Panzer Valens

The Panzer Valens is a designed by Austrasian state arsenal RKW and produced by REST Bodensysteme in service with the Austrasian Reichswehr.

History
The Panzer Valens is considered the brainchild of Brigadier Ramirus Sieger, an influential late Inspector-General of the Armoured Troops, who lobbied heavily for a new generation of heavy armored fighting vehicles in the late 1970s and 1980s. Under his guidance the members of the Panzerkreis developed a draft operational and technical requirements that were subsequently accepted with modification by the Austrasian General Staff and assigned the Project name Valens - Valiant. The requirements reflected Sieger's belief that the next step for armoured fighting vehicles would be an evolutionary one, there was continuity between the needs of armoured forces at the turn of the 21st century and the principles which had developed since the Grand Campaigns, but that substantial advances in technology had made it possible to create a machine that was dramatically more effective on the battlefield than its predecessors.

Design Characteristics
The configuration of the Valens is conservative: a four-man crew with the commander and gunner located in the turret, the main armament fed by an autoloader and a rear-sited engine and transmission. The most radical feature of its basic construction is its low profile turret, by placing the main armament flush with the turret and providing space for the breach to rise into when the gun is depressed with a rising flap the total height of the turret is substantially reduced with a commensurate saving in the necessary area of the heavy armor of the turret face and sides.

Construction
The Valens was built with a high level of modularity in its major components, in particular, its armour which in contrast to traditional AFV designs is not integral to the structure. It was recognized from the outset that the characteristics of contemporary special armour packages had made it practical to realize a modular design for a heavy AFV, the superstructure of the vehicle could be constructed separately from its armour packages and the two mated only during final assembly. This promised both tactical benefits, major repairs to the armor could be made in a much shorter time, and logistic benefits; major sub-components of the tank including the hull and turret could be produced and stockpiled separately and interchanged or swapped as required opening the possibility that functioning tanks could be re-assembled out of the components of multiple damaged vehicles or that fatigue life could be extended indefinitely by the piecemeal replacement of the entire vehicle.

As a spin-off, the Valens development REST Bodensysteme partnered with robotics specialist Talos Technik to build a highly automated welding facility for assembly of heavy AFV chassis. This venture was ultimately delayed by more than a decade but bore fruit with the christening of a state-of-the-art factory at Rhein.