Russian Tanks ERA and APS

Mindstorm wrote:Austin have you gived a look to the first scientifical publication (when i find the link to the second i will add it to mine previous post) i have pointed out on the interaction betweeen long rod penetratrors and ERA defeating mechanism ?

It can be very useful for debunk one time for all the low level ,ignorant claims (mainly triggered by that curse called Wikipedia...) sustaining that the new western KE ammunitions (in particular M829A2 and M829A3),with ever increasing L/D ratio, DU core and lower speed, was conceived to better defeat Russian K-5-like dynamic protections after the famous tests of '90 on the "impenetrable" T-72B : a pure, simply idiocy .

To obtain a KE rod more resistant to heavy ERA defeating mechanism,in fact, would be necessary to significantly increase its diameter and shorten its length; in this way you would obtain both the improvement of penetrator's resistance to side-force-induced plastic deformations and to compress the time of interaction with the ERA's flying plates (other important elements would be augment the speed of the round and not employ DU core rods )
The problem,of course, would be that a similarly constructed rod would be significantly less efficient in penetrate the passive armor behind ERA tiles ; pratically those design solutions are mutually exclusives and anyone can image on what of those solutions falled the choice of KE round's designers.

GarryB wrote:I would suggest if you use Firefox as your browser that you look through the various addons that allow pdf files to be created and edited and manipulated.

You might find freeware tools that will manipulate the text in a pdf on somewhere like Tucows.

The program Adobe Acrobat as built in text editors and probably has translation software built in in its current version... the version I own is version 6... they are up to at least version 10 now.

It is amusing that western "experts" constantly claim western armour to be superior on its own and that the Russians manage an equivalent by adding ERA, yet the evidence you have provided clearly shows that heavy second generation ERA directly compliments the base armour by defeating the rounds most efficiently designed to defeat the base armour.

The ERA perfectly compliments the base armour and together they offer far better protection than either could on its own.
to those crafty Russians... who do it using 20 tons less material than the Western solution.

It is amusing that western "experts" constantly claim western armour to be superior on its own and that the Russians manage an equivalent by adding ERA, yet the evidence you have provided clearly shows that heavy second generation ERA directly compliments the base armour by defeating the rounds most efficiently designed to defeat the base armour.
The ERA perfectly compliments the base armour and together they offer far better protection than either could on its own.
to those crafty Russians... who do it using 20 tons less material than the Western solution.

The break up of the Soviet Union caused a gap in development which resulted in the 'Black Eagle' and T-95 not being introduced in service. Even so, older designs like the T-80/90 are still competitive (and in some aspects superior) to Western designs.

Cyberspec wrote:
Very interesting interview with Viktor Ivanovich Mokruhin (leading expert on armour) on the T-90MS and Russian Armour developments in general (has english translation)....a lot questions are answered in the interview

Does that mean that US and West have a good insight in T-80 armour strength and weaknesses considering it forms a significant portion of Russian Armour and perhaps developed the A3 and the new A4 to meet those threats

RELIKT COMPLEX IS A RELIABLE PROTECTION
Valery Grogoryan Military Parade, No. 5, 2011

Valery Grogoryan - president, science director for JSC NII STALI (Research Institute of Steel), PhD (technical science), professor, RASRA academician


At present, the armor protection of even most advanced domestic tanks of type T-90 against high explosive antitank (HEAT) and armor-piercing discarding sabot (APDS) projectiles needs improvement. It follows from the expert evaluations of the most representative antitank projectiles and antitank guided missiles (ATGM) that, for example, penetration ability of the APDS of the tank guns of the ABRAMS M1 tank modifications is growing approximately according to the linear law with a factor of proportionality of about 35 mm per year. As regards the HEAT guided missiles, then alongside with the growth of the penetration ability of the warheads (WH) due to the increase in caliber, power of explosive charges and use of the precision technologies for manufacture of the warheads, a qualitative change in the principle of influence on the armor protection takes place. Specifically, we can see a transfer to the tandem warheads capable of destroying the reactive armor of the first generations, expansion of the delay time between operation of the main and auxiliary warheads, improvement of their effectiveness thanks to the scheme contrivances of different kinds, etc.

It is quite obvious that to maintain parity, we should find an adequate answer to improve for the armor protection of the domestic tanks.

The necessity of the urgent retaliatory steps to improve armor protection of the domestic tanks is also dictated by its higher role in the local conflicts where probability of use of the close combat weapons such as a handheld grenade launcher (RPG) with the HEAT grenades against the thin-armored side projections of the tank abruptly increases.

The specialists of the Research Institute were tasked to develop the appropriate armor protection complex. As a result, the RELIKT complex of the frontal armor protection was developed and entered service. Also developed were the reactive-armor special modules which were initially developed to protect the thin-armored BMP-3 infantry combat vehicles against RPG, and which well protect the side projections of the hull and turret of the tank against the widespread close combat weapons of type PG-9S.

The rear section of the hull (in the area of the engine compartment) and the turret is covered by the latticed screens to reduce by more than a half probability of an explosive jet from the shaped charge cone of the warhead of the antitank grenade launcher due to the violation of the normal operation of the warhead in case of a hit between the ribs of the screen.

Both complexes are principally new. Thus, the RELIKT complex employs a 4S23 element of reactive armor (RA) of high sensitivity and modern, more effective, propelling scheme where destructive and destabilizing influence on the ammunition striking elements (explosive jet, APDS rod) prevails relative to the thick armor plates propelled in opposite sides. In this case, the dominant contribution to the said destructive effect is made by the plate propelled in pursuit. Owing to fact that energetically a in-pursuit propelling is more advisable than an on-head propelling, the structures of such kind are more proof (in 4 to 5 times) against the APDS as compared with the KONTAKT-V RA series complex. At the same time we can see that the anti-tandem properties of such armor essentially increase, i.e. armor acquires better proofness against the most advanced tandem antitank guided missiles of type TOW-2A with a delay time of at least 400 us and with the penetration ability behind the mounted shape-charge-proof reactive armor of at least 1,000 mm.

Thus, the use of RELIKT on the domestic tanks is a meaningful step of protection of the domestic tanks against the majority advanced antitank traverse weapons designed to destroy a tank from the front.

According to the estimates of the specialists they expressed at the exhibition at Nizhni Tagil, RELIKT developed by the Research Institute of Steel is an adequate answer to the advanced antitank weapons. Today, it is one of the best armor protection complexes for the armor materiel and possibility of its installation both on the new, upgraded and being in-service tanks makes RELIKT really unique.

Protection of the tank side projections against the HEAT grenades was borrowed from the technical solutions developed for the light-weight vehicles. As applied to the protection of such light-weight vehicles, the solution of the task was drastically more difficult because of several limitations:

- it was necessary to initiate the explosives and dispersion of plates so as to prevent their destructive effects on a relatively thin principal armor;

- it was necessary to prevent transfer of detonation from the RA element initiating under the action of the explosive jet of the charge to the entire volume of their block;

- if possible, localize the area of damage by limiting it by the area of one or two modules;

- make the protective modules universal, bearing in mind simultaneous reinforcement of protection against the kinematic weapons such as bullets of up to 14.5 mm in caliber and the projectiles to the small-caliber guns.

The whole complex of the tasks listed above was solved in no small measure due to the development and acceptance for operational service of the RA element (index 4S24) with twice as little amount of explosive as indexes 4S20 and 4S22. This drastically increased, without reducing the effectiveness of the jet suppression, the design survivability when attacked by fire and practically eliminated flam-mability both of the RA elements themselves and of the modules on the whole that was a problem with the previous RA elements of type 4S20.

It should also be specially underlined that when mastering this complex, a very complicated task was solved to delay a leading portion of jet that by virtue of a certain inertial dispersion of the RA plates (especially when propelled in pursuit) had time to "slip" having at the same time a rather high penetration ability of at least one caliber of the warhead for a relatively thin principal armor.

It should be also noted that RELIKT allows installation on the tank of a stealth complex against precision weapons. The main component of this complex is a set of the NAKIDKA anti-radar multi-spectral composite material widely tested and well-proved.

Even a simple visual inspection of the vehicles shows that percentage of the so-called weak zones was essentially reduced.

If we take into account that all the represented protection complexes were only a part of the amazing work on deep upgrade of the T-90 tank that has been performed by the Uralvagonzavod practically for all aspects related to the improvement of the vehicle combat effectiveness, then we may draw a conclusion that both our army and the foreign partners in the event they buy such vehicle will obtain one of the world's best tanks capable of standing up to the today's threats.

However, the potential of growth both of protection and of the other combat properties of the vehicle have many latent reserves.

Austin wrote:So Relikt is 4 to 5 times more effective compared to Kontakt-5 ERA against APFSDS is quite impressive ( we were calculating 2x times against K-5 ) , also its anti-tandem properties is quite good as well. NII STALI did a very good job with Relikt Congrats to them.

Mindstorm wrote:

IronsightSniper wrote:Modern FCS systems are good, but hitting moving targets at combat ranges of say, 2,000 meters is still an iffy thing. Has to do with the environment.

It has to do almost nothing with environment , it has to do, instead , almost anything with arbitrary variations in the vector of motion of the intended target (completely not computable by any FCS ,indipendently from theirs sophistication) in the time required to the unguided ammunition to reach the interception point , since the instant of the found fire solution .

IronsightSniper wrote:@Austin, if what Valery claims is true (Relikt ERA being 4-5 times better at protecting against APDS than Kontakt-5), than that'd mean that Relikt ERA would provide roughly 1,000 mm of RHAe v.s. KE, which would be a truly astounding feat, though of course, as any learned man of Armor would tell you, until there is more proof of that, we'd "shuffle" it back down to 500 mm of RHAe v.s. KE for now.

Austin wrote:

IronsightSniper wrote:@Austin, if what Valery claims is true (Relikt ERA being 4-5 times better at protecting against APDS than Kontakt-5), than that'd mean that Relikt ERA would provide roughly 1,000 mm of RHAe v.s. KE, which would be a truly astounding feat, though of course, as any learned man of Armor would tell you, until there is more proof of that, we'd "shuffle" it back down to 500 mm of RHAe v.s. KE for now.

If it was not from NII STALI i wouldnt have even cared to look at any figure on Relikt , there are many internet figures floating around including some that we discussed in this thread and even stuff that you are speculating on 7 Steel Plate.

Ofcourse there was this famous 850 RhAe figure that was quoted by the Tank Designer.

But since this is from STALI i would take their word , for argument sake take the conservative 4x times , you cant get any better quote from any one in this game then from the makers themself , if you read it carefully he even mentions two breakthrough almost 2x times less amount of explosive now needed to be used compared to K-5 and as he mentions

"a very complicated task was solved to delay a leading portion of jet that by virtue of a certain inertial dispersion of the RA plates (especially when propelled in pursuit) had time to "slip" having at the same time a rather high penetration ability of at least one caliber of the warhead for a relatively thin principal armor"

Reading between the lines it makes me feel Relikt is more optimised for APFSDS and does not dramatically improve the HEAT capability atleast not in the way it does for KE.

Most likely the export variant will be limited to 2x times of K-5 and HEAT figures.

IronsightSniper wrote:Actually, the 7 Reactive Plate part is more factual than the actual RHAe claim (since there are pictures of cross sections of RELIKT somewhere in the Russian internet). And as I've mentioned, even though they're using more reactive explosives, that alone would not account for the dramatic increase in protection. But regardless, even though that is from NII STALI, any person learned in Armor will still tell you that 1,000 mm RHAe from an ERA is near absurd, and more evidence is required.

Austin wrote:

IronsightSniper wrote:Actually, the 7 Reactive Plate part is more factual than the actual RHAe claim (since there are pictures of cross sections of RELIKT somewhere in the Russian internet). And as I've mentioned, even though they're using more reactive explosives, that alone would not account for the dramatic increase in protection. But regardless, even though that is from NII STALI, any person learned in Armor will still tell you that 1,000 mm RHAe from an ERA is near absurd, and more evidence is required.

So essentially it tells me you would rather believe the 7 Reactive Plate argument or picture floating on the internet but would not believe what NII STALI has to say ?

Well if say he would have said that Relikt was 2 times better then K-5 then it would have been more believable ?

It all depends on the breakthrough that NII STALI would have achieve in material science and in equal measure a more effecient way to deal with KE rounds.

K-5 has its legacy dating back 2 decades or early 1990 may be even earlier so they had nearly 2 decades to improve it.

You would need evidence , what kind of evidence has the maker of Abrams has presented that its frontal armour is what most internet folks claim to be ? If there is any technical document from the builder or maker i would be happy to see it.

Its just typical Western Bias , I am sure if the same claim was to be made by Western Tank builders , there would be many Western armoured journal praising the breakthrough as revolutionary and how western material science triumphs but the same claim by Russian or other country would be looked down upon by contempt and asked to show evidence , which even the Western Armoured manufature claims in Armour development would never show any evidence but would be rather believed.

Almost nothing? Big adverbs you use there. Granted if the target knew what was happening and was maneuvering in a more "intense" fashion, sure, it'd be the biggest deterrent to an incoming projectile. Though, that still does not discount the environment, who's effects as we know varies more greatly as the distance increases....

And as I've mentioned, even though they're using more reactive explosives, that alone would not account for the dramatic increase in protection. But regardless, even though that is from NII STALI, any person learned in Armor will still tell you that 1,000 mm RHAe from an ERA is near absurd, and more evidence is required.

http://www.niistali.ru/

1986 The development and adoption of a universal framework of reactive armor built in. "Contact-5"

2005 Adopting a new set of universal modular RS "Relic"