Dear Mr. Nilsen, I would like to compliment you on your article "What if?..." in the May-June 1994 issue of Armor magazine. In particular your "Issues" part of the article brought out some excellent points to consider about the employment of IVIS. I am not so sure that the Army has addressed all of these issues. We tend to focus on the positive when considering new equipment, sometimes completely ignoring crucial negative aspects. I hope that you article opened up at least a few eyes in the upper reaches of the Armor community. IVIS is a great system but it does have some limitations. Next I would like to address your article "Heavy Metal Revisited" in Command Post Quarterly, Number Three. I recently did a briefmg for my Armor Officer's Advance Course Small Group on the Leclerc. I used Jane'sArmored Fighting Vehicles 1993 from the Armor School Library. This very big and expensive book contained some significant additional information beyond the sources in your bibliography. These significant points are as follows: l. The 120mm smoothbore cannon is not the same gun carried by the Leopard 2 and the M 1 A 1/A2. It is a Giat CN 120-26 which can fire the US and German 120mm rounds, but is a 52-caliber gun. The Rheinmeta11120mm is a 44-caliber gun. The Giat 120mm has a muzzle velocity of 1750 m/s with APFSDS and 1100 m/s with HEAT. New Main Gun Fire Tables are needed for the Leclerc's main gun. 2. An APFSDSDU round in expected to be fielded in 1994. 3. The Leclerc does have a commander's independent thermal viewsight. The Leclerc should be exempted from the ROF penalty when firing at multiple targets in the same phase as the M1A2. 4. Apparently the Leclerc has some sort of positioning and intervehicular information system but Janes is not clear on the exact capabilities of the system. I would not give a Leclerc the IVIS Regt/Bde FO capabilities without further information on the "IVIS" and how it intereacts with FA units. I hope the above information is useful to you. Perhaps you could incorporate it into a "Heavy Metal III" article in the future or into a modern odds and ends section. I have written an article on the OH-58D(I) Kiowa Warrior for Armor magazine and am working on a CPQ article on the same subject. I have served with 2nd Bn (AR), 8th Cav, and 5th Squadron, 17th Cav for a total of four and a half years of armor and cavalry experience. I have not played CD/CA since 1988, although I did play some OTT while stationed at Ft Hood, TX. I have CPQ 1-5 and will subscribe to CPQ when I reach my next duty station, Univ of Oregon ROTC. I hope I will be able to game more at that assignment. --Keep up the good work. Yours, CAPT Tom Burgess Thanks for the letter, Tom, you are correct on all counts. By now you may have also picked up CPQ 7 in which 1 take a more detailed whack at the Leclerc than I was able to over a year earlier, and have fortunately been able to correct all of the omissions which you cited. When 1 was working on CPQ 3, 1 was aware that the Leclerc did have a commander's independent sight, but it was not clear at the time if it had the same "hunter-killer" capability of the MIA2 CITV, and so didnotgive it the same benefit until more recent research justified it for CPQ 7. Your Kiowa Warrior article will be appearing in CPQ 9, and to answer your unprinted question (due to space limitations), yes, we would like to see whatever you can write on the Italian Army in North Africa. Frank has nothing like that on his burners. -Digital Dave Back to Table of Contents -- Command Post Quarterly # 8 To Command Post Quarterly List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by Greg Novak. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com