one of their carrier battle groups into position south of Taiwan while Australia and the Philippines contribute several navy vessels and troops. The U.S. Marine Corps presence in Luzon grows from 1200 to over 53,000 as the 1st MEF is brought to high alert.
2028 - China, publicly embarrassed by the re-election of Lai and their loss of face over two of their naval vessels foundering while attempting to harass American carrier groups decides to "lend further assistance" to the corrupt Governor General of the Solomon Islands.
2029 - Sensing the worsening situation in the South China Sea and western Pacific, the U.S. Sec. of Defense orders the U.S. Marine Corps Commandant to re-acquire 280 M1A1 Abrams from the U.S. Army.
2030 - Congress provides funding for all USMC Abrams to acquire the tailored Marine Enhancement Package (MEP) for all their Abrams. The MEP program allows for the first ever (General) Artificial Intelligence Battle Command System (AIBCS). The A.I. now commands the tank under most combat operations subject to override from the tank commander, platoon commander, company commander or battalion commander. The tanks is now crewed by three instead of four personnel, ... a commander (who also can serve as the remote gunner if the AI is overridden), a loader (whose co-function is chief mechanic), and a driver (also emergency machine gunner). All USMC tanks have their turbines replaced with 1650 hp diesel engines similar to 1500 hp models used in Germany's Leopard tanks.
2031 - China acquires permission from the Solomon's Governor General to begin building a large scale naval facility at Guadalcanal, which Australia sees as direct meddling in their regional sphere.
2033 - The U.S. Marine Corps is given further funding to bring all of their Abrams up to U.S. Army SEP3 and Tusk II standards with their tailored MEP3 enhancement program. Learning capable general A.I. has tested well in evaluation exercises and now controls most functions of the tank in battle. Turret machine guns are now automated and under control of AIBCS unless overridden. The MEP3 package also fields the completely new Directed Energy Weapon System (DEWS) in place of the 50 cal.
2034 - China's influence allows the Governor General of the Solomons to discharge Parliament and assume sole power, where upon Australia announces their intention to intercede and re-establish democracy.
2035 - China moves over 2800 "advisors" to "assist" the fully re-armed Solomon's Defense Force. This is met by elements of the U.S. Marine Corps, Royal Marines, and 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. Forty-two tanks of the reinforced 1st tank battalion, 1st Marine Division, U.S. Marine Corps eventually clash with forty-five newly released 101A tanks of Chinese manufacture (being primarily manned by Chinese army and naval infantry personnel) six weeks later.

The battlefield is set, ... and the USMC Abrams MEP3 rolls into action to see if they can repeat their success at Guadalcanal from roughly ninety years before ....

[Herr Dr. Professor]

As to the (re)build, I would guess that the MEP3 will involve some interesting external equipment. Go for it!
As to the scenario, let’s hope not.

[Meter rat]

The UK sails one of their carrier battle groups into position south of Taiwan

Definitely fictitious. The UK may just have a working carrier by then.

[Mithras]

The UK sails one of their carrier battle groups into position south of Taiwan

Definitely fictitious. The UK may just have a working carrier by then.

Right around the time the French get theirs working properly, too!

[Aurelius]

I'm not worried in the long term, ... the UK and France will get their issues sorted. What is more worrisome is institutional inertia. The U.S. Navy has something like 270 to 290 admirals and about 290 combat ships, ... not a good ratio. At one point I believe, both the UK and French navies had twice as many admirals as combat vessels. This is a point of pride I think among the U.S. Marine Corps and Royal Marines where the enlisted to officer ratio is greater and true responsibility is assigned to NCOs to get tasks completed as they see fit.

With regards to our Abrams MEP3, a fictional future situation allows us room to modify our tank without needing to be true to any one particular conflict from the past. We are going to possibly employ some "all Marine" modifications not used in the fictional and future U.S. Army

As to a real conflict with the Chinese, I agree with the Professor, ... I hope not. Having visited China numerous times though, I can see that most mainland Chinese see Taiwan the way most American's think of Hawaii, ... "it's ours and if we need to fight to retain it, ... we will," pretty much sums it up. It is one of those "manifest destiny" things.

[Aurelius]

My son and I picked out a more modern tank commander (actually battalion commander) figure for our USMC Abrams. He did some of the general painting and I did some of the finer details. This is what we ended up with so far:

USMC Lt. Colonel.jpg (368.68 KiB) Viewed 192 times

We tried to give him a Marine Corps specific look. We were going to go with the Marine Woodland BDU camo pattern, but after we painted one leg, we didn't like the look. So, we went with a jungle camo similar to what Marines from WW2 sometimes used. It was a real pain to paint two, tiny, silver, oak leaves on his collar. We may add a few more tiny details in the coming days.

[Herr Dr. Professor]

That's fine work! I don't get to see many painted modern figures as most of the figures here on RCTW represent WWII. What is your best source for modern 1/16 figures?

[Aurelius]

I don't have a source Professor since this is the first figure I ever ordered Joking aside, I got him from DKLMRC in Hong Kong:

https://www.dklmrc.com/product/1-16-mod ... ommander-2

We may try to add a few other tiny details to our figure in the coming days.

[Aurelius]

On the artificial intelligence front, we are now evaluating the Arduino giga board to see if it has enough abilities to run out sensor suite and machine learning code. More on that shortly ....

On another front, I don't know jack about tank design, but from my perspective, I see all modern MBTs as having numerous weak spots and bad design implementations (like taking a hit directly at the turret ring). What I can't understand is why all main battle tanks aren't designed as slightly concave bells, like this:

What's Wrong with this Tank resized.jpg (150.2 KiB) Viewed 197 times

A slightly concave "bell" design provides some additional protection versus the flat slanted faces of say the Abrams, Challenger, Leopard, etc ... because the first derivative of the curvature is non-zero. Even better, you get that protection over the entire hull rather than in selected front face areas. This provides additional protection against APFSDS sabot tungsten and uranium penetrators. Also, if the interior of the armor were set up in a fractal like N-2 progression, you might get 30% additional protection for the exact same weight of the armor. Giving the tank the ability to raise and lower the hull would also allow fording and high speed travel while at the same time allowing the tank to better protect its treads and undercarriage. If the loading mechanism of the barrel was changed slightly, you could have a cannon barrel that can rotate directly up to a 90 degree angle if need be. This would allow shells to be shot over walls, berms and ridges and then come down directly on top of enemies. If further mods were made, the cannon could be rotated 180 degrees to the other side if needed to change position quickly. I can think of numerous other head scratchers concerning modern MBTs that look poorly designed to my eyes. What do you tank veterans think?