Russian Tank guns Ammunition

Check these US APFSDS rounds , Are Russian current APFSDS are more thicker but shorter then the US APFSDS ?

We really don't know anything about current Russian APFSDS rounds so it is pretty impossible to say.

Russian and US projectiles will likely remain different because the armour they are intended to be used against are different.

Long and thin penetrators are more efficient... much like a needle is more efficient at penetrating skin than a blunt pencil, but ERA will blunt a thin penetrator more easily than a thicker penetrator, and a blunted penetrator uses up more energy penetrating armour than a pointed penetrator.

Different materials have different reactions to shearing forces... which is why a nylon wire can be spun up to high speed and used to cut plants in an edge trimmer.

Against grass and light vegetation the nylon is light enough to be spun up to high speed, yet still hard enough to resist breaking up into little pieces when hitting material with a lot of water in them... water does not compress so the more energy you hit it with the more damage you do to what you hit it with.

As an example when the myth busters fired live ammo into a swimming pool they found pistol bullets traveled further and faster than much higher velocity rifle bullets.

The 50 cal round was practically shattered on impact with the water and was not effective at all.

Obviously these were ball rounds which are blobs of lead with a copper jacket around the lead core. If they had been solid steel then they would have retained their shape and traveled much further though the water.

My point is that DU resists shearing forces better than tungsten does so it does not need to be as thick.

Penetrators need a certain thickness to give them resistance to bending over like a fishhook and losing all its penetration properties. Obviously making it too thick means it wont retain velocity well and will fly like a brick. The thicker it is, the more energy needed to push it through armour because it is applying its energy over a larger area.

Think of it as pushing a brick through armour... the area the brick spreads the pressure over dilutes the force so you need a lot more force to get it through. Replace the brick with a sharpened rod the thickness of a pencil and the force is much better concentrated and much less energy is required to push it through. Obviously a brick sized piece of metal has more mass than a pencil sized piece of metal, so you make the pencil sized piece of metal 50 cm long so it might weigh the same as the brick, but its shape improves its flight performance through the air (by much better aerodynamic shape) and its penetration (by concentrating its weight into a very small area).

The optimal dimensions can be calculated but things that effect those calculations are angle of impact, material the projectile is made from, and the material and structure of the armour to be penetrated.

A 90 degree hit means a sharp point will improve penetration.

A 60 degree hit means a sharp point might shear off or ricochet of the armour surface so a blunt tip is more efficient.

etc
etc

The problem is that most of the Russian APFSDS rounds we know about in any great detail are actually rather ancient and when you compare them with the western armour that was available at the time they were developed they were probably sufficient for the purpose.

New improve performance rounds will be closer to current protection levels today.

Another problem of course is that as Soviet and Russian armour performance has been revealed over the last two decades and pretty much revealed to have been more capable that was previously expected money has been put into upgrading western penetrators and guns to raise performance... something that the lack of money has largely prevented for Russian penetrators known about so far.

The point is that each side has an idea about the performance of the other sides armour so you are making the classical rookie mistake of comparing guns with guns and ammo with ammo, when you should be comparing perceived armour with ammo and guns.

Remember Russian tank guns have mainly faced former Soviet bloc armour in the last two decades that can be fitted with ERA.

Another aspect is that you own experience colours you view... a good example would be CIWS on Russian Naval vessels.

Western vessels that rely on a quad or octuple launcher for Harpoon or Exocet will often have one Goalkeeper or Phalanx.
Soviet vessels rarely carried more than that number of Anti Ship Missiles on their destroyer sized vessels but even their small patrol boats had two 30mm gatlins, while frigates and destroyers had 4, plus point defence missiles like SA-N-4 or later Klinok, while their capital ships and cruisers were covered in Ak-630s and Kashtans and Klintoks.

I rather suspect the Russians had a better understanding of the threat of anti ship missiles... especially very fast, very capable ones.

With Tanks it is all together possible that the reverse is true and the Russians haven't been making powerful enough tank gun ammo, but looking through their history the tank has largely been a heavy gun platform that shoots HE shells directly at battlefield threats and hard points and that long range engagements with enemy tanks will be done with missiles and aircraft and artillery.

Of course they have only recently fitted excellent fire control systems and battle management computers and fitted state of the art thermal imager systems, so the demand for more powerful longer range ammo might become an issue.

The purpose of angled plate is to maximise the protection that armour provides.

The cost is that the internal volume is greatly reduced for equipment.

When people are inside however it makes more sense to make protection better than to make it really "roomy". The exception to this is when lots of space is required... an example of the latter is the MSTA 2S19 SPG where a box shaped structure gives more room for a vehicle that should avoid the front lines.

There is not point in moving the crew from the turret and into the hull if you are going to make the turret tiny and heavily protected with thick angled armour.

At the end of the day if the enemy had the precision to "take out" the tank by hitting the main gun then they could do that anyway, or they could hit the vehicles tracks for a mobility kill or perhaps the turret ring where the turret and the hull meet where protection is minimal.

The simple fact is that even with high accuracy guns and ammo a moving tank is a difficult target to hit and there is no guarantee of hitting any specific part of the vehicle... otherwise the Abrams would be rubbish because hitting the turret bustle and destroying all its ready to use main gun ammo would render it useless on the battlefield.

In reality hitting any specific part of a tank in real combat is problematic.

APFSDS rounds punch clean holes through light armour... even the DU models. If you put heavy armour there then they disintegrate and do a lot more damage including starting fires.

HEAT rounds also punch small holes in very thick armour so unless either type of round actually hits something critical in that big turret then there is no real problem.

Think of firing a rifle through a large trucks rear trailer. If you make the trailer tiny so it only covers all the vital bits then every shot through has a good chance of hitting something important. With a full sized trailer with parts spread out and the important stuff duplicated then firing into it and doing real damage is rather less likely. Also keep in mind that it is also firing back at you so the result is that you are trying to damage its gun or optics and they are trying to kill you.

...sounds like they have the better design.

Also keep in mind that when they fit the 152mm gun then it will likely be shooting at targets out to 5km or more with APFSDS rounds and likely double that with diving top attack fire and forget missiles...

The energy dissipated in penetrating armour will ensure that there is sufficient heat inside the tank to cook the occupants. While HEAT rounds do punch a small hole in the armour, they in turn spray paint the interior with incredibly hot particles of molten metal and a large volume of extremely hot gas.

On the tank we are talking about the heavily angled thick armour designed to stop APFSDS and HEAT rounds is in the hull front protecting the three crew members stationed there. The flat vertical thin plate on the turret on the other hand covers an unmanned turret. Any vulnerable parts inside the turret can be protected with anti spall liners and individual metal shells.

If I go back to my example of a truck trailer... a large box... when you fire an SLR into its side it makes a single channel hole... in fact lets make this a 14.5mm SLAP round from an anti tank rifle... it will punch clean through both sides of the trailer and anything in its path on the way through will also be demolished but anything outside that path might only get fragment hits. With an RPG hit it will be the same. The point is that if you stack that trailer full of stuff and give it a sheet metal protection cover or shell surrounding it with anti spall liner or Kevlar and perhaps a bit of nomex (fireproof) then each penetration might damage or destroy several internal components, but the fuel is not stored in the turret and the main gun ammo is stored below the turret ring so electronics boxes and sensor masts could be vulnerable but duplication and wide separation of these items means it is incredibly unlikely that both copies of things will be hit. Look at videos of light cannon hits on targets... there is a random pattern to the hits... it is not like the bullseye at a sniper shoot there will be hits all over the place so it is very unlikely that the enemy will be able to precisely hit the gun or autoloading mechanism for instance.

The front turret armour doesn't need the same front turret armour of a MBT... ie 1.2m equivalent RHA, just having the equivalent of 200mm to stop frontal shots of light cannon ammo will suffice most of the time. The sides and rear can be half that to make it safe from HMG.

Remember also that an Active protection system will also be in operation that will likely be designed to deal with HEAT and APFSDS rounds and that soft kill systems like smoke and Shtora like systems will also be in operation.

The point is that if the enemy are hitting your turret then your crew are safe and the chance of actually knocking out the vehicle is actually quite low.

Tests with RPGs showed that when hitting an APC that unless fuel or ammo was hit, in which case the vehicle exploded, that only those humans in the path of the high energy plasma beam and those either side of them risked death or injury.

Translate that to a large turret with no people or ammo or fuel and the risk is zero of injuries and low of incapacitation.

If enemy fire is accurate enough to take out the gun then they could have taken out the tracks and then shot the gun barrel on any tank ever made.

They then saw a large scalloped shaped gouge out of the turret armour – it had almost penetrated but must have glanced off on account of the angle it was fired at and the position of the turret. Whatever, he said he was within 12mm of dying that day.

That is called Spall, and it occurs when a solid wall of metal is hit on one side without a full penetration. The energy goes through the metal armour and causes flakes or even large sections of the inner armour to flake off with considerable energy and damage things inside the tank.
The British stuck to rifled guns because one of their favourite rounds is called HESH or high explosive squash head. If you consider it simply a round made of solid HE with a tail mounted fuse so the round is fired at the enemy tank and when it hits it flattens like a big ball of putty slammed against a wall. After a short delay to allow the charge to spread against the armour the fuse detonates and the explosive sends an enormous shockwave through the armour as if it was a very high velocity projectile hitting the tank. The result is that while the armour is never penetrated an enormous scab of the armour itself kills the crew.

The problem of course is that modern layered armour often includes cavities which result in the spall being created in those cavities and separated from the crew. The spall is generally sharp and fast moving but not the right shape to penetrate armour so it stays in the cavities. Early tanks with solid armour added anti spall liners that also reduced the problem. Spall is also a problem with rounds that penetrate as the projectile or HEAT beam often carry fragments of the armour with them into the vehicle, which spall liner can reduce or even eliminate.

The point is that even just sheet metal will stop spall and with no crew in the turret spall becomes a threat only to the components inside the turret and these items can be protected with a mix of anti spall liners (kevlar) and fire resistent covers (Nomex) to stop fires from starting from hot fragments, and even a bit of mesh or sheet metal.

Make a hole in armour and you will generate heat.

Very true, but metal is a good conductor too so as long as the electronic components can take it there is no problem. All the crew are safely sitting under the thickest angled armour in the front hull, while the big relatively thinly armoured turret will have important bits protected, but not overly so, with duplication and redundancy dealing with potential problems of combat damage.

BTW Austin if the Indian Army purchase of Mango rounds is not just a stopgap, there is no reason why they couldn't set up a joint venture with the Russians to develop an improved Mango made of acceptable materials (ie not DU) that will still fit within their existing autoloaders and be fired from their current guns and still have the performance they want. I mean if the Israelis can do it surely the Israeli ammo they will have on hand together with Indian and Russian specialists they could develop something useful to the Indian Army.

The other option of course is short term local production of a few tens of thousands more Mangos and then a decision to upgrade to a newer gun and autoloader arrangement and perhaps adoption of a T-90MS standard, which means they could look at newer Russian Ammo from off the shelf to meet their current and near future needs over a longer term.

I think the thing to keep in mind is that no matter what they choose to do a manufacturing licence to make Mango in 2012-2013 would be like a decision to make an Amiga 500 in 2012-2013. Very simply it would likely be smaller and lighter and much faster and more capable than the old model from the mid-1980s... with a multi core processor and dedicated graphics chips with their own dedicated RAM, the fixed hardware nature of the design would make writing software for it easier because you know what hardware will be in it and it wont change much over time.

I hope the armata's 152mm gun will be 50+ calibers long and have an ATGM better than the LAHAT.

In terms of HEAT performance a major factor is the diameter of the warhead... having a 150mm calibre warhead will make it easier to increase penetration over a smaller calibre missile.

More importantly the huge increase in internal volume should allow terminal guidance to become an option, which, while it would make the round more expensive would also add potential for top attack flight profiles which maximises the potential effectiveness of the missile.

Very simply a MMW radar guidance head should allow the accuracy required to hit a tank target very easily, and the length potential of the round should allow wings and a substantial rocket booster motor, which should allow a rapid climb along with a glide and then rocket assisted dive onto the target to maximise lethality.

Right now however laser beam riding is very cheap and simple and therefore able to be mass produced and put in wide spread production easily and cheaply.