At this time, the 30-ton medium tank and 15-ton light tank developed by the Dragon Soul Ordnance Consortium for Germany have also reached a very critical node. Moreover, they also had two loud names, the 30-ton medium tank was named the Tiger tank, and the 15-ton light tank was named the Leopard tank.

Tanks of various countries have their own characteristics, some emphasize strategic mobility, others emphasize protection and firepower, and so on. Between the three major properties of the tank's firepower, mobility and protection capability, the three major performances and the full combat weight, life cycle and cost are all contradictory.

In order to improve the firepower of the tank, it is required to install a larger caliber gun, a more complete and complex fire control system and sighting equipment, and more ammunition of larger size, all of which require an increase in the volume of the fighting compartment, which will increase the total combat weight and external dimensions of the tank, and reduce the mobility and protection ability. Improving protection requires smaller dimensions, especially height, so that the armor can be thicker. The design of the tank vehicle is to ensure the realization of technical and tactical performance, and to balance the three major performances. And how to balance these three properties is determined by the military thinking and design concepts of various countries.

During World War II, the Soviet Union not only designed tanks with excellent performance such as the T34, but also accumulated a lot of tank combat experience, and thus developed a large-depth attack strategy based on ground armored assault. This tactic is simply to destroy the enemy's entire defense system by tearing through the enemy's strong defensive line at the front line, and then through this breakthrough, throwing a large number of high-speed and mobile armored forces into the enemy's deep and deep attacks.

In order to adapt to far-reaching, deep, high-speed assaults, it is required that the tank must have a good large road journey, road adaptability, and low logistical burden, and in general, it needs to have high strategic mobility. This is the main reason why Soviet tanks strictly controlled their weight and volume. Soviet tanks were always lighter in weight compared to Western contemporaneous tanks. That's because the Soviet T-series tanks required a large travel and had to adapt to most road conditions, and there was often a lack of sufficient logistical supplies behind enemy lines, so it was necessary to reduce the logistical burden.

And in order to engage enemy tanks and tear through the enemy's frontal defense, the Soviets attached great importance to tank firepower. with frontal armor. In order to maintain superiority in firepower, we can see that the guns of Soviet tanks tended to have a caliber 5-10 mm larger than Western tank guns of the same period.

Compared with the West, Soviet tank designers pay more attention to the good bomb-proof shape of the tank, and the Soviet Union can obtain the perfect bullet-proof shape of the cast armor for a long time, and the cast armor is made of armor cast steel, which is cheap to produce in large quantities and can be manufactured quickly in large quantities. Cast armor can be evenly transitioned to different thicknesses and ideal angles of inclination, as well as a streamlined outer surface that can cause ricochets, but because the internal structure of the cast steel is not dense enough, there are columnar crystals. segregation, porosity and other defects, so generally speaking, the ballistic performance of cast armor is 10% lower than that of rolled steel armor, so Western tank designers prefer rolled steel armor.

The Tiger and Leopard tanks, both in mobility, firepower and protection, far surpassed the tanks of various countries in the early thirties. Take the Italian CV33 and the Soviet T26, for example, the Tiger and Leopard tanks just stopped on the ground and let them attack. Italy's CV33 and the Soviet T26 couldn't help them.

And in turn, the Tiger and Leopard tanks only needed one shot to take out the Italian CV33 and the Soviet T26.

For the Dragon Soul Ordnance Complex. Whether it is the development of tank guns or armor, it is a pediatric. For example, the development of composite armor for the Tiger tank and the Leopard tank is progressing very smoothly. It uses the type of steel armor with an intermediate filling composite material. This led to the rise of composite armor more than 30 years earlier, because its bullet resistance was much greater than that of three layers of steel armor of the same weight.

The Dragon Soul Ordnance Consortium took over most of the development projects for the Tiger and Leopard tanks, and only a small part of the insignificant part was left to other companies. In contrast, the development progress of the Dragon Soul Ordnance Complex is much faster than that of several other companies. So at this time. The Dragon Soul Ordnance Complex did not sit back and wait, Xiao Weiguo decided to take out some of the technical personnel and invest heavily in the development of projects contracted by other companies, because in his plan, these two tanks were not only developed for Germany. Rather, it is to be introduced to the world arms market. Of course, that would need to be reinvented and exported in the name of Sweden.

And at this time, the Swedish government also said that it needed the Dragon Soul Ordnance Complex to provide the Swedish army with a batch of medium tanks and light tanks. Anderson, the scheming Swedish defense minister, has keenly smelled the smell of gunsmoke, and he judged that it would not be long before Europe would rekindle the flames of war.

Hitler had already begun to prepare for war, and the Leopard and Tiger tanks developed for him by Dragon Soul Ordnance were very obvious signals. Italy, Britain and France, among others, have stepped up the construction of military equipment, and Sweden, although a country in northern Europe, is not prepared to participate in the war. But everyone knows that sometimes it's not like you don't want to join and don't join, what if someone else wants to invade you?

Therefore, while developing tanks for Germany, the Dragon Soul Ordnance Complex is also designing and developing modifications of Leopard tanks and Tiger tanks. Of course, all the systems of the modified tank were developed by the Dragon Soul Ordnance Complex.

The Spanish battlefield provided a testing ground for weapons as well as a tactical testing ground for all countries. The design of the tank, the tactics of coordination between infantry and tanks, is one of them.

For example, Britain has always attached importance to tank protection, and Britain's idea of tank development before World War II was to divide tanks into cruiser tanks and infantry tanks according to their uses, with cruiser tanks used for anti-tank operations and infantry tanks used to accompany infantry attacks.

But the facts of the war have proved that tanks should not accommodate the speed of infantry, and infantry should also have high mobility to fight with tanks! For tank warfare, Britain has always held the idea of tank warfare, and all designs are designed to attach importance to the use of tanks in battle, of course, this is also related to Britain's national and military conditions, because Britain has always been a maritime power, with the convenience of projecting troops!

The Army, on the other hand, is lean, small, and professional. The army is not very large, either in terms of personnel or equipment. Therefore, more attention needs to be paid to the survivability of soldiers and the flexibility to carry out their tasks. The British believe that protection is the source of morale. According to this operational idea of tank warfare, their order of tanks is firepower-protection-mobility.

Spurred on by the Tiger and Leopard tanks, countries have begun to design and develop the next generation of main battle tanks, and an arms race has begun. (To be continued.) )