Never heard of this tank before? well no worries it's pretty obscure, yet I got 2 in the parcel from Matt and although the tank is not that common I guess Oronegro must have made some. I am not thinking up a story. hmm...
 |
| The Chieftain has cleared the way! Now the Strv 103's can play! |
Usually when an order for a foreign tanks construction arrives at the desk of the national arms manufacturing minister he will see a name like "The United States of America", "The United Kingdom" or "The Federal Republic of Germany" in the box containing the name of the country which placed the order... But when the name "The Kingdom of Sweden" filled the box back in 1970 (a year before Sweden ended its own production of the tank) he thought there must have been a mistake.
 |
| called wedges by Oronegrean soldiers these tanks are not to be confused with anti-tank guns, they can do so much more than that. |
Yet there was no mistake, with the country, only the number requested was wrong... two extra 0's on the end took the total to be build from 50 to 5000! the error was to say the very least huge, fortunately the mistake was seen by by then 309 were already being built and another 141 had been built! Sweden took the 50 it originally wanted but that left Oronegro with 500 tanks it needed to sell off. Sweden took 100 as spares another 100 were sold off to anonymous customers (usually western nations like the US who wanted to see its capabilities) and Oronegro was left with 300. These were then upgraded to have new composite armour, inferior to that of the Abrams or Challengers but still good, their guns were changed and eventually they all found their place in the Oronegrean army as tank destroyers, defensive tanks and "bunker busters". in Oronegrean service they were called the Wedges because of their shape. their official designation remained the Strv 103
 |
| there is the 2 "wedges" one has a cover at the back of the gun... mostly for decorative reasons but also to hide the area as if that area is damaged it can ruin the guns aim. |
There you go guys another tank class down... happily these guys are 1/72 so no scale problems this time! the next 2 tanks are 1/76 so have their own class. And as always have a nice day/night.
I like it, a definite low silhouette tank hunter look to it.
ReplyDeleteI agree, certainly looks deadly, almost like something out of a sci-fi film.
DeleteSweden stands for cool design :)
ReplyDeleteGood work!
it sure does... all these tanks can be bought from IKEA in flat pack form. another great thing Sweden gave to us.
DeleteAlways liked this one. Still I think a turret is useful, haha
ReplyDeleteit is... the reason for this design though is that the turret is usually the part of the tank that gets targeted... so to reduce the chance of a hit they removed the turret.
DeleteVery much a weapon designed for the Swedish battlefield. The Swedish manufacturers were always interested in marketing the vehicle internationally, but appear to have got few, if any, takers. So if Oronegro put in a reasonably substantial order, Sweden would have fallen over itself to supply said AFVs, along with spares, training personnel and such after sales services that would encourage a repeat custom down the track.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of a turret and fixed gun was partly compensated for by the ability to aim the whole vehicle. It has to be said, though, that this is a long range defensive weapon. It is not hard to imagine how problematical would be its chances of survival in a short range battle.
But from a war gamer's point of view, that's part of the fun.
Oronegro is where work is off-shored... sure it takes quite a few of the tanks produced but it is a place where arms companies and nations can offshore their arms manufacturing.
DeleteOronegro gives Royalties to ANY nation/company that has weapons produced in Oronegro which Oronegro then sells, placing orders costs nothing so is may not be profitable to produce stuff in Oronegro but it can still be cheap.