General Main Battle Tank Technology Thread:

flamming_python wrote:The Armata MBT should be affordable due to economies of scale production of the Armata chassis, and at the same time be comfortably superior in just about all parameters to any current tank.
No need for an expensive T-95.

Exactly! That's why the whole Armata, Kurganets, Boomerang chassis logistic chain is a brilliant Idea! The main initial money-saver would probably be the smaller amount of factory equipment needed to produce such vehicles, and then eventually that aspect of cost effectiveness would be surpassed by the greater commonality of parts and spares by 10-20 years of mass production.

Pugnax wrote:Guys,the Israelis keep designing these superb forward engined Merkavas  because they see crew survivability as a critical design element.Forward  mounted engine packages,transmissions all get in the way of incoming rounds(accidental armour),a good firewall separates the powerplant from the crew...survivability goes way up.Fears of excessive heat signature might be a latent admission of poorly designed powerplant modules but then spewing hot oil out the left side exhaust hasnt done much to allay heat signature either.Hopefully Armata does away with this rather primitive and stupid practice of generating smoke.It was a novel and useful idea in the 1950s through the early 80s,Thermal imaging has made a farce of it.

Merkava's front protection scheme is retarded.

Any front penetration (and the plate is NOT that thick) and the engine is gone.

Armata MBT will have a very heavy protected hull, no need for front mounted engine.

TR1,i am basing my argument upon the premise that a well trained crew is worth much more than an engine or the whole vehicle.Protect the manpower and you win wars,modern wars will not be won by waves of asian conscripts...unless they are the PLA,and all they will need is a 12 inch stick to get to Paris.

The issue for me is, one penetration, and your tank is possible completely dead in the water.

The crew might have a hard time getting out, the tank might get hit again until the crew is gone themselves.

I share the opinion of TR1.

We do exactly know what happenes when a tank is immobile and crew attempts to bail out on foot, they will have no chance getting out of the tank without beeing mangled by machine gun fire. We are not talking here about Tank vs tank which is the past, we are talking here about every kind of situation, such as ATGM/RPG teams immobilize the tank and the crew will try to bail out and will recieve attention from everyones fire.

To put the engine in the front sounds better than it actually is. The engine is not made of RHA or any armored material its just a pile of metal even simple engines in usual cars can be penetrated by simple 7.62mm rounds through the entire engine block, it will maybe take a 12.7mm or even 14.5mm to penetrate the entire engine block of a tank but it is surely no big thing to penetrate the entire engine block with a shaped charge.

Tanks have already one weak spot for immobility kill, the tracks no need to add another "feature" that is very short sided and was would be nothing else but a bullet fang for the first frontal shaped charge hit and than leaving the crew on a silver tablet for enemies enough time to do necessary movements or measurements to do the rest.

Merkava worked well for IDF. There are many stories about IDF tankers successfully leaving their tanks even some cases when crew were carrying casualty. And there are some stories where entire crew was moved down in the ambush from elevated positions. Their tanks are good when it comes to protection against asymmetrical threats, but it's more or less comes to their tactics how they employ tanks. IDF got some black eyes when they rushed their operations and send tanks in urban environment. 
Their tanks are tailored just for their needs and their country. Just like Russian tank designs used to be strongly influenced by doctrine and even circumstances. Engine in the front is not only because of protection, but when Merkava was designed it didn't have composite armor, so it might have been desperate measures to increase frontal protection.
They have interesting approach and I like some stuff about Merkava, but not everything. I wouldn't call it universal platform as I can't imagine this behemoth in Europe. For me perfect tank is something between western and eastern designs, like K2 Black panther (at least on paper, in reality I wouldn't bet on this tank).
Armata will bring things to new level anyway.

Regular wrote:Merkava worked well for IDF. There are many stories about IDF tankers successfully leaving their tanks even some cases when crew were carrying casualty. And there are some stories where entire crew was moved down in the ambush from elevated positions. Their tanks are good when it comes to protection against asymmetrical threats, but it's more or less comes to their tactics how they employ tanks. IDF got some black eyes when they rushed their operations and send tanks in urban environment. 
Their tanks are tailored just for their needs and their country. Just like Russian tank designs used to be strongly influenced by doctrine and even circumstances. Engine in the front is not only because of protection, but when Merkava was designed it didn't have composite armor, so it might have been desperate measures to increase frontal protection.
They have interesting approach and I like some stuff about Merkava, but not everything. I wouldn't call it universal platform as I can't imagine this behemoth in Europe. For me perfect tank is something between western and eastern designs, like K2 Black panther (at least on paper, in reality I wouldn't bet on this tank).
Armata will bring things to new level anyway.

The front engine is what makes the Merk 4 into a mediocre MBT. It's a massive, glaring weakness and no matter how much it's sugar coated, will not go away. That said, it makes a fine APC. Namer is world class, at least until Armata shows up to unseat it.

For frontline afvs with the exception of the apc and ifv, a rear mounted powerpack is the best. Aside from improving frontal prrotection, a rear mounted powerpack would prevent m-kills unless from a rear attack- preserving the ability for the afv to retreat. for rear-area units
front mounted engines because it generally allows more efficient use of the chassis but also because a m-kill is not that lethal when friendly units are in the scene anyway.
As for Merkava I think its much vaulted front engine arrangment really is a disadvantage- most decent atgms and mildly effective anti-tank rounds would cause mobility kill if it hits the huge front hull. Then you can easily flank said tank. Ofc. step 1 is rel. easy but then you have to have the necessary skill or armor to finish step 2.

It's likely going to burn if the engine compartment is hit.

Zivo wrote:
The front engine is what makes the Merk 4 into a mediocre MBT. It's a massive, glaring weakness and no matter how much it's sugar coated, will not go away. That said, it makes a fine APC. Namer is world class, at least until Armata shows up to unseat it.

yeah i forgot about Namer. tho whats funny is that the difference between it and the armata APC would be the quality in the components- the main design itself is the same. Armata APC wont weigh anywhere near 60 tons while achieving equal to superior protection and therefore mobility due to higher hp/weight ratio and the armament would be slightly better ofc.

Guys,the Israelis keep designing these superb forward engined Merkavas because they see crew survivability as a critical design element.

Merkava was initially going to carry troops to support the tank so that lighter vehicles would no longer be needed on the modern battlefield, but in the end they just used the extra space in the rear for more ammo.

Perhaps if they had modern composite armours and ERA they wouldn't need to put the engine there, but I think the idea of having the engine in front is probably more an emotional thing than a practical thing because as I have said the ballistic protection provided by a large vehicle engine is not really that significant.

Of more significance would be the better ramp exit from the vehicle if the vehicle is disabled, than the extra protection provided by having an engine in the front.

In terms of APFSDS rounds the extra layers an engine would represent would not be particularly significant... for a HEAT warhead they could offer the protection of multiple layers of armour, but Russian ERA is already more effective than an engine would be in that regard.

Hopefully Armata does away with this rather primitive and stupid practice of generating smoke.It was a novel and useful idea in the 1950s through the early 80s,Thermal imaging has made a farce of it.

Not every enemy has thermal sights, and even if it is equipped to do it does not mean it has to be used. I would rather suspect the smoke launchers of armata will include chemicals to block thermal frequencies too and that the vehicle will have something akin to Shtora and EO jamming as well as APS and every other technology they can manage to fit it with.

Fears of excessive heat signature might be a latent admission of poorly designed powerplant modules but then spewing hot oil out the left side exhaust hasnt done much to allay heat signature either.

Gas turbines are the worst so the withdrawl of the T-80s from Russian service will address that... but at the end of the day 2,000hp engines generate a lot of heat.

T-90 probably has lower crew survivability in case of penetration but it is far lighter, has an autoloading mechanism that never gets tired and in terms of actual armour per surface area unit I don't think there is much difference.

If rounds are only loaded into the autoloader then crew survivability would be similar or better.

Because the Merkeva has a rear door ramp, that means it's rear side is even thinner and more vulnerable than every other modern MBT in the world.

Actually I remember seeing the rear ramp doors open and they looked very thick... like a foot thick. If that is the case then it probably has better rear armour than any other tank ever made except the Maus. Most tanks have rear armour that is vulnerable to even HMG fire... normally a penetration will start an engine fire.

With the Merkava it would take rather more to penetrate the rear but if you did that is where extra ammo is stored...

No tank in real conflict can keep its front always facing the enemy unless you dig them in and wall up their rears... this would make the lower rear hull a very vulnerable area which presumably they have armoured up as much as they could... but I would suspect most modern RPGs should penetrate all right.

It will sit still and kill at extreme ranges like the old WW2 Elephant.A mobile bunker with infantry support because the Israeli airforce sweeps the sky clear everytime.

Which suits the Israelis... but the Russians want a mobile tank that can slug it out in an urban environment or flat open plain.

Merkava worked well for IDF. There are many stories about IDF tankers successfully leaving their tanks even some cases when crew were carrying casualty.

Indeed, but there are also plenty of stories about rear engined tanks where the crews survive and escape an immobilised tank... the point is that is it a case that the Israelis don't have access to better frontal armour structures and therefore use their engines as extra mass, or... in my opinion more likely, the fact that their focus to crew safety is so complete that they would rather save the crew than complete the mission and will weaken the strengths of their tank to ensure the tank does not take crew with it. The latter might just be symbolic but it is a culture in their military.

In other words, what I am saying is that they put the engine in the front of their tanks so their tank crews know they are more important than their tanks. The spirit that creates within the Armoured units is worth more than the actual protection the engines actually provide in real terms.

Engine in the front is not only because of protection, but when Merkava was designed it didn't have composite armor, so it might have been desperate measures to increase frontal protection.

Against a first line state enemy having an engine in front is actually likely to result in a frontal penetration leading immediately to an engine fire... which of course greatly increases the risk of fuel and ammo explosion.

US tank shells in Desert Storm were found to penetrate the front, the entire crew compartment, the rear engine compartment and exit the rear of the vehicle... so their engines were no more effective at stopping the rounds than the front armour was.

Obviously the front armour on the targets was not much to write home about, but their engines made no difference in terms of protection whether mounted at the front or the rear... if the round in question can penetrate your frontal armour the engine will not stop it either.

My question is does it exist a way to blind or disable radar's Trophy ? It seems that there is another simple way to disable Trophy by using RPG-30 specially designed to circumvent APS's hardware. However, let's imagine the case where RPG-30 is not availlable.
In the past, as now, I've never seen in a battlefield a hardware without setback. It never existed in history of man. Iam sure it is possible to neutralize Trophy.

Regards.

Probably the cheapest option would be a machine gun with projectiles fitted with corner reflectors in their nose. The corner reflectors will make the projectiles look huge on radar and be mistaken for a missile... fire a shot every few seconds or even a burst and the APS will run out of defensive munitions and then fire a standard Kornet.

nemrod wrote:
My question is does it exist a way to blind or disable radar's Trophy ? It seems that there is another simple way to disable Trophy by using RPG-30 specially designed to circumvent APS's hardware. However, let's imagine the case where RPG-30 is not availlable.
In the past, as now, I've never seen in a battlefield a hardware without setback. It never existed in history of man. Iam sure it is possible to neutralize Trophy.

Regards.

Every radar can be fooled.. and more when they are so limited like the ones a Tank like Merkava 4 have.
For me a cheap RPG-7 made not to penetrate the tank.. but to blind for a several seconds the radar will do the trick.

For example you launch the RPG-7 grenade to a tank with the intention that is intercepted as usual..but that even if intercepted it will explode launching a cloud of anti radar and anti heat sensor material. So the Trophy system will be fooled in to think a massive attack of rockets is happening. Because will detect the material released by the rocket as more missiles.. effectively saturating the radar sensor.. then a couple of seconds after launch another rpg-7 rocket.. and that one will penetrate.

In short what you need is a decoy.. a rocket that when explode fill the area around the tank with radio magnetic smoke and with spheres that heat is identical to the one of a rocket grenade.. What that will cause is the tank to non stop shoot at all sides as if was attacked effectively blinding it.. Any second projectile will penetrate easily the tank active defenses..

About bullets , i don't think a tank active defense can stop them ,they are hypersonic and fly too fast. The radar will not be aware of them at all. Trophy was designed to counter the most basic anti tank weapons like RPG7 and Kornet-E ,Rpg-29 or Israeli splike missiles or even hellfire missiles are low subsonic projectiles  or Mach 0.1 to 0.4 , heavy machine guns bullets fly at mach 3.5 .  and Krisantema anti tank missile or hermes fly from mach 1.2 to mach 4.0.  So such fast anti tank missiles should have no problems to bypassing Israeli active defenses with just 1 hit.

So how to bypass trophy? Simply use decoys to blind radars ,or launch 2 missiles of your preference at near the same time or use supersonic Projectiles ,or fast top attack weapons. Bypassing Trophy or any other active protection is not rocket science ,you only need to know its limitations.  and all of them without exception can be overwhelmed.

About bullets , i don't think a tank active defense can stop them ,they are hypersonic and fly too fast. The radar will not be aware of them at all. Trophy was designed to counter the most basic anti tank weapons like RPG7 and Kornet-E ,Rpg-29 or Israeli splike missiles or even hellfire missiles are low subsonic projectiles or Mach 0.1 to 0.4 , heavy machine guns bullets fly at mach 3.5 . and Krisantema anti tank missile or hermes fly from mach 1.2 to mach 4.0. So such fast anti tank missiles should have no problems to bypassing Israeli active defenses with just 1 hit.

No they are not.

14.5mm HMG bullets or 50 cal bullets are not hypersonic and they travel fastest at the muzzle of the weapon firing them.

At 2-3km range HMG rounds will certainly be subsonic... indeed good luck if you get that close... you will likely only get to 4-5km range at which distance 14.5mm rounds will reach but will not have the energy to penetrate any decent level of armour.

that is not so important in this application as the rounds will have an aerodynamic nose cover with a corner reflector etched into its nose to make it appear to be much much larger than it actually is.

the APS wont be able to determine whether it is an RPG or other missile type as the interception times are not long enough to add a human decision maker into the loop. This means an automatic system would have to engage the threat and to prevent it the crew would have to turn the system off.

Fire ten rounds at each tank and see if they fire their APS interception systems.

Then fire your missile which will take a few dozen seconds to reach the tank... as they approach fire a couple of extra bursts of HMG fire to make sure the APS is intercepting your HMG rounds and wont be ready when the missile arrives... perhaps out of interception munitions, or overwhelmed with all the incoming targets and not able to determine which is harmless HMG round and which is deadly ATGM.

Can some one confirm as shown in video below autoloader of T-90 Tank allows it to load the round and cartridge simultaneously in one single motion ? ( Starts at 0:43 )




Compare that with loading mechanism of T-72 where round and cartidges are loaded in two round

Hmm, I don't see any reason to doubt it....

I think that is a T-80 that loads propellant and warhead at the same time.

Werewolf wrote:I think that is a T-80 that loads propellant and warhead at the same time.

I thought the T-80 also loaded in the "two parts"....

Mike E wrote:

Werewolf wrote:I think that is a T-80 that loads propellant and warhead at the same time.

I thought the T-80 also loaded in the "two parts"....

Austin was speaking if the T-90 was loading both propellant and warhead in one reloading cycle not like T-72's which loads seperatley warhead and than propellant.

And i think that this was a T-80 and i was right. The T-90MS reloads exactly like T-72.

BTW ignore the title of the video of some factoid boys and "autoloader cut arms" for US fanboys to have some excuses why Abrams has no autoloader.



Here the T-80.

Wow! Thanks for all that info...

Not having no autoloader today is incredibly retarded and not justified..
The performance of the crew will significantly decrease after a couple of days of fighting ,specially if the crew
do not have proper rest and no sleep because of the war.

Thanks Werewolf

Vann7 wrote:
Not having no autoloader today is incredibly retarded and not justified..
The performance of the crew will significantly decrease after a couple of days of fighting ,specially if the crew
do not have proper rest and no sleep because of the war.

It all honesty it depends on the person you are talking to (opinionated). I myself believe that while autoloaders are great, they can fail in which case they are useless... That being said, human loaders are slower, can wear out, and risks yet another life in the process.

Mike E wrote:

Vann7 wrote:
Not having no autoloader today is incredibly retarded and not justified..
The performance of the crew will significantly decrease after a couple of days of fighting ,specially if the crew
do not have proper rest and no sleep because of the war.

It all honesty it depends on the person you are talking to (opinionated). I myself believe that while autoloaders are great, they can fail in which case they are useless... That being said, human loaders are slower, can wear out, and risks yet another life in the process.

Well I'll have to make an analogy here, I would compare 'not' having a autoloader vs 'having' a autoloader with a person who 'runs' from San Diego to New York City, with a person who 'drives' the same journey. There a people who are skilled enough and who happen to be in good enough shape to run that distance, and there are cars that are in bad shape and drivers who are too incompetent (terrible drivers who can't read a map or use GPS) to drive that journey, but the people who are capable of running the journey are few-and-far-between and significantly outnumbered by people who could drive the same journey.