Terrex - watsup?
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On the Light Tank sticky thread, I wondered out loud what is happening with the Terrex... Does anyone know?
Is the Terrex any good?
Has SAF decided to adopt it? They have displayed it at some shows.
What is its intended role in SAF (if any)?
What are the variants?
Any good links to pictures or information?
Thanks... -
I think Terrex is going nowhere.
It is oversized and makes a nice target - large & under armored and carries lots of troopers who will be fried when it gets hit. -
What exactly are you talking about?Originally posted by glock:I think Terrex is going nowhere.
It is oversized and makes a nice target - large & under armored and carries lots of troopers who will be fried when it gets hit.
It is supposed to be a replacement for some of our older wheeled units, is it in any way deficent to them? Or is its lack of deployment due to some other SAF reasons given the Turks use it pretty well.
Compared to other units like the Stryker, is it really flawed or are you just shooting off some rather baseless words?
Let's see how it can be useful: peacekeeping/riot control/operations other then war/rapid deployment and what have you not.
Basically when you find it hard to get a Bionix there but need the Bionix job to be done, something like the Terrex is your next best choice. -
its for export..
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Maybe can be used for riot control? Or an unmanned vehicle...
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I don' think this is the correct assessment of the Terrex's role. It is not a stand-in for a track vehicle like the Bionix.Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:Basically when you find it hard to get a Bionix there but need the Bionix job to be done, something like the Terrex is your next best choice.
But is it true the Turks have bought it already?
Cos I was already speculating that the Terrex may find a more ready export market than the Bionix due to the new shift towards wheels.
The Bionix - while a great vehicle - comes at a time when most armed forces of the world are not looking for another tracked APC/IFV. -
I wasn't saying the Terrex was a stand-in for the Bionix- simply that it's mobility features make it suitable for plenty of applications where it would be a better fit then a tracked unit. Granted they are really apples and oranges.
The Turks use their own version of the Terrex, which they call the the Yavuz. To be more exact, we co-developed a version of the Terrex for their use. -
The terrex would be suitable as a light armored troop carrier for low risk / intensity mission. Its definitely not easy to throw a wheel than it is to throw a track. And its definitely easier to replace a wheel than to replace a track.
Bearing in mind of LOW INTENSITY, which means, it just runs around, and should not run into firefights, its a great armored vehicle with a rather lesser logistic support required. -
Should it carry a sign that says "don't shoot" ?Originally posted by Shotgun:Bearing in mind of LOW INTENSITY, which means, it just runs around, and should not run into firefights, ... -
Would you prefer to ride around in L.I.C. areas in a 5-tonner or a rover instead? I wouldn't mind something that is fast, but yet can stand up to some small arms fire and is resistant to mines.Originally posted by moca:Should it carry a sign that says "don't shoot" ?
It would certianly be very useful in the scout role, and it's ability to swim right off the bat is a pretty useful feature as well.
BTW, they do have an armour upgrade for the 5-tonner, allowing it to give some protection to the occupants in the back. -
Let's not forget that different vehicles serve different purposes. IFVs (tracked or wheeled) were never meant to sit around & take a clobbering. They are less well armoured than MBTS but they are also faster & in the case of wheeled IFVS, even transportable by C130. All depends on what you need them for.
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Well, wheeled vehicles are suitable for low intensity conflicts where the enemy doesn't trot around huge anti-tank ammunitions like the RPG-27 or the Kornets which will surely leave a big hole in the Terrex or even the Striker which the US uses.
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The Terrex is probably suited only to transport troops in a low risk environment. The armored 5 ton truck would do a more cost effective job for this role.
It is just too big a target and worse still can probably standup to small arms fire. It will fry from a RPG hit. -
I really don't get you Glock, are you here to consider the discussion and make sensible statements or just shoot of a loosely-constructed piece of argument that tries in vain to support your starting position in the thread?Originally posted by glock:The Terrex is probably suited only to transport troops in a low risk environment. The armored 5 ton truck would do a more cost effective job for this role.
It is just too big a target and worse still can probably standup to small arms fire. It will fry from a RPG hit.
Is the anti-Terrax run your next pitch after an highly unsucessful SAR-21 campaign? I am starting to see several unfortunate lines of logic in your posts that have mostly failed in the SAR-21 discussion and I am afraid will fail here as well.
How is the Terrax any different from other similar wheeled AFVs? Using one thread of argument you so often like to use: If the wheeled APC/AFV is really so useless and 5-tonners are so much more cost effective... why is that virtually every army in the world sees it fit to field some kind of unit of this type?
Or are you saying that the Terrex is just unique in being a stinker without condemming or dismissing just above every other wheeled AFV design out there?
Would you to be in the armoured 5 tonner over a mine? Can the armoured 5 tonner give you fire support to your troops from mounted AGLs, autocannons and what have you not? Can your 5 tonner swim? If you suddenly need to deploy mobile units to a faraway location do you fill up your C130s full of armoured 5 tonners?
Might as well use a spoon to dig a firetrench, more cost effective as well. -
Armoring up a 5tonne truck isnt as simple as hanging shower curtains. And still the level of protection it can afford to the crew is still different from a terrex.
Also, its also easier to disable a 4 wheeled 5 tonner than a 8 wheeled terrex.
Finally, the roles for the terrex can still be expanded. Maybe into recce vehicles etc. Wanna mount a gimpy also easier.
A tonner is, in the end, just a tonner. A troop/cargo transport. -
Like others have said, don't be an idiot. The Terrex is an AFV and not a mere troop transport. It can mount heavy guns which the tonner obviously cannot without compromising its protection.Originally posted by glock:The Terrex is probably suited only to transport troops in a low risk environment. The armored 5 ton truck would do a more cost effective job for this role.
It is just too big a target and worse still can probably standup to small arms fire. It will fry from a RPG hit. -
On the contrary, I think I succeded in getting the forum to generally agree that the ideal SAR 21 needs to be lighter, have a P rail, not have a LAD, not have a Kevlar cheek piece etc. Unfortunately I was outstation for a couple of weeks and did not pick up where I left off in the SAR 21 thread. If the SAR 21 is so good, other armed forces wud have already purchased it by the thousands - the fact remains that no one else likes the SAR 21 - for the moment that is - until it is improved.
Ditto for the Terrex.But maybe worse than SAR 21 as SAF is also not ( as far as I know ) interested in it, let alone other armed forces.
Do you guys work in STK ? I thought some genuine feedback wud encourage a more positive rethink on the SAR21 & Terrex & not such an emotional response. Do you want to make better weapons for the SAF ? -
Look all your comments about the Terrex are bordering on a lack of common sense of a degree which I have no idea where it comes from. Too big? Surely you have seen how big the Terrex's contemporaries, which are even larger or similar sized? Wheeled vehicles are more for policing and operating behind the lines instead of the frontline. Tonners, armoured or not are useless for the job as they cannot do policing and stuff. By your own token of reasoning, the US army shouldn't even have a Bradley since its "too large too what not.."Originally posted by glock:On the contrary, I think I succeded in getting the forum to generally agree that the ideal SAR 21 needs to be lighter, have a P rail, not have a LAD, not have a Kevlar cheek piece etc. Unfortunately I was outstation for a couple of weeks and did not pick up where I left off in the SAR 21 thread. If the SAR 21 is so good, other armed forces wud have already purchased it by the thousands - the fact remains that no one else likes the SAR 21 - for the moment that is - until it is improved.
Ditto for the Terrex.But maybe worse than SAR 21 as SAF is also not ( as far as I know ) interested in it, let alone other armed forces.
Do you guys work in STK ? I thought some genuine feedback wud encourage a more positive rethink on the SAR21 & Terrex & not such an emotional response. Do you want to make better weapons for the SAF ?
The Terrex at the moment is being marketed jointly to the Turkish army together with Otokar, which is the Turkish manufacturer for quite a bit of Turkish military stuff. Not much is known beyond that. As for the SAR 21, the market for rifles is simply overly saturated and at the moment, the Germans are pretty popular. -
Personally, I haven't heard of any news that SAF Armor would acquire the Terrex for whatever purpose.
What I think would be a good application for the Terrex would be the AD role for Field Defense Squadrons, similar to how the V200s are used. Perhaps even as battlefield ambulances with a nice red cross marked on it.
Of course I hope to see ST come up with better vehicles for local useage, but I'm also realistic with my expectations (not that my expectations mean anything lar. ) of them.
I definitely do not hope that the Terrex becomes a front line AFV, cos I always believe that wheeled vehicles are unsuitable for frontline tasks, esp assault. But as a second echelon vehicle, with capability for expansion, i think its not bad on a whole. We may not use it ourselves, but its sure worth exporting. =D -
On the contrary, I think I succeded in getting the forum to generally agree that the ideal SAR 21 needs to be lighter, have a P rail, not have a LAD, not have a Kevlar cheek piece etc. Unfortunately I was outstation for a couple of weeks and did not pick up where I left off in the SAR 21 thread. If the SAR 21 is so good, other armed forces wud have already purchased it by the thousands
What are you talking about? I suggest you reread the SAR-21 thread.
If anything, the your arguments against the LAD revolved mainly around your ignorance of the very thing and drawing up rather nonsensical points about it or riding common misconceptions about it to the death, playing more on emotion then logic and assuming that our average SAF soldier has an intelligence somewhere between a banana and cow. At the same time you consistently skirted the answers that were given to your questions, and it seems to me that your position is more one of stubborn denial then actual
The people who actually know and use the weapon quite conclusively proved that there is a reason behind most of the quirks of the SAR-21... and many of the so called flaws turned out mostly to be certain people deciding to view it with an extreme bias, some who never even held the weapon more then 20 minutes to begin with.
And what "improvements" are you talking about? The SAR-21 has ALREADY been developed in those variants that are your so-called "improvements"... long before you even bothered to dream them up. If you haven't realized if it seemed that anybody "agreed" with you on the "improvements" it was actually because they are actually pointing out the rather obvious that one had taken the effort to read up a bit before splitting hairs on LADs and stuff.
AFAIK, your main grouse should be with the SAF, not the weapon in itself.- the fact remains that no one else likes the SAR 21 - for the moment that is - until it is improved.
Lots of people use Windows even though Mac is often far superior.
Some other guy already answered this question on the oversaturated small arms market. Objectively, if one looks at it the Ultimax and SAR-21 are accepted by reviewers to be among the best of their class, but at the end of the day market forces play a large part as well. Are the finest weapons systems the most widespread?... as far as I checked... no.
And what's up with your constant judging-a-thing-by-how-many-other-armies-use-it anyway? Have you bothered to look at the underlying logic instead of shooting off another one of your "everyone else" posts?
This your "improvements" to make it "sell better" have already been long implemented before you could even dream them up.
So what exactly is your point in here? Except to raise rather useless and irrelevant objections that have no bearing on the very topic at all? Should you be surprised that given your recent comments on the Terrax you should meet with such hostile reaction?
Maybe it would do good to actually READ UP and come up with proper questions or points before posting. It would save everybody A LOT of time. -
Woah... chill out ppl. Its a friday... get a cold one. =D
I agree the Sar-21 is a lil tad bit heavy compared to other modern assault rifles. But its already accepted that the SAR-21 is a good design. There will never be a ONE gun suits all weapon, at least not in the near future.
The weight issue is only a small compared to the improved accuracy and quicker target acquisition it allows. I would have more confidence with a Singapore nsf infantryman to take down a target under 100m than one with an M-16.
The Terrex is by far not a complete system on its own. I see it as a basis for a wide variety of systems and non-front line roles. Give me a Terrex, some imagination and maybe a magic wand, I'd turn it into a remote land-based Vertical Launch vehicle for the Aster15 or other AD missile. -
I think Terrex has many potential rather than just as a unmanned vehicle or as a ambulance.
I believe if ST shrinks the Terrex a bit and convert it into a 4x4 vehicle. We can get something like the Hummer or VBL, an armoured car. Bcos now most units fits ATGM on their LSV or Mercedes jeep. This is a little risky for the operators as they are working in an environmet that expose them to shrapnel or debris. Thus we can mount the SPIKE on it and use remote control to fire as we can now use battlefield sensors to help troops aim further.
The new Terrex can also act as a armoured amphibious recce vehicle as our terrain has many small rivers.
The vehicle can also be used to mount rails for heavier UAV like skyblade4 or even mount smaller calibre rockets to conduct surprised attacks on enemy.
Lastly, we can form something like a light cavalry unit which can act as recon element for our division or to do flanking attacks -
I really really don't feel that wheely AFVs should take on frontline or such flanking roles. These are jobs for tracks. There ARE terrain restrictions even for 8 wheelers. And you don't want to have a flanking/coastal hook force getting bogged by terrain, esp if mobility is important.
And thats one thing. Logistic support for all the spare tyres, and dealing with the shredded tyres is another thing. Yes, these wheelies have very durable tyres, can withstand hits, auto inflate etc , yes yes yes. But I don't think any decent commander would send their wheelies out without shredded tyres attached. They'd change them at first opportunity. And then what do you have... LST carrying more tyres than other more impt supplies.
Mountain of wheels... no. hahaha -
Tyra is really worked up on SAR21.
The thread for SAR21 was about the world's best rifles.
The SAR 21 is better in several features compared to M16 that we used before. Sure, the 1.5 X optical sight is an improvement over the M16 iron sight - any optical sight will be better anyway. I can hit targets at 200 and 300 m more often than with M16. Aslo, in the limited scenarios when the SAR 21 LAD can be used, it is of course very handy. But one cannot compare it with the full features of a AN /PEQ 2 which makes it heavier than the SAR 21 LAD.
There have been many posts agreeing that the SAR 21 is indeed heavy. This is something all infantrymen appreciate. If STK can lighten the current "std" issue SAR21 by removing features which do not really give a
We are all of course aware that lighter & less bulky versions of the SAR 21 already exist. I am saying that these shud be the standard issue rather than the current " std " SAR21s issued to NSmen so that SAR 21 can one day be one of the worlds best rifles.
Whether you like it or not the key criteria that must count in being one of the best is how many are used & how popular or sought after it is. -
Weather you like it or not, whatever you may say, if you fail to subject it to common sense and logic you will certainly fail to convince anybody.
The only thing that annoys me is that you fail to see logic repeatedly.
It seems that there are certain "key citeria" that you only seem to consider and forget about everything else.
This is not to mention that a lot of the "comments" about the SAR-21 being "heavy" come more from a riding of the weight issue to the death by some people when by all measures this sentiment has been proven quite conclusively to as irrational as the misgivings biplane pilots, being used the open cockpits and forgiving handling of their previous mounts, towards monoplane fighters.
Taking ALL the facts into account. This is clear:
The weight issue was not surprisingly not mentioned by those who were trained on the SAR-21 from the start. A lot of the noise comes from those who had to convert from the M-16... when by any measure the two weapons are very different. ALSO, as one person pointed out not too long back: the SAR-21 is actually LIGHTER then the current generation M-16 that it is supposed to match up to and replace.
So how is it heavy? It is you trying to make something that is white in black. So if 100 people say the weapon is heavy out of ignorance we have to follow the weight (no pun intended) of ignorance and say it so? One common illness in some armchair generals here seem to be locallymademustsuckitis, where they find each and every reason to pick that the weapons locally made (Ultimax, SAR-21, Bionix) have to be outright failures when other nations see them as very promising weapons systems. This extend often to the irrational picking out of faults, as if the entire utility of the weapon and "greatness" of it depended on whatever tiny fault we can find with it.
And your call for the removal of those supposed "features" on the SAR-21 seems to stem from your ignorance of the subject matter then those features actually having no use. You didn't know how to use the LAD and hence saw it as unnecessary weight... I think those how have been trained to use it WILL beg to differ.
After that, it seems you start splitting hair over barrel lengths, kevlar plates and what have you not in your need to "improve" a weapon that you don't seem to even know squat about. Is it no surprise some people who actually USED the weapon more then you will start to disagree and point out the blatant flaws in your logic?
And it seems that unless the SAR-21 was in service with every army in the world then you would consider it a "good" weapon. Which is once again plainly ridiculus given the oversaturated arms market. Also you make several critical errors in assuming that the ideal weapon for Singapore somehow has to have whatever is the most popular in the world. Wherever did you get that idea except from a person who knows nothing about the subject but the notion that "so many people can't be wrong."?
Really, please READ UP before you go around trying to bend objective truth to your own subjective reality with your rather laughable posts. Need we bring up your "critique" of the Terrax?
As mythbusters might say, "I reject your reality and subsititute it with mine."
Hence I must say, the sentiments about the "flaws" of the SAR-21 often turn out to be MYTH BUSTED.There have been many posts agreeing that the SAR 21 is indeed heavy. This is something all infantrymen appreciate. If STK can lighten the current "std" issue SAR21 by removing features which do not really give a
This is yet another example of you not being able to understand even your own arguments, spinning words in some vain attempt to support your point.
We are all of course aware that lighter & less bulky versions of the SAR 21 already exist. I am saying that these shud be the standard issue rather than the current " std " SAR21s issued to NSmen so that SAR 21 can one day be one of the worlds best rifles.
You contradict yourself. If your "superior" version already exists, then it follows that it is already by your logic... a "one of the worlds best rifles".
Hence, what's with all your empty talk about one day? All your "improvements" have already been done, and as I said before if it is issued is an issue of the SAF and not STK or the design of the weapon.
If you have so agreed that the technical hurdles have been overcome, and in fact the very physical nature of the weapon makes it in your own eyes "one of the worlds best", you have all but destroyed your own position that "it is not yet the best." Indeed your critique should be with the SAF and not STK or the SAR-21. And if your critique isn't even based on an issue with the weapon, on what grounds do you declare it "not one of the world's best?"
If I made the world's best weapon but because of things beyond my control most people do not get to use it... does it change the sheer fact that it exists that I have physically the world's best weapon?
So I am afraid you are not making any more sense then you started out with, like it or not. What's next, you are going to critique the Abrams and Leopard 2 for not being as widespread as the T-55 and hence they are not the "worlds best" and would only "be one day the best if they were issued in armies like the T-55"?
Please stop dodging, shifting the goalposts and face up to logic and common sense