Comparing Tanks

In the context of the implementation of the escalation scenario in the European theater of operations, where in the course of tank duels a potential enemy can use the M1A2 SEP v.3 MBT, the improved Leopard-2A7 modification, as well as the promising Challenger Mk.3 MBT, this level of armor protection will be absolutely insufficient ..

How many of these incredibly heavy tanks will HATO be able to bring to the front line to even fight?

In 10 years time the British Army might not have any tanks, and if we are talking about tanks fighting HATO in Europe then it matters little what tank can penetrate which at this or that range.

As mentioned... MBTs represent about 15% of an armoured force and all their BMPs and BTRs will have Kornet and Bulat and that new Baikal vertically launched ATGM with a range of 15km... I honestly don't think it will be a huge problem.

Sounds like the makers of ERA and APS systems in Russia want more work...

I mean if all those HATO vehicles are assumed to have APS systems like Trophy, surely we can assume that the new Russian 10-12km range tank gun launched fire and forget missiles will be ready to inflict damage.

To be honest, I consider all that yapping about "tank obsolete" as proof of impotency.
It applies to the industry, not you Isos.
Ze Wezt does not have anything to compare with the Armata program, and won't have it even in 10 years from now.
There are tons of direct and indirect proofs for that.
Enough to follow the newest products of "collective West" to compare.
As soon as we extend the "west" to all the countries that are connected & cooperate with them. What we have there?
Well, the newest on the horizon, would be Korean K2 and Japan T10. Both produced when Armata was already there.
What we see, is an Asian reincarnation of the Leclerc. The weight was downed to 50-55t, autoloader added, the crew reduced to 3.
Sure we can split the hair about how effective is the armor package, or how good is the stabilization or FCS... but that makes no point.
What we have, is a 3 crew tank with 50-ton mass, 120mm smoothbore gun combined with autoloader, with tons of stuff rooted or sourced in Germany.
And none of them is even close to the T-14.
A whole concept is still based on the European tank designed in the late 80s.
The meaning of that is, as those two were made in the 00s, there was no conceptual progress in tanks for more than 3 decades.
That is a true shape & condition of "ze wezt" tank building industry and business.
I will not mention the Arjun saga, that would be pure cruelty.

The question is if they are even keen to do so.
As I am not much afraid of the European MIC, it runs just fine, the Muricas one is not.
Sure, they can trash any amount of virtual currency applied, but highly doubt the result.

The whole point of the T-72B3 upgrade is that it addresses the two most glaring issues of Soviet legacy tanks: the lack of effective night-fighting capability and antiquated comms. gear, providing what is otherwise an obsolete vehicle with a fighting chance against most threats on the battlefield while making it affordable enough that it could actually be bought en masse in a short period of time - and they've bought quite a lot.

Let's not complicate things, numbers still matter in warfare especially land combat. After all even the most protected NATO tank is only resistant from the front; everywhere else is fair game. On the tactical level, if you can secure absurd force ratios with significantly cheaper and more importantly easier to deploy units you can just outright surround your enemy and attack him from multiple sides, bypassing the protection afforded by the heavy frontal armor. If you have have more than enough tanks that you outnumber what the enemy has in theatre several times you can also just outmaneuver the enemy's fighting elements and strike at his vulnerable communications. With no fuel and ammo even the very best of NATO tanks would die just like the rest of them, abandoned or set alight by their own crews as they are forced to retreat on foot.

lancelot wrote:The Type 10 has one neat thing. It has a continuously variable transmission. It can move as fast backwards as forwards.
It is a vast improvement over its predecessor the Type 74. The Type 90 ended up not being a proper replacement because it was too heavy to be generally usable.

I have to agree both the Japanese and Korean tank are not quantum leaps in tank design however. They are basically an amalgamation of what was state of the art at the time of their design. The Korean tank is still better than anything it is likely to face, massive overkill against North Korean T-62 derived tanks, better than anything the Chinese have. The Japanese are not likely to ever get their tanks into a conflict. The T-14 was significant enough the US and France-Germany had to fast pedal into developing whole new tank designs.

For their price I expect even some champagne and caviar inside.

For the same amount of money you can get a t-90, some 10 suicide drones and some kornets with a shiton of rpg-7 which will be better than any new tank any day.

Isos wrote:Tank vs tank duel are long gone.

Clearly this isn't the case, as tanks are still being designed primarily with tank-on-tank combat in mind. Why else would you want the very powerful smoothbore gun if not to punch holes in enemy tanks with it?

Isos wrote:
Now tanks will only face guided munitions. Just see armenian/azeri loses or the syrian war.  

The side that survive this will use its tanks against light vehicles only in a big wave rolling over enemy quickly.

Russia has state of art shorads to protect them while using plenty of missiles/drones/atgms and what not to destroy enemy tanks.

Chinese and Nato shorads are either shitty or non existant so they can't protect them against drones/helicopters and aviation. 2000 vehicles is quick to be destroyed and they certainly can't use more than that at once.

Tanks are powerful but also very weak at the same time and they will always ve destroyed by hitting weak spot which represent 80% of the vehicle (front plate and front turret are well protected, rest is butter for anti tank weapons).

What has changed is the composition - nowadays it is far better to have fewer tanks with reliable air defense than many tanks with little to no air defenses. This is nothing new, just an extension of the classic combined arms to include the land forces response against air threats. It doesn't mean that the role of tanks have been reduced, far from it. If anything they are even more valuable as despite being vulnerable to an ever increasing range of threats they are far more survivable than any other unit on the battlefield and can thus be relied upon to do more aggressive actions, like taking ground - something drones/missiles/atgms cannot do at all.

lancelot wrote:The Type 10 has one neat thing. It has a continuously variable transmission. It can move as fast backwards as forwards.
It is a vast improvement over its predecessor the Type 74. The Type 90 ended up not being a proper replacement because it was too heavy to be generally usable.

I have to agree both the Japanese and Korean tank are not quantum leaps in tank design however. They are basically an amalgamation of what was state of the art at the time of their design. The Korean tank is still better than anything it is likely to face, massive overkill against North Korean T-62 derived tanks, better than anything the Chinese have. The Japanese are not likely to ever get their tanks into a conflict. The T-14 was significant enough the US and France-Germany had to fast pedal into developing whole new tank designs.

Both tanks are good examples that excellence in civilian engineering does not necessarily translate to military applications. Outside of their operating contexts these tanks would be hard-pressed against what NATO or Russia have as their closest equivalents, and are way too expensive to boot.

lyle6 wrote:The whole point of the T-72B3 upgrade is that it addresses the two most glaring issues of Soviet legacy tanks: the lack of effective night-fighting capability and antiquated comms. gear, providing what is otherwise an obsolete vehicle with a fighting chance against most threats on the battlefield while making it affordable enough that it could actually be bought en masse in a short period of time - and they've bought quite a lot.

Let's not complicate things, numbers still matter in warfare especially land combat. After all even the most protected NATO tank is only resistant from the front; everywhere else is fair game. On the tactical level, if you can secure absurd force ratios with significantly cheaper and more importantly easier to deploy units you can just outright surround your enemy and attack him from multiple sides, bypassing the protection afforded by the heavy frontal armor. If you have have more than enough tanks that you outnumber what the enemy has in theatre several times you can also just outmaneuver the enemy's fighting elements and strike at his vulnerable communications. With no fuel and ammo even the very best of NATO tanks would die just like the rest of them, abandoned or set alight by their own crews as they are forced to retreat on foot.

That brings another interesting question. Were the Soviet tanks really inferior when compare FCS and comm?
The peaking achievement of the Soviet tank industry used to be a T-80UK model.
It was a command version, as K states for "komandirski", more costly, delivered in small numbers, still what we have there at the end of 80s ?
Well, we have a tank with Agava 2 thermal sight for a gunner, passive light magnification channel for the commander, improved communication, and last but not least, Ainet programmable round. Agava installed was a follow-up of first-gen Agava, with 50 elements matrice, that Soviets had back in the early 80s. Not implemented for serial use due to cost, the fact that work on improved 128 element matrice was already running, and general problems with establishing an industrial base needed for serial production of it.
If one doubts if the Soviets were able to make a TI sight back in 80s, well, the answer is very simple.
A PRP-4M recon vehicle with 1PN71 NVS was delivered serial to ground forces starting from the early 80s, and its TI channel granted a 3000m detection and 1300m recognition ranges (some states 2000).
As we realize, that it is not a matter of competency and/or ability, what left is a doctrinal approach.
All Soviet tanks of the 80s were produced or modernized for use of a combined active/passive light magnification. In general, a range of passive detection of a tank-sized target was in the 1200-1500m range. For European theatre of operation, it was more than enough, as the line of sight does not exceed 1000m in most places in Europe.
What we have got on the opposite side? Well, an EMES 15 system of Leo2 could operate for approx. 20 minutes. After that, had to be switched off for cooling. Any TI observation channel for a commander was applied to A5 version only, and we are in the late 00s already, 20 years after 80UK. Its granted parameters are no better than that 80UK possessed.
If the price tag would be accepted by the Soviet decision-makers, they could equip the tank fleet with tanks on pair with the opponents in both FCS and comm status. Still, those would be much better protected, much smaller, much lighter, and possessing some really important tactical gains, like Brod river crossing system, gun launched ATGMs, or Ainet programmable round.
Who has even heard about Ainet round? It used to be Israel, who operated the first programmable ammo for 120mm tank gun, right? Ze Wezt fanboys were driving crazy about that back in 90s, so it is impossible that Russkies got it a decade earlier!

Clearly this isn't the case, as tanks are still being designed primarily with tank-on-tank combat in mind. Why else would you want the very powerful smoothbore gun if not to punch holes in enemy tanks with it?

They are made to punch holes in enemy units, not only enemy tanks.

Enemy tanks will be spotted way before they come close to engage friendly tanks and they will be attacked either by helicopters, drones, aviation, suicide drones or artillery/atgms.

Tanks have a max of 3-4km engagement range when a suicide drone have 70km, drones some 250km, helicopters 300km and aviation 500-600km or more.

And since most armies have less than 1000 tanks which is very low they can't go that zone of 4-400km in front of enemies freely without protection. Most won't be able to face any tank.

A drone can pack 4 atgm. A chopper 16. A bomber can have dozens of guided bombs and russian have developed tens of new missiles for drones that will for sure be adopted on su-25 bringing total weapon number to a hundred per aircraft. 1000 tanks is quick to anhilate then.

Tanks are powerful but are very weak too if you know how to destroy them.

ALAMO wrote:
That brings another interesting question. Were the Soviet tanks really inferior when compare FCS and comm?
The peaking achievement of the Soviet tank industry used to be a T-80UK model.
It was a command version, as K states for "komandirski", more costly, delivered in small numbers, still what we have there at the end of 80s ?
Well, we have a tank with Agava 2 thermal sight for a gunner, passive light magnification channel for the commander, improved communication, and last but not least, Ainet programmable round. Agava installed was a follow-up of first-gen Agava, with 50 elements matrice, that Soviets had back in the early 80s. Not implemented for serial use due to cost, the fact that work on improved 128 element matrice was already running, and general problems with establishing an industrial base needed for serial production of it.
If one doubts if the Soviets were able to make a TI sight back in 80s, well, the answer is very simple.
A PRP-4M recon vehicle with 1PN71 NVS was delivered serial to ground forces starting from the early 80s, and its TI channel granted a 3000m detection and 1300m recognition ranges (some states 2000).
As we realize, that it is not a matter of competency and/or ability, what left is a doctrinal approach.

And yet we have seen them introduce thermal sights to practically every tank in active service. One could hardly use doctrine as an excuse then. Let's face it, the Soviets had issues with capacity for thermal sights and the technology was found lacking. As a result they could only really deploy these equipment to select units when instead they should've been spread throughout the whole AFV fleet.

ALAMO wrote:
All Soviet tanks of the 80s were produced or modernized for use of a combined active/passive light magnification. In general, a range of passive detection of a tank-sized target was in the 1200-1500m range. For European theatre of operation, it was more than enough, as the line of sight does not exceed 1000m in most places in Europe.

Image intensifiers are markedly inferior to passive thermals at any given condition. Sure, you might see something at 1 km but identify it? No way.

ALAMO wrote:
What we have got on the opposite side? Well, an EMES 15 system of Leo2 could operate for approx. 20 minutes. After that, had to be switched off for cooling. Any TI observation channel for a commander was applied to A5 version only, and we are in the late 00s already, 20 years after 80UK. Its granted parameters are no better than that 80UK possessed.

EMES-15 takes 15 minutes to cool down, and not that it could only operate for that long. There were thousands of Leo 2s with the system, and how many T-80UKs again?

ALAMO wrote:
If the price tag would be accepted by the Soviet decision-makers, they could equip the tank fleet with tanks on pair with the opponents in both FCS and comm status. Still, those would be much better protected, much smaller, much lighter, and possessing some really important tactical gains, like Brod river crossing system, gun launched ATGMs, or Ainet programmable round.
Who has even heard about Ainet round? It used to be Israel, who operated the first programmable ammo for 120mm tank gun, right? Ze Wezt fanboys were driving crazy about that back in 90s, so it is impossible that Russkies got it a decade earlier!

The price tag wasn't the problem, it was the dumbass decision to keep multiple production lines with their own ecosystems churning out tanks by the hundreds year on year out. Had they consolidated on say, just 2 lines they might have saved enough resources that they could actually take a look at tackling the growing gap in micro-electronics.

Isos wrote:

They are made to punch holes in enemy units, not only enemy tanks.

You wouldn't need high pressure guns to destroy non-heavily armored targets. Just chuck some high explosive or HEAT warheads and you can dismantle just about everything that is not a tank.

Isos wrote:
Enemy tanks will be spotted way before they come close to engage friendly tanks and they will be attacked either by helicopters, drones, aviation, suicide drones or artillery/atgms.

Tanks have a max of 3-4km engagement range when a suicide drone have 70km, drones some 250km, helicopters 300km and aviation 500-600km or more.

And since most armies have less than 1000 tanks which is very low they can't go that zone of 4-400km in front of enemies freely without protection. Most won't be able to face any tank.

A drone can pack 4 atgm. A chopper 16. A bomber can have dozens of guided bombs and russian have developed tens of new missiles for drones that will for sure be adopted on su-25 bringing total weapon number to a hundred per aircraft. 1000 tanks is quick to anhilate then.

Tanks are powerful but are very weak too if you know how to destroy them.

Not true at all. If ISR is that powerful on its own nobody would be investing in any ground forces - just build drones and missiles all day long. Since militaries are investing in counter-ISR from organic air defense to anti-satellites there is no guarantee that you can enjoy these theoretical stand-off ranges either which means you are back at square one with armored formations duking it out within direct LOS of each other.

It is based on a combination of illiteracy and propaganda.
Lots of armchair strategist ho has no clue about anything different than last round of CoD or a Marvel crap.
They look for invincible tanks, invisible planes, and Captain America to the rescue.
This is how propaganda shaped them. It is not a fault of theirs, to be honest.
And then, Captain Reality comes to the scene, and we may witness how a fog&mirrors project fades away.
The last 20+ years brought us a wide perspective of armored warfare and conflicts. Starting with 1999 Dagestan and Serbia, 2nd Chechen campaign, 2003 2nd Iraq war, 2006 Lebanon, 2008 Osetia, Libya, 2012 and on Syria, Yemen, Karabach lately.
That is plenty of conflicts with intense armor warfare applied, and not a single of them prove the tank to fade away.
We have faced guerilla warfare, regular tank battles, modern equipped regular infantry fighting armor, and a classic clash of armies.
The only thing that is clear for someone who observed those 20+ years, is the fact that there is no invincible tank, that mass of propaganda applied to western gear is nothing more than that, and that the battlefield may be changing, still, all works same old fashion style.
If someone is impressed by the UAV, loitering ammo, and this new cool stuff you can buy on Aliexpress, must pay more attention to observe how things happened to be after initial gains.
In both Syria and Libia, UAV offensive was stopped as soon, as anti-air assets showed on the scene.
As we observed both Azeri and Armenian propaganda war, it can not change the facts. Karabach introduced weak assets with no direct support from Armenia, still was able to shoot down, or simply down, tons of Azeri gear. Including the latest toys purchased from Israel. It was a number that matters, not sophisticated technology applied. Karabach was simply overrun by massive Azeri offensive, including long and costly trained special forces. It was a bloody and brutal conflict, with pawns&teeths.
Confronted with the modern army, UAV is just another tool to be used. Makes things easier, provides more opportunities and saves lives. But won't win a war. There are, and will be, tracks, wheels, and foots needed to challenge the territory, suppress the opponent, and gain the goals. UAVs themselves can be only a weapon of terror. Not a victory.

lyle6 wrote:And yet we have seen them introduce thermal sights to practically every tank in active service. One could hardly use doctrine as an excuse then. Let's face it, the Soviets had issues with capacity for thermal sights and the technology was found lacking. As a result they could only really deploy these equipment to select units when instead they should've been spread throughout the whole AFV fleet.

If they would decide for that, they would overwhelm the obstacles. There was enough technological ground for that, it was only a matter of decision. We can consider the one taken as wrong, we have 40 years more to become experts

lyle6 wrote:
Image intensifiers are markedly inferior to passive thermals at any given condition. Sure, you might see something at 1 km but identify it? No way.

Only in some, not any given. The 80s gen TI had tons of issues once working in wet weather conditions. The fog made them almost useless, some serial problems were emerging in rain. To be honest, we see the issue with desert warfare, which is an optimal condition to show the TI advantages.

lyle6 wrote:
EMES-15 takes 15 minutes to cool down, and not that it could only operate for that long. There were thousands of Leo 2s with the system, and how many T-80UKs again?

Hold your horses my good lad
Leo2 was introduced operational to the units in 1980 only, so in a time we consider, there were no "thousands" but merely hundreds of them.

ALAMO wrote:
If they would decide for that, they would overwhelm the obstacles. There was enough technological ground for that, it was only a matter of decision. We can consider the one taken as wrong, we have 40 years more to become experts

Then its even worse. They pissed off resources developing technological dead-ends and blew off the massive lead they had in the process. The only consolation is it appears that NATO is keen on repeating many of the USSR's mistakes, starting with over-investing in platforms that are all but tapped out in the scope for improvements.

lyle6 wrote:
Only in some, not any given. The 80s gen TI had tons of issues once working in wet weather conditions. The fog made them almost useless, some serial problems were emerging in rain. To be honest, we see the issue with desert warfare, which is an optimal condition to show the TI advantages.

If the weather is rainy or foggy enough that thermal imagers are having issues its going to be absolute murder for image intensifiers.

lyle6 wrote:
Hold your horses my good lad  
Leo2 was introduced operational to the units in 1980 only, so in a time we consider, there were no "thousands" but merely hundreds of them.

By the time the Soviet Union collapsed Germany had 2000 such tanks, while they were only still introducing the T-80UK...

lyle6 wrote:
Then its even worse. They pissed off resources developing technological dead-ends and blew off the massive lead they had in the process. The only consolation is it appears that NATO is keen on repeating many of the USSR's mistakes, starting with over-investing in platforms that are all but tapped out in the scope for improvements.

That is your opinion based on your understanding of things. You have a full right to it, especially as it is 40-50 years after, and it is not you who is to make any decision for that matter.

lyle6 wrote:
If the weather is rainy or foggy enough that thermal imagers are having issues its going to be absolute murder for image intensifiers.

Not even close, because it uses different operating principles and light waves. As fog brings both to the same point, they can't see shit, rain is slightly other. With a low resolution of that gen of TI, and relatively low sensitivity, it could not see shit in dense rain, while the light magnifier was able to see the shit I will repeat: you consider the factor having in mind desert wars when TI works in optimal conditions. A wide and long line of sight, and high-temperature difference for object and background, especially at night, neither fog nor rain applies to the quotation.
For dessert or steppe campaigns, even 1st gen of TI provided a huge advantage. For European theatre, it was slightly better, when worked. It could not work continuously and hardly worked in some weather conditions.

lyle6 wrote:
By the time the Soviet Union collapsed Germany had 2000 such tanks, while they were only still introducing the T-80UK...

And that would still make no difference, as those 2000 L2 could only piss on the frontal armor of adequate Soviet pieces, plus being outnumbered 1:5 at least. They operated about 5500 pieces of T-80 alone, remember? Sometimes, a number is a quality of its own sort...

What has changed is the composition - nowadays it is far better to have fewer tanks with reliable air defense than many tanks with little to no air defenses.

America and the EUs main problem is that their air defences are air power based... so of course they are worried and thinking maybe tanks are obsolete...

But then again the Armata can be made lighter because it does not need heavy armour on its turret front... a tank with no crew at all could also be much lighter, and in fact you could pump them full of inert nitrogen in normal operation so fire is much less of a problem... the biggest problem is ammo propellent which is essentially a mixture of fuel and the oxygen needed for it to all burn up... it will catch fire and burn even in a zero oxygen nitrogen purged space.

I was just impressed with that Combat Approved video of the latest upgrade of the T-90... shooting at a tank target from 5km range and hitting every time in places that would lethally penetrate was rather impressive I thought... including firing on the move.

Not true at all. If ISR is that powerful on its own nobody would be investing in any ground forces - just build drones and missiles all day long. Since militaries are investing in counter-ISR from organic air defense to anti-satellites there is no guarantee that you can enjoy these theoretical stand-off ranges either which means you are back at square one with armored formations duking it out within direct LOS of each other.

Azeri anhilated armenians, tanks and soldiers, with few drones.

ISR is way better today with modern improved optics and large use of drones.

Nothing will go through a front zone of 200km in front of the frontline without being noticed.

Even soldier's binoculars can spot a tank 10km away. Even civilian cameras can do such thing for few hundred dollars.

So yeah if you don't have shorads to protect your troops you will see them anhilated by long range weapons before they can see the battle. That's exactly what russian are investing in.

miketheterrible wrote:Armenia is a bad example as their command fucked up bad. Don't forget that it was purged of the more mature military command when the bastard took power.  Most air defense units capable of hitting those drones sat idle.  Even Syria used their shorads way better than Armenia.  

Well that exactly confirms what I say.

No proper shorads means ground force being destroyed by air force and drones.

Having any tank doesn't change the outcome since they hit weak points.

ALAMO wrote:
That is your opinion based on your understanding of things. You have a full right to it, especially as it is 40-50 years after, and it is not you who is to make any decision for that matter.

Its not just my opinion, seeing as the Soviets adopted it as well. They knew all along that II was a step below TI, hence the frenzied development and fielding of clearly inadequate Soviet thermals, but they just couldn't make them in enough numbers and quality to be useful and so are stuck with II. You're making a virtue out of a deficiency.

ALAMO wrote:
Not even close, because it uses different operating principles and light waves. As fog brings both to the same point, they can't see shit, rain is slightly other. With a low resolution of that gen of TI, and relatively low sensitivity, it could not see shit in dense rain, while the light magnifier was able to see the shit I will repeat: you consider the factor having in mind desert wars when TI works in optimal conditions. A wide and long line of sight, and high-temperature difference for object and background, especially at night, neither fog nor rain applies to the quotation.
For dessert or steppe campaigns, even 1st gen of TI provided a huge advantage. For European theatre, it was slightly better, when worked. It could not work continuously and hardly worked in some weather conditions.

So you're saying that Soviet generals would have to pray for the rain like ancient farmers did just so their tanks could get the first look advantage? Ok.

ALAMO wrote:
And that would still make no difference, as those 2000 L2 could only piss on the frontal armor of adequate Soviet pieces, plus being outnumbered 1:5 at least. They operated about 5500 pieces of T-80 alone, remember? Sometimes, a number is a quality of its own sort...

Both tanks can be killed by each other by hitting the less armored frontal hull armor. In which case its down to whoever spots first and shoots first. The Soviets might have the advantage in numbers but they would still incur outsized losses that could've been avoided had they just stopped producing so much tanks and focused on improving the individual performance of their existing tanks, starting with soft factors like sensors and comms.

Isos wrote:
Azeri anhilated armenians, tanks and soldiers, with few drones.

The Azeris were only able to achieve victory because the Armenian quisling is in charge of the war effort. They mostly fought Artsakh militias and a smattering of Armenian units here and there but even then they suffered losses not dissimilar to shitty arab militaries against similarly trash enemies.

Isos wrote:
ISR is way better today with modern improved optics and large use of drones.

Nothing will go through a front zone of 200km in front of the frontline without being noticed.

Even soldier's binoculars can spot a tank 10km away. Even civilian cameras can do such thing for few hundred dollars.

So yeah if you don't have shorads to protect your troops you will see them anhilated by long range weapons before they can see the battle. That's exactly what russian are investing in.

We're in the middle of transition period with militaries just only realizing the value of drones. Give it 10-20 years when drone counters have proliferated then we can go ahead and talk about how drones have changed the battlefield or whatever.