Cost of 21st Century Tank Engine/Powerplant ?

[Racer]

Quick one :

Mercenary Type Game/Campaign and the Diesel Engine from a Tank similar to a Challenger 2 has been removed while it was in storage . Players are trying to find and get a replacement fitted . Costs and Tech requirements seem to vary wildly in real life , depending on sources .
This Tank is based on a Challenger 2 , but other in game versions have Turbine Power Plants . It's possible to retrofit a Turbine apparently , but they are reluctant to ask of costs and difficulties etc . It's lighter than the actual RL Challenger and secondary weaponry is different , but that's not part of the situation .

I've seen upto $2,000,000 Dollars US for a current Models Abram's Turbine , and yet only £200,000 to £380,000 quotes according to British Military guys for current/recent models of Challenger 2's Perkins Diesel Engine (ever one asked gives different figures) .

Both players & GM want to try and resolve this in as realistic way as possible . They have two APCs , a IFV and a variety of Light ATVs and OR Trucks , but need more firepower for a series of missions .

Any help is very welcome on this .

[Anthony]

Your core problem is that these aren't off the shelf parts, they're specific to the vehicle, and because weapon sales are used as political bargaining chips, whether you can buy it at all, and how much it will cost, may not be strongly correlated with how much it costs to the provider. The turbine used in the M1 is somewhat notoriously expensive, however.

Also, 'no engine but otherwise in fine operating conditions' is not likely; removing the engine is more in the category of "this vehicle is designated spare parts" than preparation for storage, so probably closer to a hollowed-out husk of armor than a useful vehicle.

[Witchking]

My first thought is...

Is this vehicle still being produced? Is the engine still in production?

If the answer to one of these questions is no (worse if 2 no's) then the PCs are basically on a procurement scavenger hunt...

Merchant, Scrounging, Area Knowledge, the list of skills that could apply to finding a functional tank engine if one is not officially in the military are quite long.

I am hoping one of the PCs has a bit of luck or they have a good bit of lead time.

Good Luck to the Party and GM both...

[The Colonel]

Also, bear in mind that if you replace the powerpack with anything but the original (or an identical specced substitute), you'll also need to replace the transmission or you'll have a very short lived tank.

The only good news being that military powerpacks and transmissions generally lift out as single units with far less dismantling than a civilian equivalent - they are meant to be swapped out.

Well done on the engine theft plot BTW - a lot of people don't even consider that, but apparently it's been a major factor in certain people's attempts to mobilise their large cold war stockpiles...

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Racer

I've seen up to $2,000,000 Dollars US for a current Models Abram's Turbine, and yet only £200,000 to £380,000 quotes according to British Military guys for current/recent models of Challenger 2's Perkins Diesel Engine (ever one asked gives different figures).

$1-2M for the Abrahams' turbine and £200-400,000 for the Challenger 2's diesel looks perfectly plausible for the present day. Neither engine is in mass production as of now; both would have been cheaper while they were.

Tank engines are specialised for tanks, having been designed to fit into minimum space, and to run on a wider variety of fuels. If the characters can't get the right engine for the vehicle they have, improvisations with other large diesel engines will be possible, but the penalties will be steep:

• Unless they are extraordinarily lucky, an engine that will fit in the space available will be much less powerful, 600HP at most, maybe as little as 200HP. That will make the tank much slower, and less capable of climbing slopes.
• Unless they are extraordinarily lucky, again, separately, they're going to need a serious engineering workshop to adapt a different engine to the transmission. A workshop for heavy earthmoving equipment would substitute for a tank workshop, but the job would take longer.
• It will only run on proper diesel fuel, but that's a minor problem.

The low power is the biggest problem. There's a simple number that tells you a lot about tank performance, which is horsepower per ton. 20HP/ton is the magic number, at which a tank becomes lively and highly mobile. A few tanks serve as an example:

M1 Abrahams: 23.8
T-90A: 21.5
T-72: 18.8
T-90: 18.2
Challenger 2: 16
Panther: 13.8
Centurion: 13
Tiger: 11.5
Chieftain: 11.1

A Challenger 2 with a substitute 400HP engine would be down at 5.33, really slow, and easy to bog down.

Tracking down the engine that was removed from the tank seems like a good idea. People who work with that kind of equipment are reluctant to scrap it while it still works, so it may be in a different storage location. If it was in a tank that was killed. it's worth checking how long ago and how much damage the engine took.

[Varyon]

If you're seeing a range in pricing, might as well make it a dice roll. $1-2 million would be something like $800k + 1dx$200k, £200k-400k would be something like £160k+1dx£40k. You can adjust the number of dice if you want a non-linear distribution, just change the multiplier as well - 2dx$100k or 4dx$50k, for example, or 2dx£20k or 4dx£10k.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Tracking down the engine that was removed from the tank seems like a good idea. People who work with that kind of equipment are reluctant to scrap it while it still works, so it may be in a different storage location. If it was in a tank that was killed. it's worth checking how long ago and how much damage the engine took.

Sadly the usual reason to strip the engine from a mothballed tank is to stick it in another, active, tank. Might be possible to find a dead engine dumped in the same depot and fix it with substitute/replica parts?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Sadly the usual reason to strip the engine from a mothballed tank is to stick it in another, active, tank. Might be possible to find a dead engine dumped in the same depot and fix it with substitute/replica parts?

Or more likely, several engines from which you can bodge together one working one. Hopefully it's not a model of engine that has a particular weakness, resulting in 90% of dead engines having the same broken component(s).

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Or more likely, several engines from which you can bodge together one working one. Hopefully it's not a model of engine that has a particular weakness, resulting in 90% of dead engines having the same broken component(s).

Well, that ups the odds that they've got spares of the component that always breaks sitting around. The other problem is that, once someone has decided that a given tank is spare parts, there are lots of other components that might be useful to strip and put on a different tank, some of which are pretty hard to replace, such as electronics.

[hal]

Thoughts that went through my mind at the onset of this thread were:

What year is this?
Where is this taking place?
What tank system are we discussing?
Why was the tank sidelined?
What happened to the depot?

Take for example, the recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan, entire weapon systems were left for any to procure. Pre positioned supplies for possible use in war that may or may not start in the future may have been stockpiled in case of war. Maritime replenishment supplies could have been in progress before the "hostilities" were concluded.

Then the possibility arises where an engine plant was pulled due to near red-lined status, and rather than take the time to perform diagnostics, the power plant was down graded, swapped out, and the plant left in storage awaiting further investigation.

Then there is another potential issue: every quarter master is required to track material losses and supplies on hand. Many are listed as expended due to war use. Some get misplaced and the hapless individual has to account for the item. Once a new quarter master signs off on an inventory as being complete and accurate, any faults of the outgoing quarter master are now officially his. So, is it possible one could lose track of a rebuilt engine at a depot? It would take a series of unlikely events to occur, but the friction of war time maintenance is odder than you can imagine.

Now add to that mix, A foreign nation receiving coveted war materials aid, without a First world style economy to handle these fighting systems. The local military mechanics red line a functional engine because it is easier to do that than dig in and resolve the issue. Where would the pulled engine be stored awaiting a closer inspection?

Since we don't know the particulars from the original poster, we can only speculate.