Tamiya M2A2 ODS Infantry Fighting Vehicle 1/35

[ltsmash]

I'm going to throw my hat into the ring on this one. This will be my first build with this forum and I'm looking forward to it. While I'm also building a Bradley, this shelf queen is the M2A2 ODS flavor from Tamiya.



I will likely do some scratch building and may add a couple of other figures. I have a few modern US infantry sets in my stash that could look nice with this IFV...time permitting, of course.

[DBMiller]

The Bradley will be well represented here! Good luck!

[Gav0909]

I notice you mentioned it was a shelf queen, just so long as the kit is unstarted for this SiG.

Other than that, I look forward to seeing this progress. And welcome to ISM, feel free to get stuck in!

[ltsmash]

Thank, Gav. The kit Is unstated as my pictures will prove...of course, I was hoping to have opened the bags and started the build by this point but work has been crushing me. May get a couple of hours at the bench tonight. Fingers crossed!

[ltsmash]

It's time to get this build started.

A lot has been written about the history of the M2/M3 Infantry Fighting Vehicles, better known as the Bradley. Rather than recount its turbulent and controversial birth in 1981, I’m going to focus on the subject of my build: the M2A2 ODS.



The M2A2 ODS is a variant of the M2 Bradley IFV. It’s slightly older brother, the A2, was introduced in 1988 and featured several improvements from previous variants. Most notably, it sported a larger engine and improved armor. Three years later, the Bradley fought as part of Operation Desert Storm and the US Army learned a lot from its experience in the First Gulf War. These lessons were incorporated into the A2 which became the A2 Operation Desert Storm, or A2ODS for short.

The A2ODS variant included a number of significant upgrades. A seventh seat was added to support a larger squad. A new tactical navigation system and Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2) Battlefield Command System integrates the Bradley into the digital battlefield. The driver was given an improved thermal imaging system, and an eye-safe laser range finder was fitted to increase weapon lethality. All-in-all, the ODS modifications enabled the Bradley to better fight as part of a combined arms team with the Abrams main battle tank. But, as cool as that stuff is the majority of these are not externally visible. Therefore, many changes are not interesting to modelers…many but not all.



In fact, the A2ODS incorporated a number of physical changes both in early A2s that were modified to ODS standards as well as later A2s and newly manufactured A2ODSs. Some of the bigger changes included the addition of combat identification panels (CIPs), new antennae were installed to support the GPS and DCS (Digital Compass System), and the swim barrier was removed.

For my A2ODS, I am building Tamiya’s M2A2 ODS Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Like most armor, this is a 1:35 scale kit. According to ScaleMates, the kit is based on Tamiya’s first M2 model released in 1985. Six years later, Tamiya updated the kit to model the M2A2. In 2003, the kit was updated again with additional parts added to build the A2ODS. The A2ODS includes options for six vehicles: three in NATO camouflage from Kosovo and three in tan from Operation Iraqi Freedom.



Pawal Krupowicz (a.k.a., Vodnik) has written a great feature on accurizing Tamiya’s 1991 M2A2 and added a supplement covering the A2ODS. According to Krupowicz, the original M2 kit produced a fairly accurate model. The subsequent releases decreased accuracy as Tamiya just bolted on additional parts delivered on additional sprues rather than truly address the changes made between the A0 and the A2ODS.

I plan to use Krupowicz’s articles along with a couple of other sources to help clean-up my build. Pierric Boudehen posted a great walk around of a later model A2ODS on Prime Portal. I also have M2/M3 Bradley at War by Michael Green and James D. Brown. This book provides a good history of the Bradley with some great photos of every variant. Beyond, these sources, I’ve been collecting a few photos of the A2ODS that will compliment my main sources.



Time permitting, I’m going to try and put the Bradley in a diorama (secret: I’ve never built one before). I picked up MasterBox’s US Check Point in Iraq a couple of years ago. I also have some less recently equipped modern figures that could make up a good Kosovo diorama. I’ll make a decision one way or the other as I get closer to the painting my A2ODS.

[ltsmash]

My build started off auspiciously: As I reached over to grab my sprue cutters and free my first part from the sprue, I impaled my thumb on my wire cutters and then spent the next 15 minutes bleeding all over my sprue and workspace….fun! With the blood mostly cleaned up (leaving a little as a sacrifice to the modeling gods), I started to cut plastic.

Like the other builds in this SIG, this one starts with wheels and drive sprockets and leads to the lower hull assembly including the loading ramp. This covers the first five steps in Tamiya’s instructions.

It is fair to say that the suspension with this kit has issues. This is largely because the kit was motorized as many of the Tamiya kits are. The road wheels lack detail, the shock absorbers are not modeled, and the drive sprocket attachment points are wrong. Blast Models came out with a suspension replacement for which looks great, but I’m not shelling out $44.00 for something that is going to largely be covered up in the final build.

The biggest issues, in my opinion, are the drive sprockets and drive covers. The drive sprockets are too shallow and do not include lightening holes. The good news is that the sprockets are mostly covered by the armored skirt and the problem is obvious at first glance.

The drive covers are too small. Pawel Krupowicz (a.k.a., Vodnik) has some nice photos comparing the kit’s covers to the real-life drive covers in part one in his article about accurizing the M2A2.

I ran through my spares box looking alternate sprockets but I don’t have any good choices. I’ve got Abrams sprockets which look great but are way too big for the Bradley. I even thought about drilling out the lightening holes but decided that it was impractical due to the Because I plan to leave the armor skirt down, I opted to drill out lightening holes and live with the kit parts.

The wheels and sprocket have the familiar seam running along the surface. The seam is fairly significant on the road wheels. I dealt with it using a sharp knife and 100-grit sandpaper followed by some time with my Flex-i-File. Frankly, I like using the rough sandpaper on the road wheels to give them some texture and wear.



As I researched the drive covers, I found several photos that show that the original drive cover is still there but there has been an extension or protrusion. This could be an additional layer of armor. Or, it could have been enlarged when the engine was upgraded between the A1 and A2 variants. The photo below, shows the shape of the original part and the enlarged area.



Regardless of what caused it to grow, I realized that I didn’t need to scratch built new drive covers but layer a strip of styrene over the existing covers.I played around with different styrene thicknesses to achieve a passable result. In the end, I went with a 5mm strip of .040 inch styrene. I think that .035 may have been fit the scale better but I didn’t have any of that available.

Because the styrene is thick, it didn’t want to follow the curve of the drive cover. I thought about applying heat to it but have run into problems in the past with this technique. So, I opted to apply plastic cement a small portion of the drive cover. Once dried, I cemented another small small portion and let that dry, repeating the process until the styrene wrapped the drive cover. I then trimmed the excess styrene from the ends.

Next, I turned my attention to part E26. This part represents armor that has been bolted on the front of the lower hull. In fact, the greatest clue that the drive covers are oversized is by looking at this piece compared to photographs of the real tank. Compare the photo below from Krupowicz’s article with the photo of the actual tank above.



Krupowicz shows how the red areas on the left and right of E26 should be removed to match the reality. Also, the top armor plate needs to be split. The surgery in both areas was quick and easy. Also, as a side note, my part did not include the sink holes that Krupowicz points out. So, no repair was required.

With E26 modified, I mounted it on the lower hull before fitting and finally dementing the drive covers in place. I did all of this before mounting parts B61 and B62, the left and right attachment points for the drive sprockets which was a break from the instructions.

As Krupowicz points out in his article, B61 and B62 are not attached to the lower hull correctly in Tamiya’s kit. The top photo below shows how Tamiya wants to you mount B61 while the bottom photo shows how it should be mounted.





Compounding this problem, the location of B61 and B62 needs to be slightly higher with the drive covers enlarged and surgery performed on E26. Therefore, I removed the attachment pins and most of a ridge along the rounded portion of the part (leaving some to help place the part against the drive cover).





With all of this done, I pulled out styrene and putty and started filling in all the holes in the lower hull that Tamiya included for a motor and parts.

[ltsmash]

While my build continues, I found this unite resting article on a potential replacement for the Bradley that the US Army considered in the 80s. Based on the M-1 Abrams chassis, it was too heavy and expensive.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-u- ... fb6728dd11

[DC87]

Wow, nice clean improvements well done.

[eightfooticeman]

How are you doing with your M2A2? We are on the home stretch and hope you make it to the finish line.