FA.90 Liopard
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The FA.90 Leopard (Glasic: Feithicil Armúrtha 90 Liopard) is a main battle tank (MBT) designed and manufactured by Byrne Heavy Industries (BHI) as a replacement for the FA.79 Leon and FA.83 Tíogar. It entered service with the Glasic Army in 1990. It itself has recently begun to be supplemented with the FA.15 Pantar.
Development
By the 1970s it had become apparent that the the FA.60 would not be sufficient in the face of newer armour being developed in Casaterra and Hemithea. Up until this point the FA.60 could be relied on to deal with most threats and indeed had been upgraded to remain competitive. After a lengthy development phase the FA.79 entered service, based on the Anglian Chieftain the FA.79 was primarily intended as a stop-gap before a clean-sheet design could enter service. This took much longer than anticipated and resulted in another stopgap tank being procured, the FA.83 which essentially was an export variant of the Challenger.
With the adoption of the Tíogar the Glasic defence procurement agency was still looking to the future with an eye on replacing the FA.79 with an entirely clean sheet design, as a result multiple mockups and prototypes for replacement vehicles were produced between 1978 and 1983. Some were based on the FA.79 with complete with the wedge shaped glacis whilst others featured a three-part glacis.
Major contract work was undertaken by Timoney Automotive, Timoney Technology and Brennan Brown alongside the Defence Research and Technology Exploitation Institute (RTEI). After the desired vehicle layout was decided upon a further series of prototypes were constructed, all completed between 1980 and 1981. A second series of prototypes were constructed in 1986/87 incorporating improvements for issues identified during troop trials. These were the first in the series to be equipped with a 120mm gun, the first prototypes being fitted with the 105mm L62 of the preceding FA.79. This new gun which was derived from an Eisenmatian weapon provided significant growth potential over the 105mm gun. The second and third series of trials between 1986 and 1988 further refined the vehicle's design with low rate initial production beginning in 1989. A second round of troop trials prior to mass-production rectified several small issues brought up by during the trials which were incorporated into the final production design. Mass production commenced in 1990 and continues to the present day.
Design
The design of the Liopard superficially resembles that of the Eisenmatian Leopard 2 with its angular turret and general shape but the similarities end there. The Liopard has a highly sloped front hull, angled at some 82 degrees on the upper glacis and 60 degrees on the lower slope greatly increasing the relative thickness of the vehicle's armour without the substantial increase in weight otherwise dictated by the required protection level. The driver, partly as a result of the highly sloped armour is seated in a supine position between two self-sealing fuel tanks which, serve the additional role of adding further armour protection through their construction. The upper hull sides lack any sort of slope but contain further armoured fuel cells for a total of 1,150 litres inclusive of the bow tanks.
The Liopard initially Hennessy featured a licence-built MB 873 V12 manufactured in Tír Glas by Timoney Automotive, whilst this was an acceptable arrangement the Glasic army wished for a fully removable power-pack to improve accessibility and maintenance time. This resulted in the introduction of a power-pack arranged around the MB 873 for existing vehicles and smaller but more powerful MB 883 for new-construction. More recently both power-packs have been supplanted by the introduction of the MB 893, again smaller and more powerful than the outgoing designs, this in turn has freed up valuable hull volume for other items such as ammunition, fuel or air-conditioning.
The Liopard is steered by a pair of joysticks, one to either side of the driver, these are connected to electrically-actuated brake discs which are in turn connected to a 10 speed hydrostatic transmission. Between the drivers legs are the accelerator and brake peddles in the usual positions. The driver's seat can recline fully allowing for the driver to egress the vehicle through the turret in the event that their hatch is unusable.
The Liopard utilises Horstman hydro-pneumatic suspension on all of its road wheels which allow for adjustable ride height in addition to smoothing out bumps and dips in terrain whilst on the move.