Why do Western APCs mostly use just a LMG/HMG?
>I know APC is only meant to be used as a battlefield taxi, but reality has shown us that real combat doesn't care for textbook theory.
>I also know Soviet/Russian APCs are much more inferior in every aspect, but having a 30mm on your APC seems way more organic than having only a HMG.

Been reading on TPz Fuchs and there was an attempt to mount a 20mm on it, because the regular LMG array seemed a bit lacking in combat situations.

>>64083968 (OP)
Bradley, and LAV-25 have 20MM and 25MM canons. The AAV has a 40MM grenade launcher.

>>64083979
>Bradley,
A textbook tracked IFV, not and APC.
> LAV-25
Armored reconnaissance vehicle with 4-6 scouts in the back, not an APC

Stryker is an APC and again, it uses a HMG.

what could've been

>>64084022
While I agree, I wonder how much of the 10 troop seats would have been sacrificed for this setup.
China also has an interesting one man 25mm turret, picrel

What are you defining as a Soviet APC with a 30mm that doesn't overlap with any of the caveats of >>64084017

In any case, it could be a doctrinal split as Soviet APCs would be carrying troops forward offensively and fighting together to push forward, while NATO was more expecting to be on the defensive where APCs would be more dedicated transports

>>64083968 (OP)
what are you on about...?
btr series (excluding the btr90 which never went into serial production and btr82a which came late into the cold war), brdm2, mt-lb all had HMGs or HMG+LMG coax.

>>64084069
14.5 KPVT is venturing into autocannon area and it was fully enclosed in a turret.

>>64083968 (OP)
It just seems like unnecessary complexity in every aspect. From space, design, weight, logistical footprint to cost. You want 1k+ simple armoured taxis not 1k+ subpar mini IFVs. If you need firepower just bring a real IFV along.

>>64084114
A very good point.

>>64084022

>>64083979
both use the same 25mm M242 autocannon you retard

>>64083968 (OP)
France put a 20mm autocannon on some of the VABs
it can still carry 5 soldiers too
until the mid-2000s a platoon of these would accompany a tank company, either splitting up to be assigned to each platoon or working together
they still use them in infantry companies for the sniper section
>snipers get a 20mm autocannon n-nani?!

that all said Fuchs, VABs, M113s, MRAP trucks, etc dont normally mount something heavier because they are a battle taxis and not armored enough to engage in direct combat

>>64084249
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubqD6Apunrw

Different types of autocannons and turrets could be useful on APC's but consider the probability of ever using it. If we put a 20mm - 40mm autocannon on a Patria 6x6, Stryker or similar and use it in a modern conventional war what is the likelihood that you will ever get to shoot at targets with it that aren't likely to shoot back at you with different types AT-weaponry? Even if you can point out to a situation where it may or may not have made a difference at the end of the day what it comes down to is that for APC's you just want huge ass numbers and expensive turrets add to the cost and effectively decrease the amount of vehicles that you can buy even if you have infinite money like the US. Of course almost every military around has tried a lot of different shenanigans but eventually everyone just goes back to a basic bitch APC with some kind of a machine gun on top because you can just shit them out in quantities that matter.

>>64084051
The BTR-80A/82, presumably, though even russians themselves refer to it as "BMP" sometimes. The carrying capacity isn't reduced to armored recon tier, internal turret volume is nearly identical to the 14.5mm.
As for why, a mixture of relative expense and russian predilection for maximizing the basic firepower/armor/speed triangle above all other considerations. The 2A42 is cheaper and lighter (35% less than Bushmaster II) than notional western equivalents, which shows in areas like it's infamous inaccuracy but also allowed it to be more easily/practically installed on small vehicles.

>>64083968 (OP)
>reality has shown us that real combat doesn't care for textbook theory
What "reality" is this?
The WW1-style Ukraine meatgrinder?

Turdie war mentality doesn't apply to most NATO nations, turdie-anon

>>64084345
I think that people misunderstand often times why things happen or don't happen in the Ukraine war. You have to remember that whilst both Ukraine and Russia like showing off their better trained and equipped units the reality is that the level of training, unit cohesion, equipment, doctrine and so on is fragmented beyond measure. A friend of mine fought in Ukraine for a while and acted as an instructor and it was wild how there was little to no uniformity or commonality for anything between units or even individual soldiers and some of the better SF units were supposedly genuinely very, very good but then you had territorial defense units commanded by ex-Soviet officers with alcohol issues that stole everything not bolted down. Both for Ukraine and Russia there is an internal conflict for resources between units and if you want that new shipment of stingers or whatever your commanding officer better have some political pull or maybe the retards next trench over get them instead and they might get the entire shipment even if they can't shoot that many missiles in six months.

>>64084345
Anon we are just as guilty of say, driving humvees into battles they have no place being by doctrine. Nor is this a new phenomenon, see the field-armored Willys jeeps. By their own initiative or in compliance with retarded orders, anything you give grunts may be used as a weapon; it follows that they should be given ones as effective as possible by design.

>>64084397
>anything you give grunts may be used as a weapon; it follows that they should be given ones as effective as possible by design
That path leads to "every grunt should drive a tank" hell

>>64083968 (OP)
Only poorfags(germs and bongs) do this.
>Poland
30mm Rosomak
>France
25mm VBCI
>USA
30mm Stryker Dragoon
>Italy
25mm Freccia

>>64084545
>Britain
Warrior 30mm
>Germany
Puma 30mm
Marder 20mm

>>64084541
>Common soldiers shouldn't have breech-loading rifles, they'll waste a campaign's worth of cartridges in just an hour's battle!
>Troops must be able to march 20mi to battle from the railhead on the feet god gave them, trucks are a sissies expense.
Anti-mechanization arguments are a problem for the national economy and/or the finance ministry to solve. If the nation seeking military might can afford to give every grunt a personal tank, it should.

>>64084755
Anon, we're 80 years past the time when generals thought more tanks than infantry was a good thing

>>64084790
>"When I joined the corps we had two sticks and a rock for the whole platoon. And we had to share the rock!"
You conflate mass and capabilities, I'm not suggesting we replace the role of nimble, versatile combatants. If it were possible to provide every infantryman a personal tank to do infantryman things with, the APC/IFV debate that OP invokes would be redundant. As it stands the best even America or China can deliver is to have a half-dozen of them share a tank.
What is very possible nowadays (thanks to lighter, cheaper electronic automation) is giving every APC a cannon, so that it can pretend to have armor like the IFV it will inevitably be used as, via greater suppression without any tradeoffs aside from marginal expense. That is why all the non-poorfag militaries are doing so.

>>64084863
>If it were possible to provide every infantryman a personal tank to do infantryman things with
>what is powered armour
>what are exosuits
Mobile Infantry!

>>64083968 (OP)
Autocannon has significant firepower that has its cost in crew, room and maintenance, and there is a lot more infantry needs to be mechanized. I can't really classify anything that reduce dismount from full 10-9 man squad to 6-7 or add gunner to the crew as apcs. What soviet apc has autocannon without cutting into the dismount?
HMG may seem to be the lowest scale for vehicle but its pretty high bar for infantry when it comes to suppressing and chewing through sandbag defense. The larger the caliber the less ammo per box which is the apc firepower bottle neck. One would spend more time loading than unloading the gun. And VC busy doing that can't be on the look out of things and make decisions.
VC do need better gunshield and copula tho while still have good audio and visual connection to the outside.
The point of apc is not just to reduce walking, but keeping gear and supply accessible without weighing infantry down. This triples infantry fire power, allowing them to wear more armor and move fast without reservation.

>>64084863
>What is very possible nowadays (thanks to lighter, cheaper electronic automation) is giving every APC a cannon, so that it can pretend to have armor like the IFV it will inevitably be used as, via greater suppression without any tradeoffs aside from marginal expense
Except it's not, because anti-missile and anti-electronic defence was and is already overloading existing IFV platforms, even before we got to the drone fiasco of the past 2 years. Miniaturisation of defensive capabilities has not been able to keep up with miniaturisation of threat capabilities.

So that's the real problem. It doesn't matter whether it's armed with a 50 cal or 20mm. The problem is how to give it a weapon that can kill drones as well.

>>64084712
>wheeled apc

>>64084017
Because an APC is not an IFV, and if it was we'd be using IFVs instead of APCs.

>>64085000
>apc
Every vehicle you posted above is an IFV thoughever

>>64084932
They're going to 30mm (or more) not 20mm particularly because it's the right size for programmable airbursts, doesn't matter if the target is in a trench or above the trees. Drones haven't done shit to anything inside Flakpanzer Gepard coverage and that's a 40 year old platform - even my automatic lawnmower has radar now.

>>64083968 (OP)
Because if we put a 20mm on one it would be an IFV.

>>64085088
They went to 30mm to defeat modern IFV armour which can fairly quickly be made 20mm-proof. For pure antivehicle work, 30mm is alright thus far. Hence why weapons such as the Bushmaster II. 30mm also is pretty good for killing infantry, but this is secondary to the above because infantry dies well enough to lower calibres too.

Then we hit the problem of 40mm. Tests showed that for any kind of antidrone or antiair work, generally bigger is better. You can stuff more HE frag in, which exponentially increases lethality against such targets. It's just a function of pi, simple as. Unfortunately as the bongs and frogs discovered, a 40mm gun and decent magazine is really hard to squeeze into an IFV, at the same time that the battlefield suddenly demanded vast amounts of electronics and their support systems.

>Drones haven't done shit to anything inside Flakpanzer Gepard
Perhaps, but the dispersed nature of combat and the way drones can hug the ground so closely means that each IFV needs to have organic antidrone defence, it should not rely on e.g. a dedicated AA vehicle to defend the platoon or company. Besides, if the enemy dedicates a PGM or artillery strike to killing just one Flakpanzer, suddenly you've rendered the entire platoon or company useless, for want of a single vehicle.

>>64084906
Half-squad or fireteam sized APCs are equally valid. The classic BTR-80a/82 upgrade didn't reduce dismounts nor do modern RWS installs. A properly designed belt feed holds plenty of ammo and requires minimal crew intervention to resupply once expended. The USMC are trying to standardize picrel the same way they disguised new rifles as M249 replacements.

>>64084906
We're seeing bolt-on unmanned autocannon turrets coming into the market. This might solve the problem you mentioned.

>>64085129
Perhaps, but the dispersed nature of combat and the way drones can hug the ground so closely means that each IFV needs to have organic antidrone defence, it should not rely on e.g. a dedicated AA vehicle to defend the platoon or company. Besides, if the enemy dedicates a PGM or artillery strike to killing just one Flakpanzer, suddenly you've rendered the entire platoon or company useless, for want of a single vehicle.
Which completely missed the point: putting 30mm "anti-everything" on APCs, like >>64085161, no longer demands a specialty vehicle and formation.

>>64084036
Chinks are a cargo cult.>>64084036

>>64085129
>Perhaps, but the dispersed nature of combat and the way drones can hug the ground so closely means that each IFV needs to have organic antidrone defence, it should not rely on e.g. a dedicated AA vehicle to defend the platoon or company. Besides, if the enemy dedicates a PGM or artillery strike to killing just one Flakpanzer, suddenly you've rendered the entire platoon or company useless, for want of a single vehicle.
Which completely missed the point: putting 30mm "anti-everything" on APCs, like >>64085161, no longer demands a specialty vehicle and formation.

>>64085161
>Half-squad or fireteam sized APCs
Very costly, especially logistics-wise, but also because you now need twice the number of fire control systems

One possible economy method is to have one 30mm cannon between two fireteam sized APCs. The second APC might carry a different weapon or simply ammo. But then you're still having to buy two vehicles to do the job of one.

>>64085188
>putting 30mm "anti-everything" on APCs
Will eat up payload

Anon above is basically suggesting usijg two vehicles in place of one, in order to accommodate the same number of discounts.

There's no free lunch. You can't just demand an upgrade an APC's gun, already designed not to waste much, already making compromises to not carry other systems, and not have something give somewhere.
That's the real question: what are you willing to trade off for that 30mm?

>>64085209
>discounts
*dismounts
Fucking autocorrect

>>64085209
Having two or three general-purpose vehicles per squad is a net gain to combat capability, not a detriment. The russians might even be onto something with the disposable dirtbikes (as supplemental mobility for your squad AT/MG gunner teams, not desperate replacement for armor. The Taliban got a ton of mileage that way).
>Logistics, no free lunch
The only thing more expensive than fighting a war is losing one.

>>64083968 (OP)
>Why design armored transport vehicle to maximize internal volume?
/k/indergarten

>>64085264
>The Taliban
Esteem each life much cheaper
That said, the bongs got into the dirtbike/ AFV game too, because they were suited to the terrain in Afghanistan

>cost is no object in war
Realistically, no
In many ways, popular "war support" can be quantified by how much budget the people are willing to vote to the military
You can argue that theoretically support should be 100% and therefore the budget should be 100% or as near as (which is actually about 50% of GDP, pretty much totalenkrieg tier; half the population is building guns and the other half is feeding them.)
Practically however, that is not the case.

>>64084545
German Boxers get to use 30mm too

>>64084905
Correct. The optimal shape for navigating any human environment is naturally a man-sized biped, and as long as people are willing to fight each other for access to resources they will do so in spite of that form's myriad weaknesses to more specialized war machines.

>>64085309
They use them in the "Schwere Kompanie", 12 Boxers armed with 30mm cannons for each Jäger battalion.

>>64085161
Its only valid if you intend to carry a team that small on their own. Something like a stick of scouts or manpad team. A squad leader can only take care of his fire teams and one vehicle, adding one more big bulky thing that can't turn in place isn't going to help, the two will constantly block each others way and sight in tight space. The firepower mounted on vehicle is all held up on funneled ground where infantry can peak and hit then retreat while vehicles can only react and can not follow into the building. Any attack approach from vehicle favored terrain will have tanks and fire support vehicle that deliver the bulk of the fire power.
The infantry of next generation would go beyond mechanization into robotization where uav and ugv will occupy the bustle rack of todays army transport. Anything a soldier now has in his bag, the ammunition, the gun and launchers, will get its own pair of eyes, legs and wings or be accessible by them. Maybe by then a fire team the size of a squad will be manned by half as much and still double the fire power with leashed robots. And the weapons squad in a rifle platoon will be a full fledged drone tender.

>>64083979
Those are not APCs but IFVs.

>>64084102
14.5 is absolutely not autocannon caliber. Have you ever read about the concept?

>>64084249
>>64084254
I'm pretty sure the "sniper section" is less the sniper section and more the weapons company in a battalion.

Most mounts that can take a .50 will take a GMG as well. A 40mm grenade launcher is just as good if not better than a small auto cannon in most situations.

>>64084345
Explain Bradleys taking out more tanks than Abrams in the Gulf War then, insecure nerd anon

>>64087017
the sniper section is in the weapons unit that has other shit but the snipers are the ones in that unit getting the 20mm autocannon not the AT team

>>64087025
ATGMs kill tanks and 25mm kills t50s

>>64087173
>t50s
Whats that?

>>64087181
T-54/55 I'm trying to settle a baby and I'm sleep deprived

>>64086271
No, it's quite standard to have one APC per fireteam in light formations now. Coordination is a bit of a chore but nothing the team leaders aren't prepared to handle.

>>64085094
>>64084932
>>64084906
>>64087011
KPVs are a perfectly legitimate choice if you are on the fence about HMGs or ACs , especially in high elevation powered mounts.

>14.5mm isn't a AC!
No it isn't but it does alot of the same things light ACs do and against targets like cardboard Soviet light armor, soft targets and people is arguably better due to greater ammo capacity. It does just as well against those things as 20mm, especially if you have two of them.

Many 14.5mm mounts are also usable as basic AA and most ACs are not.

>>64087025
>Bradleys taking out more tanks than Abrams in the Gulf War
Easy: didn't happen

>>64087415
There are lightweight 20mm mounts that work better for nearly the same mass, which is why NATO doesn't bother with 14.5mm. Besides, as said above, the problem is wanting a weapon to kill drones with.

>>64084017
Doesn't the use of the autocannon make it an IFV?

>>64083968 (OP)
Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, what do you think happens to the occupants of a thin-skinned vehicle laden with 30mm ammo when it gets penned

apc?
you mean the
Shoota proof
Shithead mov'a?

>>64087836
Depends dramatically on whose.
On a JLTV the ammo is stored outside the crew compartment and shock+heat insensitive to approximately 250c thanks to TATB-bonded filler and propellant with rigid QC.
A BTR-82 loaded with A-IX-2 and single-base powder will likely turret toss if subjected to high-energy fragmentation. Aluminized RDX nominally detonates just above 200c but is prone to micro-ignition events at lower kinetic/thermal inputs if the crystal shape+size aren't carefully controlled, leading to premature detonation.

>>64083979
Kys warriortard Bradley is perfect as it is

>>64083968 (OP)
Because if it had more it would no longer be an APC but an IFV

As the caliber increases, the variety of ammunition increases, but it is not easy to switch between different ammunition types as needed.

>>64084932
>So that's the real problem. It doesn't matter whether it's armed with a 50 cal or 20mm. The problem is how to give it a weapon that can kill drones as well.
That's what the new generation of 25mm and 30mm turrets are capable of.

AESA radar + IR tracker and smart ammunition = dead drones.

>>64083968 (OP)
For the same reason that humvees don't. The APC isn't supposed to engage in a serious fight, IFVs are. APCs are supposed to drop troops and supplies off in hairier locations and survive the occassional rain of shrapnel or a surprise lmg burst.