[Official] Armata Discussion thread #1

The MBT variant is also very interesting even though it may not be the definite version and maybe just one of the proposed MBT on the Armata platform.

We don't know that this is a mbt version... there are suggestions that this is a BMPT vehicle with a 120mm rifled gun/mortar instead of a high velocity tank gun.

The twin 6-barrel guns are very interesting and is definitely meant to counter the top-attack weapons.

A close look suggests to me that it is probably a 23mm 6 barrel gun (ie 23 x 114mm calibre rather than the much higher veocity 23 x 152mm round used by Shilka and ZU-23) and on the far side a long barrel 30mm or 40mm grenade launcher.

And if this is going to make to the production variant, it would mark another big leap that Russia would have over other designers, in self-defense from top-attack weapons alone.

I rather doubt these are for CIWS use, and suspect it is more for firepower against ground and air targets... the 23mm gatling would produce a high rate of fire and would be a powerful weapon against ground and air targets but using compact ammo (based on the 14.5mm HMG round).

I rather suspect the gatling would be used in short bursts to fill an area with fragments, rather than against small fast moving targets.

Imagine the effect on nearby friendly vehicles if a 23mm gatling gun suddenly opened up at 10,000 rpm because someone launched an RPG at the vehicle? The cure would be worse than the disease...

Even though there have been turrets with twin guns, like below, the new model displayed is sort of taking the Kashtan/Palash/Palma capability on to a MBT, a big leap in my view.

That tank with cannon fitted was about replacing the roof mounted 50 cal with a weapon or weapons more suited to anti helo use... nothing to do with CIWS use.

2) The two guns looks independent in vertical plane, but will there be guidance units to allow the MBT to target two targets approaching at different angles (in vertical plane)?

All the guns will be controlled by the gunner, so it is likely he will choose the weapon that is most suitable to the target.

3) Without a direct physical viewer it looks like all the images have to come through cables and get displayed on to the dedicated displays. Or will the unit have something different that is conventional and 'real-time'?

The gunners main sight will likely be used, but I suspect the guns can elevate independently as the low velocity grenade launcher will need higher elevation than the main gun or the gatling.

4) whats the gun barrel covered with & where is the third hatch located?

Probably to protect the gun from fragments and to lower the IR signature of the gun.

Based on the location of the optics I would say the centre seat is to the rear of the seats either side of it.

Using tank for AD is stupid and no mention has been made of that, and for urban operations 6 barrels just adds weight, complexity, and a ROF that is needlessly high.

Actually the GSh-6-23 is a fairly light gun at less than 80kgs and being gas powered has no electric motor to spin it up. A high rate of fire is useful if used in very short bursts to maximise the effect of relatively small rounds.
The 23 x 114mm ammo is rather more compact than the 30 x 165mm ammo.

23 x 114mm ammo is also standard ammo used by Mi-24P helos.

But my view is to have these close-in cannons if the design is feasible, so that an MBT is able to independently defend itself against top-attack weapons/missiles & guided missiles. I believe it will be worth an addition if there is not a big penalty of weight.

Again, I seriously doubt these extra gun mounts are part of a CIWS.

In every case this is only a model, so I think it is still too early to draw some conclusion.

Very good point... this is only a model, and I doubt it is the MBT model anyway.

Small guns are for Ciws or to be used only against infantry?

I would rule the former out and suggest the latter is the only logical conclusion...

I don't think it's x2 6 barreled guns. I think the one nearest to the camera is one, and the gun on the far side is just a 7.62 machine gun very similar to what is on the T-90MS.

Looking at the barrel thickness of the farside gun I suspect it is a grenade launcher rather than a PKT.

I highly doubt it's for dedicated AD, most likely just additional firepower. IMO it is probably just a place holder on the model. A multitude of different weapons should be able to be mounted to the two auxiliary weapon slots on the turret. If they wanted strong AD capability, I guess they could mount a strelets module on it. North Korea demonstrated a similar setup on their upgraded MBTs.

I am pretty sure it is not an AD vehicle... keep in mind that it is totally out of scale to the vehicle models beside it.

I rather suspect that this is a BMPT model but that the real MBT model will have the 23mm gatling replaced with a 30mm 2A72 cannon and it will likely retain the grenade launcher on the other side... the main gun being a 125mm smoothbore... later to be replaced with a 15xmm calibre weapon when needed.

Apart from the panoramic sight at near the rear of the centre spine on the turret and the gunners optics above the gun there are lots of details missing like NERA and smoke grenades and APS systems and sensors... this is clearly a basic model that is not giving away all the real details.

True. But for a BMPT vehicle, it has lower firepower (missiles) compared to the existing version.

Would have to disagree there.

The BMPT has two 30mm cannon, plus coaxial PKT and two front fender mounted 30mm grenade launchers and finally two ready to fire ATAKA ATGMs.

Lets assume that this new vehicle has a 120mm rifled gun related to the Vena, a 23mm gatling gun firing 23 x 114mm rounds and a long barreled version of the 40mm Balkan AGL. Add to that a PKT coaxial MG which we can assume is fitted.

Certainly the 23mm gatling beats the 30mm cannons in terms of rate of fire, but the ammo is much lower velocity so its penetration will be worse. The 23mm rounds are far more compact so it will be able to carry a far larger load of 23mm ammo.

The point is that against most soft targets the heavy projectile of the 23mm round will be just as effective, and the difference in effective range will not be significant.

The job of getting 10 small cannon shells on target rapidly would be more efficiently done with the gatling than with the two single barrel 30mm guns and the two single barrel guns weigh 230kgs compared with the 73kgs of the 23mm gatling!

The long barrel 40mm grenade launcher will likely have a range of 2-3km and the larger grenades will likely make up for only one weapon being fitted.

In terms of making up for the loss of 4 ATAKA missiles.... I rather think a 120mm rifled gun able to fire HE shells and mortar bombs to 13km and 7km respectively more than makes up for those 4 missiles with a flight range of 6km.

For precision the 120mm gun should be able to fire the Gran and Kilolov laser guided artillery rounds to ranges beyond 6km in a diving top attack profile...

In fact I suggested that to improve the BMPT they should replace the two single barrel guns with a twin barrel GSh-30K with a higher rate of fire, and fit the 100mm rifled gun of the BMP-3 so missiles could be fired down the main gun without any crew needing to leave the inside of the vehicle. I also thought it would be better with a couple of independently operated turrets... but with a crew of three there would not be the two dedicated gunners to operate them so they make less sense.

How about the 4-barrel 7.62mm? It is very light and would make good asset against infantry.

The best use of the 4 barrel 30 cal gatling is from a fast moving vehicle like a helo for use against enemy ground forces and it would be used to hose an area down to suppress enemy fire.

Against infantry it would actually be much more effective to use exploding ammo like 40mm grenades.

But when we talk about two multi-barrel guns, this vehicle is sort of approaching the BMPT level, but without the missiles that exists on the current BMPT.

Multi barrel guns offer very high rates of fire, which is critical when trying to hit small fast moving targets so for CIWS and as a gun for a fighter aircraft they might be very useful, but most of the time very high rates of fire just wastes ammo. To suppress an enemy position like a building where lots of sniper fire is located then a 50 round spray burst of 23mm cannon shells is just as effective as a 50 round burst of 30mm cannon shells, but in this case it takes the 23mm cannon less time to deliver that burst so it will arrive in a shotgun blast like effect rather than a stream or two.

If rate of fire was everything then metal storm would be the number one gun company in the world.

But we do agree that 6-barrel gun is for air-targets. And that is exactly what I mean, a significant improvement in capability against air-targets with this 6-barrel gun to include wider range of targets than just aircrafts. This I believe is for engaging the top-attack missiles.

No.

If this is the GSH-6-23 then it is the wrong gun... the projectiles are heavy and the muzzle velocity is low... about 710m/s... these are not good features for shooting at moving targets.

Don't think of this gun as being a Shilka with two extra barrels... this weapon is a very fast firing KPV with the projectiles stretched to 23mm calibre and filled with a lot more HE... the cost is a reduction in muzzle velocity of about 400m/s.

Not great for penetrating armour but excellent for delivering a hell storm of fragments and HE.

Against a group of enemy forces in the open this gun would be particularly deadly. Equally for ripping up light armoured vehicles it would also be deadly.

For shooting at aircraft the density of fire would be great, but the low muzzle velocity would seriously count against it.

The crew is going to be shifted to the front hull, but that does not mean the turret need not be protected from top-attack missiles. Since this is an early model, there is quite a scope to change my view as things gets clearer. But as of now I believe and want to believe that this gatling gun is for engaging top-attack threats.

I would suspect the fact that they have anti sniper systems including laser dazzlers in a package the size of a pair of binoculars that for their new generation tank they could beef that up a bit so the diving top attack weapons like SALH or TV or IIR guided weapons will be dealt with both passively and actively.

If these turret mounted guns could do the job then BMPs should be safe from top attack weapons because its 30mm gun should actually be more effective than any of the guns fitted to this vehicles turret at engaging such threats.

And this could be to engage the top-attack missiles, which the current 12.7mm cannot counter with any amount of bursts.

I rather doubt the solution to incoming top attack threats will come in any form of gun... it just wouldn't be able to react quickly enough... you need something like ARENA that is ready to fire at any time to intercept an incoming threat...

For engaging a regular targets like helo, they don't need a 6-barrel gun.

For engaging helos there will be TOR and Pantsir-S1 vehicles in the brigade.

The 120mm gun with laser guided shells would likely be more use against a helo than the gatling gun.

The relatively low velocity of the 23 x 114mm round means it would likely not be much use against aerial targets outside of 2-2.5km... which makes the vehicle horrendously vulnerable to enemy helicopter weapons.

But the centre seat is going to be that of driver or the gunner?
If the 3rd seat is going to be further back, any exit hatch is going to be underneath the turret face.

I don't know. It is possible that the centre crewman gets out after one of the other crew gets out, or perhaps the turret has to turn 90 degrees sideways to let him get out his own hatch.

For all we know there could be a tunnel down a side of the vehicle to let all three crew out a hatch at the rear and the hatches in the front are fake.

As I said I don't know.

Then what is it for?
They don't need any sort of 6-barrel rapid-fire cannon to engage the helos.

If the vehicle is the armata BMPT then its two main roles are convoy escort... ie firepower to repulse an ambush, and tank support to protect tanks from dismounted infantry, in steep country or urban areas where threats can come from angles where standard MBT guns can't elevate to cover.

In that case its armament is fine... a 120mm direct fire gun/mortar plus a high rate of fire cannon with heavy HE projectiles for its calibre, and a 40mm AGL, plus coaxial PKT MG.

Long range targets can be engaged with guided ammo and close range targets obliterated with 10,000 rpm 23mm cannon shells.

A 23/30mm 6-barrel gun is a wastage on infantry. Better use smaller 4-barrel 7.62mm or 12.7mm for that role.

The 6 barrel gun in this case allows lots of targets to be engaged rapidly without overheating. 23mm packs rather more punch than rifle calibre MGs. Using fixed bursts of 5, 10, 20, 50, or even 100 round bursts means the very high rate of fire will not be a problem in terms of wasting ammo. Against a target like a light vehicle a 10 round burst would ensure it is put out of action rapidly. I would think a sweep of the barrel at a group of infantry would make them duck very rapidly and stay down...

I think its 7.6mm or a 12.7mm as Zivo mentioned. Maybe similar to what we see in this drawing.

Both PKT and Kord have muzzle flash hiders, while the far side weapon in the model is a straight tube that is too thick to be a rifle calibre machine gun. I would suggest it is either a 30mm or 40mm grenade launcher.

Look at the elevation of the main gun... with a coaxial PKT machine gun attached to its axis a separate 30 cal MG becomes unnecessary.
To be honest a 50 cal MG and a 23mm gatling would be relatively redundant as the ammo is a similar size while the cannon carries a much heavier projectile.

The only weapon that makes sense is a low velocity grenade launcher that can lob grenades over frontal cover into dead space.

Yes, itz a basic model no doubt. But it may be giving out signs of what sort of thing to expect..

In my biased opinion it has the ideal armament for a BMPT type vehicle... especially if the decision is taken to replace the KPV HMG with 23mm KPVB machine guns which trade high muzzle velocity for shell weight, which would make the 23mm gatling more useful as the round it fires would become much more common on ground vehicles.

AFAIK the 23mm gatling has been removed from aircraft for safety reasons as the vibration of firing led to problems in the Su-24 and Mig-31. The Mig-27 uses the 30mm 6 barrel gatling and has already been withdrawn with that aircraft.

Both guns can still be used in gun pods.

Good news, but not totally unrealistic as they have been working on a next gen tank for some time.

The transfer of technology probably saved quite a bit of time as well.

Of course at the end of the day what they are trying to do is huge... they are going to replace all the vehicles in a brigade with a new vehicle base that is part of a family of vehicles for that weight class. They are also creating three different vehicle families with two extra variants to accommodate all their options...

They are basically developing a tank based brigade family of heavy tracked vehicles based on two versions of armata with the engine in front or engine in back design, a BMP based brigade family of medium weight tracked vehicles all with the engine in the front, a BTR based brigade family of medium weight wheeled vehicles all with the engine in the front, and a shortened BTR based brigade family of light weight wheeled vehicles all with the engine in the front.

The difference is that the they are all heavier and better protected than their existing equivalents, so instead of a 48 ton MBT, an 18 ton BMP, and a 14 ton BTR and an 6 ton BRDM-2, they are 55 ton, 25 ton, 25 ton, and 10 ton respectively.

Equally important is that these are families of vehicles, so while there are armoured recovery versions of MBTs and artillery versions (MSTA), with Armata every vehicle in a heavy brigade from BMP to BTR and Tunguska and command vehicle and ambulance will be armata based. Same with other vehicle types.

To simplify and ease logistics each vehicle type (MBT/IFV/APC/Air Defence/Tube Artillery/Rocket Artillery) that is part of that brigade will be based on that vehicle, so within a unit all the vehicles will have the same or related parts including engines etc. Equally the electronics and sensors package (called avionics for aircraft) will also be standardised so the tank in a heavy armata brigade will have the same electronics and sensors as the Boomerang-10 tank. Because of weight issues eventually the armata might have a 152mm smoothbore, while the Boomerang-25 might be limited to the long recoil 125mm smoothbore fitted to Sprut, and the boomerang-10 might have a 45mm smoothbore simply because in 125mm it wont have enough ammo on board, or the recoil might be too high.
Artillery will have its own avionics, from a 152mm coalition in the armata brigades, to perhaps a 120mm smoothbore gun/mortar in the lighter vehicles that can fire 120mm mortar bombs as well as custom designed 120mm shells and laser homing missiles like Gran and Kitolov-2M.

you are not wrong my friend...

Tanks have a long time 12,7 mm machine gun on the roof for AD defense, but they are not AS systems. I think this GSh-23-6 will just replace Kord machine gun.

I don't think this is a standard tank model Armata... I think this is the high firepower BMPT model which is why it has a gatling.

To follow your logic a change to 23mm calibre it would be much simpler and cheaper to fit a KPB, which is a KPV HMG in 23 x 114mm instead of the related 14.5 x 114mm standard round it usually fires. Rate of fire is not hugely important against most ground targets and weight of the HE payload is far more important... and the 23mm shell has quite a useful HE round. Double the muzzle velocity of a 30mm grenade launcher it would be a potent weapon.

Personally I think the MBT version of Armata will keep Kord and a coaxial PKT and likely also have a 30mm grenade launcher if there is a BMPT vehicle with a rifled 120mm gun/mortar. If there isn't then fitting a 30mm cannon that elevates to hit targets the main gun can't hit would be the same as BMPT vehicles...

[quote]
True, but they will be 1 or 2 km behind you and they will not be always present, because they are not build in such big number. In such case vehicle like BMPT, which is in the same line, is quite of great value.[//quote]

That is a good thing because the missiles for Pantsir-S1 have a 1.5km dead space and will have an enormous advantage in terms of engaging low flying aircraft by having radar and being connected to the air defence network.

The primary use for RWS on armata MBT and BMPT will be for ground based threats like infantry.

I suspect that the Russians have made one-team out of the teams which did work on both the "Black Eagle" and the T-95, plus experts from the ground forces and others pretty much they`ve put all the bright minds into one large project. And yeah it probably did they pretty much have two protytpes they can "look" at even if one of them is more of a mockup to some extent as well as people that has worked x?? how many years again on the two other projects?

Have to be careful here... many seem to think the Black Eagle and T-95 were competing to be the next gen Russian tank.

In many ways the Black Eagle was an attempt to solve the main design problem of the T-80, which was the underfloor ammo cassette.

The T-95 on the other hand was a program to replace the current MBTs with a new generation system.

In this regard the Black Eagle was more like Burlak, or T-90AM, but it never got full funding.

Black Eagle was based on the T-80 which has its propellent stubs exposed on the floor of the vehicle turret, so any penetration sent a shower of sparks and hot fragments down onto the propellent stubs made of cardboard impregnated with highly flammable main gun ammo propellent.

The Black Eagle removed that ammo to a turret bustle system to the rear of the turret separate from the crew.

The Burlak was an upgrade of the T-72 which has the propellent stubs and the ammo projectiles horizontal on the turret floor protected by armour plate and separated from the crew compartment so penetrations that shower the floor with hot fragments and sparks never reach the propellent stubs. Because it had underfloor ammo and rear turret bustle ammo it would have had up to 53 rounds of ready to use ammo with long rod penetrators in the turret bustle benefiting from a straight ram loading procedure which should be fast and efficient.

The Russian Army decided that having lots of ammo in the turret bustle was not safe so they rejected both designs and the resulting further work led to the T-90AM which has loose ammo in the turret bustle but protected and completely separate from the crew compartment.

Personally I preferred the Burlak design... I think it could be made safe and indeed I think if they were clever they could design it so that the rear turret autoloader could be fitted like a rifle magazine so you load the turret bustle autoloader with a crane and a reduced size autoloader with ammo for the underfloor ammo cassette and use that to cycle ammo through the autoloader system and into the underfloor ammo cassette. You'd then remove the empty turret bustle cassette and replace it with full size autoloader with special long rod rounds for carriage in the turret bustle.

Of course the armata will have an external gun mount with all main gun ammo below the turret ring protected by heavy hull armour and totally separate from the crew.

In the future I could see progress to add separate HE and APFSDS rounds with no propellent with a liquid propellent system storing the propellent liquid in two parts. Each separate part might not even be flammable, though I wouldn't want to drink either, so you could store the propellent between armour layers safely. The two components of liquid are mixed and then injected into the chamber just before firing and are ignited with an electric current.

This would make propellent storage on the vehicle much much safer and would give the vehicle much more control of its main gun... the propellent could be varied to suit terrain or target or temperature.

For instance in steep terrain a reduced charge might be useful, and for closer shots less propellent might be needed.

but Pantsir is still dedicated AD complex (expensive, what mean not in large number), which will be 1 to 3 km behind the first lines, no matter how good protection it will have.

This is true... it is important that a Pantsir-S1 actually acts like an AD vehicle and does not go up and waste time and ammo trying to be a BMPT. When there is no enemy air threat that might be OK, though it could still hit targets with its 30mm cannon at 2km as 500m, but in real combat it would be suicide to distract your AD vehicles with "other" missions.

Placing gun only vertically independent means you could use it with your main FCS and have only one operator. For engaging ground targets, rotating speed of a turret is high enough. 23 mm or 30 mm gun could effectively keep infantry up to 3 km away, so they could not launch their AT rockets or even ATGMs like Javelin.

I agree. This is not a case of making a tank vehicle a jack of all trades AD/MBT vehicle.

This is more of a case of fitting the BMP-3 with a 30mm cannon and a 100mm rifled gun.

It means when facing a variety of targets the gunner has a choice of which weapon to use to engage that is appropriate to the target at hand.

A 23mm gatling has good hitting power because of the relatively heavy projectiles, and the moderate muzzle velocity means the rounds get to target faster than grenades, with moderate recoil from compact rounds that could be carried in large numbers. The high rate of fire will keep the rounds in a burst close together to magnify their impact on area targets.

They could have just as easily used the twin barrel 23mm GSh-23L which is already used by Army Aviation in the last model Hinds with the 23mm twin barrel gun in a chin turret.

AFAIK the feed mechanism for the GSh-23L uses a single belt feed... it is a single twin barrel gun and the ammo is fed alternately into each chamber from a single belt.

The 2A42 and 2A72 single barrel guns of the BMP-2 and BMP-3 vehicles respectively are dual feed weapons so with a flick of a switch you can choose AP or HE ammo.

I rather suspect the 23mm gatling will fire a standard belt of all HEI rounds with little need for an AP round.

I totally agree that the Shilka would be a fearsome weapon against infantry and soft targets... the 23mm projectile used by the 23mm gatling gun is the same as that fired from the Shilka.

The main difference is that the 23 x 114mm round travels at 715m/s muzzle velocity (which doesn't matter much for HEI rounds of course), while the 23 x 152mm round of the Shilka travels at 980m/s.

For use against soft ground targets the difference in muzzle velocity is completely unimportant.

Rate of fire on the other hand determines how the rounds arrive and the gatling firing at up to 12,000 rpm has three times higher rate of fire than the four barrel Shilka at 4,000 rpm, so a 200 round burst can be delivered in 1 second by the gatling.

BTW it might not penetrate the armour of an M1A2, but you could shatter the optics and roof mounted sensors and blind the target...