That’s just Swedish problem solving in general
this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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It's definitely a design of its time. The primary concern was "halt a Soviet armored column from bowling through to Stockholm" so I'd assume they would have been primarily used defensively on major roadways, where the lack of a turret is less of a problem. And in that same vein, eliminating the traditional turret brings the unit cost down quite a bit, so a smaller economy could build more of them and theoretically mount a more competent defense.
It supposedly held its own in trials and exercises with other MBTs of the era, and had a marked advantage when defending fixed positions. But it came from an era when effective gun stabilization wasn't really a thing yet (meaning that having to stop to aim wasn't that much of a disadvantage) and the primary threat to tanks was expected to be other tanks (meaning it's light but insanely sloped upper armor would be effective against projectiles on a flat trajectory, rather than a massive liability against top-attack missiles and other modern threats like drones). An excellent outside-the-box design for its era, but not at all suited to the modern battlefield.
Additionally, tanks in casematte design have a lower silhouette and thus are harder to spot and provide a smaller target.
The tank that goes faster backwards than forwards, the popular of its time joke about the French? That's this tank. The Swedes did it.
It also has some sort of shovel in the front, so it can dig in behind a small ridge, showing only a thin slice of its extremely angled top armor. Wait for the enemy tank column to get in the narrow target window, shoot them, then immediately drive away backwards at 60 km/h.
Also: it aims with adjustable suspension, because the gun is rigidly mounted to the hull
Just put 360 different guns in a circle around the tank so it doesn't need to turn a turret but still has 360 degrees it can shoot.
Yeah, then fire them all at once!
Even better: rotate the tank and always fire the one pointing towards the enemy. The tank is about 4m wide, so it'd have to drive about 12 metres to rotate once. It can go 60 km/h or about 30 m/s forwards and backwards. So if it puts each track in full speed but opposing direction it should take about 3 seconds to rotate once, firing every 0.01 seconds to empty all its 360 barrels when rotating once, being on par with a gatling gun.
Don't ask about accuracy though.