Sergeant York Tank – Several companies responded to the request with proposed systems, with the Army ultimately narrowing it down to two entrants- one developed by Ford Aerospace and one by General Dynamics, with both companies given $79 million to develop prototypes.
I think it was scrapped far too soon. They should have reworked it until it was EXCLUSIVELY targeting latrines, then gave it some sort of pseudo-armor covering that made it look like a large poop emoji and set it on it’s merry way.
Sergeant York Tank
The sheer terror that a large automated poop emoji that ruthlessly destroys any and all latrines it happens across could be incredibly valuable in the area of psychological warfare. The M247 Sergeant York has cast hull and welded turret.
Usage In Battles
Its armored hull provides protection against small caliber armor-piercing projectiles, however Turret protection is only against small arms fire and artillery shell splinters. Vehicle is fitted with NBC protection system. To minimize production time and cost, the Army specified that the basis of the newly developed system had to be mounted atop an M48 Patton tank chassis (something the Army had in great surplus).
Further, the system had to more or less use off the shelf parts, rather than anything being developed from scratch. On top of all this, the M247’s turret also could not turn fast enough to track fast-moving targets and the hydraulics leaked in even marginally cold weather.
Not a problem, of course, given it’s always balmy in the regions that were once the former Soviet Union… (In truth, even if it was balmy, it turns out the tracking system also struggled in high ambient temperatures and had trouble dealing with vibrations
, such as generated continuously when the M247 moved over the ground.) One of the TAM’s highlights is its primary cannon armament. Equipped with an Argentinian FMK.4 Modelo 1L, derivative of the British 105 mm L7 cannon, sporting a wide selection of highly effective ammunition choices ranging from fin-stabilised sub-caliber rounds over HESH and HEAT, the TAM is perfectly suited for engaging a
multitude of targets even at longer ranges. Apart from the main cannon, TAM drivers will also have two 7.62mm machine guns – one mounted coaxially and one on top of the turret to serve as an anti-aircraft deterrent.
I worked on Divad system from start to finish. I designed the optical gun sight. Every thing I read in all these articles is as we call it today. Fake news. Plain and simple. Ford was losing est.
1 million per unit. The Reagan administration needed to show the public that it was reducing military spending. So Ford basically raised there hand. The system was accurate and deadly. Ford originally chose the 40mm for its range and availability of a prox round.
All the BS the press puts out there is nonsense. The TAM is a tank which was jointly developed by Argentinian and German engineers in the 1970s. It was intended to replace the outdated WW2 tanks in service with the Argentinian army at the time.
Tankers can look forward to the addition of the TAM to the German ground forces tree with the release of update 1.81! What a strange comment. There are hundreds of reports, articles, photographs, etc. about the Bofors 40mm gun system used on the Sergeant York.
There is no 60mm anti-aircraft gun that has ever been produced. I’ll be generous and presume this comment was a “senior moment”. In any event, around the same time of the debacle that was the 1984 tests, the Soviet Union were deploying longer range anti-tank missiles that were capable of being fired outside of the then current range the M247 could effectively counter the attacks, even if
the system did aim properly. Sorry Ray, it was all 40mm I happened to design the gunsights. Worked this program start to finish. Believe me the News was just as fake back then as it is now.
The guy who wrote this article Just posting False News from the 80s The short truth, Reagan administration needed propaganda it was reducing spending. Ford was losing 1 million per copy. Performance was never an issue.
The M247 Sergeant York is based on the M48A5 Patton medium tank chassis. It is powered by the Continental AVDS-1790-2D diesel engine, developing 750 horsepower. It is worth mentioning that the M247 had a maximum road speed of only 48
km/h and it could not keep pace with the M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley vehicles, it was designed to protect. Eventually it was replaced by the M1097 Avenger and the M6 Linebacker short-range air defense systems.
The M247 Sergeant York is an American SPAA, developed in the late 1970s as a much needed replacement to the outdated M42 Duster and M163 VADS. Although its development was far from smooth (or successful), the M247 brought with it several modern design choices to the American SPAA concept.
Eager to receive a second chance at fulfilling his historical role, the Sarge has set out to join the top tier battles of War Thunder with the upcoming update 1.81! In the aftermath, a Ford Aerospace executive claimed the “glitch” had been caused by the M247 being washed before the demonstration, damaging the targeting system.
This explanation did not sit well with military brass or the many journalists present, one of whom, Gregg Easterbrook, mused that perhaps Ford Aerospace did not realize that it rained in Europe where the M247 was to be deployed.
The Sergeant York is fitted with the Westinghouse AN/APG-68 search and track radar. It is a modified fire control radar of the F-16 fighter aircraft. The M247 radar has a tracking range of 40 km. The Sergeant York is
Also fitted with a laser rangefinder and digital fire control system. As an example of some of the issues here, in 1982 Ford was set to demonstrate the M247 to a gathered crowd of VIPs and military brass.
However, the moment the M247’s tracking system was turned on, it immediately targeted the stands the gathered people were sitting in, resulting in complete chaos as those present trampled one another to get out of the way.
![New]The Tamiya 1/35 U.s. Army Vs. Empty Tank York - Be Forward Store](https://image-cdn.beforward.jp/autoparts/original/202103/51427747/i-img1200x900-1614525073msluym185131.jpg "Sergeant York Tank 3")
Of course, the M247 required the operator to tell it to fire, so there was no real danger here, but one can imagine staring down a pair of 40mm cannons in a live demo would be a tad frightening.
The M247 “Sergeant York” was designed in the late 1970’s as a purpose-built SPAAG. It was designed to fight alongside the M1 Abrams and M2/M3 Bradley, in order to provide cover against aircraft. There were other SPAA vehicles in service at the time;
These were the M163 Vulcan and the MIM-72/M48 Chaparral. The former being a 20 mm rotary cannon mounted on an armored personnel carrier, and the latter being a heavily modified armored personnel carrier chassis with a surface-to-air missile launcher.
Neither of those two vehicles were designed as SPAA’s, and so, did not have the necessary performance to be adequate at their job. The M247 was designed as a replacement for both of the previous vehicles.
I remember when I was stationed at Scott AFB, IL getting a message from the DIVAD program office offering to send complete fire units to any unit willing to pay for shipping. Couldn’t get my boss to go for it, though.
This particular weapon was developed by the defunct off-shoot of Ford known as Ford Aerospace in response to a contract put out by the U.S Army in 1977 requesting what they referred to as an: “Advanced Radar-directed Gun Air Defense System”.
This was later re-dubbed, “Division Air Defense” which was itself shortened to DIVAD in official documentation. The tests did not go well. When the system utterly failed to hit any realistically flown drones, they resorted to having them fly in a straight line.
After further failures to actually hit a target, the drones were made to hold still and equipped with radar reflectors… (Rather ironic for a weapon named after a famed WWI soldier known for his incredibly sharpshooting ability.)
As you might have guessed, this decision was controversial, not just because the General Dynamics prototype outperformed Ford’s by a considerable margin, but because, unlike every other entrant, the M247 used more costly 40MM shells instead of 35MM ones which were extensively used by NATO.
at the time. Rumor had it that Ford stood to make more money from the use of 40MM rounds due to a business deal they had with the manufacturer. However, it should also be noted that the Army may have had good reason to favor the 40MM given its larger size and a newly developed 40mm round that had a proximity sensing fuse built in.
The M247 is fitted with fully-stabilized twin 40 mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns. These guns have improved rate of fire. Vehicle can fire accurately on the move. The M247 fires HE and HE-FRAG rounds against air targets and AP rounds against armored vehicles.
A total of 580 rounds are carried. Reloading takes less than 15 minutes. This belt is the best at taking out enemy aircraft because the proximity fuze rounds make it so that a direct hit on an aircraft is not needed, the shells must only pass near the aircraft to damage it.
This belt also includes armour-piercing rounds so that if a ground target is spotted it can be engaged when necessary. The AP rounds have enough penetration (94 mm maximum) to go through the fronts of many light tanks and SPAA vehicles, as well as the sides of most other vehicles including main battle tanks (MBTs).
The only class of vehicles that cannot be penetrated in a majority of cases is the heavy tank class, which should be avoided as much as possible. We are pleased to share with you some new ground force vehicles planned for the upcoming War Thunder major update 1.81: The Argentinian-built TAM light tank in the German tech tree, and the American rapid fire high-caliber SPAA M247 Sergeant York.
The M247 Sergeant York DIVAD (Division Air Defense gun) was born of the Army’s need for a replacement for the aging M163 20mm Vulcan A/A gun and M48 Chaparral missile systems. With the Soviet Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter being fitted with the longer range AT-6 SPIRAL Anti-tank missiles and twin barreled 23mm cannon, and the Mi-28 Havoc nearing deployment, the M163 and M48 systems would be out-classed in a
future conflict. In addition, the Soviet’s ZSU-23/4 SHILKA Quad 23mm A/A gun combined a radar with a proven gun fitted to an existing chassis resulting in a highly successful and lethal design. How was this targeting system so bad, given that it was developed using off the shelf parts that were shown to be reliable already?
Mainly because the radar was one designed for the F-16 fighter jet. (In fact, it worked very well in the open air.) However, despite the efforts of the Ford and Army engineers, the random objects on the ground continually wreaked havoc on the radar’s ability to track low flying aerial targets like pop-up attacking.
helicopters. It also had significant problems tracking high flying targets because when the turrets were raised up they got in the way of the radar… (*queue Yakety Sax*) (As to that cost, while it’s widely reported today that the project cost close to $7 billion (about $18 billion today), in fact that number includes about three decades of anti-aircraft weapon development leading up to and including the actual figure of about
$1.8 billion (about $4.8 billion today) spent on the development of the M247s.) The “Argentinian FMK.4 Modelo 1L” is no derivative from the British L7. Its a further development of Rheinmetall’s Rh-105-30 105 mm (Yes i know, in former times a british L7).
And I hope for you GJ that the TAM has no APDS. It was supposed to shoot only HESH, HEAT and apfsds ( M735A1). Source: de Mazarrasa, Javier (1996). La Familia Acorazada TAM. In a nutshell, the Army wanted a drivable anti-aircraft system that was to serve alongside their newly developed M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley tanks in battle.
The contract was put out in direct response to a battle tactic known as “pop-up” which essentially involved helicopters harassing tanks from a distance by hiding behind cover and then popping up briefly to let loose a volley of anti-tank missiles (which themselves
were a newly developed technology) before hiding once again. Despite all these problems to units being delivered, the Army continued to pump money into the project, mostly because there wasn’t a backup option and there was a very pressing need for such a weapon.
However, rumors of the Army faking positive results for the M247 via putting it in unrealistically favorable conditions (such as hovering the drones and attaching radar reflectors), including Oregon state representative Dennis Smith going so far as to publicly accuse them of this, ultimately led
to something of an inquiry on the matter. Specifically, in 1984, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger decided to oversee a set of amazingly expensive tests costing $54 million ($144 million today) to better determine what this weapon could and could not do.
Other problems with the M247’s targeting system include its seeming inability to tell the difference between helicopters and trees and its penchant for locking onto random other ground based objects as threats. The most infamous example of this was that time an M247 ignored a passing drone it was supposed to be targeting and instead locked onto a nearby latrine exhaust fan, marking it as a low priority, slow-moving target.
Another major problem, as previously mentioned, was that the M247’s top speed was not sufficient to keep up with the M1 and M2’s cruising speed, meaning it literally could not drive fast enough to travel with the things it was specifically designed to protect.
You might at this point be thinking that one’s on the Army because they’re the ones that made Ford use the M48 Patton tank as the base, and that’s not an entirely unfair thought. However, it should be noted that the M48 was previously capable of keeping up here, but Ford added about 17 tons to the original 45 in their modifications of the turret, making the tank much slower than it had previously been.
The U.S. Army found that the tactic was almost impossible to counter with the ground based weapons it had available at the time as their leading anti-aircraft weapons system, the M163 Vulcan, only had a range of 1.2 KM (3/4 of a mile),
while newly developed anti-tank missiles, such as the 9K114 Shturm used by the Soviets, could hit from a range almost five times greater than that. To add insult to injury, the Soviets had no problem countering the pop-up attack method thanks to their ZSU-23-4 Shilka, which is essentially what the United States wanted to copy.
The M247’s turret is installed on the hull of an M48 medium tank, because of this they have roughly similar mobility. The M247 is about 3 tons heavier than the M48A1 (49.3 tons vs. 46.4 tons), and has a slightly weaker engine, which translates into a slightly more sluggish machine compared to the M48A1.
The M48A1 has a max engine power of 810 hp, while the M247’s engine power is 750 hp. For a vehicle this heavy, it has fairly good mobility. When spaded, it can comfortably hit a top speed of 45 km/h on flat terrain, while in cross-country you will have a top speed of around 25 km/h.
While going backwards, the top speed is somewhat less impressive: about -9 km/h. Over a period of three decades four successive generations of upgraded forward area air defense systems — from Mauler to Roland to Sgt.
York to ADATS — were all canceled, at a total cost of more than $6.7 billion.
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Emma Nehls is a military writer and historian with a passion for exploring the intricacies of warfare and the human experience within the military. With extensive knowledge and a deep understanding of military strategy, tactics, and historical contexts, Nehls brings a unique perspective to his writings.
