Monday, July 31, 2017

NAMER with New Remote Turret

NAMER 
IFV VARIANT

NAMER IFV with Remote Turret

Namer is the Heavy Armored Personnel Carrier (H-APC) of the Israel Defense Forces based on the chassis of the Merkava 4 MBT. Namer H-APC has a crew of 12 including driver, commander, gunner and 9 dismounts. The vehicle is heavily armored against ballistic and mine/IED threats. The combat weight of NAMER is 62 tons! So that's why it is called a Heavy APC..

NAMER Heavy APC
So far, we have seen Namers armed with only 12.7mm or 40mm grenade launcher armed Remote Weapon Stations (RWS). It's been tested with Rafael and Elbit's 30mm remote weapon stations before, however the in service vehicles are only armed with 12.7mm RWS's.

However, Israel Defense website (http://www.israeldefense.co.il)  has published an article that shows the Namer armed with a new remote turret. The turret does not look like the existing products of Rafael or Elbit. The turret seems quite large.


In the article, it is stated that the turret is unmanned and armed with a 30mm automatic cannon. 

As far as I can see from the video, the turret is fully armored. There two sighting systems, one on the LHS of the main gun, probably gunner's and the other on top of the turret on RHS of the main gun being most probably the commander's sighting system. The commander's sight system seems to have independent traverse, indicating hunter-killer capability.




The main gun seems to be a 30mm Orbital ATK Mk44. From the video I was unable to see exactly  if there is  a secondary machine gun; however I highly suspect there should be one.

There are multiple access hatched on the top, sides and back of the turret. 




The turret has active protection system installed. On the front and rear sides, it seems the Rafael Trophy Active Protection System radars are located and on the top of the side protrusions on each side, Trophy launchers and blast shields are located.



The article states the turret will also be installed on the new Eitan 8x8 armored vehicle.