T-90 Main Battle Tank #2

lyle6 wrote:

The-thing-next-door wrote:

The T-14 uses the 2a821m which has the fume extractor removed, the base model 2a82 was designed to be used on upgraded T-72s.

The earlier renders of the 2A82 gun for the T-90 lacked the bore evacuator too. And its not for nothing that they were deleted. The fume extractor requires holes to be drilled through the barrel of the gun to create that pocket of pressure differential. Obviously this deliberate weak spot imposes some limit on the amount of pressure that your gun can tolerate, which is no bueno if you are maxxing APFSDS performance.

They could simply make a reinforced fume extractor and the original 2a82 likely included one anyway.

lyle6 wrote:
I don't see any issue. With near peer opponents you position the most modern T-14 and T-90M tanks to guard against.

The T-90M is only barley adequate for the western European front for now. It will need some serious upgrades if they intend to use it as a frontline tank for any longer than it takes for the Armatas to reach the troops.

The-thing-next-door wrote:
They could simply make a reinforced fume extractor and the original 2a82 likely included one anyway.

It will never hold as much pressure as a barrel that is made up of one solid uninterrupted piece of steel.

The-thing-next-door wrote:
The T-90M is only barley adequate for the western European front for now. It will need some serious upgrades if they intend to use it as a frontline tank for any longer than it takes for the Armatas to reach the troops.

Judging by the Leopard 2's poor showing in Syria its looking more like it is the Europeans who are going to need serious upgrades of their armor fleet instead.

lyle6 wrote:
Judging by the Leopard 2's poor showing in Syria its looking more like it is the Europeans who are going to need serious upgrades of their armor fleet instead.

I am not aware of it getting penetrated frontally.

The only things a T-90 would have over it in such a situation are the low mounted ammunition carousel and the laser warning receivers.

The T-90M is only barley adequate for the western European front for now

The T-90M is better than they need on the European front... there are no better leopards or leclercs or abrams or challengers... most western tanks don't have any ERA or APS or even guided missiles.

And how many tanks will there even be on the European front... give it 5 years and the British wont have any...

It will need some serious upgrades if they intend to use it as a frontline tank for any longer than it takes for the Armatas to reach the troops.

Like what? Everything is good enough already... which is why they are taking the time to get the Armata right.

It will never hold as much pressure as a barrel that is made up of one solid uninterrupted piece of steel.

That is true, but deployed operational ammo can never exceed actual practical limits of the barrel anyway otherwise things like a wet barrel or damp ammo can increase pressures beyond safe levels and kill crews when the guns explode.

Judging by the Leopard 2's poor showing in Syria its looking more like it is the Europeans who are going to need serious upgrades of their armor fleet instead.

And Abrams are no longer invincible... there are no super tanks that are perfect... the upgraded T-90M actually stacks up rather well against the best from any and every country... except the T-14 from Russia...

The only things a T-90 would have over it in such a situation are the low mounted ammunition carousel and the laser warning receivers.

Gun tube guided missiles, and price... and not needing to be kept in air conditioned tents for them to keep working when it gets cold...

The Combat Approved show on the T-90M showed shots fired at stationary targets at 5km range and all the rounds fired including APFSDS and HEAT and guided missiles hit within about 1m of centre of mass.... from 5km. The missile was fired while the vehicle was on the move.

Now we have been hearing that western tanks can do that all day for years, but the thing is that real targets never remain still and hitting a moving target is much harder at long range because you are guessing where the target will be when your round arrives. If it is driving at a steady speed along a nice flat road your estimate should be pretty good, but bouncing across country with random changes in speed as it overcomes lumps and bumps in the terrain getting a hit becomes very very hard with an unguided round like an APFSDS round... even though it is very fast there is no leeway so either hit or miss.

With a guided missile the chances of a hit are much much better... and after that hit if a follow up shot is needed then a damaged target would be less able to move than an undamaged one.

Russian night optics are now state of the art... and their communications and battle management kit is excellent too...

GarryB wrote:
That is true, but deployed operational ammo can never exceed actual practical limits of the barrel anyway otherwise things like a wet barrel or damp ammo can increase pressures beyond safe levels and kill crews when the guns explode.

The requirements for enhanced performance doesn't leave a lot of margins for safety. Outside of European ambient conditions there is a very high risk of guns bursting when firing high powered ammo. There is a lot of clever engineering going on behind the scenes to mitigate such risks but needs must.

lyle6 wrote:
Judging by the Leopard 2's poor showing in Syria its looking more like it is the Europeans who are going to need serious upgrades of their armor fleet instead.

And this is what they do.
Functionally all the modernization programs applied to the Leo2A4 fleet consist of replacing hydraulic systems with electric ones, up armoring, and replacing the obsolete FCS.
There is a targeted German program of upgrading the ammunition, too.
I would consider the lack of competence of Turk crews as a major factor of Leo2 failure in Syria, not the vehicle itself.
Any myth will fall, as soon as you will start to shoot at western tanks with modern ammunition.
If there would be HE ammunition placed in M1 turret magazine, we would have seen them tore apart for years.

Naked turrets of the T-90M tank

Russian_Patriot_ wrote:Naked turrets of the T-90M tank

Hard to tell but is the armor beside the gun mantlet a little bit thicker on the new turret?

I was just looking at the image Russian_Patriot_ posted and the geometry of the frontal armor does indeed appear to have been altered, specifically it appears that the area of the flat parts on either side of the gun mantlet are now smaller. This could perhapse indicate improved levels of protection or at the very least the reduction of the size of the weakened zone.

With roof-top armor

New optical system installed on T-90M (source: First Guard Army Facebook Page)

Why do they have the shitty shtora headlights still on? They're a thoroughly obsolete piece of tech and reduce protection. Most NATO SACLOS missiles are immune to it, except HOT(not HOT3) and it's useless against SALH or IR guided missiles like brimstone, Spike, hellfire, etc. The threats they can theoretically are too narrow. They're only useful in against an insurgency, but even TOW2A snd TOW2A are immune to the shtora.

More ERA or smome charges are more effective at this point.

limb wrote:Why do they have the shitty shtora headlights still on? They're a thoroughly obsolete  piece of tech and reduce protection. Most NATO SACLOS missiles are immune to it, except HOT(not HOT3) and it's useless against SALH or IR guided missiles like brimstone, Spike, hellfire, etc. The threats they can theoretically are too narrow. They're only useful in against an insurgency, but even TOW2A snd TOW2A are immune to the shtora.

More ERA or smome charges are more effective  at this point.

Well, they can always install the Shtora-2 if they want, which has much higher power and is much more effective. Similarly, they can always install the Arena-M, the option is there. The thing is, why should they. These systems aren't free, and so only when the US finishes replenishing the M1s in Europe with Trophy will they install Arena-M and the likes on T-72B3 and T-90.

For the Shtora-1, the argument is basically the same. Yes, it's less effective against current NATO IR guided threats. But why do the need to install stronger system on it now? If a day in the future comes when stronger IR-guided missiles are everywhere, I think we would see stronger headlights being installed. For the moment, threats from IR guided missile from NATO arent so high that they forces the Russians to upgrade their systems. The Javelin that the US gave Ukraine, for example, is a potential threat, but the number is not that many, so rooftop net for the win (if you know what I mean)

In fact, for the T-90M, the Shtora is a stripped down version without IR illuminator since it's basically useless as you said, and there's only the laser warning system (which can always help). I don't really see what's wrong with it.

limb wrote:Why do they have the shitty shtora headlights still on? They're a thoroughly obsolete  piece of tech and reduce protection. Most NATO SACLOS missiles are immune to it, except HOT(not HOT3) and it's useless against SALH or IR guided missiles like brimstone, Spike, hellfire, etc. The threats they can theoretically are too narrow. They're only useful in against an insurgency, but even TOW2A snd TOW2A are immune to the shtora.

More ERA or smome charges are more effective  at this point.

These things are basically an ongoing R&D project - always testing and improving. When last did NATO test the shitty shorta? Perhaps the Russians know something that NATO doesn't?

Who told you what is immune and what isn't?

The same ATGM makers that claimed Milans armour penetration was over 1 metre in the 1990s?

The ATGM makers that claimed TOW had similar armour penetration performance too?

SHTORA is more than just the two IR emitters you do understand that don't you?

The current vehicles have tiny EO systems in the same location as the old large HEAT emitters with their massive heat sinks.

Suggests they have replaced it with lasers.

Most of the SHTORA system is very very valuable and detects laser rangers and laser target markers as well as optically guided weapons presumably.

The place of the gunner in the T-90MS tank

I was just comparing the T-90 turrets, it seems that the new turret has around 750mm LOS on the turret front and around 500mm around the mantlet (head on).

A slight improvement, but not that much, though we ofcorse do not know the effectiveness of the composite array.

The-thing-next-door wrote:I was just comparing the T-90 turrets, it seems that the new turret has around 750mm LOS on the turret front and around 500mm around the mantlet (head on).

A slight improvement, but not that much, though we ofcorse do not know the effectiveness of the composite array.

I wouldn't look into LOS as much as I would the weight increase of the T-90M. There's around 3 metric tons worth of weight increase from the T-90A to the T-90M which is quite a bit; the T-72B's turret armor package only weighed a whopping ~800 kg.

Also LOS measures ignore ERA and APS effects too obviously.

Hasn't it been stated that all the new T-90 upgrades are getting APS systems installed as standard?

Thermal imaging duplicate sight of the T-90MS tank

lyle6 wrote:
I wouldn't look into LOS as much as I would the weight increase of the T-90M. There's around 3 metric tons worth of weight increase from the T-90A to the T-90M which is quite a bit; the T-72B's turret armor package only weighed a whopping ~800 kg.

How much of the weight increase is not ERA? If they wanted a volume efficient armor array they could possibly have gone for tightly spaced titanium plates sloped at around 60-75 degrees or some other kind of high density array.

I don't know that titanium would be good as armour on a tank... there was talk of titanium armour plates on some early Russian flak vests but these days they mostly use ceramics which are lighter and much much cheaper than metal.

Detailed photos of the retractable optical reconnaissance system of the T-90M tank