Shipbucket

If it has Harpoons,I guess it is late 1970's to early 1980's.However,design does not is visible to me.

Assuming the DC-10 MPA discussion was started up concurrent with the "normal" version, I'd guess IOC would be mid-80s to the early 90s. Feel free to fudge it earlier if necessary.

Real Olympic Airways had 8-10 B707 (some were 351C),7 B720 and 8 B727 before Onassis sold the company to State (history of the State-own Olympic is known well). Now the AU Olympic Airways (which remains in private hands) : 12 B707 (8 -384B,4 351C),6 VC-10 Super.

After further reading I decide not use a modified airliner as an MPA,but the P-3B Orion.6 were ordered in 1968 and entered service in 1970.2 more P-3A were also purchased for training.

The B707 were modified to tankers locally with a hose & drogue system based on that of Buccaneer Buddy-Buddy system,capable of transferring 2070lt/min for refuel fighters,in twin pods under wings.4 have a larger system under fuselage,capable of transferring 4220lt/min to refuel aircraft with large fuel capacity,like the Mirage IV and the P6M together with the wing system.All RHAF Tankers belong to 372 MEA Squadron (MEA=Μοίρα Εναέριου Ανεφοδιασμού),in English Air Refueling Squadron.3 of the B707-384B have also COMINT/ELINT/SIGINT/ electronics co-developed with Israel and the 4 B707-351C are used also for transport various loads when need.Olympic Airways Technical Base still maintain these B707 and all are in very good condition for their age (from 44 to 47 years).

The DC-10 is a really large airframe (the MPA variant was based on DC-10-10) with much greater fuel consumption from the B707.Canada did thought this back in 1970's but they rejected it."Money on the Ground and not in the air" is the term which they describe it,referring in the cost of building ground facilities.Even your airliner company has it,its better to modified it in tanker.

But I would like to have a artist's image or photos of a model DC-10MPA to see it,because I did not found anything (even in Flight Global magazine/PDF),except some text about it.

Something completely different, about tanks.

Yesterday I thought not using the Leopard family of tanks in Hellenic Kingdom, but started with a license-manufactured variant of Vickers MBT (like India), powered by a joint Cypriot-Hellenic V12 diesel (they used it also in their A27K tank). Then instead of Leopard II Hellenic Kingdom manufactured a modified Challenger with Israel 120mm gun (or the US M256). How does this sound?
I will keep the M48/M60 but not the AMX-30 (only Cyprus have AMX-30 in my scenario)

Essentialy You want to have instead Leo 2, a Challenger with a cannon from Leo 2.
And as for replacing Leo 1 with Vickers Mk.1. It's a swap of the high-end design (for it's day) with something that from the beginning was designed as low-cost choice for 3rd World armies.

Hi odysseus, eswube,

This sounds quite a bit like the Challenger 2 "CLIP" (Challenger Lethality Improvement Programme), I should think that would be perfectly possible, from wiki (obviously, salt to taste) the main difference was accomodating the single-piece rounds instead of the 2-piece (well, three, technically, but the vent tube can't make that much difference to ammo capacity) rounds currently used.

Regards,
Adam

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So I keep the Leo I, but manufacture it also with license. The problem with two-piece projectiles is that the piercing "arrow" is much shorter than that of one piece projectile. The IMI 120mm gun has nothing to do with Rheinmetall 120mm, is an Israeli design.

Hi odysseus,

I understand the reason that the UK went for two-piece ammunition was for a couple of reasons - firstly, to make things easier on the loader, second, to separate propellant and warhead in the event of a hit on the tank, an attempt to increase survivability.

With regard to the CLIP stuff, I thought it might be relevant because you'd mentioned the M256. Apologies if that's not the case.

Regards,
Adam Smith

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Numbers would be for 369+246 tanks for Leo II or Challenger II, split in 9 units (right word?) of 41 tanks each and in 6x41. First could be Leopard 2A4 and second Leopard 2A6 (perhaps both with the 120/L44 gun) both capable of using LAHAT (designated E-105 in HLK). With Challenger, all could be Challenger 2 with smoothbore 120mm gun instead of rifled. Again LAHAT capable. The problem is price, I think that Challenger choice is much more expensive, since it include the cost of the gun conversion.

I think that word You want for "unit" is "battalion".
(without entering a complicated world of unit naming in some armies - sometimes that unit would be called "regiment", though for all practical purposes it would be a battalion)

Anyway, I guess that You could rather need some tanks for training (I'd say a company of 13 tanks for each type but maybe a platoon of 4 for each type would suffice), and perhaps several tanks in research establishments, on display, other training duties etc.