[Official] Armata Discussion thread #1

The advantages of an all digital drive-by-wire system are apparent.

You can't really call it that. A fly by wire system is an upgrade where early aircraft had direct wires connected to the control surfaces of an aircraft so it took a lot of strength to operate an aircraft. Later hydraulics were used to ease the load on the pilot, but true fly by wire flight controls took away all those hydraulics and pretty much replaced the connection between the controls and the control surfaces with small electric motors to deflect the control surfaces that were activated by electrical signals from a computer based fly by wire control system.

In a land vehicle... particularly a tracked vehicle the steering wheel doesn't physically turn the wheels left or right and the accelerator pedal does not actually make the wheels go round and round faster... the control of the wheels is not directly linked to the controls so it has long been fly by wire as such.

It'll literally be operated by three guys sitting side by side, with joysticks, staring at computer monitors. How many video games exist out there with tanks that have two crew?

More than that... the crew will have external cameras offering views comparable to the external views in video games and with UAVs flying around the place and battle management systems providing information about enemy forces nearby those enemy positions on your map will appear and be identified in real time as they are detected and identified.

Of course in a video game you often are not allowed to drive near terrain where you might roll the vehicle or get stuck, so unlike a video game the armata MBT needs a dedicated driver, and the dual role of commander/gunner can be the other role in a low intensity conflict, but to be fully effective having three crew makes the best sense so you can be killing a target but also be aware of other threats and targets and also be directing the vehicle cover to cover.

Many of them, and people don't seem to have problems with it. Having two crew members would be feasible, but it would be at the expense of SA. It sounds ridiculous to compare, but on a digital system, input is input, whether it's a virtual vehicle or a real one.

Indeed... against a low tech enemy there is little need for those three crew to actually be in that vehicle at all... they could be quite some distance away safe and sound... when they get tired a relief crew could replace them...

Half the kids these days would come pre-trained to operate Armata.

Exactly... imagine if the best gunner you could find is 12 years old? Or the best crew.... one lives in Moscow, one in St Petersberg, and the other in Murmansk... invasion force by video conference...  

MF! where can I sign up? Give me 1 Armata MBT
and an assload of fuel and ammo and I can
blitzkrieg the middle finger kingdom.

Actually in terms of firepower I would go for an Armata BMPT... and with remote crewing the crew area could be replaced with more ammo and more fuel...

Is this really what war has come down to?

It is what air power has been for some time...

Yes it is; until the HEAT warhead penetrates into the crew compartment, melts a hole through the commanders torso, combusts the small volume of oxygen inside the compartment leading to death by asphyxiation for anyone that survived the burns

Doesn't actually work like that however... HEAT warheads don't consume oxygen from confined spaces... they are pretty much super hot lances of molten metal that use velocity and mass to compensate for the lack of rigidity. At very high speeds mass is what is important rather than hardness... a 1 ton chocolate blancmange hitting a target at 20km/s will do the same damage as a 1 ton steel object of the same shape at the same speed.

In the real world a HEAT warhead penetrating into the crew compartment will do damage only to those crew it passes through or splashes onto. Breathing in during the penetration might lead to a lung full of superheated gas that could also kill you, but chances are the crewman sitting in the seat the warhead goes through is likely the only person that will be injured.

This has been proven repeatedly where unless the penetration hits fuel or ammo the only person injured is the person hit directly by the penetrator.

“The prototypes will be unveiled soon at an exhibit in Nizhny Tagil, and their tests will kick off within a month or two, I believe,” Lt. Gen. Alexander Shevchenko said on Echo Moskvy radio.

Note they will be revealed to a chose few... not publicly revealed to everyone...

Shevchenko also said Saturday that all standing alert units of the Russian army will switch to two types of main battle tanks – the T-72 and the T-90 – by early 2015.

So there are going to be about 2,000-3,000 T-80 MBTs on the for sale list by early 2015... interesting.

Makes sense though as a simplification of their logistics tail makes no sense if they hang on to all their tanks with all those different calibre guns and non standard parts and engines...

Actually I was hoping they might send a few to me... you know... just for the free promotion work I do for them...  

 

 

In the auto industry, this system is referred to as drive by wire.

Then they are misusing the term.

To properly use the term drive by wire they would need electric drive with electric motors on each wheel with no gears and transmission and direct drive shaft connection between the engine and the wheels.

If the opponents have the FGM-148 Javelin every single MBT can be taken out .

Javelin uses a very low speed missile that requires a solid lockable target before it can be fired in fire and forget mode.

An Armata MBT with Nakidka 2 type IR camouflage would not allow Javelin to get a lock and therefore it would need to be used in conventional SACLOS mode which means no diving top attack... just a boring horizontal flying missile with very low speed and poor armour penetration from the front... 750mm will not penetrate a T-80 or T-72 let alone a T-90 or Armata MBT.

The Javelin uses a cooled mid-wave IR (MWIR) sensor that can passively lock-on to targets at up to 50% farther range than an uncooled sensor, thus allowing the firing crew greater and safer standoff distance, and less likely to be exposed to counter-fire.

The Javelin in fire and forget diving top attack mode has a range of 2.5km... the Catherine XP thermal imager used in Russian tanks can detect troops in the open at over 4km and vehicles at 7km range.

The range of a lock is zero when the target is using IR camouflage like Nakidka.

When a lock cannot be achieved then the missile has to be used in conventional line of sight SACLOS mode like Dragon or Milan where its very low speed leaves the crew exposed to enemy fire for very long periods of time.

Igla-S MANPADS have been tested against Falanga anti tank missiles and were successful in engaging these very small targets because they have proximity fuses that allow near miss kills instead of requiring a hit like older models did.

Of course the Pantsir-S1 armata will be able to spray the ground where the Javelin came from with a hail of 30mm rounds in a split second after the missile appears on radar as it climbs...

TOR would likely engage it too.

The cooled seeker’s MWIR spectrum allows a durable hardened dome, and it is better than LWIR in discerning threats in certain geographic locations or environmental conditions.

Cooled IR systems are more effective where the ambient temperature is high like in the jungle or desert as most thermal imagers are designed to display objects hotter than 25-30 degrees as white... meaning people and running engines appear clearly on the screen. In a desert such a system has problems because the sun heats everything to above 30 degrees so everything is white...

I wonder if the Russian Army will modernize T-72 at enough pace to be able to retire all T80s by 2015. T-80B/BV is still the main battle tank.

It is a bit like ICBMs... numbers are not a problem because although they are withdrawing a lot the fact is that they don't actually need that many so even if the number dip down a bit the older models are all there already and new ones are on the way.

Replacing the solid propellent would be a big step forward...

Liquid fuels tend to be more powerful.

If only oil price would reach the stratosphere, perhaps Liquid propellant tech and hybrid engine tech could be part of the next gen vehicles.

Liquid propellent need not be expensive... they are introducing new vehicles now... just fitting them with some plumbing wouldn't cost that much.

The propellent could be a binary liquid or split into three or more components where each component on its own is not dangerous and will not explode. When mixed together in the chamber it becomes a super powerful explosive but stored in various parts in the vehicle it can be inert and safe.

Each shot could be loaded to the level of power needed for that specific target, so firing a HE shell a lighter charge could be used, while an enemy tank from the front could use the max charge.

They could use it on the Coalition first... it would make the mechanism much more compact if they only have to store and move projectiles from the automated ammo rack to the chamber of the gun and can have propellent stored in tanks in various places around the vehicle where there is room.

For use from safe areas you could plug in external tanks with propellent... perhaps mounted on a trailer for prolonged periods of firing.

Esp. Liquid propellant, the tech is there, the problem would be the huge costs associated with new guns, ammo and the support equipment.

Wouldn't need new guns as such... just modify their chambers (ie it is a bit like modifying a petrol driven engine to gas (LPG) ).

The APFSDS projectiles will be lighter as they wont need solid propellent around them and also will be smaller and more compact so you could carry rather a lot. The HE rounds will be exactly the same.

The difference is that you can have an extra fuel trucks with each of the propellent chemicals to pump into the respective vehicle... pumping it in via hose would be much quicker, easier, and safer than hand loading them in via the roof hatch as they do right now with 125mm rounds.

Not to mention the 2k odd t-80 that is about the level of t-72b, and im pretty sure on par with chinas best tank(t-72b is with the exception of its shitty engine).

Not sure what you mean about the T-72Bs engine being bad. It is very reliable and doesn't consume fuel the way the gas turbines in the T-80s does.

perhaps Liquid propellant tech and hybrid engine tech could be part of the next gen vehicles.

You mean next gen as in armata/kurganets/boomerang/typhoon? Because they are going to be operational for 30-40 years... they are designed to be modular so new armour types and new weapons can be installed easily so they will likely get decent upgrades every 2-3 years as new technology matures.