T-90 Main Battle Tank #2

Why does shtora take away ERA protection on the T-90, while on the T-80U shtora is placed on top of ERA and doesnt replace it?

That is at the thickest part of the turret armour, plus the emitter uses layers of ceramic plates that are heated (note the extensive cooling fins around it).

If the enemy want to hit a metal box in front of the thickest armour on the tank who cares... how is that a weakness?

Shtora dazzelrs allegedly need a long time to be pointed at a missile to spoof it

Which just proves he does not know how they work and does not know what he is talking about.

Shtora dazzlers are invisible to the naked eye and work against the Giononmeters built in the the wests SCLOS ATGMs. A gionometer is a device... an optical port on a missile launcher like Milan or TOW or HOT that tracks an IR flare or beacon on the tail of the outgoing missile and its job is to calculate the deviation of the missile from the point of aim so the system can calculate a manouver for the missile to move back into its centre of aim.

The Shtora dazzlers... as their name implies does not spoof anything... it sends out an intense IR signal so the the tiny IR beacon from the outgoing missile is lost in the wall of IR light coming from the two dazzlers... when the ATGM launcher cannot tell where the missile is it does not know what command signals to send and it will generally fly straight into the ground or veer off and miss by an enormous margin.

Shtora would not work on Kornet because the launcher does not track the missile, the missile looks back at the launcher and finds its place within the laser field directed at the target and it manouvers itself into the centre of the beam.

The T-90 is far too slow(Irrelevant, strategic mobility is more important than tactical)

No commander's thermals

Western tanks are too heavy and too slow and way too expensive... and in the case of the Abrams only the US could afford the fuel burn rate.

The TOW2, Hellfire and Spike are resistant to the shtora and they're NATO's main ATGMs.

No they aren't... because Shtora includes an entire suite that includes smoke grenades that are still effective against all of those systems... and it is automatic.

Can the dazzlers scramble the tank's IR signature, making it difficult for thermals to spot it?

Not really. In a thermal imager the dazzlers would look light bright spotlights turned on, but not overwhelmingly so. From an IR tracking system looking for a small flare it will look like trying to see a candle flame being held up with a light house light lit behind it... the flare would not be visible.

Through a thermal imager you would probably see both.

A better question would be what western tank does better... Kornet... Vikhr... Khrisantema... Ataka... and now LMUR and Hermes... their new vehicles have a system called Quarry that is a laser based anti optics system...

Plus T-90 was developed and deployed in the 1990s during several economic collapses.... but even now they are funding their military and introducing new military kit and equipment that is brand new and state of the art in some cases with no western equivalents, while the west is abandoning allies and cutting procurement numbers so they can spend more on nukes... which sounds like an admission of defeat to me...  

But lets give them the benefit of the doubt... the original T-90s lacked a separate commanders thermal sight, the gunner had one but the commander didn't... SHTORA Dazzlers only had a limited period of effective use because as ATGM makers learned how they worked they would adapt their systems so they were no longer effective... SHTORA is so much more than the two dazzlers of course but lets carry on... their position is ideal for their role but does leave weak spots on the tanks heaviest armour locations and we know western penetration performance claims were bullshit for all their missiles and weapons. The T-90 is not the fastest tank, but its power to weight ratio is pretty good having a 1,000hp tank that is 20 tons lighter than most western tanks.

Is that sufficient to call them useless junk that suck?

Sounds like a child describing an ice cream flavour they don't much care for...

Still, the T-90 was developed and put into service during a very difficult time for Russia when there was almost no funding and several economic collapses, yet they made some and put them in service and these days are upgrading all their T-90s to an improved T-90AM level that eliminates many of the old problems like the thermal sights and the dazzlers have been replaced presumably by a system called Quarry that is a laser based anti optics suppression system.

Also they are introducing its replacement in the form of the T-14... a brand new from the ground up scratch built new tank... as well as introducing stealth fighters and stealth bombers and new attack helicopters and infantry equipment second to none... their training seems excellent and their airdefence network is the strongest in the world by far... but lets compare with the mighty west... Britain is spending billions on Trident and can't afford new tanks or F-35s... it seems they have realised they can't win a conventional war and are putting their eggs into the nuclear missile basket.

The British tank... 1916 to the early 2020s... RIP.

No wonder his panties are in a bunch.

The-thing-next-door wrote:

GarryB wrote: we know western penetration performance claims were bullshit for all their missiles and weapons.

Do you have a source for this? It would be interesting to read.

The first down the list : real penetration ratios of TOW family revealed by GAO.
Tons of fun reading.
It is like watching The Pentagon Wars again and again...

It is attached to the turret bustle which makes me think it is not a snorkel for underwater crossings, but the optics covers and hand strap make it look like recon observation optics sitting on top of a motorised aiming system that could mount other optics or equipment...

For a mast mounted system I would expect protective covers for the optics that could be remotely deployed and opened from inside the tank...

The very idea of optics mounted up there is solid and sensible, but the implementation seems a little rushed...

limb wrote:
How do you respond to the severe tactical disadvantage of not having commander's thermals? Im talking about day battle. Its very hard to impossible to spot a leopard 2 sized target 2000km away with a regular optics in any environment other than desert, without thermal imaging.

How is this even a question? You simply shrink the width of the attack lane of each sub-unit to compensate for the halved search sector. That way, an enemy tank will have the disadvantage of at least one tank gun pointed in his direction that turns quickly into 2-3 guns after he shoots and reveals his position. He could of course narrow his line but that would simply render his search advantage redundant - a tank with two observation channels could still only engage one target at a time with the main gun.

lyle6 wrote:

Very similar to the German Leopards. Probably also doubles as an escape route for the crew in case of emergency - perhaps negating the need for "scuba" gear for the crew?

How do you respond to the severe tactical disadvantage of not having commander's thermals? Im talking about day battle. Its very hard to impossible to spot a leopard 2 sized target 2000km away with a regular optics in any environment other than desert, without thermal imaging.

The gunner has a thermal imaging sight and more recently the Russians developed the Irbis-K thermal sight for the T-80 and T-90's together with Agat-MDT for the commander that can spot targets at over 3km during both day and night.

Very similar to the German Leopards. Probably also doubles as an escape route for the crew in case of emergency - perhaps negating the need for "scuba" gear for the crew?

Actually that is rather narrow so unless you are a tiny man I would think climbing up that tube would be near impossible anyway... but the confidence factor is always important.

I would still want the scuba gear... having some clean fresh air to breathe in a tank would be useful if the tank is hit and catches fire because I suspect it would rapidly fill up with acrid smoke... I also think the driver is not going to have an easy time waiting for the other two crew to climb out first.

They did the car crashing into water thing on Mythbusters and Top Gear and it seems that if you wait patiently for the vehicle to fully fill up with water so the pressure inside and outside the vehicle has equalised then you can open the doors and get out easily enough... of course if you are 12 metres under water can you swim vertically 12m on that one gulp of air... I would take a scuba tank every time...

To be honest I would struggle to fit inside most modern MBTs anyway... at 125kgs I am a bit on the heavy side.

How do you respond to the severe tactical disadvantage of not having commander's thermals? Im talking about day battle. Its very hard to impossible to spot a leopard 2 sized target 2000km away with a regular optics in any environment other than desert, without thermal imaging.

Not sure what sort of targets you expect to be able to see with western thermals at 2,000 KILOMETRES... I think that is just being a bit too picky and unreasonable.

As mentioned, the Russians bought and paid for some of the best western thermal imaging technology and are at the point of producing their own models and the level of their glass and optics production capacity means it is actually very very good.

The new uncooled third gen thermals in the short wave IR band can even see through glass so they are not as expensive as the old ones that needed single crystal Germanium lenses for optics because old medium wave IR sights can't see through glass or water.

GarryB wrote:Actually that is rather narrow so unless you are a tiny man I would think climbing up that tube would be near impossible anyway... but the confidence factor is always important.

It does have a "ladder" structure at the back of the snorkel and most likely on the inside as well - just like the Leopard. No need to make it that wide if there is no need for the crew to use it. It also gives the commander an elevated view whilst crossing a water obstacle. Tank crews are normally picked from smaller sized soldiers

Scuba gear would still be handy but not essential in my view when you have this type of snorkel.

The Pentagon Wars :-)
Here you can watch it on YT.

Will be interesting to see if it has those mast mounted optics... I rather suspect they are hand held recon binoculars that were placed there in jest, but as I said before mounting optics up there would be what tank commanders everywhere have dreamed off... think about how dangerous it is for the commander to open his hatch and sit in the tank with his upper body and head sticking out... horribly vulnerable to anything including stray pistol bullets... but they did it because their view they got from that position was enormously valuable to them so they knew what was going on on the battlefield around their tank.

Having magnified day night optics mounted on a mast several metres above your tank would be amazing... for a custom designed system I would expect several fixed panoramic cameras looking at a downward angle to view the ground and terrain around the tank from a birds eye view... amazing for driver and commander alike and very useful in case enemy troops or even friendly troops are very close. On top of those panoramic cameras... three or four to give continuous 360 degrees view all weather day and night, a moving wide angle camera that can point horizontally and be angled up and zoomed in and out from wide angle to high level zoom would be amazing... you could sit behind cover or concealment and just spot for other vehicle... it would need to be night and all weather capable and a laser range finder would be useful too... for some versions perhaps even a gun or grenade launcher.

You could standardise them across your fleet so for instance command tanks could use them, but also recon vehicles of all types from light four wheeled Tigrs, through to Armatas could use them... so the enemy might see the mast but wont know if there is a SUV there or a unit of Armata tanks or recon versions of the T-15.

It would be a cheap low cost long endurance drone physically attached to the vehicle and available for use any time you want it.

You could make different types depending on what you want it for, you could even mount it on your unmanned ground drones to make them safer while scouting around.

It was one of GAO reports made public few years ago. Won't find it now, I have heard that just flying by. The point was, that for some TOW missiles real penetration was 400 mm, so in real half of the declared by the producer.

Not just TOW missiles... everyone on the internet went mental over British IFVs that could withstand direct hits from 120mm Challenger rifled rounds... but it turns out it was a HESH round and any spaced armour will defeat those rounds because they rely on sending shockwaves through solid armour plate to get the inner side of the plate to flake off and act like shrapnel... the problem is that the shockwaves only work through solid metal so a cavity or layered armour and it is useless... the flakes might be created but because it is not the inside of the vehicle it still has layers to penetrate and flat flakes of metal will devastate unprotected flesh at those velocities, but their armour penetration performance is pathetic so the next layer... even a few mms will stop any threat to the crew.

Also the Hellfire was described as having enormous penetration performance but when an M1 Abrams was disabled they launched all sorts of weapons at it to prevent it from being captured intact including a Hellfire hit that failed to penetrate... they took the then cited penetration of the Hellfire and proof of how amazing the armour on the Abrams is, but when the actual protection of the Abrams was eventually released it was realised the figures for Hellfire were BS...

And of course the figures for all the models of TOW were greatly exaggerated too.

Of course this meant that Soviet armour with ERA would mostly survive frontal hits from HATO anti armour missiles in general, but of course side or rear shots everything is vulnerable without APS.

It wasn't the case that all HATO weapons were rubbish... but they weren't the super weapons they pretended they were.

Most ATGMs with front mount seekers are actually a lot less efficient than what conventional wisdom of multiplying the charge diameter by some round number might suggest. Something to do with the seeker blocking the way of the shaped charge jet when its at its most capricious pre-forming stage so instead of a spike you get a jet that's a bit blunter on the end which dissipates a lot more material over a wider area when it hits the actual armor.

It is interesting that the design of Kornet has a small precursor charge in the nose to set off ERA and start the penetration, behind that is the small server motors that control the nose fins for steering, and then the main body of the missile is solid rocket fuel with a hole down the centre... and behind that near the back is the large full calibre HEAT warhead and behind that the rear looking sensor that sees the laser beam the missile rides down and the rear fixed stabiliser fins.

The rocket exhausts point backwards and sidewards and the fuel in the centre of the missile burns during flight so the centre of gravity of the missile does not really shift as the fuel burns and the forward force from the rocket motors comes from the centre of gravity too so keeping the missile flying straight and level is relatively easy but the main charge warhead is mounted so far back that there is plenty of empty space in front of it to form a good armour penetration plasma beam that continues the hole the nose mounted charge has started.

There is a lot of work that goes in to the design of these weapons, they are quite impressive really...

GarryB wrote:It is interesting that the design of Kornet has a small precursor charge in the nose to set off ERA and start the penetration, behind that is the small server motors that control the nose fins for steering, and then the main body of the missile is solid rocket fuel with a hole down the centre... and behind that near the back is the large full calibre HEAT warhead and behind that the rear looking sensor that sees the laser beam the missile rides down and the rear fixed stabiliser fins.
The rocket exhausts point backwards and sidewards and the fuel in the centre of the missile burns during flight so the centre of gravity of the missile does not really shift as the fuel burns and the forward force from the rocket motors comes from the centre of gravity too so keeping the missile flying straight and level is relatively easy but the main charge warhead is mounted so far back that there is plenty of empty space in front of it to form a good armour penetration plasma beam that continues the hole the nose mounted charge has started.
There is a lot of work that goes in to the design of these weapons, they are quite impressive really...

It does indeed, and that was a part of anti-Kornet propaganda campaign unleashed in the 90s, when it became vastly available for export, seriously hindering the competitors.
A statement that due to its construction, the cumulative stream can't expand as planned used to be notorious.
The only problem was, that as the customers required tests, it turned out that the regular Kornet burns through claimed 800 mm like a hot knife through butter. So the number was getting higher and higher, ending up at 1100 mm of RHS, for the very same late 90s model. And up to 1300 mm for modernized ones ...
This was just the same situation as for 9K113 Konkurs, when the Soviets delivered it with guaranteed 600mm penetration, while in Poland for example, practice shootings revealed that it takes out 700 mm easily.
This is just another story, where Russkies are far ahead of the US based competitors in all the spheres other than propaganda.