Yes totally that why I put it in. I actually had been on the short list to be the receiving inspection supervisor at the GDLS factory that manufactures that turret and had to withdraw, biggest misstate of my life, delayed me getting into defence by five years and ironically I ended up working with the man who would have been my boss and was to have interviewed me a few years later. I can't say if it would have got me the job but I got on very well with him and he was an ex RAN FAA Tracker maintainer and I know my FAA types aircraft, ships and history
. Spent hours talking about armour, aviation and the RAN over the time working together.
Another bloke there had been an engineer on the selected AS3/4 .50cal turret and told me the issues with that. I haven't heard anything about those issues in service so they either fixed the problem or haven't fired enough rounds to cause the failure mode identified
. Worked with the senior structural engineer form the project at another place and heard all about the delamination as well as the cracking issue with the current hulls. Apparently the add on armour is great the issue was the poor condition of the original hulls (fixed at great expense) and the drive train (a current neighbour who has driven them say they are still crap.
I used to drive the original A1 pre-mod when in uniform (not taking an offer to go reg is another big regret) and all they needed was a better engine (plus upgraded transfer case, trans and diff to cope), protection and track. Keep the weight down and the original suspension would have been fine. An RCS and external tanks would have fixed this volume issues and the support versions wouldn't have had vegies in the back so there was plenty of space anyway. My list was simply a list of MOTS options to fill a variety of roles that a zero timed fleet could have filled. We started with, from memory over a thousand of them and ended up with 4-500 over a decade later with the reserve stripped of all vehicles, not a good result.