Commanders!

Today we’d like to tell you more about a vehicle that’s coming to Armored Warfare this December – the American XM2001 Crusader Tier 10 Self-Propelled Gun.

But first, a bit of history as usual.

The Crusader program was conceived in the 1980s as a replacement of the old M109 series of 155mm self-propelled howitzers. The original goal was to create a modern SPG that would outmatch anything the Soviets could field but the breakup of the Soviet Union halted the plans until roughly 1994 when the development began in earnest.

The vehicle was supposed to be cutting edge and featured many innovations. The crew was safe in its armored hull while the turret was unmanned with the gun automatically fed by an autoloader. This allowed it to set up and fire several times faster than the M109A6 Paladin. It was also very fast thanks to its 1500hp gas turbine engine.

It did have numerous drawbacks though because the loading mechanism was extremely complicated, the proposed liquid shell propellant had to be dropped and the turret could not traverse more than 20 degrees from the vehicle’s axis.

But the biggest issue turned out to be the fact that by the end of the 1990s, the U.S. Army was planning to switch to lighter units and the Crusader was just too heavy. The weight therefore had to be reduced from 60 to 40 tons, which, along with other overhauls, caused additional delays. Two prototypes were built around 2001 (along with a single XM2002 resupply vehicle) and were tested.

The results were quite promising but with the onset of the War on Terror, the Crusader became one of the budget cut victims of the era. The program was cancelled in the May of 2002 and the single surviving prototype can be seen in the U.S. Army Field Artillery Museum in Lawton.

As was stated above, in Armored Warfare, the Crusader will be a Tier 10 Premium SPG.

In many ways, the Crusader will be very different from most other vehicles in Armored Warfare. As self-propelled guns go, it’ll be very fast and agile with high maximum speed (67 km/h) and high reverse speed (39 km/h).

It’ll somewhat armored too as its frontal hull and the roof are covered with composite armor elements. In reality, however, most of its frontal armor will be vulnerable to armor-piercing ammunition of the same Tier.

And then there’s the 155mm gun with a three-round magazine with 2 seconds between shots (and 10 second of full magazine reload). The ammunition is a standard set of HE and HEAT rounds with some pretty nasty traits. Add to it its excellent gun depression (-6/+75 degrees) and little accuracy loss from moving the hull.

But there will be some drawbacks. Perhaps the most important one is that, just like in real life, the Crusader’s turret offers limited traverse only – 20 degrees to each side. This doesn’t make aiming that much inconvenient due to the abovementioned low accuracy loss with hull traverse, but it does mean that the Crusader is a very poor brawler. In other words, you have to stay out of close combat to survive.

The second major drawback is that while the Crusader does have soft-kill APS, it cannot deploy smoke grenades – unlike the vast majority of higher-Tier vehicles, it only has a smoke generator. In other words, careful gameplay is required.

The Crusader is effectively an equivalent of an assault gun relying on high mobility and excellent firepower to deal as much damage as possible and then quickly retreat under the cover of your own smoke. Using its high reverse speed is critical in this regard, as is situational awareness because catching even a Main Battle Tank off-guard will allow you to destroy it really quickly. For aggressive, skilled players, it’s the perfect vehicle.

We hope that you will enjoy it and, as always:

See you on the battlefield!