T-72 ΜΒΤ modernisation and variants #2

ALAMO wrote:Objectively speaking, you shouldn't make a comparison between the Chinese and Russia.
Those are two different leagues.
Russkie has a 100+ years old heritage of the tank construction business, and are de facto own class.
Since the purchase of Christie's chassis and making it usable, they created standards for others to follow.
Chinese are still soaked deeply into Soviet-origin tanks, so we are talking about some 30 years behind.
Will they catch up? Probably/maybe. How fast? At the rate they find convenient.

It probably doesn't help that theater of operations is just wildly different between the two countries. For Russia most of its threats are just within driving range from the nearest railhead so heavier designs like the Armata can be employed without stretching the logistical burden too much. But with most of its threats across the sea it would be extremely difficult for China to use anything other than lighter vehicles which makes it very difficult, but not impossible, for their vehicles to match those of their opponent fighting on home turf.

For Russia most of its threats are just within driving range from the nearest railhead so heavier designs like the Armata can be employed without stretching the logistical burden too much. B wrote:

Russia is threatened by NATO from the Western side, China has no such enemies from the land side.

Sprut is light and is designed to be a tank

No it is not. It's a tank hunter. As long as it is hidden and sees targets first it will be ok. Once spoted it is dead. 30mm guns can take it out easily.

Its turret is gonna fly much hicher than t-72 because of its rounds stored inside the hull. For that matter type 15 is way better protecting its crew.

So ammo exposed and vulnerable to enemy fire... not a good thing.

Opposite actually.it's the sprut sd that is unprotected and vulnerable. Any vehicle that mout a gun can penetrate it and explode its round inside the hull vapourazing the crew.

Type 15 is way better.

So it has the weaker armour of a light tank but none of the advantages like being dropped by parachute or being amphibious...

Look at their respective roles.

Is it an advantage to be parachutable ? How long would a sprout sd last behind enemy lines facing artillery and rpg ? That thing need one 30mm round to explode and send its crew to the moon.

Just look at all the bmd in ukraine that were just easy targets. Sprut sd is based on their design.

Type 15 is made for chinese mountainous areas where it will face smaller vehicles than him and is protected against the guns it can face there, the biggest being 30mm guns.

Type 15 is better designed for its role and you can always add armor in bricks.

Any penetration in any tank will kill the crew

Not really. Even in WW2 when they used armor piercing high explosives crews used to survive. Heat and apfsds just penetrate in a tinny line... By keeping the munitions out of the crew compartement the type 15 and m1a2 crews are quite safe compare to tanks with munitions inside.

Both are designed to be used where conventional tanks are not suitable because they are too heavy.

No they are not. Sprut is for VDV to be dropped and face real tanks.

Type 15 is for mountains where even bmp will struggle.

Like to see a BMP with a 20mm or 30mm firing at Sprut firing back with a 125mm gun...

Who cares about the 125mm gun. 30mm rounds can easily go through the sprut SD. First to shot wins. And actually the apfsds may not even kill in a first shot. Against light target the round may just go through and damage nothing important. In the same time a 30mm gun will deliver 20 rounds and touch its 125 shells leading to a catastrophic explosion.

Btw plenty of video of btr4 engaging russian tanks in ukraine successfully.

Those max range fight don't occure that much. At close range a 30mm gun may be quicker.

Arrow wrote:Russia is threatened by NATO from the Western side, China has no such enemies from the land side.

NATO is no less dangerous across the sea.

Isos wrote:Its turret is gonna fly much hicher than t-72 because of its rounds stored inside the hull. For that matter type 15 is way better protecting its crew.

With a poorly protected front turret a bustle conveyor autoloader is possibly the worst design you can pick. At least with a hull autoloader you can hide half of the vehicle behind a crest and the ammo is totally safe.

Isos wrote:Is it an advantage to be parachutable ? How long would a sprout sd last behind enemy lines facing artillery and rpg ? That thing need one 30mm round to explode and send its crew to the moon.

If its behind the enemy lines it ought not to face that much artillery and RPG in the first place. Its main weapon and defense is its mobility. It can go places where the defender can't, making it very difficult to ambush and kill.

Isos wrote:Just look at all the bmd in ukraine that were just easy targets. Sprut sd is based on their design.

That's an unfair assessment. The performance of the Russian Army and their equipment in the opening phases of the conflict can't really be faulted when they are laboring under operational circumstances placed upon them by the political leadership. When the leash was even just slightly loosened the Russians just picked up where they left off and proceeded to give a very good account of themselves.

Isos wrote:Not really. Even in WW2 when they used armor piercing high explosives crews used to survive. Heat and apfsds just penetrate in a tinny line... By keeping the munitions out of the crew compartement the type 15 and m1a2 crews are quite safe compare to tanks with munitions inside.

Subcaliber shafts and HEAT slugs are no less dangerous than APHE. By happy accident post-war designs tend to be "denser" designs with fuel and ammo located much closer in a much tighter internal space alongside the crew. If you pierce the armor there's a very good chance it goes through the ammo, the fuel or the crew.

NATO is no less dangerous across the sea. wrote:

Of course, but China is building a huge ocean fleet and will not allow NATO to reach its shores if necessary. A huge fleet and the development of anti-ship missiles. In the case of Russia, they have NATO on the Western Flank. Now they already have NATO in Ukraine which they are fighting right now. China on the land side is relatively safe.

Russia is threatened by NATO from the Western side, China has no such enemies from the land side.

Ironically with that logic the US should have lots of light tanks too but has the opposite.

Sadly some countries don't understand common sense or logic...

The Type 15 is just one tank type the Chinese make, just as the Sprut is designed for very specific operations too.

No it is not. It's a tank hunter. As long as it is hidden and sees targets first it will be ok. Once spoted it is dead. 30mm guns can take it out easily.

It actually is not a tank hunter... their tank hunters have missiles... the Sprut is heavy direct fire power used to support troops... in this case airborne or amphibious forces deep behind enemy lines where enemy heavy tanks are not common and might be found individually rather than in large groups.

It is a replacement for the ASU-85 with a much more potent weapon... they could have used a smoothbore 100mm gun like that used with the MT-12 towed anti tank gun but they went for a long recoil full calibre full power tank gun for ammo commonality and raw power and range.

In a conventional conflict like that in the Ukraine they are using upgraded T-72s, but that wont always be possible depending on terrain... before the ground froze the Sprut would actually be an excellent vehicle because enemy vehicles with 30mm cannon would not be driving around much either.

Its turret is gonna fly much hicher than t-72 because of its rounds stored inside the hull. For that matter type 15 is way better protecting its crew.

The ammo on the Type 15 is exposed and vulnerable in the turret bustle so is more likely to take a hit and catch fire... whether the crew survive or not the tank is out of action... the Chechens used RPG teams together with SVD and PKM armed troops so anyone bailing out of a vehicle is dead anyway with those sort of tactics.

Opposite actually.it's the sprut sd that is unprotected and vulnerable. Any vehicle that mout a gun can penetrate it and explode its round inside the hull vapourazing the crew.

Where is the ammo... and will 25mm or 30mm ammo reach it?

Any idiot with an RPG can see the bit bulging rear turret area and hit that easily enough and boom... there are reasons the Black Eagle and Rogata T-72 upgrades were rejected.

T-34s with turret bustles were destroyed in WWII by enemy troops putting satchel charged under the turret bustle... ignore the lesson and keep making turret bustles?

Is it an advantage to be parachutable ? How long would a sprout sd last behind enemy lines facing artillery and rpg ? That thing need one 30mm round to explode and send its crew to the moon.

Soviet and Russian Airborne forces are fully mechanised for the purpose of being dropped in the middle of nowhere where there are no enemy air defences... once everything has landed they mount up and drive at high speed to the actual target... could be an airfield that will have some form of SAM to defend it from a VDV landing and probably a couple of light vehicles and troops for perimeter security... BMD-4s and Spruts would obliterate them and once taken and secured the airfield can be used to land heavier vehicles which can then start preparing to repulse the counter attack the enemy are preparing to deal with the landing.

Will there be spruts taken out... of course there will but can the Type 15 do what the Sprut does... not really.

Mobility speed and fire power.... or do you think the SAS are stupid fighting in the desert with jeeps with no armour protection at all that a pistol bullet will kill the driver and stop the vehicle.

Just look at all the bmd in ukraine that were just easy targets. Sprut sd is based on their design.

Easy targets... wiped out were they... totally obliterated... Russian forces never got to Kiev... they were destroyed on sight... yeah right.

BMDs are useless because their armour is too weak and western special forces in dune buggies are bullet proof and invincible with a couple of machine guns mounted on them and no protection from dust let alone bullets or fragments.

Type 15 is made for chinese mountainous areas where it will face smaller vehicles than him and is protected against the guns it can face there, the biggest being 30mm guns.

In mountains your biggest threats are drones and long range ATGMs and of course artillery... guided weapons that would destroy the Type 15 fairly easily at distances the Type 15 wont even know it is under attack.

Type 15 is better designed for its role and you can always add armor in bricks.

It is a light tank if you add more armour to make it a bloody normal tank you will find it weighs more than a normal tank but all of a sudden the transmission and suspension is overloaded and it is a piece of crap.

You misunderstand the idea of a light tank.

Light tanks are vulnerable to enemy vehicles... there are no vehicles that are not... even a 180 ton Maus would be dead meat today against RPGs.

Not really. Even in WW2 when they used armor piercing high explosives crews used to survive. Heat and apfsds just penetrate in a tinny line... By keeping the munitions out of the crew compartement the type 15 and m1a2 crews are quite safe compare to tanks with munitions inside.

When hit tank commanders don't hit the F key for fire suppression or the T key to repair tracks and engines etc... when you get a substantial hit the crew bail out... normally a fire starts and will burn till it gets hot enough that the fuel and the ammo explodes... when either explodes then blast doors and blow out panels wont do shit.

It you are in the path of the penetration you will get injured or killed, but even if you don't get a scratch the inside of the tank becomes uninhabitable and everyone gets out or remains there and dies because a box filled with ammo and fuel will always burn and explode.

Separating the crew from the ammo and putting it all together makes the crew much safer and means it takes longer for the tank to explode but they almost always explode or burn out.

A crew that stays and fights the fire normally dies in the explosion.

No they are not. Sprut is for VDV to be dropped and face real tanks.

Bullshit... the Sprut is to be used as a tank to assault enemy positions, but the enemy positions are deep behind enemy lines so the number of tanks and armoured vehicles will be low or zero... they will be used the way we see T-90s used in this conflict with their thermals spotting enemy positions to be engaged with direct fire HE frag rounds.

Type 15 is for mountains where even bmp will struggle.

T-55s and T-62s and T-72s did just fine in Afghanistan.

And would be better armed and armoured than the Type 15.... with upgrades.

Who cares about the 125mm gun. 30mm rounds can easily go through the sprut SD. First to shot wins. And actually the apfsds may not even kill in a first shot. Against light target the round may just go through and damage nothing important. In the same time a 30mm gun will deliver 20 rounds and touch its 125 shells leading to a catastrophic explosion.

Tanks often hit tanks in the turret... funny you think the 30mm rounds that can easily penetrate the Sprut are not APDS rounds... a tank is a compact container filled with crew and ammo and fuel... an APFSDS hit to the turret of the Type 15 will likely hit the turret bustle ammo so it wont just go through. The 105mm round might take out a crew member but a turret hit wont get ammo.

The Sprut will be operating with BMDs which will also have 30mm and soon 57mm cannon.

European countries are moving to larger calibres too, because some 30mm cannon struggle with BMP targets especially with add on armour modules.

Those max range fight don't occure that much. At close range a 30mm gun may be quicker.

In mountains they do.

In fact a big problem in the mountains is being able to see enemy troops and not being able to hit them because they are 3-4km away and small arms and even HMGs struggle at that range.

For the Soviets the 23mm towed cannon and of course mortars were valuable in that regard but they also had dug in positions for tanks to operate in an artillery role and also ATGMs and anti armour weapons like SPG-9 recoilless rifles could reach out and touch with HE frag ammo.

Maybe Russia should license the DTC10-125 sabot from China. It outperforms svinets and fits in regular autoloaders...

Maybe Russia should license the DTC10-125 sabot from China. It outperforms svinets and fits in regular autoloaders...

From that comment alone I know you are a fanboy that does not know what they are talking about.

Do you actually think it is a competition and the gun with the highest penetrating round wins the war?

How did the Taliban beat all of HATO in that case?

All of the current Russian tank and ATGM and RPG range of weapons would destroy any western tank they care to send.

The British are now bleating that Kiev can't send their Challenger II tanks anywhere where they could be captured... hahaha... have they not been paying attention?

The silly guy who doesn't know anything about tanks or warfare in general is calling me a fanboy? That's comical.

Do you think Russia wants to spend the time and money to modify autoloaders to fit new rounds? You don't think they'd be happy with a round that outperforms the tungsten svinets yet fits in every t-64/72/80/90 autoloader? Knowing you, because Russia can never do any wrong, you probably think they willingly chose to waste time and resources modifying them.

You think it's fanboyism to have the most effective round possible that works in the largest number of vehicles without modification? It really seems like you haven't thought this one through.

I have no doubt of China's materials science and engineering but how could a shorter fin round penetrate better than a longer one? Surely the tungsten alloys are very similar. Coule you provide a link to its performance?

Also good old mango fin is good enough for the moment. It is a competent penetrator even for early 2000s third gen tanks. Svinets will be saved for the best western tanks on the battlefield and even then these new tanks will predominantly be taken out by means other than other tanks. That said the t-90m will probably be carrying one or two svinets just in case.Did the t-70b3m get an extended auto loader? I'm not sure on this.

Also I think Russia should buy Chinese military equipment particularly for the navy until they can fully develop their own stuff. Would be awesome seeing Russia have one or two of those new Chinese aircraft carriers.

Edit: added an extra thought.

i don't have it on my phone, just Google the name of the round, it caused a stir because some Chinese insider inadvertently leaked it on the War thunder forums. The specs there then matched export documentation. No idea how they did it.

https://www.techarp.com/military/china-dtc10-125-anti-tank/

There's some information. Hopefully the poor guy who posted the information is alive and not in a Chinese prison.

Very impressive. If correct the length is a couple inches shorter than svinets and still has similar penetration numbers. The key is a longer barrel and better propellant to get it to the 1700 meters per second speeds. I bet Russia has similarly capable propellants and what they already have is as capable, even with the older auto loaders the mango 2 can be used which is pretty good.

But yeah that is indeed impressive. Neat to see a potentially legit leak like that.

diabetus wrote:Maybe Russia should license the DTC10-125 sabot from China. It outperforms svinets and fits in regular autoloaders...

Maybe you should use your brain and compare apples to apples?  
Piercing 220mm plate at 71.12° is not piercing 680 mm plate at 0°.

TMA1 wrote:I have no doubt of China's materials science and engineering but how could a shorter fin round penetrate better than a longer one? Surely the tungsten alloys are very similar. Coule you provide a link to its performance?

Because it doesn't and there's none. You have the exposed projectile, you have competent calculators and finite-modeling softwares available - you don't have to take the word of fucking paper.

Lyle as usual is too lazy to read. It states:

"Armour Penetration : normal temperature (+15°C), at 2000 metres, 220mm at 71.12° (Equivalent to 680mm at 0°)"

It does and you're just acting like a child, like you do in basically every post you make here.

Holy shit you really are dumb.

I'll simplify: piercing a sloped thin plate is not the same as piercing a thick plate head-on.

Yeah. Know a little bit about how round performance is measured before you continue to make a fool out of yourself because you're clueless.

Different nations have different ways to measure penetration value. NATO uses the 50% (This means that 50% of the shell had to go through the plate), while the Soviet and Russian standard is higher (80% had to go through).
What is the chinese measure?
Comparing values without taking into account all the circumstances under which they were obtained is idiotic, the same shit happens with RCS people making comparisons without taking into account frequency, direction...

**** it. I'll bite:

The reason I shit on the Chinese numbers is because the value for the vertical plate is just the thickness of the sloped plate divided by the cosine of the obliquity - this is not true experimentally. With a good tip design a subcaliber penetrator will pierce as much as ~20% more sloped armor than with a vertical one. (This is the primary reason why the base armor nowadays are flat, btw.)

You can even verify this on http://www.longrods.ch/perfcalc.php by just changing the obliquity.

In short, this Chinese super-round will penetrate something around ~600 mm on a vertical plate. Slightly less than its penetrator which is a good rule of thumb btw.

And how could the soviets have possibly known the structure of the abrams and leopard 2 composite armor for them to make this assumption? Also the M1(1980) hull armor array is far mor adavnced than the T-72A or T-64B. It has reflective plate design filled with ceramics which are classified to this day , while the T-72A and T-64Bs just had 2 RHA plates primitively sandwiching textolite.

Maybe they work on similar protection in their institutes on their projects who never saw day of light. Because it isnt sience fiction how to made some ceramic protectio and put it in some angle...this old armor is made 40+ years and its same till today because you cant produced something batter right now...

Dunno I guess the KGB was one of the best intelligence agencies in the world

The silly guy who doesn't know anything about tanks or warfare in general is calling me a fanboy? That's comical.

Russian rounds will penetrate any western tank sent to the Ukraine, but you think Russia needs to panic buy a Chinese round you claim is better than any Russian round we know or don't know about... Fanboy.

Do you think Russia wants to spend the time and money to modify autoloaders to fit new rounds?

They already have. The Autoloader for the T-14 for when it is armed with a 152mm round suggests they have flexibility in the lengths of the penetrators they use.

You don't think they'd be happy with a round that outperforms the tungsten svinets yet fits in every t-64/72/80/90 autoloader? Knowing you, because Russia can never do any wrong, you probably think they willingly chose to waste time and resources modifying them.

Chinese claiming their round has x penetration is just a claim and means very little. You first have to establish that Russian rounds are not good enough and in need of replacement, which you have not done.

You think it's fanboyism to have the most effective round possible that works in the largest number of vehicles without modification? It really seems like you haven't thought this one through.

Fanboyism is demanding your mom buy the highest spec gameboy because that will mean it will have better specs than any of your friends... a few extra Hz of CPU processing power is more important to you than the fact that all your friends bought the cheaper machine with better games, so you can't play the same games your friends play but you have the superior hardware and that was the point of the whole exercise.

Also I think Russia should buy Chinese military equipment particularly for the navy until they can fully develop their own stuff. Would be awesome seeing Russia have one or two of those new Chinese aircraft carriers.

Russia has a carrier and barely has enough large long range ships to operate with it... buying more fixed wing carriers would be a waste of time and getting China to make them would take funds away from Russias shipbuilding capacity which needs support and funding too.

There's some information. Hopefully the poor guy who posted the information is alive and not in a Chinese prison.

He should be in prison... giving away military secrets to brag and improve the specs of his vehicles in a computer game... what a dick.

The lower penetration reported by CCTV may be intentionally meant to obfuscate the DTC10-125 ammunition’s real capabilities to foreign observers.

The numbers released are given by the Chinese... this guy supposedly leaked numbers and numbers were officially released and are different.... do you think it is possible that the numbers released for the Russian rounds are conservative and the secret numbers from field testing might be better and comparable to this Chinese round?

There was talk of the new tank gun used by the T-90AM was generating muzzle velocities of 2km per second, which is about 200m/s faster than previous rounds which suggests improve propellent and chamber design... how would that effect the performance of all existing rounds.

If these western tanks are dribbled into the theatre they likely wont even see a Russian tank... if they are held back around Kiev, or locations where Lithium or Titanium are located then air power will likely take them out... I very much doubt they will be massed up and used for an offensive, but if they try then they will end up like the Germans in WWII with their super tanks that broke down before they got to the battle when they first arrived to the front line.

And how could the soviets have possibly known the structure of the abrams and leopard 2 composite armor for them to make this assumption? Also the M1(1980) hull armor array is far mor adavnced than the T-72A or T-64B. It has reflective plate design filled with ceramics which are classified to this day , while the T-72A and T-64Bs just had 2 RHA plates primitively sandwiching textolite.

Nuclear bomb design at the end of WWII was super super secret too... but the managed to find out quite a lot about that too.