T-90 tanks in Indian Army

The point is that APS systems will reduce the danger from the most common weapons on the battlefield like RPGs that any soldier on the battlefield can sling over their shoulder and take shots at your vehicles from sides and rear and fire from distances too close for you to do anything else about.

Obviously APS systems are not perfect and are not cheap... my understanding is that the MMW radar they emit to detect incoming rounds would allow a sophisticated enemy like HATO or Nazis HATO is currently supporting to use the MMW radar emissions to plot the real time locations of Russian armour and indeed use it to blind target those forces with artillery strikes.

It is going to take time to get them to the point where they are useful but in some situations like in Syria you might find going into a built up area that it is worth switching something on that stops RPGs and TOWs... you could even set up decoy emitters to get the enemy to launch attacks where the intent is to draw their artillery into a trap...

The new Russian T-90 upgrades seem to use upgraded Shtora but not APS... a laser warning system is valuable even if you just use it to try to spot enemy drones with modern EOs and perhaps decide if they have a missile on the way where popping smoke and moving might be a good idea.

I was thinking the same and you were the one who said APS radars have a very short range. Something like 300m which equals to more or less 1km detection by ELINT systems.

The Russians seem to think it is a problem needing to be solved...

The LWS being developed by DRDO is required to detect threats at ranges up to six kilometres. It will have four sensors mounted on the vehicle’s turret at different places to provide a 360-degree coverage to detect threats from sources such as laser range finders, laser target designators and laser munition guiding beams.

The control units and display screens will be mounted inside, adjacent to the commander’s console, and give out an audio and visual warning to the crew, classify the type of threat and enable them to take counter-measures such as firing smoke grenades to obscure the vehicle and move to a different location.

It is a complex game... they could send a drone towards Indian armour with LIDAR.... essentially laser radar, that scans for targets... it could mark targets it finds with the intention to get them to pop smoke and therefore reveal their positions.

After a few days of making you pop smoke every half hour you are going to get ordered to turn the damn things off to stop wasting smoke rounds... when the stop popping smoke... they start launching missiles.

For Russian and Soviet laser homing weapons the target is normally lased for 1 second for direct fire weapons and for 3 seconds for indirect weapons so by the time the target is lased the weapon will be very close and popping smoke might not help very much.

No tank can go from stationary to moving in 3 seconds... certainly not any distance that would mean anything.

Sujoy wrote:Indian Army approves the purchase of Automatic Target Trackers and Digital Ballistic Computers for maintaining combative edge of T-90 tanks over adversary platforms after Pakistan acquired VT-4 MBTs and China's deployment of Type 99 MBTs in the India-Tibet border.

Automatic Target Trackers and Digital Ballistic Computers have already been developed for the Arjun MBT.

The T-90S already has digital ballistic computers and ATT is just a software upgrade, unless France is being a bitch as usual with mods on products bought and paid for 20 fucking years ago.

To maintain the overmatch India just needs to secure licenses for 3BM59/60 subcaliber shells which are heavily optimized to overpass NERA and heavy ERA arrays. Also Lancets, and the Russian fires management system, Zemlediye etc. etc.

Of course they also need to start work on an independent drone supply chain ecosystem, because they're fighting China after all.

Isos wrote:I was thinking the same and you were the one who said APS radars have a very short range. Something like 300m which equals to more or less 1km detection by ELINT systems.  

The signal power received from the target is inversely proportional to the 4th power of range while the signal power received by the target is inversely proportional to the 2nd power of range.

Pure radar APS systems are magnets for anti-radiation missiles. That's why Afghanit APS has an electro-optical direction finders. The electro-optics search for high-intensity UV/IR spikes like heavy caliber muzzle flashes or ATGM launches while the doppler radars only start emitting during fine tracking for the interception itself.

The Afghanit APS a lot stealthier than competing APS systems as a result. It also provides the crew a massive surplus of reaction time to maneuver, orient the strongest armor to the target or engage the target itself before the projectile even lands, something which is impossible for most other APS which can only detect the threat at the very last second, far too fast for the crew to do anything about it.

You can have the total advantage of surprise on the T-14, fire a perfect shot and before your thermal sight even adjusts to the muzzle flare get blown up by the return snap shot that you never even noticed.