T-90 Main Battle Tank #2

On the T-90M, does the turret bustle have a door to the crew compartment which allows the crew to take from it to load the carousel, or does the crew have to get out of the tank in order to access it?

The ammo in the turret bustle are all insulated from each other by fire retardent material and the bustle is totally isolated from the turret... you put the ammo into the bustle and take it out from roof hatches, there is not access into the turret because having ammo exposed in a turret bustle which even cheap obsolete RPGs can penetrate would make the vehicle horribly vulnerable like the Abrams is.

Get out and then bring the ammo inside.

Too bad they didn't make it with a loader. Would make the tank safer.

Isolating the ammo stored in the turret bustle makes the tank safer... they had two prototypes that used turret bustle autoloaders (Black Eagle, based on the T-80 design with the underfloor autoloader removed and replaced with a turret bustle autoloader, and a prototype of the T-72 with a turret bustle auto loader and the underfloor autoloader).

Both were rejected because the rear of the turret is too exposed and such an easy target on the battlefield that the enemy could target it and destroy the tank by hitting it and setting off the ammo.

T80 black eagle have his own turret with autolader in safe compartment not inside the turret, oy as i said in this back compartment is all ammo and autoloader. Similar to the autolader on AMX 56 Leclerck....

Turret bustles are not completely safe if they are connected to the turret.

Ammo exploding in a turret bustle is going to be bad for the turret crew, the T-90AM only has 12 rounds all separated apart so each can burn for a bit before other rounds are effected giving time for the crew to escape if they need to.

The two problems are large volumes of highly flammable propellent and HE charges for HEAT rounds and HE FRAG rounds... generally the fire has to get very hot before the HE in either round will actually explode and otherwise it will just burn, but the propellent is there in large volumes and when it burns it will heat the HE up rapidly and when it reaches flash point... boom.

Blow out roof panels would work if there was only a few rounds and they were separated so they didn't all ignite at once... like say the bustle of the T-90... but with lots of rounds all stacked together like the black eagle or M1 Abrams then blow out panels will not do very much at all... made worse by those two vehicles having gas turbine engines which are prone to fire too.

Also a correction... the ammo storage for the tank is 22 rounds in the underfloor turret bustle autoloader with a further 8 rounds behind the turret autoloader in front of the engine, and ten rounds in the turret bustle... as shown here:



Note the centre area is for the propellent stubs and the two hatches either side would be for the projectiles... 5 in each presumably...

GarryB wrote:Turret bustles are not completely safe if they are connected to the turret.

Ammo exploding in a turret bustle is going to be bad for the turret crew, the T-90AM only has 12 rounds  all separated apart so each can burn for a bit before other rounds are effected giving time for the crew to escape if they need to.

The two problems are large volumes of highly flammable propellent and HE charges for HEAT rounds and HE FRAG rounds... generally the fire has to get very hot before the HE in either round will actually explode and otherwise it will just burn, but the propellent is there in large volumes and when it burns it will heat the HE up rapidly and when it reaches flash point... boom.

Blow out roof panels would work if there was only a few rounds and they were separated so they didn't all ignite at once... like say the bustle of the T-90... but with lots of rounds all stacked together like the black eagle or M1 Abrams then blow out panels will not do very much at all... made worse by those two vehicles having gas turbine engines which are prone to fire too.

Also a correction... the ammo storage for the tank is 22 rounds in the underfloor turret bustle autoloader with a further 8 rounds behind the turret autoloader in front of the engine, and ten rounds in the turret bustle... as shown here:



Note the centre area is for the propellent stubs and the two hatches either side would be for the projectiles... 5 in each presumably...

Do you have videos or phyical simulation of a bustle cookoff causing the turret to fly or being able to kill crewmen? Sounds like a baseless assertion. Show me a SINGLE EXAMPLE of any tank in history with a bustle ammo rack killing its crew from a BUSTLE RACK DETONATION and NOT A HULL AMMO RACK DETONATION.

limb wrote:
Do you have videos or phyical simulation of a bustle cookoff causing the turret to fly or being able to kill crewmen? Sounds like a baseless assertion. Show me a SINGLE EXAMPLE of any tank in history with a bustle ammo rack killing its crew from a BUSTLE RACK DETONATION and NOT A HULL AMMO RACK DETONATION.

https://www.mojevideo.sk/video/24dd1/m1a1_abrams_vs_konkurs_(saudska_arabia).html

M1A1 Saudi Arabian getting penetrated by Konkurs and visible fire coming out of tank drivers hatch, commanders hatch and blow out panels.

Being hit and penetrated by an ATGM is never safe.

Werewolf wrote:

limb wrote:
Do you have videos or phyical simulation of a bustle cookoff causing the turret to fly or being able to kill crewmen? Sounds like a baseless assertion. Show me a SINGLE EXAMPLE of any tank in history with a bustle ammo rack killing its crew from a BUSTLE RACK DETONATION and NOT A HULL AMMO RACK DETONATION.

https://www.mojevideo.sk/video/24dd1/m1a1_abrams_vs_konkurs_(saudska_arabia).html

M1A1 Saudi Arabian getting penetrated by Konkurs and visible fire coming out of tank drivers hatch, commanders hatch and blow out panels.

Being hit and penetrated by an ATGM is never safe.

Link isnt working for me. ANyway Ive seen videos of abrams getting destroyed by houthis with ATGMs, but the videos are so blurry that they don't show if the blowout panels have destroyed the crew compartment. The onloy way for blowout panel cookoffs to kill a crew is if the ammo door is opened when the cookoff happens. Thats extremely rare. For all we know the houthis were shooting at an abandoned abrams or got lucky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8JiqItigE

If the cookoff happens with the ammo door closed this is what should happen most of the time.

In this video, the tanks looks abandoned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-1CabC8tR4

Do you have videos or phyical simulation of a bustle cookoff causing the turret to fly or being able to kill crewmen? Sounds like a baseless assertion. Show me a SINGLE EXAMPLE of any tank in history with a bustle ammo rack killing its crew from a BUSTLE RACK DETONATION and NOT A HULL AMMO RACK DETONATION.

You are missing the point.

The vast majority of cases with a turret bustle holding extra ammo is to allow the turret crew to open an internal access door and access the ammo directly without leaving the turret.

The problem there is that when the ammo explodes it explodes and blow out panels don't work with HE explosions... they work with propellent fires where releasing the pressure reduces the intensity of the fire.

If you put modern smokeless powder on a table and light it it does not go bang, it goes woof.

Propellent requires pressure and heat to burn through fully so that powder on the table burning would blow a lot of unburnt powder all over the place too.

Inside the chamber of a rifle the powder burns and as the pressure increases more of the powder is burned and it is more fully burned so by the time the bullet gets blown out the end of the barrel it is expanding at supersonic speed hense the bang, and if the bullet is moving at supersonic speed there will be the sharp crack of the bullet moving supersonically too.

A rifle works because the bullet acts as a blow out panel except the barrel allows the lid of the blow out panel (bullet) to be accelerated over a distance and spin stabilised so it reaches much greater distances than a blow out panel which would be like a loose rifle cartridge thrown into an open fire.

With no chamber to support the cartridge case and no barrel for the bullet to accelerate down when the bullet eventually ignites in a fire the bullet pops out the end of the cartridge case with a tiny pop and then the propellent burns... the pressure drops as soon as the case and projectile separate because removing the bullet allows the gas to escape and the pressure immediately drops.

In a turret bustle burning propellent will heat up the HE content in HEAT and HE FRAG rounds till they reach their flash point and then they will detonate... if you put a HE charge in a rifle round case with a primer to set it off the bolt and chamber will shatter because the pressure goes up too high too quickly for them to contain the "shot".

The turret bustle extra ammo in the T-90 is designed to carry extra ammo safely and separated from the crew compartment... if you think ammo exploding there will kill the crew then the T-14 is a total waste of time because all the ammo for that is stored under the turret right behind the crew compartment in the front... if a sealed off turret bustle explosion will kill the turret crew in a separated turret compartment then obviously the same would happen when turret ammo explodes with the crew sealed in an isolated crew compartment that the T-14 uses.

Turret bustle ammo storage is used to increase the ready to use ammo, but its weight on the back of the turret also helps offset the weight at the front of the turret of the turret front amour and of course the gun barrel. The turret bustle on the T90 is specifically designed to add a small amount of extra ammo (10 rounds) in a way that does not add risk to the crew.

The Black Eagle and that T-72 with the turret bustle autoloader upgrade failed simply because putting ammo and autoloaders in a turret where an ammo detonation could spread to the turret crew was considered too dangerous.

Now if that is the case how could they justify putting turret bustles on anything with large calibre ammo in it?

To be cleared for service this turret bustle ammo would need to have been proven to be no risk to the crew even if it gets hit and ignites and burns out or explodes.

The onloy way for blowout panel cookoffs to kill a crew is if the ammo door is opened when the cookoff happens. Thats extremely rare.

The ammo door is not as safe as no door at all... if they could make an ammo door that was safe then it would make more sense to fit an ammo door... except even that would make no sense for the T-90 because there is no loader so who could reach into a turret bustle through a door and reach ammo stored there?

For ammo in the turret bustle to make sense the loader has to be able to open a door and reach it all easily, for the T-90 there is no loader and ammo can be placed away from the turret armour and isolated to reduce the chance of fire.

The turret bustle on the T-90 would be like an armoured box with ammo sitting on the rear deck... the armoured box is designed to resist penetration but probably only by small arms and light automatic cannon fire, and also to direct fires upwards and away from the tank.

As mentioned above if the HE ammo detonates then no level of armour would keep that box intact, but an explosion on the outside of the tank is much more survivable than one inside the tank.

08:43 T-90M in the Artemovsk direction.
Earlier, BMPT "Terminator" was seen in the same direction.



https://t.me/intelslava/42075

Does the T-90M have upgraded hull armor below the ERA?

Should do.

Does the T-90M have upgraded hull armor below the ERA?

The arrays may possibly have been improved but the casing shape is not. They should honestly have gone for new frontal hull geometry on the newly built tanks.

Post lyle6 Wed Dec 07, 2022 2:28 am
Notably the soft ERA bags are directly attached to the integral ERA modules.
Dual layer of ERA was not really possible due to risks of fraternal detonation, but it seems they solved the problem.

Photos of double or even triple layer of Kontakt-1 bricks were revealed as early as the 1st Chechen campaign. Yet not sure if was it a sign of desperation or really a working solution - I suppose the outcome was fifty-fifty ...

This whole bag concept is weird and stupid enough, to apply the Murphys Law to it - if something is stupid but works, than ai't stupid.

A few years ago Kuzmin was reporting from Alabino, that those bags are usually filled with sand, and the "egg carton" like things are spacers to make the whole thing harder.



So considering that we have about 25cm of sandbag with ceramic (?) spacers, this thing almost equals the turret cavity of T-72Bs.

On the other hand, here is the patent drawing of the whole thing :



The three plates inside are some sort of thin ERA plates, probably similar to the side sirt ERA panels.

So my guess is that we have here a kind of modular solution you can adjust, considering of what you have or what the threat is.
If there are no ERA blocks on hand, just put a sand there and you have a quite solid protection against the precursor warhead.
There is no precursor that will penetrate that thing, so it's job is done.
If you have ERA plates - even better. Just put them in.
No ERA? Just put any kind of steel sheets there, and you have some NERA equivalent.

Keep in mind that a negative PR was unleashed in the western NAFO incels society, calling that "muffin trays", "a silicone" or "egg box".
In real, it seems a mature and quite universal solution that can be easily applied in field conditions. It is robust and versatile.
As always, people who can't find their own arses, using both hands and a torchlight, will comment on a solution created by the technical school that produces breakthrough technology and solutions tanks for five generations.
I find that always funny.

All the T-90M we've seen so far have been new builds from scratch. Its highly unlikely they would go back and reuse old composite armor array designs when they have new ones developed for the T-14, for example.

New build Leopard 2A6s and 2A5s still used the hull armor array of the 2A4 AFAIK. Its normal in the west. The swedes however made the Strv122 with far improved hull armor, making it completely immune to all russian APFSDS except maybe svinets-1 or vaccuum.

Post  lyle6 Today at 1:12 am
All the T-90M we've seen so far have been new builds from scratch. Its highly unlikely they would go back and reuse old composite armor array designs when they have new ones developed for the T-14, for example.

Not sure about that. The first 60 were an even split of T-90A rebuilds and T-90M new builds. And original planning seem to indicate that would be the norm.

Those original T-90 don't seem to be good for anything including rebuilding. Only the 90A's are planned for upgrades.

The monolith glacis armor on the Object-187 (and T-14) MBTs has perfect ballistic protection but this comes at a significant volume (and weight) cost. The Soviet style upper glacis armor also doubles as roof armor so if you move to the monolith glacis design you also have to invest in a proper roof armor for the hull.

Considering the amount of ERA they got away with adding I am sure they could squeeze in better front hull geometry. That and it only needs as much roof armor as the turret.

The arrays may possibly have been improved but the casing shape is not. They should honestly have gone for new frontal hull geometry on the newly built tanks.

How much would that cost and what differences would it make... changing hull angles alters the internal volume and available space and is more than just a cosmetic change in armour protection.

Put the new armour layers in and new ERA and that should be good enough for an space filler tank upgrade.

Photos of double or even triple layer of Kontakt-1 bricks were revealed as early as the 1st Chechen campaign. Yet not sure if was it a sign of desperation or really a working solution - I suppose the outcome was fifty-fifty ...

It has never been used operationally so it was likely propaganda. Western critics suggested the second and third layers would not work but as those ERA modules don't deform I don't see why they would be effected by layers above or below them in terms of the effect they have.

Of course the face that they were only shown at a show and not on operational vehicles suggests it was propaganda...

This whole bag concept is weird and stupid enough, to apply the Murphys Law to it - if something is stupid but works, than ai't stupid.

Two extremely different types of ERA protection might be more effective than multiple layers of the same which seems to not work.

We have seen the bag system used operationally which suggests it works and is worth putting in the field.

Not sure about that. The first 60 were an even split of T-90A rebuilds and T-90M new builds. And original planning seem to indicate that would be the norm.

The fact that they are upgrading the T-90As and 90Ms to the current AM type suggests they want unified tank designs, so making the armour the same would not be that difficult and would promote unity in design and operation...

By 2030 they will want to have moved current armour types to reserves and be operating Armata and Kurganets and Boomerang and Typhoon and twin chassis arctic tractor type vehicles in most units.

The sand is there to tamp down the energy of the detonating active ERA element and protect neighboring modules from fragments. The spacers maintain the required obliquity of the ERA. They also double as ballistic protection from small arms fire up to medium calibers to a limited extent.

Penetrated by cannon fire the sand might leak out but the angled plates and egg cartoons would remain to reduce the performance of heavier anti armour weapons, so they would preserve the ERA elements behind the bags under small arms and light cannon fire.

There was talk of using 50 cal HMG rounds to try to set off ERA to weaken enemy armour, but these would reduce that capacity.

The swedes however made the Strv122 with far improved hull armor, making it completely immune to all russian APFSDS except maybe svinets-1 or vaccuum.

So what.... 300 tanks joining HATO that Russia would have to hit with Vikhr or Kornet... that is fine...

Those original T-90 don't seem to be good for anything including rebuilding. Only the 90A's are planned for upgrades.

They should convert them into Terminators then... and put dozer blades on the front spaced a metre or two forward of the hull with anti mine attachments and with a V shaped blade for pushing aside obstacles...

If they are not upgrading the original 90s then perhaps that is because it would take a lot more work to modify them for the new armour and equipment types adopted in the newer models, which suggests the 90As are getting upgraded armour elements too... or why not not upgrade them like the 90s?