Tank Warfare: Russian Armour vs Western Armour

Werewolf wrote:
To make direct conclusion we would need to test thermobaric weapons against tanks and see what damage they do to optics, cannon and APS and for the part that Thermobaric weapons used as Anti-aircraft weapon, they are not favorable because the shockwave is rather small in comperision with a HEF were fragments can fly several dozen meters and still make damage, where the Thermobaric warhead needs remote detonation at maximum of 10 m not counting in the split second delay after aerosol has formed itself.

magnumcromagnon wrote:
The best weapon against APS would be moment of surprise and stealth,

magnumcromagnon wrote:
the best and most cost effective solution would be cheap helicopter drones with TV guidance and directly linked to EFP's. A small drone with some ram coating would show up very small on a X-band AESA radar of a APS system, combined with the effect that the slow rate of flying speed would further disguise itself with birds, maybe even strap sythetic bird wings for further disguise.

magnumcromagnon wrote:

KomissarBojanchev wrote:

kvs wrote:Thermobaric shells are not practical.   There is a reason why thermobaric bombs are huge.  The concept is to detonate a fuel aerosol in air.  You
need a lot of fuel to create the aerosol.   There are physical constraints and you can't simply replace the fuel with some high explosive variant
that can be packed more tightly and made to fit in a tank shell.

Then how is it done on the even tinier shmel and metis-M1 warheads?

He's referring to thermobaric shells against armor, you would need fairly large and heavy thermobaric weapon to do some seriously damage to any MBT...now compare that to HEAT warheads, where the Kornet's 152mm 10kg warhead against any MBT armor would be best described as a grown man jumping on top of a well shaken can of soda!

higurashihougi wrote:

runaway wrote:I think looks is important, "a Beautiful ship is often a great ship" and the same can often be said about tanks. T-34, Tiger, Panther, SU-100, T-72, M1 is good looking and good tanks. The Cromwell, M3 for example doesnt look good and werent any good either.
Perhaps they dont look good when you know they arent, but often if they look good they are.

M1 is NOT a good tank.

Werewolf wrote:

TR1 wrote:

higurashihougi wrote:

runaway wrote:I think looks is important, "a Beautiful ship is often a great ship" and the same can often be said about tanks. T-34, Tiger, Panther, SU-100, T-72, M1 is good looking and good tanks. The Cromwell, M3 for example doesnt look good and werent any good either.
Perhaps they dont look good when you know they arent, but often if they look good they are.

M1 is NOT a good tank.

Yes it is.

And combat proved it repeatedly.

A mediocre one actually when compared to Leopard2a6/7, Merkawa 4, T-90A/SM and even ZTZ-99A2.


In combat against old export equipment from untrained personal against a country that is was under sanctions more than 2 decades, hardly what anyone would call "Combat proven".

Werewolf wrote:So you unignored me again, was getting lonely for you?

The only tanks that have even seen a glance of modern AT weaponary or anything that could be even associated with a Modern Battlefield, those tanks are designed for were T-72/80 and Merkawa 4. The rest of the tanks including M1 of all versions haven't seen much more than PG-7 warheads of 70's export production with 290mm RHAe penetration (monoblocks) and the biggest it saw in vast use was AT-4 Spigot with 350-400mm RHAe penetration against US Army only 4 incidents i can recall where Iraqi M1's have been engaged with modern weapons of RPG-29/7 (650-700mm RHAe) with Tandem shaped charge warhead and one incident with Kornet-E (1200mm RHAe) which destroyed M1A1 tanks or at least penetrated side armor and lower glacis of frontal arc, ripping of drivers leg. So how can any of those tanks be called "Combat proven" when all of those tanks were designed to fight real militaries with most modern Anti Tank weapons in much worse conditions while they hardly saw even insurgents with even capable weaponary dealing against them.

Combat proven is among those magic words amongst Chobham, Depleted Uranium, Fire and Forget used by online military armschair generals that barely know the subject they like to discuss and you should refrain from using such terminology in this way.

The comperision of military weapons and plattforms can only be compared in three ways that would actually have fair, realistic and basic concept of evaluation.

1. Technological and capability evaluation, rellying soley on implemented technologies, based on official data, analysis and research data of the entire system and each major subsystem and the capabilities those tanks have as an example like different Munitions, sensors, protection firepower of each munition and occuring targets/threats. Further the comperision of how two different tanks would fare under exact same circumstances against various enemies (targets and threats) and which of the tanks would fare better in how many situations to draw a conclusion of combat effeciency.


Basing this evaluation only for the purpose to compare and draw direct comperision of technology and capability, excluding logistical,financial and human influence out of the comperision.

2. A combat effeciency comperision with technological evaluation and its capabilities with the influence of country's (A vs B) logistical, financial, geographical and military assets capabilities and situation.

This comperision is quite extended but is the most realistic which evaluades more of countries capabilities than actual performance of tanks combat worthiness.

3. Combat effeciency only, all participants are bound to exact same resources (human, money for procurement, maintenance, deployment and supply chain) and based on the technological capabilities of eachs participants tank how each would fare in exact same situations of each enemies targets aswell as threats.

This comperision is the actual only comperision that would matter due the fair basis and direct evaluation process of the Combat effeciency, which is the exact point of weapons how effective they are in entire military relevant points Effeciency on battlefield aswell effeciency in logistical and finanical terms which all militaries even the spoiled and overbudgeted militaries are bound to in peace aswell war time.

Yes and non of those incidents actually proofs the combat worthiness of those tanks when they are isolated from any opponents military engagements and technological level, since we are speaking about M1 Abrams tank, so it was designed to fight Soviet/Russian Army most modern and capable tank divions under Soviet military doctrine, but some iraqi sanctioned militaries and insurgents with monoblock shape charged weapons from 70's that just barely manage to penetrate side armor are not really any ground to proof to anyone the Combat worthness of those tanks since they were designed for much more than that.

You can't proof your worth as a boxer if you go as 110kg Schwarzenegger against 60kg weightclass highschool teens.

TR1 wrote:

The wheels look identical to T-80 as far as I am concerned.
2A82 can 100% use back-dated ammo. Otherwise it would be pointless.

Soviet tank wheel sizes don't matter terribly- the suspension differences are more substantial however.
T-80 does seem to drive the smoothest, but it has to do with engine as well.

TR1 wrote:

cracker wrote:It's right to say that the armata wheels are direct evolution of T-80 wheels? (or even simply T-80 ones)

By the way, someone can explain me the main difference between T-72/90 wheels, T-64 wheels and T-80 ones? I often read the T-80 has the "best"...


fantastic to see the tank retains the traditional integrated dozer blade!


By the way.... what's the secondary armament? I can't believe all the crap about an upper 30mm canon, it would be senseless and useless.... overburdening... Can we say for sure it's a coaxial PKT and a classic top turret PKT? or is the top gun a KORD? I kinda wish they finaly make a 12.7 coax instead of the 7.62

and for the 2A82, and the autoloader... can they accept standard 2A46 ammo??? would be really shitty if not.

The wheels look identical to T-80 as far as I am concerned.
2A82 can 100% use back-dated ammo. Otherwise it would be pointless.

Soviet tank wheel sizes don't matter terribly- the suspension differences are more substantial however.
T-80 does seem to drive the smoothest, but it has to do with engine as well.

Stealthflanker wrote:
Anyway, i wonder if Russian have any interest toward adjustable suspension. Thus it could take better advantage of terrain  like Japanese Type-90 or Korean K2.

cracker wrote:

and more expensive, more things that can break, more problems, more maintenance. The simpler the better. If the Armata has already -8 gun depression, it's already a good improvement over T-90 and olders.

flamming_python wrote:
T-90A? Smashed their way through a whole bunch of Chechens when they were cut off in Dagestan 1999, with no losses. But other than that one episode, nothing else AFAIK.

TR1 wrote:
At the end of the day, the Abrams has overall done far better against the same old RPG-7s that have been used against T-72s.
And that makes sense, being a newer tank and all.

Militants operating in Al-Anbar have also released images of numerous attacks on other Abrams tanks, including ones involving a 9K11 Kornet ATGM, RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers

Since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with tanks in daily combat against the unexpectedly fierce insurgency, the Army says 80 of the 69-ton behemoths have been damaged so badly they had to be shipped back to the United States.

The Army will not discuss details of how tanks have been damaged by insurgents.

Werewolf wrote:Why is this debated kept in an infanitle way, completley ignoring facts, circumstances and weapons specifications and not discussing based on exact those things to have a fair comperision.

Abrams never even saw modern weaponary, while even on Donbass T-64/72 tanks see far more modern ammunition used against them far above the 290mm RHAe the iraqis have used against abrams. The T-72 can eat 1000 PG-7 warheads even to the side without getting penetrated, but of course compering apples with bananas is of course the way to compare things to trying to push a point of view dislocated from reality.

higurashihougi wrote:

TR1 wrote:At the end of the day, the Abrams has overall done far better against the same old RPG-7s that have been used against T-72s.
And that makes sense, being a newer tank and all.

Which T-72 ? Naked T-72 Ural, monkey T-72 Babylon or T-72Bxx with ERA and etc etc ?