Question Thread: Russian Army

Actually it would be a very interesting anti helo weapon... especially in 23mm calibre with a smoothbore barrel and an APFSDS projectile, though most helos have only minimal armour so some sort of HE round might actually be more effective against a few targets.

Of course in urban combat the APFSDS rounds able to punch through concrete walls and sand bags would be a useful weapon for attack and defence.

From memory the 15mm AMR developed in the west was based on the 14.5mm round and could easily penetrate 40mm steel plate at 1,000m, so a hot loaded 23mm round should allow a heavier projectile at higher velocities to do even better... especially with a smooth bore barrel.

The obvious problem however is that once the round has penetrated, how effective will it be, which suggests to me that a new sub calibre sabot round with the front designed for penetration and the rear filled with HE and incendiary material might be an ideal anti MRAP weapon that pentrates light armour but explodes inside the target for maximum effect. An APHEI round.

Of course the weapon would be rather heavy... it would probably make more sense just to take a METIS-M which delivers a much more powerful HE charge to 2km.

Never been much need for it I guess.

For anti-material role there are a variety of light AT launchers.

WP rounds for russian artillery and tanks?

The US has used them throughout the cold war and with outstanding success during the Vietnam war. Have the soviets and then Russians ever used used them? IMO they're a lot more useful than dedicated smoke rounds and grenades because they also offer a devastating incendiary effect while giving equally thick smoke.

Also if tanks could have WP smoke grenade launchers that could also be a useful weapon.

Not very widely, no.

They have incendiary weapons including the RPO-D and the ZAB series of bombs which are devastating, but AFAIK they don't carry such ammo in their tanks.

BTW WP wasn't that effective in Vietnam... napalm was more widely used and it was used fairly indiscriminately.

That means  soviet mortars, artillery and tanks had a serious  disadvantage in incendiary weapons. Pretty much any NATO tank with a rifled cannon could fire WP rounds. Not to mention 60mm+ NATO mortars.

All Soviet and Russian tanks can generate smoke screens using smoke grenades and by injecting diesel fuel into the exhaust manifold.

The Soviets have a wide range of fuel air explosive munitions that are far more effective at killing enemy personel than Phosphorus... phosphorus burns fiercely, but will not knock down walls or shatter glass, it gives off poisonous fumes too, but FAEs burn off the oxygen and suffocate people just as effectively, but the blast and heat effects are more consistent.

Why BMP-T-Terminator had five operators , i knew the job for every one but isn't this a big number in compraison with bradley vehicle " 3 operators " !

As in title..hmm aside from development of Kornet-D, Hermes and other type of ATGM's..i wonder how's the development of the Russian gun launched ATGM ? Steady pace so i could expect to see new form of refleks or any other stuff in the future or perhaps it's been abandoned ?

Other question is related to doctrine.. How those gun-launched ATGM's will be used in a battle ?

Would love to ask in tank.net.. nonetheless they're not taking new members at the moment.

thanks for any response.

First of all Tank Gun launched missile is a misnomer as they have laser beam riding anti armour missiles for direct fire use and also SALH missiles for artillery use.


They have a laser guided round designed for every tank calibre weapon and above including 122mm gun/howitzer, 120mm mortar, 125mm tank gun, 130mm naval guns, 152mm artillery, 180mm artillery shell, 203mm artillery and 240mm mortar. I have not read about any 160mm mortar round but it would no surprise me.

I also suspect a laser guided direct fire 152mm tank round, and several new guided rounds for the 100mm rifled main gun of the BMP-3, 125mm Sokol-1 guided shell using EO guidance, and new rounds for Koalition.

Why this tank project was cancelled? This tank has to had 152 mm smooth bore gun as main armament and 30 mm autocannon as secondary weapon. It would be an extemely power full tank, why it was cancelled? 

Is there any thing to do with brain drain? 

Because it was a Cold War project not corresponding to the realities of warfare and economics today.

Nothing to do with brain drain. Armata is more advanced of a project, even if it won't have a giant gun.

The T-95 was like the Commanche.

If the cold war had continued then it might have made sense but with the end of the cold war it was a very expensive tank that would have operated with a range of other vehicles that would be vulnerable to enemy fire... just like today most conflicts the US will operate attack helos in will not have extensive radar coverage so a radar evading helicopter makes little sense and is expensive.

The Armata MBT will likely be a T-95BIS, or T-95SMT, fitted for but not with a more powerful 15xmm calibre gun.

The difference is that now they will have entire brigades of armata vehicles that can operate in very dangerous environments.

SSDD wrote:Why this tank project was cancelled? This tank has to had 152 mm smooth bore gun as main armament and 30 mm autocannon as secondary weapon. It would be an extemely power full tank, why it was cancelled? 

Is there any thing to do with brain drain? 

you waffen ss from dfi?
anyway i think 125mm ETC gun is much better than humongous 152 mm gun. You could fire apfsds and HE with same muzzle energy as 152mm gun and you also have a lot of ammo, though 152 mm offers unparalleled HEAT weapons at standoff (arty) ranges.

It is all about energy... for a given diameter of barrel and the same level of technology level of propellent, and materials and ways to make gun barrels when you reach the limits of the barrel and propellent technology and metalurgy for making gun barrels and penetrators then to make a large step up in performance you have to increase the calibre.

The larger the calibre the more energy you can push down the barrel.

Larger calibres also mean wider HEAT shells which means more effective HEAT shells, and in terms of gun launched missiles the larger calibres mean more efficient HEAT warheads and also more room for electronics and extra propulsion and guidance options.

In other words a bigger missile means adding computerised guidance to allow fire and forget performance.

Having said all that... a new calibre is expensive and larger and heavier which means new loading and handling equipment and fewer rounds per vehicle etc etc.

well there is not much true information about t-95 for now , lets wait for armata and more data about t-95 ,then we can compare.

Yes unfortunately the T-95s 'brain-drain gun', it's secondary turret weapon wasn't ready yet.

They fitted it with the standard co-axial machine gun instead, but when taken altogether they realised that such a configuration wouldn't offer that much of an advantage over the competing Armata project while being considerably more expensive. So they halted the project.

Here's my conjecture...

1] Object 195 was designed first and foremost as an MBT, with modular properties.

2] Armata was designed from the beginning as a universal platform.

I believe the MoD felt that by investing in Armata, they could modernize and replace a lot more vehicles for less cost. I also believe the restructuring of the Russian military is a necessity, and Armata was chosen to fill the requirement of high part-commonality required to keep modernization costs to a minimum. Performance of the vehicle had little importance in the decision.

T-95 was a tank program to replace the T-90/72 family of tanks... much the same way the PAK FA was to replace the Flankers and Fulcrums.

The problem was that the conflict in Chechnia made them realise that mobility was important, as was protection and firepower, and that sometimes lighter, more mobile vehicles were needed and at other times heavy well protected vehicles were needed.

This led to a change in thinking... instead of making one MBT (ie T-95) and one IFV (BMP-4) and one APC (BTR-82) and one light armoured vehicle (BRDM-4), that for each operational brigade you need all the vehicles to have similar levels of mobility and similar levels of protection, so they all should arrive together, and they should all be able to withstand similar levels of enemy fire.

It means the MBTs wont be left on their own after the enemy have picked off all the light vehicles like BMPs and BTRs.

The solution was a completely clean sheet of paper.

There was only one T-95 and it was a main battle tank with a rear mounted engine.

Armata is a vehicle family that includes vehicles with the engine at the back, a turret in the middle and crew in the front like the MBT, but it also includes IFVs and APCs which likely have front mounted engines so the troops can exit from rear ramps.

A lot of things that were developed for T-95 will have been transfered directly to the T-99 (ie Armata MBT)... but the point is that there will likely be four T-99s... T-99h for heavy, T-99mw for medium wheeled, T-99mt for medium tracked and T-99l for light... the heavy model will be tracked and the light model will be wheeled, but they will all share electronics and sensors and weapons.

The T-99l might have a 45/57mm gun because it is simply too light for a 125mm gun for instance but it will have Kornet-EM missiles to allow it to engage enemy MBTs if they stumble on them in combat.

The brigade structure with the four vehicle types was theoretical and was pretty much passed to the Russian MIC when the T-95 was cancelled so they all started from scratch then, but the companies these design requirements were passed to started from scratch in terms of layout, but they could use existing things where useful... not everything needed to be made from scratch.

I wanted to know if there is somehwere reliable source or official source about ammunition that entered active service. Manufactors develope all kind of ammunitions but the problem is just because ammunition exists it doesn't mean it is in active service.

An example: russia tried to introduce new 30 mm AP rounds (APDS) since early 00s and so far i couldn't find anything credible that this ammunition is in service. Majority of outdated information still state that russian army and vvs use old AP-T rounds with rather mediocre penetration capabilities compared with newer designs.

a new armour piercing round would be nice, tho imo its not that needed. A 30 mm round optimized for soft targets and lightly armored ones would be better.

i am need help finding detail information not just specs about the 9S18M1 Snow Drift and the Acquisition Radars and Engagement Radar of the Buk-M2 and Tor-M2

thanks so much in advance

Anas Ali wrote:

i am need help finding detail information not just specs about the 9S18M1 Snow Drift and the Acquisition Radars and Engagement Radar of the Buk-M2 and Tor-M2

thanks so much in advance

I would suggest starting from Russian Wikipedia

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%D0%A118

or pvo.guns

http://pvo.guns.ru/buk/buk_12.htm

Hope it helps

^^
thanks a lot

Marines had enough of a weapon that "throws up into his own mouth". Enter the M27.
Surely Army is to follow. Spec ops already seem to be H&K mostly.

Zee Germans (H&K) managed to add a simple piston to AR design with very minimal changes.
The bolt, instead of gas port, now has an anvil - that piston rod strikes to cycle. The piston/rod is very thin and lightweight, compared to AK design.

more or less the only change. Charging handle is the same.

The rifling in standard issue is cold hammered.

Visited a friend recently and we shot his AR. Was my first experience with it and I was amazed to see a number of jams in a very controlled and clean env. Can only imagine what it behaves like in real world conditions. Took US from Nam till now (half a century) to close this sad chapter.

Anyway, i had this question - why we, the soviets/russians, never fielded a direct impingement weapon. Now I know

The irony is that with very modern very clear burning propellent the lack of a piston rod is not actually a bad thing.

The real problem is that when the use of the M16 became popular and the demand for ammo increased by an order of magnitude the production capacity of the clean burning powder was exceeded by a wide margin... to some dork decided to change to standard ball powder and the rest, as they say, is history.

With a new propellent a piston rod is not critical, but you need to have very clean burning powder.

Obviously other solutions were worth a look... the SVD and FN FAL both have light weight piston rods that are not directly connected to the bolt carrier that greatly reduce weight and recoil as they only move a few cms.

The FN FAL also has the separate upper and lower, with the mag well and barrel as the upper and the pistol grip and firing mechanism and recoil spring as the lower.

The fact that the mag well is part of the upper means different calibre uppers can have different mags, so unlike the M16 uppers in 7.62 x 39mm the FN FAL upper could be made to use standard AK mags... that would be cool.