General Main Battle Tank Technology Thread:

GarryB wrote:
You are being unfair... the T-90 is a tank developed from a cheap mass production tank that turned out to be even better than the top line expensive tank it was produced in parallel with... ie the T-80.

The T-90 is the top of its evolutionary chart the same way the M1 Abrams in its current in service model is too. Just because the next gen vehicles will likely have unmanned turrets and perhaps even be completely unmanned does not mean they are bad tanks.

..does not mean they are bad tanks.

The ability of a tank to leave the ground and not require to be immediately sent for repair is not a practical thing that would be useful in combat... much like a tail slide for a fighter, but it shows acceleration and a certain level of mobility... just as a tailslide shows robust engines that are not bothered even by reverse air flows... which is very significant in combat... no point fitting your plane with TVC systems if your engines stall when the airflow changes direction.

To hit something precisely over 1 km You have to be stationary.

For example Brandleys with TOW wrecked havoc among Iraqi T-72. They scored more kills than tanks because of their longer missile reach.

TR1 wrote:
If we compare export prices, T-90A is not a cheap product at all by world standards. And why should it be, it is a good MBT. I can't imagine T-90MS being much cheaper than Leopard 2s either.

Zivo wrote:

For example Brandleys with TOW wrecked havoc among Iraqi T-72. They scored more kills than tanks because of their longer missile reach.

Care to elaborate on this?

Haha. There is nothing practical with jumping and shooting in same time......Judging by that kangaroos are best MBT in the world.

Still not sure about it's performance in central European landscape where engagement distances are short.

I'm not saying that T-90 is bad tank, but it's not the best too.

I'm not saying that T-90 is bad tank, but it's not the best too. So many years ago I was catching all the details about Black Eagle, who was considered T-80 on steroids. It happened to be just a mock up, but heart was in the right place. Not to mention FST projects that where way ahead of their time.

I've heard that M1A3 will only get minor upgrades, new wiring/cables, new computers and other minor upgrades that will make tankers life bit easier. Nothing revolutionary, or maybe i'm missing something.

Cause it looks like no brainer to me.

but it going for T-90 is like dating super models and marrying a plain looking girl next door only because she will cost You less.

Should I mention T-64? Having two tanks wasn't an option for Russia and they chose the cheapest one. Too bad :/

For example Brandleys with TOW wrecked havoc among Iraqi T-72. They scored more kills than tanks because of their longer missile reach. I expect no less from Reflex.

I think there was even some kills made with Bushmaster,

Mindstorm wrote:Capability to execute those "jumps" on HARD soil (....not the very soft one ,on which the Merkawa of the video land, which obviously absorb the stress in place of MBT's suspension

retaining perfect mobility after, is a very good "marker" of a CRUCIAL battlefield capability for a MBT -product at its own time of a sound technical design- capable to enormously influence its exchange ratio in mobile engagements against direct enemy fire.

In substance those "jumps" or ,for better say, capability of the MBT's torsion bar suspensions to absorb similar level of energy (see attentively the slow motion from 0:25 of this video)

indicate capability of the tank in question to proceed off-road in battle at any speed and velocity's delta and long any vector of motion independently of the gradient and height's gap characterizing it.

The combined effect with the vastly reduced target area of domestic MBT and theirs turret design produce an enormous difference in the final PHit of unguided enemy direct fire in mobile engagements at tactically relevant ranges.

I provided a brief explanation of the terms of this specific question and its effects about an year and half ago at post 555 of another thread ,read it if you want.



https://www.russiadefence.net/t1368p540-first-photos-of-t-95-and-t-90am

Usually the fire produced during those "jumps" (the round ,as you would have surely noted by now, is effectively shoot just before leave the terrain when FCS can still compute a fire solution) include mostly HE/HE-Frag rounds against infantry positions/bunker or Ainet-programmed rounds against known position of hovering helicopters/ATGM squads.

Metropolitan legends....even more those useful at justify in some way a western failure in designing a particular weapon system ....are truly die-hard even in the era of Google map.

Give a direct "look" to the morphological characteristic of area involved in the hypothetical Warsaw Pact armoured offensive in Europe, such as the "Fulda Gap" the "Northern Plain route" or "HOF's Bisector" (or even better visit those places personally..) and you will realize the incredible nerve of those people attempting, still today, to justify western failure to produce an efficient gun launched ATGM for theirs MBTs with fairy tales on the LOS in Germany

If it was such game changer Why soviets didn't go for full missile tank then like we seen before?

What makes You think that Merkava landed on a pillow? I'm pretty sure it hurt them pretty bad. Merkava suspension would be the weakest part of this tank

Why not to stick bayonet on it too?

In mobile engangements You will hardly have speed to jump at all.

Torsion bar suspension is well known to be durable.

Flying bunkers? Barrel can't depress lower because hull is climbing up on the hill/ramp, look again at the video.

So what are typical combat ranges in Europe?

And what's so special about 80ies technology that West can't design?

In era of modern FCS reduced target area doesn't play such important role. Tanks use even smaller targets for practice. Where is enormous difference when look at the size of T-90AM, it's not really a dwarf.

Mindstorm wrote:

What ? Practically anything....

1) Depressed position of the front axle
2) Very high amount and overall consistency of the terrain lifted by the track train in the motion and in the "jump"
3) Wide presence of short root plants (it is an any effect a soft grassland )
4) Almost complete absence of any suspension generated elastic bounce after the landing (you can notice the immense difference with any video where a MBT, forcibly much lighter than western behemoth, absorb really the energy produced by similar impact)

Reading comprehension anyone ?

In mobile engangements You will hardly have speed to jump at all.

I image that you know the difference between engagements in marksmanship training (where the maximum hit percentage is the central parameter taken into account) and tactical maneuver training (where variation of position in relation to tempo and time of exposure to enemy fire and the mode of enemy direct fire's Phit is taken in consideration too).

Western nations MBT's training has historically stressed on marksmanship training for the simple reason that them expected to fight a defensive war against overwhelming enemy forces from almost fixed entrenched or defilades positions, neither that theirs same design don't allowed for good strategic and tactical mobility or capable to achieve a substantial hit avoidance in mobile engagements.

Obviously not.

Above all if over the same suspension, in the same condition of T-90, would burden 17-18 tons more falling from 1,80 m.......

There is no chance that an M1 Abrams, Challenger 2, Leopard 2 and the likes would not disintegrate their suspensions with a solicitation ,on hard terrain, even only several times lower than that.

Not Regular, simply any fixed targets attacked with HE-Frag rounds (possibly with Ainet setted detonation) with usual ballistic trajectory.
I repeat one more time: it is not that the "jump" is necessary for something ; being capable to sustain similar jumps point instead to the capability to proceed at relatively high speed off road in terrain characterized by high gradient.

Do you can realize now why i laugh when see people attempting ,[b]still today, to sold around this comical fairy tale on the gun launched ATGMs....not fruitable in European regions, when in reality it represent an almost perfect environment for theirs employment

The same preventing, for example,to the West to design any supersonic cruise missiles up to today

This is simply NOT TRUE (unless someone manage to create a future reading FCS or KE rounds increase enormously theirs average speed ) and nothing more nothing less than the umpteenth metropolitan legend circulating on those subjects.

Well Russians themselves said that their new FCS can precisely hit moving targets from great distances. I think west is not lagging behind in that matter.

- The ever open question of Probability to Hit of a MBT equipped with a modern FCS and importance ,or lack of it, of target's surface area for this crucial parameter -



An advanced, modern FCS ,provided with all the necessary chrono-spatial and environmental informations (precise range from target ,accurate measure of its motion's vector, overall environmental temperature, wind speed, specific humidity, barrel level of thermal expansion and its level of structural fatigue etc..etc..)can effectively allow a modern MBT to find a fire solution and reliably hit a relatively small target -smaller than the frontal projection of a MBT- at long range (in the right conditions even more than 3000-3500 meters), but what is almost always, strangely, "forgotten" is that ,at medium/medium-long range (2000 m and over) considering actual HEAT and APFSDS rounds ,all that remain true only against stationary/near-stationary targets or those changing theirs motion vector in a proportional linear way .

Image an engagement attempt against a target at 2200 meters moving at 36 Km/h (10 meter/second), for simplicity we can image this target moving perfectly perpendicular to the barrel's axis of the shooting tank (selecting, therefore, a very unlikely and very advantageous geometry for the shooter); from the processed data and the precise instant of the found fire solution to the moment of the APFSDS arrival on the computed point of interception, taking into account: gun collimation ,fire initialization, velocity and gravity drop of the round and travelling time long the parabolic trajectory to this point 2200 m far, elapse about 2 seconds for a round like M829A3 (1540 m/s at barrell exit).
Now any change of the target motion from the vector computed by the FCS ,at the instant of the fire solution found, capable to modify the actual spatial position of the silhouette's centre of a measure superior to its semi-projection (half of the projection of its target area at the shooting point) will cause an assured miss; anyone can easily realize as a variation as small as +/-15 Km/h in the target speed or a simply turn ,even of only few degrees, or even the effect of some terrain morphology is more than sufficient for a tank with an average silhouette to cause a miss by part of the named round at this range.

What is very important to point-out is that what now expressed remain totally valid independently from the FCS's sophistication (unless someone will manage to create a future-reading FCS ) because those variations of target's vector in the mentioned time window are totally arbitrary ,therefore completely out of the computing capabilities of any data processing system in the past ,in the present or in the future.
The unique factors, conversely, capable to influence a similar engagement sequence against a target randomly changing its motion's parameters are : round's speed, distance from target, target capability to quickly change its motion vector, round average dispersion at this date range, and size of the target actual aspect projection at the shooting point.

Now anyone can easily realize too as even small variations in a MBT's area projection (in the order of some dozen of cm ) produce an enormous, disproportionate effect in the related PtH -Probability to Hit- parameter for engagements at 2000-2500 m or over, between randomly moving opposing MBTs not employing guided ammunitions, because those features allow both to increase the time window useful for initialize a motion variation capable to cause a miss and/or mitigate the "required" entity of the same motion's variable.

In particular is demonstrable that considering the process's function of those discrete and aleatory variables in a stocastic model, we have that the projection of potential hit's distribution tend to be concentrated ,in a non-linear way, long the peripheral aerea of target area silhouette ( in particular ,for obvious reasons, of the turret's area ).

You can easily realize why, before the new Soviet military doctrine of 1987, Soviet tank crews in service in the spearhead armored divisions stationed in East Germany and planneed for transition over Rasdorf, areas around Geisa, to overcome NATO resistance long the Fulda Gap,was instructed ,at the beginning of the offensive, to employ all theirs GLATGM (against armored vehicles as priority targets and ,in second instance, against any low flying target of opportunity) while, when reaching the range of possible counterfire by part of enemy MBT's main guns ,change almost continually and randomly speed and direction of motion (in the training, the conscripts followed the cadences of a brief litany).

In facts, the apparently randomly advancing armoured divisions that is possible to see in some very old videos of Soviet exercices for "STOSS" plan was not the effect of lack of training or vodka, like some laughable ignorant had suggested, but the training for this type of non linear mobile advancement toward enemy defense lines in West Germany.

We must, now, also add that a MBT with a smaller silhouette show, almost always, also a smaller internal volume and a significantly lower inertial mass, elements that don't allow only to maintain a greater armoured-mass-to-surface index but also a far better capability to quickly change direction and speed in the unitary time segment of reference , one of the variables in the Probability to Hit function for medium-long range engagements.

The operational factors previously described wouldn't be simply important but literally crucial in any major MBT's engagements between peer opponents employing armoured brigades ,both in offensive and in defensive missions, in theirs classical CONOPS and even more considering modern concepts of adaptive ground maneuvering warfare.

Naturally, one more time, Gulf War, with Iraqi ground forces employing theirs MBT as....fixed pillbox/field artillery pieces ....have generated a lot of low level platitudes (among which capability to engage enemy MBT with APFSDS or HEAT at 3 km or over “thanks to advanced FCS” )very difficult to eradicate from low level common imaginary and completely irreconcilables not only with physical reality but with what would actually happen ,or would have happened, for example, in the highly mobile engagement in the Thar Desert between India and Pakistan armored forces (or, in the past,in the Fulda Gap and in the Nothern German Plain and between URSS and NATO forces) where the heavy effects of lower probably to hit triggered by lower target area and lower inertial mass of some of the MBTs involved would generate an huge impact on the final attrition ratio .

Can't say that I disagree, but for me it's natural to feel more sympathetic towards T-80 family, Ukraine is lucky to have Kharkov. Too bad they are rehashing same thing all over again. They are not as capable as Russia and their financing must be way lower. I was reading a lot about Soviet prototypes and some of them really make my jaw drop.

Well Russians themselves said that their new FCS can precisely hit moving targets from great distances. I think west is not lagging behind in that matter.

I do like the bustle autoloader concept, at least for a small supplementary number of rounds that wouldn't result in a catastrophic burn if it were hit. The bustle would house GLATGMs or maybe some APFSDS for a higher fire rate.

Well Russians themselves said that their new FCS can precisely hit moving targets from great distances. I think west is not lagging behind in that matter.

They said the engine in the front was meant to increase protection, but as Garry mentioned the engine isn't made of hardened tank armor, so the protection against armor penetrating rounds/ATGMs is almost non-existent.

The counter arguments that i have read for these issues are:

That the same could be said about tanks with the engine in the rear the engine isn't made of hardened tank armor and so is easily penetrated.

And the active protection system will cover both the rear door and driver from being hit.