T-90 Main Battle Tank #2

New APFSDS just dropped. Diet Vacuum edition.

Still fits the modified AZ autoloader for T-90M/T-80BVM/T-72B3 but the penetrator is the longest that still can.

But more importantly it got rid of the retarded Svinets-1 guide cams which introduced asymmetric barrel wear every time its fired in favor of the sounder Vacuum style sabot design.

Sure it can, in an indirect mode. And with a full charge. Like any ballistic artillery.
But we are talking a different thing now.

Now I am confused.

We were talking about very long range use of gun fired missiles and someone said the ballistics computer wont handle targets more than 5km away, so I mentioned that the ballistics computer already dealt with targets 11km away when firing HE rounds.

Ballistics is ballistics... whether it is a flat shooting APFSDS or a slower shell with the same ballistics as a HE Frag round... like a HEAT shell.

Having aiming marks out to 11km for HE rounds means aiming marks for HEAT rounds of a similar weight and muzzle velocity... obviously would be pointless firing HEAT rounds to that distance because they need to hit point targets to be effective while HE Frag rounds are aimed at larger structures or groups of enemy that are spread out.

My point is that firing a missile at a target 30km away you would use max elevation and rely on the fact that once it leaves the barrel the missile can turn upwards and climb more steeply to gain max ballistic range... there is no need for a vertical aim point and actually turning the vehicle so it is pointing up hill would improve range by increasing elevation.

The add on piece might be simply a rear mounted ramjet with fuel tank added and the flip out control surfaces used to climb to maximise range and well as steer into the target.

Firing guided rounds doesn't require high level precision from the ballistics computer... at any range, though a good aim on the target would reduce the amount of manouvering the round is required to perform to hit the target.

A higher ejection speed and a nose mounted target sensor should allow a decent speed... always firing it up into the air at max elevation would make sense because a missile diving down nearly vertically on the target could have two widely spaced much smaller HEAT warheads with the front to take out ERA or NERA and the rear charge to cut through the roof armour of the vehicle... especially if it can fly into the rear turret bustle ammo store on western tanks.

No calibre increase is really needed and with front mounted optics you could put a ramjet in the rear and a centreline fuel tank with a warhead directly behind the nose sensor and the rear charge just in front of the ramjet.

ALAMO wrote:lyle6, so they split the penetrator and placed half of it in the propeller charge, figuring some mechanism to click them together while loading?

I don't think that's possible? But anyway the sub-projectile is still one solid piece, it just sits as far back into the integral charge as possible while maximizing the protrusion in the front. This way you get a solid 700 mm projectile out of the 740 mm limit. Not as good as the 950 mm long monster projectiles for the Vacuum-1/2 mind you but it should impregnate that impregnable NATO armor just fine.

TMA1 wrote:Nice find! Does it have a known code name and number?

Nyeto. NATO tankers are advised to follow up though, so they know with what shell they were sent to hell with. And pray to their overlord satan that its not something hilarious like a froot!

Nice to know despite all our barking the engineers in Russia just keep making new missiles and rounds...

They think they make them to defend Russia from its very real western enemies, but in actual fact they also make it for our interest and entertainment...

Well the advantage there would be that if you make it right it can be carried on T-14s, but also used by ground based Coalition vehicles... armata and wheeled versions, and also a naval version for naval gun support roles for landings or supporting land troops inland.

And if it is successful imagine a 203mm version for ground and naval use with more HE and more range etc etc.

The sky is the limit but the budget to create it can be shared between the Army and the Navy...

ALAMO wrote:
The more I think about that, the more certain I get that it can be archivable.
What you would get, is a sort of telescopic penetrator. Those are not monoblock either, and the joint point is small and probably weak - yet it works somehow.
So yes, my guess is that it can be done, only question remains if it is worth to bother.

Probably not, telescopic penetrators seem very hard to manufacture and complexity is expensive.

And the beauty of the APFSDS is that its a dumb heavy metal arrow that uses only kinetic energy to pierce armor. The only real enabling technology here is advanced metallurgy - for the gun to have the pressure withstand to accelerate the projectile at the necessary velocities and for the projectile itself to withstand piercing through complex multilayer targets - and Russia always had excellent metallurgy.

Its also supposed to be made cheap enough that all the tanks have some in their loadout at all times. Russia doesn't want a repeat of the WW2 experience where mass anti-armor shell shortages meant that the Soviet T-34s had to resort to very unfavorable tactics just to be able to kill German armor.

ALAMO wrote:
At the moment, maximal absorption point is somewhat 740 mm long rod for upgraded loaders, and that is more than enough to deal with any existing NATO tank. And as those reach the end of the road, I would not expect any monumental changes here, we won't se a NATO tank with armor protection reaching 1000mm in the next 30 years.
And watching the path that more modern tank hubs followed, we won't see them even in 50 years ...

And the T-14 is already armed with subcaliber shells that can pierce 1000 mm of armor now.

Talk about firepower overmatch.

Exactly... it is like stealth... from one direction this plane appears on a radar screen as the head of a pin, and this German tank has 2.5 metres of armoured protection... but from the side it looks rather bigger and even if it didn't how many heads of pins are flying at 10,000m altitude at 800km/h, and with the tank, it can be penetrated by 30mm cannon fire from the sides and rear, or the humble land mine can destroy it...

Peak numbers give an indication of how far things have progressed, but don't bet your mortgage on them... like the max range of AAMs...

Yeah, but German tanks are intended to fight Russia so how could they possibly know their tanks were ever going to be tested on the eastern front in such testing conditions... and it is not like shitty Russian tanks could do any better...

Quote from the 1930s... now approaching the 2030s and not much has changed really...

Isos wrote:
But just like any other tank, sides and rear are like butter for any apfsds.

The T-14 has superior situational awareness than most MBTs - it would be difficult to outflank it at the best of times and even then the APS gives it an unfair advantage by denying first round hits.

Isos wrote:
Those numbers are shit. We see everywhere how easy it is to destroy tanks with appropriate tactics and weapons.

Russia makes it look easy because its ground forces are highly trained, have iron discipline, are extremely experienced and have superior coordination, tactics and equipment - they are the best on the planet bar none.

ALAMO wrote:
This conflict gives us the impression that the western tank building school is fuked up for real.
And it is not my private opinion, but a professional one.
All of them are way too heavy, bulky, and overcomplicated for war.
The logistics effort is enormous. Even planning a simple route is a challenge.
Too heavy for Ukrainian soil in Spring. - that would be a great joke, if not talked seriously.
Too heavy for Ukrainian soil in Autumn. - yeah, very funny, but why do you repeat that again, my two stars friend?
Perform bad in Winter, tracks get frozen to the ground. Like fukin serious? Shocked
Cooling system is ineffective and engine overheats in Summer conditions. No fukin kidding me! Shocked

Because its fundamentally broken at its core - the losers of WW2 were its first teachers. Of course they would just be perpetuating garbage throughout.

Isos wrote:
Yes and no. A good situational awerness goes through external sensors, datalink and comms. Not through tank's own sensors. A enemy tank vehind a house won't be seen and will smash your t-14 easily. Good thermals help a lot though but any modern tank will have very good thermals anyway including upgraded tanks.

So I doubt we can say t-14 is better in that field.

This is just plain wrong. The T-14 will have full access to sensor fusion data from the tactical network aside from the feed from its onboard sensors. And unlike other tanks its combined workstations actually allows the crew to handle numerous sensor streams all at once, and execute various combat tasks simultaneously and more importantly, seamlessly.

Just imagine a, a Leopard 2 or an M1 Abrams crew has talk its way through every step across multiple isolated workstations just to do one thing. Fucking disgusting.

Isos wrote:
It could however survive two or three hits easily because its turret is unmanned, apfsds would need to hit very precisely the ammo. A hit on the turret itself must be useless too because it's empty.

You won't even land a hit. The first shot gets deflected by Afghanit and then the thermal opaque smokes pop up.

You frantically scan the smokescreen for a sign of the target but then all of a sudden the T-14 pops out and burns your tank with a perfectly aimed subcaliber arrow...

gg;no re

General Winter won a war in Russia!

General Winter and of course Hitlers interference is what cost the Germans the war on the Eastern front, but we hear this from the german generals that fked up... it is interesting that they blame the Russian winter and not their own logistics or planning and preparation for the conflict.

They blame Hitler for things but not for not demanding a military force that can fight in the cold, they blame him for demands about attacks and withdrawals and tactics.

It's not so much the HEAT rounds as much as the APFSDS rounds that are destroying Russian MBTs, BMPs and other armoured vehicles.

They have not started shooting on the huge open plains of Ukraine, most combat seems to be happening at relatively short range with enemy vehicles appearing from behind trees and bushes at quite short ranges.

Russia better starts working on an APS that can neutralize NATO's APFSDS.

Russia is the only country to claim to have such an APS system.

Armata's designers should place depleted uranium tiles in the side and rear as well to stop APFSDS rounds.

DU adds enormous weight and complications... an APS that can get the APFSDS round to yaw as it approaches the target is good enough... a nail being hammered sideways into any material... whether concrete or wood will fail as they fold or snap and do not make it through.

Because its fundamentally broken at its core - the losers of WW2 were its first teachers. Of course they would just be perpetuating garbage throughout.

Yes, their experience was coloured by pride and arrogance and racism... those Soviets beat them with numbers and the extreme cold and of course Hitler was the blame hound... was his fault too.

That was the idea the US had that was behind the FCS program. They wanted to make light vehicles which would be half the weight of the M1. They would use active protection to protect against enemy fire. The program was a bit of a disaster and ended up cancelled after tens of billions were spent on R&D.

The hilarious thing is that if they opened it up to any manufacturer then the Russians could have entered the T90M and probably won...

Yes and no. A good situational awerness goes through external sensors, datalink and comms. Not through tank's own sensors.

The APS system uses optics and AESA radar so it can detect things approaching, though obviously not through buildings... but then as you mention most modern vehicles have good modern thermals but even the best wont see through buildings so while you can say the Armata wont see stuff coming through buildings... how does the enemy see through those same buildings to fire at those vehicles in the first place.

I remember after a HATO exercise somewhere in the Med area a HATO officer said their forces would have been easy to defeat... the enemy just had to shoot the bushes...

It could however survive two or three hits easily because its turret is unmanned, apfsds would need to hit very precisely the ammo. A hit on the turret itself must be useless too because it's empty.

Being able to survive a couple of hits is about as much as you can ask of a modern tank these days... it should allow you to determine where the threat is and deal with it.... or for someone on your team to do that.

Before a T-14 approaches the enemy lines a robot T-72 with mine rollers will likely be driven up first with the T-14s and drones watching where the enemy fire comes from...