News for all things related to Tanks and Armored Fighting Vehicles
Today we dig into the vault to retrieve a 1971 article by noted tank expert Richard Ogorkiewicz on the Swedish IKV91 light tank and its associated vehicles. This article comes from the May-June 1971 issue of Armor. The individual pages can be viewed in the image gallery below or the entire issue can be downloaded here (article starts on page 150 of the PDF)
A new addition to the Osprey Publishing New Vanguard line titled Valentine Infantry Tank 1938-1945 is slated to be released on April 21. Authored by Bruce Newsome, this is a soft cover book of 48 pages with color illustrations.
Publishers description:
The Valentine was the most produced and most widely used British tank of the Second World War. The Valentine first saw combat during Operation Compass in November 1941 and remained one of the main medium tanks in British service into 1943. As the Churchill became more prevalent the Valentine was relegated to specialist and tank-destroyer variants, which would remain in service in the Far East to the end of the war.
This book describes the evolution of the Valentine design and weighs up its impact on the battlefield. Although widely regarded today as one of the weaker tanks to be fielded during the war, it was exceptionally numerous, with more Valentines produced than any other British tank.
Author and master model builder Steven Zaloga has given us permission to post this gallery of some of his 1/35 and 1/48th scale models. We hope you enjoy these images and we thank Mr. Zaloga for sharing them with us. The models can be viewed in the slideshow directly below or click on the individually labeled thumbnails to view the full size images.
This video appeared on youtube today. It contains some rather nicely shot footage of the Russian T-90 sM in action.
Sputnik International has posted an article about a video showing the new Russian T-14 Armata MBT being driven and the main gun fired. According to the article, in early March 2016, Sergey Chemezov, head of the Russian state corporation Rostec, confirmed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that the T-14 is already being mass produced.
It seems the video we had originally linked to has been pulled from youtube due to copyright issues. Here is a different, relatively recent Armata videos.
This video from Daily Military Defense & Archive showed up on youtube earlier this week. Featured in the video is footage of the German PzH 2000 and the US M109A6 Paladin SPG’s firing their guns.
IHS Jane’s is reporting that Poland is to sign a contract worth approximately 320-375 million dollars for 96 self-propelled 120mm Rak mortar systems. The contract with Huta Stalowa Wola is reported to cover a five year time frame.
According to Janes:
The contract will cover the fitting out of eight mortar companies with the new Rak 120 mm mortar system, which is mounted on the Rosomak 8×8 chassis (a Polish-variant of the Patria AMV). In total the order includes 64 Rak M120K mortar vehicles and 32 AWD command post vehicles (also based on the Rosomak chassis). These are divided into two mortar platoons per company, each equipped with four M120Ks and an AWD, plus an extra two AWD vehicles for the company commander and deputy commander.
The first company set of equipment due to be delivered before the end of the year, with the Polish Land Forces expected to receive a further two company sets a year until the eight are delivered in 2020.
A video from Military History Visualized on the first German tank, the A7V.
Internet personality Lindybeige relates some stories involving Cromwell tanks in an entertaining manner.
The photo of the day comes from a foreign language blog post on the Royal Thai Army School museum. The Ha-Go has a rather interesting paint scheme.
Tank and AFV News 