Just want some comments on this thing...

This was sort of a spur of the moment build, had an old Tamiya and Academy Abrams gathering dust, so i had some fun with them. I combined the Tamiya hull with the academy turret. I call it an M1A4 EWV *Energy Weapon variant*

Any critiques would be appreciated.

Interesting, very interesting.....I'm curious as to what the backstory is.....Has it been painted? Cool idea! Thanks for your time.



P.S. It would be kinda cool to see a Sgt. Bilko Hovertank!

Um..Backstory..

Ok..here goes, the cut and dry version.

The Army had a few Abrams tanks lying around that they didnt know what to do with. Being of the M1A1 variety, R and D wanted to test out some new weapon systems for land warfare, specifically Urban fighting. They took a few M1's and retrofitted them with energy weapons. The main gun is a particle beam cannon *or anything your imagination desires* and is of the short barrel variety for ease of use in city scapes and the like. All roof mounted machine guns have been removed and replaced with a completely autonomous point defense energy weapon. Its usefull for shooting down enemy missiles as well as attacking marauding infantry.
In place of the CITV is a 360 ' holographic imaging camera use for spotting nearby heat sources and available targets. Since the tank is based on energy weapons, the tank carries no ammunition save for energy packs and high output batteries. The area in back of the turret that used to house the tanks ammunition has been taken over by a shielding system. If the tank detects an incoming round that the vehicle cant defeat...the shield goes up 5 seconds before weapon impact. The emitter is the dome on the back of the tank.

Basically...thats the general idea. After hearing reports of our M1's getting knocked out by RPG's and IED's...ideas in my mind started swirling. It might be nice to hear if the army was really working on stuff like this to protect our soldiers. But as i said before...this was just a little diversion, and i had fun doing it.

My next challenge is camoflageing this tank. Im thinking an urban scheme. Black , grey and light grey...maybe in T- bar or Digital pattern. Or maybe box patterns.

Thank you for looking and thanks for the replies.

That's sweet! i like the concept. I've thought that a railgun variant would be cool too.

So hows this starting to look?

Kinds looks like it should be able to fly too.
Ready for the paint shop yet?

well I have the basic camouflage down, im not sure if i should put another grey cloud pattern on it or not. but it is basically set for some weathering. Mt favorite weathering technique is the one i learned in the Osprey book...how to paint Soviet Heavy tanks (JS-2, JS-3) where you use a sponge and stipple the finish. That may look good on this tank. Well see how it turns out.

I absolutely love the cocept of this tank! Looks just as if it might have happend in a few years My only thought on camo would be: more rectangles!

Cheers
Grzegorz

the first photo looked like a "TRON" prototype !

Nice creative idea!

You should enter this in "Twilight 2006: Secrets and Monsters" campaign along with the story.

Pretty interesting I guess I retired to early. :-)

I have a concept tank in the works as well based on the old Emar MKVI.
sort of Warhammer type tank.

TC

the IS workign on a similar concept its called TUSK'

http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=6985


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1A2_Abrams < ----- go to the bottom part