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Armour Weathering

Great walk around. Excellent shots of wear and tear for a modern combat vehicle. I would love to see the same from a Bradley IFV perspective.

I have been around active duty, home station vehicles quite a bit the last 15 years or so. There are many reasons for chipping even on CARC vehicles, but mostly it is because of the hard training these guys do on a regular basis. What is shown here is pretty typical. Frontline units are supposed to quality twice a year at gunnery. There is plenty of lead up training just for that. Then there are the other training exercises like Field Training Exercises where they go up against OPFOR, then there are Combined Arms Live Fire Exercises where they get all tactical and work with other types of units like engineers, artillery, and helos. Then there are the visits (with their own tanks) to places like the National Training Center. The bottom line is that these vehicles are rode hard and put up wet. Lots of bent and scratched fenders and the like too. As an anecdote, 1-64AR, 3rd ID returned home from a Europe deployment last year and due to the rain at Ft Stewart over those months, more than one tank was partially flooded from poor seals in the hatches. Moderate (not light) rust was evident on just about every AFV from sitting there for months without any use, so all of those little chips that were there before turned into rust. I was there for their first gunnery after that deployment and they looked pretty rough. And USMC tanks are another matter too. Lots of rust, scratches, etc. Just about every tank at Camp Lejeune has its right front fender paint worn to the bare metal from the crew dismounting. Lots of scratches on the skirts in both Army and USMC tanks. Nobody cares about them either. Depending on the depth of them, these result in rust too. Crews just laugh when I mention that modelers would get questioned for chipping and rusting on their tanks. Until a repaint happens nobody cares about minor chipping and rusting. To me, another point of interest for us modelers is that there are many bolts that are bare metal. Pretty much everywhere. I'd post a few examples of my own, but I'm not up to speed yet on losing my Photobucket account.

Not knowing anything about the M1, what is the gray-ish devise on the top of the gun muzzle? Is that for simulated firing, or something else? And is it supposed to be gray, and why not the vehicle color?

Muzzle Reference Sensor (MRS) Basically it lines up the muzzle/gun with the gunners sights. So whatever he is aiming at will be exactly where the gun is pointing. The one in that pic is CARC green, not gray.

A lot of people assume the crew is lax because of the chips and rust. CARC paint is not available to the crews so there can be no paint touch ups until the next repaint. You can straighten bent metal but there is no paint available.

This is the tank that I fell in love with just because of its wear. It was to me so worn and it just drew me in. It is the one that I am trying to mimic right now with a current build. I love the multi color wear on the wheels. As you have the brown and green camo covered by tan fighting with rust.

Upside-down skull/crossbones? Are they in need of assistance?

Bradley was in a much better condition. A few chipped bolt heads here and there, thats it. But the tracks were really worn down.

I was an active duty tanker from 1977 to 1981. We never did touch up painting. Its a tank it gets dirty, paint chips, some areas rust. They live outside, the turret usually gets tarped to keep water out that's it. If you loosen or tighten a bolt the paint comes off the bolt will rust, Drop a wrench on the back deck paint chips. Replace a fender, parts do not come camouflaged and they stay that way until the entire tank is repainted. Now some COs get bugs up their butts and pretty tanks are important to them so they may get painted more often but I do not believe that's the norm. Now CARC paint makes crew level painting very difficult if not nearly impossible. On a crew level it can only be brushed or rolled. It has to be thinned with de-ionized water at specific ratios. We had some for Our tank restoration and chose not to use it for health and difficulty issues. Tom

Yep. Drove, loaded, gunned and TC'd from 06' to 12'. Tanks break ALL the damned time, shit is ALWAYS worn. If a broken or worn part doesn't deadline a vehicle, it most likely will take FOREVER to get fixed. Broken tanks get scavenged for parts all the time. A platoon of 4 tanks can easily turn into one working tank that gets hot seated as necessary. Paint? It's an afterthought. Worn bolts or rust? Fucks given = 0.