T-90 Main Battle Tank #2

ALAMO wrote:I guess it is a pointless discussion, as you don't get the point while seeing a pic worth a thousand words.

Why don't you then show me the monstrously thick section of the T-90M's array in an image?

I have clearly already given my measurements for it's array thickness, while you fail to refute them and claim that the array is 30% thicker than of any western MBT, which would make it up to 1300mm thick, which it is clearly not.

lyle6 wrote:

For one, they are primarily designed for armored duels but their main opponent is going to be the T-14. A tank with vastly superior firepower, protection, mobility, and networked fighting capabilities making even the very latest NATO armor so decisively outmatched like never before its not even funny. In a duel scenario the T-14 would punch holes through NATO's best wherever it hits at extended ranges even

While I would agree that the T-14 is night invulnerable to even the new 130mm, it's firepower is limited by it's hull height and based on my estimates it is quite possible that sections of future nato tanks (ones we have not yet seen) could well be resistant to penetrators that take up it's full hull height. Especially if nato starts using anti kinetic ERA.

ALAMO wrote:



As you still have no idea what you are looking at, let me help. With the other angle.

Those bolts do not indicate array geometry.

The array thickness is typically from the turret front to the sights, or in some cases you can see  a weld seam.

This may help.


In this image you can see an approximation of the T90M's turret array thickness (including RHA)



As I hope you can see the T90M's turret array is only around 62% the thickness of the M1A1's, but as I have previously stated the west uses low density arrays that are intended to stop HEAT streams and are less effective against APFSDS rounds while the Russians, assuming they have continued in the same direction as the array of the T-72B most probably use high density arrays designed primarily to stop APFSDS, so it is possible that they T-90M has the same protection level as the newer abrams without ERA and much more with Relikt.

ALAMO wrote:
The "A1" from your drawing is about 50+ cm. Never measured it in detail, but it is about the size of my hand from fingertips to elbow.

Are you referring to the total array LOS from the direct front or the thickness of the NERA stack only?

If you know something we do not about the contents of the abrams turret armour cavities then I would love to see it.



As can be seen in this image the thickness of the cavities is greater than that of the T-90M's.

Not sure about the religion we are destroying here, so let me just say how sorry am I.

I would love to be able to say that the M1a2 was made of paper, it just does not seem that way from my angle.

The best way to defeat a hardkill APS is to shoot an airburst shell to shred the surface clean of external sensors and equipment, disabling the APS, and possibly the optics, and radios as well. Only then can you switch to subcaliber for the killing stroke. Simple and nothing fancy.

I have heard that mentioned before but never seen it in real life... besides if the APS can intercept an APFSDS travelling at close to 2km/s I would think it can also intercept an air burst shell whose HE content would suggest a much lower flight speed.

Air burst shells create an irregular shotgun blast like fragmentation pattern that could not be relied upon to defeat optics let alone APS equipment unless we are talking very very large HE rounds like the 152mm calibre gun on the Sheridan light tank... and even then that was a spectacular failure all round.

The optical ports on any tank have glass components for crew periscopes that can be replaced in the field without even getting out of the vehicle and backup optics should make such a sure kill very unlikely.

It sounds like the idea in Mr Bean where he paints a room by putting a sick of dynamite in a paint tin and sets it off (after leaving the room first obviously).

The problem is that in actual practise it does not work well at all... Mythbusters tried it and there was no way to use an explosion to evenly paint any nearby surface, and so the idea you can set off a round near a tank to take out all or even some optics and all APS elements or ERA elements or any such thing sounds a bit naive.


A quick look at the current version of ARENA suggests the radar and optical ports have overlap and are rather small targets and presumably the APS system itself is hardly going to be surprised by such a slow moving threat so even protecting optics and sensors at the last milisecond could be another option, though I suspect it could not tell whether the incoming round is HE FRAG or HEAT so by default it would try to intercept the round.

The really cool thing is that while HATO tanks are getting into the line of fire and risking death to shoot pea shooter round to scratch the T-14s paint the T-14 can be gutting them like a fish with high velocity anti armour rounds that penetrate them right through front to back...

TI brought matrix that are getting bigger and bigger, too. All the electronic, matrix, and cooling systems created half-meter-high towers.

Newer thermal sights are actually much smaller than the older models with much better resolution and the new thermals can operate in frequencies where normal glass can be used whereas older systems required special crystals for lenses because the IR frequencies they operated at were blocked by glass and water.

But I appreciate what you are saying... the number of optical ports on a modern tank has massively increased in numbers and area... a tank like the T-14 needs lots of optical ports because the crew down low in the hull can't open a hatch and get a decent panoramic view of the battlefield like tank commanders have been doing for quite some time despite the risks.

The point is that there will also be tiny fibreoptic lenses you probably can't even see from more than 10m that could be sufficient for some jobs like detecting incoming threats...

If you look at the eye of a fly it has given up a high resolution high quality view of the world for a motion sensor array that is incredibly efficient if you have ever tried to swat a fly.

Those systems required external APU to be mounted, adding one more vulnerable, yet beautifully flammable/explosive box.

APUs are actually valuable because in combat areas you want your electronics on and in some places heating and in others cooling but running that huge engine all the time is not very efficient, so a gas turbine APU is small and runs on the same fuel and generates the right amount of electricity to keep everything running and it also generates heat which can be used to heat the main engine which means you can start the main engine and move straight away rather than having to wait 10 minutes for it to warm up.

Killing that all is easier rather than securing.

Only if the tank and the enemy troops around it let you. It should be designed so there is no point of complete failure and that anything that can be shot out can be replaced easily in the field too... most tanks have replacement glass blocks for their periscopes that can be replaced without leaving the vehicle...

But of course unlike World of Tanks or Warthunder you can't just press a button to fix a gun breach or replace a track... the commander will make the call... but the thing is that if the enemy are sending forward forces with small arms to try to shoot out your optics and your optics allow you to see them and kill them then that is a win for you isn't it?

If the enemy are not expecting to destroy you, but are focussed on disabling you and getting you to withdraw then the designers of the tank can pat themselves on the back.

I remember just after Desert Storm US teenager fanboys were mainly discussing how the biggest problem with fighting Russia would be to get them to line up three or four of their tanks in a row so each penetrator is not just wasted killing one vehicle at a time because Abrams is a super tank that destroyed T-80s and T-95 super tanks in Iraq.... my uncle was there and he told me that the Iraqis had all the latest Soviet tanks... including those that didn't even exist at the time (They called the T-95 the future soviet tank or something and it was supposed to have a 130mm gun... it was the boogeyman in video games in case blowing up t-72s became too boring...).

APS range is smaller than the effective range of a fragmentation warhead, and we are talking about general use HE rounds. If you will use a canister filled with heavy fragments, it can be easily effective when detonated from 150m. Well beyond the APS coverage range, and no APS can intercept 10,000 incoming tungsten balls, you know.

At 150m the spread of fragments is going to be quite significant so what you are saying is that 5 western super tanks meet 5 T-14s and as the 5 T-14s start destroying the 5 western tanks the 5 western tanks start firing HEFRAG rounds at the T-14 HOPING to damage their optics and APS systems so their follow up rounds have some chance of doing some damage?

Yeah... if that is all you got then I am happy.

What about near misses? Does the hardkill APS have topside coverage as well?

Different APS systems are different and nothing is perfect.... the ARENA was supposed to be able to track Bill 2 missiles that fly 2m above the line of sight and hit the target tank from above and engage them too. The descriptions given in the adverts in the 1990s suggested that the ARENA detected targets and tracked them and determined if they were going to hit or fly over or near the tank and to ignore rounds that were clearly going to miss... and also presumably rounds they couldn't reach... if you are firing MON-300s at the tank and detonating them at 150m distance then they probably can't do much about that... but honestly if such things would be so effective then why not set up ambushes with Claymores to try to do the same thing without risking your tanks... or just launch a rocket artillery attack on the tanks and instead of using HEAT or self forging fragment rounds, just use standard anti personnel HE Frag munitions from 50km away.

Because if not I could just shoot over the target and shower it with thousands of fragments.

You mean like artillery does?

It does not seem that effective though...

What about interception standoff? Some designs of APS don't even intercept until 1m - looking at you ADS. Even rocket based effectors have relatively short standoffs that might not be enough to save the tank's soft systems from an airburst anyway.

There is never going to be a 100% effective defence, why are you expecting APS systems to be perfect?

The newer 3OF82 fragmentation shells contain enough preformed tungsten fragments to ensure a nice dense conical fragmentation field at the front apart from those at the sides. The shell body might even be scored with tiny checkerboard patterns to maintain small even fragments upon detonation. That's a lot of fragments either way.

And so the west should get rid of all their armour and just have artillery?

Another option is to use a secondary 30 mm autocannon with airburst shells to pre-shred the APS. The APS definitely would not engage and a 2 second burst before firing the main gun should have 100 shells arrive just before the subcaliber arrow. Even if the APS somehow survives it will not be able to properly detect and track the main target amidst so much other targets...

If you look back through the threads on APS systems I have already suggested using 14.5mm HMGs to defeat western APS systems... the 14.5mm round has significant weight and range so cut a corner reflector in the front of a 14.5mm ball round and then put a plastic ballistic cap so the aerodynamics are not effected... the rounds leave the barrel at about 1km/s but after a kilometre or two it will be moving rather slower and with the corner reflector the target vehicles will think it is significantly bigger than it actually is.

A belt fed 14.5mm HMG with a lengthened barrel and special long range projectile like those new rounds used for sniper rifles for long range sniping with a plastic aerodynamic nose cap and corner reflector machined into the tip and the low drag nature even if you make it a sabot round for even better aerodynamics and low drag to better maintain velocity to the target and you could fire off a few shots at every enemy tank that is visible and then retreat to cover... pop up and fire again...

Each shot on target and the enemy APS system will have to react... eventually they will get wise to what you are doing and probably turn off their APS systems or green troops might just leave them on and run out of munitions and then you can launch real weapons like Kornet or 125mm rounds.

Even with special low drag ammo the 14.5mm HMG rounds will be rather cheap to mass produce and there are lots of vehicles that already carry the round... a few robot vehicles positioned on the enemy flank during an attack would be interesting because the enemy wont know if the threats are real or if they are fake.

Even a fake round could have incendiary material and would damage light vehicles.

Why choose the fake when you can have the real deal? The Russian 30 mm autocannon has programmable fragmentation shells that would tear through soft targets with ease. I believe those are the smallest such prpgrammable munitions out there too.

The problem is that the amount of HE you can fit into a 30mm round is not amazing and its performance against a range of targets is not staggering.

One of the reasons they went to 57mm was more effective HE.

A core reason the BMP-3 had both a 30mm cannon and a 100mm gun was because the HE power of the 100mm round was vastly better than the HE power of the 30mm round.

I'm sorry but in what battlefield is artillery ineffective? Certainly not in Ukraine where its the main cause of casualties - both in men and machine.

Kiev is begging for tanks, and no western army and certainly not the Russian army are not thinking... we have artillery so we don't need tanks because we can blind enemy armour with HE rounds we don't need to penetrate them.

To be fair the British actually believed they could use HESH to defeat enemy armour which would not have worked on any vehicle fitted with even the most basic of ERA let alone with composite built in armour.

If HE artillery was so effective against heavy armour then why bother with submunition rounds with HEAT warheads and also SFF top attack rounds...

I'm not. I'm being realistic. These systems are not foolproof - they have limitations one can exploit. They all do.

Of course they do, but I would say we really don't know enough about APS systems to be able to say this or that system will work or not.

HE rounds against optics is not a good gamble most of the time because it means you are giving away your position firing large calibre rounds at tanks that can fire right back at you...

The already do all of that. Large militaries just have more proper anti-tank weapons in their disposal that tends to be used more often.

Most western countries believe Russian tanks are junk and their tanks are amazing and the best tool to deal with enemy armour.

Why choose the fake when you can have the real deal?

Because a real round would have a tiny RCS that most APS systems will likely ignore... the purpose of the HMG rounds is to mimic anti armour weapons threatening a tank carrying an APS system to get it to expend its munitions leaving it vulnerable to standard rounds.

You could try the same with BMPs but how many are you prepared to lose trying to degrade the enemy tanks defences with them returning fire and destroying your lighter vehicles.

Technology wise new thermals are smaller than old thermals is what I was saying.

The thermals on the T-14 include short wave thermals which are not good for long range use but close in are very good and are cheaper than medium and long wave thermals... because they don't need to be cooled so much and are much smaller and lighter.

Commander thermals and gunner thermals are often different too because different frequency ranges offer different advantages too.

Anyone know if the contract to build 500 T-90ms in Egypt wit Tot is still on?  The rumor has been flying for 2+ years but nothing has come to fruition yet.  Wondering if the gaddam US stuck their nose in it again like the Su-35S considering we've been assembling their M1A1 Abrams for 2 decades or so and they really got a bug up their asses about anything Russian coming to Egypt.  But the latest was it was a signed deal.  Anyone?

I'd much rather see them build the Armada but we can always dream.

What a friggin' beauty.

That's why it uses rate of fire to compensate. The objective is to unleash as much fast moving metal in the air - and there is more than one way of skinning the proverbial cat.

If that were true then most tanks would be fitted with 12.7mm gatling guns to hose down enemy vehicles.

The core problem is that when a HE shell explodes against an armoured plate most of the blast is reflected back off the plate back towards where the shell came from and in most cases the paint gets singed off in that location but it doesn't automatically shred all the optics within 10 metres of the impact... the angles are just wrong.

If you play games like world of tanks or war thunder then I think you are getting a very skewed view of armoured warfare... sure a Bradley with a 25mm gun and excellent optics and night vision can take on T-55s driven by poorly trained crews with image intensification optics and win most of the time but they also had complete air control and had an artillery and support advantage too.

The Bradley can kill a T-55 but equally a T-55 can destroy a Bradley very very easily too.

Even with missiles fitted I wouldn't rate the Bradley as anything but a troop transport that can defend itself while running away.

Most explosive fragments on a 30 x 165mm HE shell go sideways but that is the wrong angle to damage optics on a tank with shrouds, so you would need direct hits for them to actually be effective... and once you open fire the enemy will be aware of what you are doing.

There is no mention of Terminator being used to take out equipment on enemy MBTs despite its armour and fire power actually being suited to such a role if it existed.

Honestly you probably don't need airburst ammo to disable a heavy MBT. A quick 2 round burst on the quick fire setting is enough weight if fire to thoroughly trash the external systems on tanks in tests. Maybe that's partially a reason why the Object 195 has a secondary 30 mm autocannon...

Well what I have read about the development of the BMP series was that first of all they wanted an anti armour main gun that could defeat MBTs from the front so the BMP-1 needed something that could penetrate a MBT from the front out to about 800m where the missile was not that reliable because it was manually controlled and sometimes it took that far for the operator to get the missile under control. With the BMP-2 the new missiles could hit targets at 50-75m so they went with a 30mm auto cannon that they wanted on the original vehicle.

What they then found was that for some targets the 30mm cannon was better... troops in the open but spread out, enemy ground vehicles and aircraft with light and medium armour, some light structures, while the heavier 73mm rockets were more effective against defended positions and vehicles with heavier armour...

They realised that each type of round was different enough to be valuable and useful to have and so the BMP-3 has both a HE bomb launcher and a high velocity automatic cannon.

Its problem is that 30mm is not effective on new IFVs which are getting rather big and heavy... the solution has been a new 57mm grenade launcher that fires heavy HE bombs but can also fire an APFSDS round to penetrate light armour too.

I have no experience with 30mm auto cannon but I know from using a shotgun that spreading pellets (fragments) at a moving target is not what most people think... an instant kill that obliterates everything...

In fact you can't control where the pellets go and they will always hit in a random pattern that might be effective but equally might not.

A HE fragmentation round might shatter every piece of glass optic on that vehicle... but equally it might hit none at all... which is why I am saying it is not something you should be relying on in combat.

I would say the Russians know quite a bit that they still insist on a heavy armor configuration for vehicles that will have APS integrated.

The Russians are under no illusions that any one technology on its own is the solution and in fact lots of different solutions have specific situations they suit best but other problems they are not a solution, so EW jammers to defeat some fuses in mines and IEDs might also work on some missile and rocket payloads and even some drones, but you also have ERA and smoke and other equipment for other threats and over time things will evolve and get better.

The original dazzlers for SHTORA were huge, but current ones might be laser based using rather more energy but have other uses too, like anti sniper anti optic roles...

And there is always risks with firing first, but if you have a working APS and he doesn't your odds become much better.

Whether they have an APS or not I think Russian vehicles having an APS system improves their odds.

No hardkill APS will engage an autocannon by design. A 30 mm autocannon will spit out hundreds of shells in a few seconds, and the magazines for interceptors only allow 2-3 intercepts at best, 1 is more realistic.

The point is that backup optics don't need to be big, they can be fibreoptic based with backup views all over the place, with mast mounted optics with backup optical ports all the way up the tube so if some vehicle opens up on you with a 30mm or a 35mm that you can aim and fire and kill them still.

A datalink connection  to nearby drones or your own tethered drone would allow a tank out of the line of sight to fire at targets too.

On the Mi-28 the canopy transparency is about 50mm thick and will stop a 14.5mm HMG round fired from less than 5m distance. Cut it into three sections and have a mechanism that can raise such pieces in front of the vulnerable components... if they get hit or damaged they can be ejected and the next piece raised... the optics themselves can be pointing vertically with optical periscopes reflecting the light down into them with top and side and rear cover with small turret mountings.

So any HE or penetrating round would just pass overhead of the actual optical sensors...

It would also be easy to replace in the field without having to replace the expensive optical sensor.

That's why I'm also suggesting making it a secondary weapon on the MBT. The T-14 has a lighly armored but spacious bustle to stow ammo for the 2A42 autocannon. Much better for survivability too instead of powerful 125 shells just lying in that place.

Agree with you there, though there was an early model showing a model terminator type vehicle with a 120mm smoothbore gun and 23mm 6 barrel gatling and another long weapon that I assumed was a 40mm grenade launcher but might have been a 57mm grenade launcher too.

The 23x115mm round is about the size of a 14.5mm HMG round so it could be carried in large numbers without taking a lot of space and the recoil would not be too great.

It uses the same projectiles as the 23 x 152mm gun of the Shilka and ZU-23-2 does which makes them quite powerful for their calibre, but muzzle velocity is low... about 700m/s but that is because the projectiles are so heavy. With a light APFSDS projectile you would get high mv over 1km/s or more.

This is wrong. You want cooled thermals to reduce image noise and thus improve resolution as much as possible. In fact the main advantage of larger vehicles is that they have the volume and power supply for bulky cryogenics needed to use cooled thermal sights.

The uncooled optics are best for the close in optics for situational awareness around the vehicle and it sees through smoke and dust better and can see through water and glass which also makes them cheaper.

The new optical turret of the new Kamov Ka-52s is smaller because the new cameras are smaller.

The new IWS rifle scopes are tiny and light weight compared with the old equipment that often included a nitrogen bottle for cooling.

If you think a HE round will automatically destroy all optics and APS systems on a tank perhaps look at this guy and his videos...



He has lots of different videos on his channel showing him using all types of weapons including hand grenades and rifles and guns up to artillery and tank rounds and rocket launchers etc etc.

If you watch a few of his videos you will see that often he will throw grenades at a tank like target with water bottles all over the place... the grenades land all over the place and the damage to the water bottles is not often obvious though when he picks them up there are holes in them, but hitting every optical port and APS sensor even with a dozen hits with HE is not guaranteed.

I said as much when mentioning shotgun blasts with buckshot can be powerful but you can't aim with buckshot... it does where it goes and you really can't control it except fire over and over and over.... at 20m the pattern will be a metre across so a mouse sized target could be completely safe after three or four shots with buckshot because the spread of pellets is not predictable... you might hit it first time or you might never hit it with 10 shots... you have no control over where the pellets go within a pattern.

HE is the same... and different HE rounds spread the fragments differently... most artillery and tank HE Frag rounds spread fragments sideways along the walls of the shells with the nose carrying the fuse...