AFV-4 Gorgon

Gorgon
Faction	- AAF - Loyalists
Type	Infantry Fighting Vehicle
Seats	11 seats: 1× Driver 1× Gunner 1× Commander 8× Passengers
Item capacity	3000 mass
Top speed	100 km/h on land 11 km/h in water
Fuel capacity	24 fuel units
Primary armament	Main: 1× CTWS Cannon 30 mm
Secondary armament	Secondary: 4× Titan Missile ATGM Coaxial: 1× Coaxial MG 7.62 mm Defensive: 1× Smoke Generator
Variants	None
Games

The AFV-4 Gorgon is a wheeled Infantry Fighting Vehicle used by both the AAF and Altian government loyalists in ArmA 3.

Overview

• Roles:
  • Troop transport
  • Fire support

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The AFV-4 Gorgon is an amphibious 8x8 all--wheel-drive armored personal carrier, used to carry soldiers to the battlefield and provide fire support. Its remote controlled CTWS turret is usually mounted with a 30mm cannon, coaxial machine gun and 2 guided AT missiles. Crew consists of a driver and gunner/commander, with further seating available for 9 additional soldiers. Field Manual

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Design

The Gorgon is an 8x8 armoured combat vehicle that uses an inverted V-shape hull. It is designed to transport troops into battle and to provide fire support against a variety of ground threats.

Armament
It is fitted with a 30 mm autocannon that is capable of firing both high-explosive and armour-piercing rounds at ranges of up to 1,500 metres.

In addition to its primary cannon and 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun, the Gorgon has anti-tank guided missiles that are capable of defeating or at least disabling heavily armoured vehicles, allowing it to assume (albeit limited) a tank destroyer role if necessary.

The standard loadout of the Gorgon gives it 280 rounds of multi-purpose (MP-T) explosive rounds and 120 armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot (APFSDS-T) shells for the main gun. Each munition type feeds from 140- and 60-round "magazines" for MP and APFSDS shells (respectively).

The coaxial MMG feeds from a single 200-round belt and has a further 7 belts in reserve. The adjacent launcher pod has 2 infrared-guided Titan anti-tank missiles pre-loaded by default, and can be reloaded once (which gives it a total of 4 missiles).

File:Arma3-gorgon-03.png

Loyalist Gorgons on the offensive. Note the launcher pods mounted adjacent to the main gun on the turrets.

Features
Fairly well-armoured, the Gorgon can protect the crew and its passengers from both small arms fire, moderately-sized explosives and land mines.

Just like its wheeled NATO and CSAT counterparts, the Gorgon is fully amphibious and can conduct water-based landings or extractions.

Drawbacks
The weaknesses of the Gorgon's design mainly stem from its large hull. It has the highest turret profile of all the wheeled APCs/IFVs, is disadvantaged by having an exposed turret (a flaw shared with the BTR-K) that renders it vulnerable to being disabled from machine gun fire or grenades, has somewhat poor handling while off-road and finally, has a slow turn rate.

Nonetheless, the Gorgon is still well-suited to serve in both APC and IFV roles, making it useful in any situation due to its multi-role capabilities.

Crew Capacity
The Gorgon has a seating capacity of eleven personnel including the crew. The crew includes the driver, gunner and commander.

Camouflage

• Digital Green
• Guerrilla 01
• Guerrilla 02
• Guerrilla 03
• Digital Green (Slat/Camo Nets) - Desert
• Digital Green (Slat/Camo Nets) - Jungle
• Guerrilla 01 (Slat/Camo Nets)
• Guerrilla 02 (Slat/Camo Nets)
• Guerrilla 03 (Slat/Camo Nets)

1/9

• Digital Green: Digitised semi-fractal camouflage pattern used by all AAF vehicles and aircraft. Suited to forested and grassy environments, but otherwise useless in arid and desert terrain.
• Digital Green (Desert Camo Net):** Identical to the standard Digital Green camouflage pattern but changes any applied camo nets to use a two-tone desert camouflage scheme.
• Digital Green (Jungle Camo Net):** Also identical to the baseline Digital Green camouflage pattern, but changes any applied camo nets to use a two-tone woodland camouflage scheme instead.
• Guerrilla 01:* Olive green paint scheme with tan line stripes. Has a graffiti slogan written on the right side of the hull that says "FREEDOM OR DEATH" in Altian.
• Guerrilla 02:* Tan paint scheme with black line stripes.
• Guerrilla 03:* Olive green paint scheme with black line stripes.

(*) The Guerrilla camouflage schemes are exclusively used by Altian government Loyalist-operated Gorgons only.
(**) Changes are only visible if the Gorgon has the Camo Net component attached to it.

Protection

The Gorgon has a base armour value of 480. It uses Composite Armour plating and can optionally support addon Slat cages.

It does not have any Explosive Reactive Armour blocks/panels installed, but has the option of being fitted with slat cages covering both the rear and each side of the hull (up to a total of eight individual cages).

The following highlighted positions serve as weak points on the Gorgon:

LEGEND
Green = Hull
Orange = Engine
Violet = Fuel tanks
Maroon = Turret

Note that in order to inflict actual damage, a munition must first penetrate through the surrounding armour plates and directly hit the component's weak point. Any strikes on non-highlighted parts will cause little (if any) noticeable damage.

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Hull

The hull can resist up to 960 points of damage. Will cause a catastrophic kill if fully depleted.

Munition type	Damage reduction (%)	Velocity reduction (%)
Armour Piercing	None	20
High-Explosive	80	50
High-Explosive Anti-Tank	80*	20
Tandem High-Explosive Anti-Tank	80*	10

(*) Reductions only apply to the explosive component of the munition i.e. Tandem HEAT explosive charge

If the hull has been compromised, no reductions will be applied to the velocity/raw damage of incoming projectiles.

Hull Slat

Slat cages protect all sides of the hull. They can resist up to 200 points of damage before failing.

Large calibre HE-based munitions or missile/rocket fire will always inflict twice as much damage on the cages, and will almost always be destroyed in a single hit.

Engine

The engine can survive 600 points of damage.

Only 10% of incoming damage on the engine is transferred onto the Gorgon's "health" pool. It has 50% resistance against explosive-type munitions. It will not cause a catastrophic kill by itself unless the Gorgon is critically damaged.

If damaged: Reduces power output, acceleration both on land and in the water is decreased and it may become impossible to climb uphill.
If destroyed: Instantly immobilises the Gorgon.

Fuel tank

The fuel tank can resist up to 360 points of damage before failing.

50% of incoming damage onto the fuel tank is always inflicted onto the Gorgon's "health" pool. It has 40% resistance to explosive-type munitions. A destroyed fuel tank will not cause a catastrophic kill unless the Gorgon is critically damaged.

If damaged: Gradually leak fuel over time.
If destroyed: Causes it to rapidly lose its entire fuel capacity in just a few seconds.

Wheels

All eight wheels are able to resist 250 points of damage.

They are susceptible to small arms fire and take 400% damage from explosive-type damage, meaning any high-explosive (HE) munitions or landmines will instantly pop them. No amount of damage inflicted is transferred onto the Gorgon's "health" pool, however.

Destroying all of the Gorgon's wheels will be needed to immobilise it. Depending on which and how many are remaining, it is entirely possible for the Gorgon to continue driving even with more than half of its tyres missing.

Turret

The turret can resist up to 720 points worth of damage.

It is fully susceptible to both small arms fire and light explosives. No amount of damage incurred is transferred onto the Gorgon's "health" pool.

Munition type	Damage reduction (%)	Velocity reduction (%)
Armour Piercing	None	20
High-Explosive	80	50
High-Explosive Anti-Tank	80*	20
Tandem High-Explosive Anti-Tank	80*	10

(*) Reductions only apply to the explosive component of the munition i.e. Tandem HEAT explosive charge

If the turret's integrity fails, no reductions will be applied to the velocity/raw damage of incoming projectiles.

Autocannon barrel

The autocannon barrel can incur 720 points of damage before failing. No damage inflicted on this component is transferred onto the Gorgon's "health" pool.

Destroying this component will lock the barrel and prevent the gunner position from adjusting its elevation/depression. It should also be noted that unlike the turret, the barrel is only capable of reducing 60% of incoming damage from high-explosive (HE) munitions.

Commander periscope

The commander's optic can only survive 240 points of damage. It is fully susceptible to all kinds of damage. No damage is returned onto the Gorgon's "health" pool, however.

Disabling this component will prevent the commander from being able to rotate their optics independently.

Components

• Slat Cage (Hull): Attaches slat cages around the entire hull aside from the turret. Slat cages will protect the Gorgon from non-AP munitions but can be destroyed after multiple hits.
• Camo Net (Hull): Drapes most of the hull with camouflage netting (the turret is not covered). Partially conceals covered sections from thermal sensors.

Armament

NOTE: For specifics on the CTWS Cannon 30 mm's munitions, see its related section listed here.

The Gorgon's gunner controls all three of the turret's weapons - the CTWS Cannon 30 mm, Coaxial MG 7.62 mm and the Titan Missile launcher. Regardless of weapon, the gunner's optics feature three fields of view and can toggle a day, night or black-hot/white-hot thermal vision mode:

CTWS Cannon 30 mm

The CTWS Cannon 30 mm serves as the Gorgon's primary weapon.

It has an effective firing range of 1,500 metres. The CTWS Cannon can attain a fire rate of up to 200 RPM. There is no delay for switching between the different rounds, but it takes 40 seconds to reload the "magazine" for each individual type. Dispersion is also identical regardless of whether AP or HE rounds are being fired, and is always fixed at 0.0018 rad.

The fire control system can automatically adjust zeroing on targets moving at speeds of up to ~ 110 km/h. There is a fixed delay of 1 second before the FCS can finish adjusting the zeroing. The gunner can also opt to manually zero, though it is only available in increments of 100 m that go up to a maximum of 3000 m.

Titan Missile

Warhead	Damage type	Base damage value	Penetration depth (mm)
Primary	High-Explosive	150	N/A
Secondary	High-Explosive Anti-Tank	780	900

The Titan Missile ATGM launcher pod is also fitted adjacent to the main autocannon, and serves as the Gorgon's auxiliary weapon.

Titan ATGMs have a minimum lock-on range of 200 metres and a maximum lock-on range of 5,000 metres. The gunner can choose either a direct fire or top-attack mode for the missile's flight profile. The pod has a delay of 0.5 seconds in-between launches, but requires 30 seconds to reload another pair of missiles each time.

The missiles use HEAT warheads, combining an explosive charge with a kinetic penetrator submunition. The explosive charge has a blast radius of 4 metres. They have an initial launch speed of 36 m/s, and can reach a maximum of up to 180 m/s at top speed.

Its seekers are infrared-guided, and can acquire targets moving at speeds of up to 126 km/h. They cannot however, lock onto targets that are 50 metres above terrain level (ATL), and have a 50% chance to lose lock against smoke countermeasures. The gunner also has the option to manually guide the missile via SACLOS, but the maximum distance for both forms of guidance remain the same (5,000 metres).

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Flight Profiles

The Gorgon's Titan missiles can utilise two types of flight profiles:

Direct-attack

Missile uses a linear flight trajectory. This is the default flight mode.

Top attack

Once launched, the missile will transition between two phases:

• Initial: Missile will continue to climb diagonally in a 30 degree angle until it passes a height of approximately 200 metres.
• Seeking: Terminal phase of flight. Missile begins to descend onto the target once it hits an altitude of 240 metres ATL.

The missile has a minimum targeting range of 240 metres in this mode. If the target is not beyond this distance, it will default to direct-attack mode instead.

Lastly, if the missile loses track of the target during the seeking phase it can be defaulted back to manual guidance (SACLOS). The missile will act as if it was being guided by SACLOS in the event this occurs.

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Coaxial MG 7.62 mm

Base damage value	Aerodynamic friction	Initial velocity (m/s)	Penetration depth (mm)
11.6	-0.001	860	20.64

The Coaxial MG 7.62 mm is fitted adjacent to the main autocannon and is functionally identical to those employed on Main Battle Tanks. The sole difference is that it takes up to 20 seconds for a second belt to be reloaded.

It has an effective firing range of 300 metres up to a maximum of 1,200 metres. It has a fire rate of 800 RPM and always has a fixed dispersion of 0.0016 rad regardless of range.

The Coaxial MG's FCS can only zero against targets moving at speeds of up to ~110 km/h. It has an imposed delay of 1 second before it can finish adjusting.

FFV

Main article: Firing from vehicles (mechanic)#AFV-4 Gorgon

Trivia

• The Gorgon is based on the real-world 8x8 variant of the "Pandur II" APC.
  • It uses a (slightly updated) port of the Pandur II 8x8 CZ's model from the Army of the Czech Republic DLC for ArmA 2.
• Despite the Field Manual stating that the Gorgon can transport nine passengers in its rear compartment, it is only actually capable of transporting eight at a time. This mix-up is mostly due to the commander's position being erroneously considered as a passenger seat.
• Unused textures still present in the game files indicate that during the pre-Alpha phase of ArmA 3's development, the Gorgon was originally meant to be a NATO vehicle instead.
  • Unlike the Strider however, the alternate texture cannot be applied to the Gorgon without use of the setObjectTexture scripting command.

Gallery

Arma3-gorgon.jpg

Pre-Alpha olive drab green paint scheme applied to the Gorgon and Strider. While the Strider can still have its NATO texture applied in the Virtual Garage, the same cannot be done to the Gorgon without use of scripting commands.

External links

• Wikipedia: Pandur II

See also

Vehicles of comparable role and configuration

• AMV-7 Marshall (NATO counterpart)
• MSE-3 Marid (CSAT counterpart)
• Pandur II 8x8 CZ (ACR predecessor, ArmA 2: ACR only)